GoodKid at the Bronson Centre, November 2023. Photo by Landon Entwistle.
While festival season is right on the horizon, this weekend has a few shows that deserve to draw attention away from the main stage lineups. And if you haven’t gotten back out to see some live music in a while, best to get the rust out before the long festival days.
Saturday has a pair of great Ontario rock shows to check out. On one hand, the double bill of Bleeker and Boston Levi at Overflow Brewing Company is bound to be a blast, and will feature a fun mix of high energy anthems and captivating roots rock in an intimate venue. On the other hand, Bronson Centre will be hosting indie-rock quintet Good Kid for their first headlining show in the city. Either way, you can’t go wrong.
We recently chatted with one of the ‘Good Kid’s, Jacob Tsafatinos, to catch up on what they’ve been up to since their last performance here last fall.
APT613: Last time you guys were here was in the fall, opening for Portugal. The Man. And now you’re in the same venue but headlining it, just six or so months later. Has that sunk in yet?
JT: It probably won’t really until we get there and we see it ourselves. Actually, I remember everyone really loved the Ottawa show specifically. Our singer Nick (Frosst) is from the Ottawa region, so maybe there’s something in the air or it’s extra special. Or he just performed better because of it. But I remember we specifically walked away from the Ottawa show thinking that one was one of our favorite ones from that whole Portugal. The Man tour. Definitely really exciting to come back.
To be headlining it is kind of crazy. Unfortunately, Canada is particularly difficult to tour, so that was really great for us as a band, because we’re Canadian, and we never really had a chance to play a lot of these cities. It’s crazy that we get to come back and actually be a headliner band there now.
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As a headliner, you’re going to have a whole lot more space for your setlist. Given you have a couple of EPs and a couple of albums, it must be a different challenge to put together a setlist when you’re headlining, as opposed to when you’ve got a tight one as an opening act.
Yeah, as a headliner you’ve got time, but you want to put on a very different kind of experience. Every band is a little bit different. Everyone has different theories of what their show can or should be. Portugal. The Man, one of the most talented groups of musicians we’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing a stage with, they are very much of the style of, just get up there and play a bunch of music, and they play it very, very well. I think we try to put on a bit more of an interactive show with the audience. So we have a lot of bits and stage banter and things that intertwine with our music. It’s definitely a different challenge for sure.
Whereas when you’re an opening band, you only have to fill 30 minutes. Really, that’s like 6, maybe 8 songs, depending on the songs that you’ve picked. There’s also a flow to the set. When you’re up there for an hour and a half, you want to have some dynamics of a certain vibe and energy, and this is part we get more upbeat. You want to take the audience through a bit of a journey.
Over the pandemic, a lot of artists turned to technology to find a way to keep connecting with fans and keep releasing music, whereas with you, technology was baked in from the beginning. Given you went from 2020 to 2023 with hardly any releases, were you just writing and playing around with ideas or did the music have to be put on hold?
I think initially we did. I do specifically remember we had to give up opening for Tokyo Police Club in Europe, and we were so disappointed because they’re one of our favourite bands. And then we were going to follow up that tour with the release of an EP. I think that was our second EP at the time, actually. So there were a lot of things that we didn’t initially put on pause, but then we realized, this thing is not gonna be quick.
So, we just put stuff out anyway and had fun with it. There was a long time where a couple of us had sick elderly parents, so we were a bit paranoid during that time. We didn’t actually practice for a very long time. But we did write demos at home, and shared stuff, like one of our most popular songs, I wrote the demo in my apartment, and then I sent that to the boys and then I remember Jon (Kereliuk) added drums to it and then Michael (Kozakov) added bass to it at home.
We were still able to be creative and write and contribute to songwriting even from our home, so it’s a very different style, but in a lot of ways it was better I guess, because sometimes when you’re in the room, it’s hard to hear all the details, but when you’re at home and you’re meticulous, ‘I gotta track a bass part to Jacob’s guitar demo’, you have to be a little bit more particular about what you want you write.
So what’s next for Good Kid? After your three Canadian shows, you’ve got a fall European tour. Any new music that we can hope to see pop up soon?
I hope so. We do have some more touring going on. We’re playing Lollapalooza, which is going to be really exciting. And then, yeah, we’ve got the UK EU tour in the fall. A lot of bands go into these cycles of writing, touring, whatever. We don’t really do that. To be honest, everything is always happening at the same time. So we’re still writing demos, we’re practising, we have one song that’s mostly recorded. But I think we’re just going to take it day by day and hopefully we’ll have something else coming up soon, but it’s hard to guarantee. We’re always cooking, but the timelines are never rigid.
Good Kid will be playing an all-ages show at the Bronson Centre, with support from The OBGMs, June 1st. Doors open at 7:30pm. Tickets available here.
Bleeker and Boston Levi will be playing a 19+ show at the Overflow Brewing Co. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets available here.
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