Silverstein's When Broken Is Easily Fixed 15th Anniversary Tour with guests Hawthorne Heights, As Cities Burn, Capstan, and Alone I Walk
January 20, 2019
The Garrick
Manitoba’s own, Alone I Walk, was selected to join the touring lineup for the Winnipeg date and kicked the night off just right. Alone I Walk is made up of the brother duo, Franky and Pascal Courcelles, alongside their fellow Canadian musicians Shane Tasker and Cody McManus from the band Bellevue. The group performed tracks from their 2018 album, Wander, as well as material from their first album Lost At Sea and their EP, Already Lost. Since the release, last year of the wildly popular album Wander, the band has embarked on two tours of North America and has fairly earned their spots opening for PVRIS in April 2018 and now for Silverstein on the band’s When Broken Is Easily Fixed 15th Anniversary Tour.
Following Alone I Walk, the progressive post-hardcore band, Capstan, hailing out of Orlando, Florida, braced the extremely bitter Winnipeg cold as well as The Garrick stage to perform for their very first time in the city. The first thing that struck my eye as the band hit The Garrick stage was that Capstan’s vocalist, Anthony DeMario walked upon the stage proudly wearing a Humboldt Broncos t-shirt to honour the victims of the horrific accident. The band performed a decent-sized set of seven songs, including the tracks, “The Wreath and the Follower,” “Stars Before the Sun,” and “Wax Poetic.”
Performing after Capstan was the post-hardcore turned indie rock band, As Cities Burn. As Cities Burn brought a high-octane performance from all the band’s five members on stage in their debut Winnipeg performance. As the band has never been to the city before, their seven-song set was sure to include music from all three of their records, Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest, Come Now Sleep, and Hell or High Water. Some of the songs performed in front of the Winnipeg audience included, “One: Twentyseven,” “This Is It, This Is It,” “84 Sheepdog,” and their most recent single, “2020 AD.” Subsequently, the track “2020 AD” was dropped in November 2018 after the band announced their signing to Equal Vision Records.
Sporting a gigantic backdrop that read “I used to listen to Hawthorne Heights in high school,” it was no question who was up to the stage after As Cities Burn. Unlike Capstan and As Cities Burn, the Hawthorne Heights crew aren’t strangers to the city of Winnipeg and have performed in the city on multiple occasions in the past. The band is currently touring in support of their new album, Bad Frequencies. From that new record, they performed three songs during their nine-song set.
Among those three was “Just Another Ghost,” a track about losing loved ones way too early in life. Vocalist, JT Woodruff had the Winnipeg audience hold up their phone flashlights during the performance of the song, which illuminated the entire venue in the bright white light of cell phone LEDs. Hawthorne Heights’ set was primarily filled with older tracks, however, which contained the fan favourites, “This Is Who We Are,” “Niki FM,” and “Ohio Is for Lovers.”
The final act of the night was no other than the Canadian post-hardcore legends Silverstein from Burlington, Ontario. Silverstein are far from strangers to Winnipeg, let alone all of Canada. They’ve toured their entire home country over a dozen times supporting their vast catalogue of music, from as early as 2000. The most recent time Silverstein made their way through Winnipeg was just over a year ago on November 7, 2017. The tour date was part of the band’s Canadian leg of their Dead Reflection Tour.
Silverstein performed a huge twenty-one-song set, which was split into two halves. The first ten songs were off the band's very first album When Broken Is Easily Fixed, which turned 15 years old last year in May. The band was joined on stage by Capstan vocalist, Anthony DeMario to perform the album’s title track, “When Broken Is Easily Fixed.” The track originally featured, Kyle Bishop of the now-defunct Toronto post-hardcore band, The Black Maria.
All photos by Samuel Stevens Photography.
The second half of Silverstein’s set was dubbed, “The Greatest Hits” by vocalist, Shane Told. This part of the set included a plethora of fan favourites such as, “The Afterglow,” “Smile In Your Sleep,” “Call It Karma,” “Massachusetts,” and “Discovering the Waterfront.” The band's encore was performed mostly acoustic and the songs performed were, “Aquamarine” and “My Heroine.”
While the band’s When Broken Is Easily Fixed 15th Anniversary Tour is said to be Silverstein’s only headline tour of the year, it has yet to be clarified if the band will take time off the road to start writing and recording the follow-up to their 2017 album, Dead Reflection, or if they’ll be touring as an opening act on an upcoming tour bill, as the band is well known to do on occasion. Regardless of which route the band is set to take, expect to see them on the road again very soon.