Easter Weekend is for hockey and live music in these parts. Well, for me at least for the last 20 years. If you think I can make an adventure out of a stroll in the dog park, well buckle up buttercup! Join me for the Good Times Hockey League Summit!
As the story goes, a bunch of actors, musicians, music industry folks and comedians decided it was time to form a hockey league just for artists. As the league grew and more teams joined, it was decided that a yearly tournament would be a good occasion to invite teams from across Canada to join us in Toronto...on Easter Weekend.
We have had a team in from the first edition of the tournament and were here again for perhaps the 20th year in a row. It is no simple hockey tournament though, there is a big artistic and musical component that makes it special. Here is my trip as it showed up in chronological order on my phone.
First was a trip to Toronto after packing all my gear and clothes for the weekend. Great day for a drive and good evening for a jam session.
We assembled at Jimmy Freedom's place to watch a little hockey and figure out what songs we all knew. This year, our musical contribution would be an hour of Rink Rock. That that entails is playing music between whistles at one of the hockey games. As simple as that sounds, it is not.
Playing a big long song for the warmup is pretty straight forward. Between the beginning of the game and the first whistle, you have to plan a song to rip into and play it during the break until the next faceoff. Then you stop immediately and start laughing at how silly it is to play a song for 20 seconds. Sometimes the laughing continues until the next whistle and you have to very quickly pick another song to play, together, immediately. We generally go through about 30 songs in total so a little rehearsal the night before is very useful.
Besides getting back to live music in a single evening, it is also a great chance to hang with the guys and have a couple beers. Another thing I love about the trip to the big city is picking up fresh beer from some of my favourite craft breweries. This time, it was a trip to Great Lakes Brewery for a New England IPA https://www.greatlakesbeer.com/Beer/theyre-alive/
2 is better than 1 so I took the opportunity to visit another local brewery. This is the taproom at Henderson Brewing Company https://hendersonbrewing.com/ I will save sharing the beers I picked up here for #beersaturday and get back to the music.
The opening night festivities consisted of a private party with all of the teams invited. The theme of the night was karaoke, which I happen to enjoy more than your average hoser, so we were all in. I normally prefer to try a new song every time we go but opted for a song we did live on stage last year as a throwback to 2022. Who doesn't love Huey Lewis & the News?
Turns out this wasn't the only karaoke on tap for the weekend. One team called the Twisted Sisters went all out to simulate the experience of singing in the shower except right in the lobby of the arena. They had branded towels and bathrobes to celebrate Twisted Showeroke.
3 of us jumped behind the curtain and belted out Stayin' Alive by the Beegees to throw it back to our set a couple years ago. Too much fun.
The Hootenanny was the real draw of the weekend as it is every year. This is where each team puts an act on stage and tries to out-do eachother for the Dominion award. This is given each year for the team that has the best act at the multi-night Hootenanny and is actually much more coveted than any of the hockey trophies.
Sometimes it is a bunch of hairy uncles pumping out Weezer songs.
Other acts included a team dressing up in ref stripes and doing a set of The Strokes/White Stripes.
Then you have award winning musicians assembling a full brass section and shaking the dance floor with some rocking funk. Jungle boogie!
So many good acts each year and it was a treat to hear a Doucette song live after so many decades!
We were up the next day for our rink rock set. We ended up playing quite a few classic rock songs with other old favourites mixed in. set list included Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Big Sugar, Neil Young, Bad Company, Weezer, Radio Head, Nirvana, Tragically Hip, Tom Petty, some I Will Survive all the way to I Would Walk 500 Miles and everywhere in between. Such a different and fun type of performance.
Equally as fun was a couple beers and a smoke and a pancake in the parking lot between games. Weather was damn nice with dry sunny days to tailgate. Didn't make us any better for the next game but it is a sacrifice you have to make when you are athletes of this calibre.
In the end, we didn't perform too well on the ice. There was a lot of rust to knock off and we bowed out in the semi finals. We got better as the tournament went on and had a blast but it was not to be this year. Still made a fun weekend to hang with friends you don't always get to see, doing something special, being active and artistic.
We did take home a trophy for off ice performance. A new award was introduced called the Black Sabbath Mirror Award and we won it for being "The Hootenanny Set that should have won last year" for our Huey Lewis & the Groove show. Hell yah! What a weekend!
Thanks for joining me this year! Just wait til you see what we have in store for next year!
