Concert series to make a return in Fort William First Nation this summer

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM — Crossroad Music owner Steve Lalonde is looking forward to the second year of a summer concert series featuring Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians on Crossroad Music’s outdoor stage on City Rd. in Fort William.

“I just thought it was a tremendous opportunity to promote local musicians and Anishinaabe musicians from all communities including ours,” says Lalonde, a Fort William musician who started up the business last May. “It gives them a chance to come in the store and look around and check things out. One of the things that was really important to me was to basically put the event on free of charge. It’s really turning out and we’re looking at different ways of growing it.”

Lalonde says the concerts have been well received by people in the community, noting that he is planning to hold the concert series for 15 consecutive weeks this summer.

“…Chief [Michele] Solomon has been by a number of times,” Lalonde says. “We’ve had a number of councillors come by and partake, Elders and youth, and it seems to be really well received. It’s a modest start, but it’s growing.”

Lalonde says he is also planning to work with Indigenous artists to create a limited series of about 50 Prestige guitars with Indigenous artwork featured on the guitars.

“It’s never been done before and we’re looking at donating some of the proceeds to Indigenous causes,” Lalonde says. “We’re just trying to create a real good synergy there.”

Andrew Haigh, manager at Crossroad Music, says the concerts run every Saturday from 1-5 p.m. starting on May 25.

“Sometimes, we have two bands, sometimes we have one depending on what we can book,” Haigh says. “It’s free local music supporting our local musicians.”

Haigh says the concert series went really well last year.

“Several weekends we had a full parking lot,” Haigh says. “We’re looking to ramp it up and we’re going to get better parking. We had Frankie T last year and I think he was our biggest draw — he’s kind of a bluesy rock and roll classic rock kind of guy. The response has been really good, people have been saying they’re going to come back and every band from last year says they want to come back.”

Haigh says they decided to build the outdoor stage after opening the store.

“We were like, ‘You know what we should do? Have bands’, so we built the stage,” Haigh says. “We had about 30 performers last year. We have chairs set up, we block off the middle of the parking lot.”

Haigh says they also had the T’s Eats food vendor set up at last year’s concerts, which is confirmed for this year as well.

“So, we’ll have bannock burgers for sure,” Haigh says.

Haigh says they sell a range of guitars, ukuleles, amplifiers, pedals, mixing boards, and other equipment.

“Once we get our renovations done, we’re going to get drums in, we’re going to get keyboards,” Haigh says.

Eugene Bannon, guitar tech at Crossroad Music and Fort William citizen, says he does general guitar repairs in the store.

“I work on guitars, fix, repair, setups,” Bannon says. “I know a lot about gear and a lot about music and instruments, amps. My dad used to play back in the day — he taught me how to do everything with my hands. We were very self-sufficient out here, we didn’t have much money growing up as a kid on the rez so we were taught to be self-sufficient.”