The Strumbellas made a stop at the Bronson Centre Music Theatre last night as part of their Part Time Believer Tour.
Getting the night started for the early fans was Niagara singer-songwriter Dom Louis, who engaged the crowd with a set of excellent songs, heavily based around his 2023 eponymous album, but also included a song he had just written on Monday, which was well-received by the crowd.
By the time The Strumbellas were set to hit the stage, the Bronson Centre was packed with fans eager for some of the band’s feel-good music. The Part Time Believer Tour is named after the new album. The band dealt with a lot of imposed downtime during the pandemic, and an inability to do live shows gave the band plenty of time to work on writing new material, whittling down a hefty 50 songs to the final 12 on the album.
In recent interviews, the band has said that the album is about pushing through, looking for the light and the hope. The band has been open about mental health struggles, something which has come through in their music for a long time, and that has helped connect the band to their fans. The lyrics from “Holster”, the most recent single from the new album, ring true for a lot of us these days, as we put the pandemic behind us and move forward.
“Because we all get caught in a holster, but it’s all in our head
And everyday goes by, we get older, but we’re not done yet
This is the greatest place that I have been.
I came from the desert and turned into a king.”
There’s a lot to be grateful for, and coming together to celebrate music is one of them. And that’s just what everyone did on Wednesday night. Going to see The Strumbellas is a lot like having a big house party with a few hundred friends, drinks hoisted and hands in the air as everyone sings along. The band’s set was full of new and old material, including “Steal My Soul”, “Running Out of Time”, “Holster” and “Salvation”. The set was fun and silly at times, like when keyboardist Dave Ritter announced that he was going to start the next song with the psychological powers of his mind, and instead teased the audience with a pre-recorded snippet of Europe’s “The Final Countdown”, and once again with Van Halen’s “Jump”.
As part of the tour, the band has been bringing along the Believer Box, a wooden box into which fans are encouraged to put in a piece of paper on which they’ve written something they believe in or at least half-believe in (hence the album title), so vocalist Jimmy Chauveau took a moment to read a few previous submissions, including one where the writer had said they believed Jimmy would need some help with the lyrics to “Salvation”, poking fun at some fumbled lyrics at the beginning of the tour.
The band played a number of their older songs like “Lakes” and “Home Sweet Home”, and also played “Wreckage”, which closes the new album. Violinist Isabel Ritchie said that the band likes to end their albums with acoustic songs, and the song was written about the things you leave behind.
Chauveau made a point of thanking the crowd for coming out on a Wednesday night and packing the Bronson Centre, and that the people’s voices are the heart and soul of the band. But, he joked that as the band moved through the second half or “ass end” of the set, they were gonna need the crowd to bump up the energy from front to back, and the crowd was only too happy to respond. The set continued with more love and positivity, closing out with their 2016 hit “Spirits”, which has been seeing a resurgence in popularity thanks to being frequently featured on Tik Tok.
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