The Darkness At Club Soda

We're a little bit backed up on getting my concert photographs up here on The Old Blog.  I suppose we will catch up at some point, but this would be a good time to remind you that my concert photographs can be seen in a much more timely manner by visiting V13Media, which you can do by following the link.  If you'd like an even more direct route to my photographs, you can visit my personal page over there but using the following link.  The Darkness visited Montreal’s Club Soda this past Sunday night and it was a show that I have been waiting seven years for.  You see, The Darkness are forever tied to my being a concert photographer.  Their visit here in 2013 marked the first time that I brought a camera in to a show.  It was a small Kodak pocket camera, but it ended up laying a foundation for what was to come.  The band returned in 2018 and by this time I had begun bringing my DSLR to the shows with me.  Not totally on the up and up, but I was only using a plastic 50mm prime lens.  When asked by security, I would simply say that it wasn’t a professional camera, thus was legal.  However, on that fateful night, security wasn’t interested in my story or my plastic lens.  They asked me to return it to my car.  As I slowly walked back to the venue, I decided that I needed to find a way to make sure that this would not happen again.  I needed to find a way to get myself in to the photo pit.  Fast-forward through several years and several concerts.  The Darkness are back in Montreal, and I get to shoot them.  To say that I was excited leading up to the event would be an understatement.  The Darkness are currently on their Dreams on Toast tour, named after their most recent album of the same name that was released back in March of this year.  With the sold-out building now packed from front to back, with thanks to a great opening set by Mark Daly & The Ravens, follow the link to check out the photographs, it was time for The Darkness to hit the stage.  Justin Hawkins was the last to join his bandmates on stage.  The familiar cat suit from past concerts has been replaced on this tour with a cowboy outfit straight out of the wild west.  The band opened with ‘Rock And Roll Party Cowboy’, Track One from Dreams on Toast.  That was followed with two songs from Permission To Land, ‘Growing On Me’ and ‘Get Your Hands Off Of My Woman’.  The Darkness recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of that album and the Montreal fans were only to pleased to sing along to both tunes.  At this point, The Darkness was in control.  They even got this hardcore group of rock fans to line-dance along with ‘Walking Through Fire’, much to the amusement of guitarist Dan Hawkins who had to hide his face a few times to contain the laughter.  The rest of the night was a mix of old and new and some terrific covers which ultimately led to a massive sing-a-long for ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ that must have been heard from a block away.  All of the photographs were taken at f/3.2 while using various different shutter speeds, ISO settings and focal lengths.  Here are the rest of the photographs that I took of The Darkness while the performed on the Club Soda stage.

If you would like to find out more about The Darkness and their music, you can do so by following the link to their website.  If you would like to see the photographs that I took of Mark Daly & The Ravens, who performed earlier in the evening, you can do so by following the link.  A big thank you goes out to Chris Taplin, Will Meekin and Polly Marshall Taplin of Shooting Star Management, Renee Harrison of Publicity Please PR and Christopher Gonda of V13 Media for getting me a pass to photograph the show.  As always, it is very much appreciated.  Maybe even more than usual seeing how connected my photographic journey is connected to the band.  This leg of the Dreams On Toast tour has come to an end, but The Darkness will be back on the road in November.  Don’t you dare miss is when The Darkness come to a town near you.