After almost folding when its founding members left, Thunder Bay’s The Honest Heart Collective is gearing up to put out its first new album in years and will be playing some of those shows when they hit the stage at Rainy Lake Square on July 8.
Frontman Ryan MacDonald calls the band a “blue-collar sneaker rock and roll band.”
“We’re just like an everyman’s kind of band from Thunder Bay. We’ve been around for 13 years now, and we’ve been fortunate to tour the country and put on energetic live rock shows,” he said.
As with many bands that rely on live shows for their bread and butter, the pandemic was rough for The Honest Heart Collective, and they’ve lost some members, which MacDonald said is just part of being in a band sometimes.
“It’s tough because it’s hard to blame people,” he said. “It’s like a marriage between you and three other people.”
“We’ve been a band for over a decade, yeah, and when stuff happens, it’s easy to point the finger at who is to blame and who said the thing and who hurt whose feelings, but at the end of the day, it’s 10 years of great memories—and also horrible resentments that we all kind of carried and there’s a lot of baggage,” MacDonald said. “Sometimes something that might be small, that might seem kind of insignificant, like somebody made a joke about somebody else or their shoes, or whatever.”
The two constant members of the band have been MacDonald and his brother Nic, with others coming and going over the years. MacDonald said the challenge of trying to make a living as well as maintaining personal lives can really stress band members.
“Sometimes when you get older, it’s not as easy to do anymore,” he said.
“People get their own apartments, they have dogs, they have relationships, they need to make a living and to be honest, we haven’t been making enough money to hold it together through the BS of all the interpersonal relationships and it starts to feel like a job for some people. And when it starts to feel like a job, they’re not your friends anymore, they’re your coworkers.”
Since their last shakeup, the band has been able to tour extensively, opening for some pretty significant acts including Jimmy Eat World, Fall Out Boy and Billy Talent.
They are preparing to debut their first record of new material on Sept. 18 with a work entitled Sheer Will. They recently released two singles from the album: “96 Sunfire” and “Second Wind” are available on streaming services, with another single to be released soon.
“We recorded this record a couple of years ago before two of our founding members quit,” MacDonald said. “So it’s just been on the shelf for a while until my brother and I found the money to be able to put it out. So now it’s coming out, and it is a rock and roll record that tells a story of a person caught between not being able to keep up and not being able to give up.”
The band has plans to tour around Canada in the fall as well.
The Honest Heart Collective is playing in Rainy Lake Square on Wednesday, July 8, as part of the Summer Sounds in the Square series sponsored by the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre, Tour de Fort and Rainy River Future Development Corporation.
Following that show local acts will take to the square. The Faculty will perform on July 29, Thinking of Pinky on Aug. 5, Rough Cut Pine on Aug. 12 and Red Right Return on Aug. 19.
Over the course of the series, various vendors will be on hand selling food and drink. Flint House will be on hand selling food and drink at The Honest Heart Collective’s show. Concertgoers are encouraged to bring a chair as well.
The Honest Heart Collective are set to take to the Rainy Lake Square stage on July 8, beginning at 7 p.m. In the event of rain, the show will be moved indoors to the Memorial Sports Centre auditorium.
