NOTE: All photographs are copyright Howard Shiau Photography 2024. Apologies to drummers Colanthony Humphrey and Jon Kereliuk who I somehow missed
College students meet and decide to form a band, start playing some gigs, and through hard work and gigging non-stop, they make a name for themselves and get popular. In this day and age, they also get on TikTok or YouTube and gain a ton of followers. That’s a pretty typical industry story, right? Not so much for local Toronto band Good Kid. Yes, they met in university (a bunch of computer science majors), started playing gigs, and next thing you know, they have a hit single “Nomu” on YouTube. BUT….they’re gamers and, via the gaming community and twitch, developed a following as other gamers started using their songs as background for their videos on Twitch. Then their music was picked up by Fortnite and they instantly had a huge audience! Then they were named Breakthrough Group of the Year at the 2024 Juno Awards!! Not too shabby for a bunch of geeks that are now juggling their tour schedule with their full-time programming jobs. After spending all of April touring the United States, they came home to Toronto to play a sold out show at the Danforth Music Hall on May 10th.
For such a young band, they sure have some dedicated fans. Everyone at the barricade were wearing flower crowns that light up. They were also giving out individual light up flowers which two security guards good naturedly accepted and wore. There was so much cheering going on before the show even started that I could have sworn we were at a sporting event!
Opening for Good Kid was another Toronto band, OBGM’s. This punk band came on stage and immediately blew everyone’s socks off! The energy was so high that this photographer couldn’t figure out where to look next. Between guitarist Simon Outhit’s long blonde hair flying all over the place to bassist Joe Brosnan high flying antics and his headbanging his way to a concussion, the pace of the set was incredible.
Click on photos to enlarge
Frontman Densil McFarlane was the only one to stop long enough for a breath! In fact, he came down off the stage to engage with the fans! He told the crowd that all the songs were about crippling depression, including one called “Buffalo” about a girl from Buffalo that he was dating. As a current Buffalonian, I wasn’t sure quite how to take that. Either way, the energy was amped throughout the short but fun set!
As Good Kid got ready to take the stage, what intro music did they use? The Pokemon theme song, of course!! So there we were with a thousand kids singing the Pokemon song. Too funny! How can this band follow OBGM’s on stage? With the whole band jumping in the air! Yeah, these guys weren’t going to be upstaged and looked like they were having as much fun up there as the fans were having in the pit. Does this band really look like a bunch of geeks? Well yeah but that doesn’t make the music or their playing any less impressive. Speaking of geeks, does vocalist Nick Frosst remind anyone else of Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon? LOL! There were a couple of technical issues with the Jon Kereliuk drumkit and David Wood’s guitar but the band made light banter through those problems and blew through their set.
The band even brought out a makeshift “Wheel of Chaos” and brought a fan up to the stage to spin the wheel. That would determine which song they would play next…OR it could end the show right then and there. To everyone’s relief, the spinner stopped at “Sea Shanty”, which Good Kid then played. The audience had a great time throughout the show with several fans crowdsurfing (one guy went SIX TIMES!!) and the crowd singing along most of the night. Frosst even took his turn stage diving, showing he was a brave soul with so many young girls in the audience. Luckily, he’s a pretty skinny guy and had no problems being carried throught he crowd.
Good Kid has a couple of other Canadian shows towards the end of the month before playing Lollapalooza in August, then heading over the pond for a UK/EU tour. Catch them live for a good time!
Click on photos to enlarge
