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Iron & Wine + Band of Horses at the Wiltern in Los Angeles

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One of my favorite places to listen to any genre of music has and will always be the Wiltern. Doesn’t matter if its metal, pop, or folky catchy songwriter music. Iron and Wine fits this demo perfectly, as they stopped by, along with co-headliner Band Of Horses, for a headlining date on their current tour together. This show did not disappoint, as Samuel Ervin Beam (better known affectionately as Iron & Wine), took to the mic and calmly went into “On Your Wings,” and followed it up with “Yellow Jacket.” The band is an amazing mixture of musicians, with Samuel leading the way amongst an incredibly talented backing band. The Wine to his Iron, you might say. Such effortless song writing lends to his wonderful voice, evoking childlike flashbacks you’d see in a movie somewhere, playing and running in an open field. I&W give you that feeling, watching something very special unfold live. Nothing too flashy, just exceptional raw talent in every member of Iron & Wine.

Band Of Horses singer Ben Bridwell was already sharing the stage with Iron & Wine, as both himself and Iron & Wine have collaborated on an EP of covers that redefine what their original versions sounded like. BOH blasted right into “The First Song,” literally the first song on their 2006 album Everything All The Time. Following up that indie rock energy with “NW Apt,” the band seems to be having fun, and their bassist Matt Gentling is bouncing all over the stage with that quintessential pop punkness of bands doing this with far less time then BOH. The band brought the energy down for the tear jerking pain of lost love in “No Ones Gonna Love You.” The crowd was singing along with the band, becoming a choir at times, turning the Wiltern into a cathedral of emotion wrapped in color.

The bands continue on this tour for a few more weeks. Make sure to catch them when you can, be it together, or separate. Both are exceptional live.

Check out our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!

Upcoming Tour Dates:
9/26  Del Mar, CA @ The Sound at Del Mar
9/27  Las Vegas, NV @ Bel-Aire Backyard
9/28  Chandler, AZ @ Gila River Resorts & Casinos – Wild Horse Pass
9/30  Flagstaff, AZ @ Pepsi Amphitheater
10/2  Anaheim, CA @ House of Blues Anaheim
10/3  Santa Barbara, CA @ The Arlington Theatre
More information here.

IRON & WINE

BAND OF HORSES

All Photo Credit: John McCrary

Concerts Photos

Summer of ’99 Tour: Creed Gives Winnipeg a Night to Remember

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Some nights disappear by the time you get home. This wasn’t one of them. From the first note to the final encore, Canada Life Centre never stopped singing with Creed. Beat after beat, lyric after lyric, hundreds of voices carried the night. If you weren’t there, you genuinely missed something special.

Opening the night was Mammoth. Before jumping into the set, Wolfgang Van Halen asked the crowd how many had seen the band before and how many were first-timers. The cheers landed almost perfectly down the middle.

I also found out he was Eddie Van Halen’s son, my expectations shot through the roof. That’s a heavy name to carry. Songs like “The End,” “The Spell,” “Distance,” and “I Really Wanna” showed exactly why Mammoth is building its own reputation. By the end of the set, he wasn’t just Eddie’s son, he was Wolfgang Van Halen.

Next came Big Wreck, a band that somehow gets even better live. Ian Thornley’s guitar work was effortless, floating between delicate melodies without missing a beat. “The Oaf,” “Come Again,” and “Albatross” sounded massive. Every instrument cut through cleanly, every lyric landed. Big Wreck are definitely one of Canada’s strongest live rock bands.

Then everything shifted. Long before the lights dropped, the arena had already decided who they came for.
“Creed! Creed! Creed!”
The chant rolled across the building before the band even stepped on stage. The opening blast of “Bullets” hit with fire shooting into the air, smoke pouring across the stage. They played like a band with something left to prove. Audiences were locked in just like the band.

The set moved through “Weathered,” “On My Sleeve,” “My Own Prison,” “What If,” “One,” “What’s This Life For,” and “With Arms Wide Open.” Every chorus came back twice as loud as it left the stage. Thousands of phone lights lit up the arena.

After a short pause, the encore delivered exactly what everyone had been waiting for. “One Last Breath.” The crowd barely let Stapp finish a line before taking over. Then came “My Sacrifice,” and for a few minutes, the band almost disappeared beneath the voices around them. That’s what made this show hit differently. The show was about hearing songs that still connect, still fill arenas, and still have thousands of people screaming every word like they were written yesterday.

Check our our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!

CREED

BIG WRECK

MAMMOTH

All Photo Credit: Nischal Karki

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Concerts Photos

Coheed and Cambria Bring “This Is Our War” to Ottawa

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Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Ottawa – July 14, 2026

There’s a particular kind of chaos that follows Coheed and Cambria into a room, and Ottawa got the full dose of it on a Tuesday night that felt more like a Saturday. Twenty-plus years into their run, and still touring behind last year’s Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe, the New York prog-rock lifers proved once again that a good story and a great riff are not mutually exclusive.

The Openers: Cevilain Own Their Hometown Stage

Before the headliners even hit the stage, the local crowd already had something to cheer for. Cevilain, Ottawa’s own, got the rare hometown-opener treatment, and they didn’t waste it. Tight, loud, and relishing the size of the room, the band tore through a set that had the front rows moving well before Coheed‘s set change. There’s something different about watching a band play in their own city, and that energy was written all over the performance.

The Headliners: Hair, Harmonics, and the Keywork

By the time the house lights dropped, the room was packed shoulder to shoulder. Claudio Sanchez took the stage exactly as fans expect him to, guitar slung low and hair a wall of curls.

The production leaned hard into the band’s sci-fi mythology, with the “keywork” logo splashed across the backdrop in shifting reds, blues, and greens throughout the night. Sanchez spent as much time airborne, leaping, crouching, and prowling the lip of the stage, as he did locked into the fretboard, and the rest of the band matched the intensity beat for beat. The rhythm section anchored the heavier cuts while the guitar work carried the band’s trademark blend of melodic hooks and progressive sprawl.

Between songs, the crowd took over almost as much as the band did, fists in the air, singalongs on the choruses, and no shortage of phones raised to catch a moment.

The Takeaway

For a band this deep into a catalog built on interlocking concept albums, Coheed and Cambria‘s live show still manages to feel less like a history lesson and more like a release valve. Ottawa showed up ready to shout every word back, Cevilain proved a hometown opening slot is nothing to waste, and by the time the last chord rang out, it was clear this stop on the This Is Our War tour earned its place in the run.

Check out our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!

COHEED AND CAMBRIA

CEVILIAN

All Photo Credit: Kieran Delport

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