Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell will be making his fifth appearance at Peterborough Musicfest, performing at Del Crary Park on Saturday, August 16 to close out the festival’s 38th season.
Festival organizers made the announcement on Thursday (March 27), one month to the day after they announced Juno award-winning Serena Ryder will be opening the season on June 28.
“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Kim Mitchell back to Musicfest for our closing night,” says Peterborough Musicfest executive director Tracey Randall in a media release. “He’s a Canadian rock legend, and we know this will be an incredible show.”
“In times when the news is often heavy, it’s great to have something like Musicfest to look forward to,” Randall added. “Being able to offer world-class live music to our community — completely free of charge thanks to our sponsors — is something we are incredibly proud of.”
Mitchell, who will be 73 when he takes to the Fred Anderson Stage, was born and raised in Sarnia in southwestern Ontario. In his early twenties, he began playing with local bands in Sarnia before forming the progressive hard rock band Max Webster in Toronto in 1972 with his childhood friend Pye Dubois.
With Mitchell and lyricist Dubois writing most of the band’s material, Max Webster released six studio albums from 1976 to 1981, recording hit singles such “Waterline”, “Paradise Skies”, “Let Go the Line”, “A Million Vacations”, “Diamonds Diamonds”, “High Class in Borrowed Shoes”, “Hangover”, and “Check”.
VIDEO: “Lager & Ale” – Max Webster
VIDEO: “Paradise Skies” – Max Webster
Max Webster also toured heavily during this time, usually playing 200 to 250 shows each year in venues of all sizes, from bars and high school auditoriums to theatres and arenas.
They opened for big-name artists including Bachman–Turner Overdrive, Blondie, The Cars, Cheap Trick, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, The Guess Who, Kansas, Ted Nugent, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Rush, and more — with one notable exception being KISS.
Many years later, when Mitchell was a host on Toronto classic rock radio station Q107, he interviewed KISS frontman Gene Simmons and asked him why KISS never took Max Webster out as support. “That’s easy — you were too good,” Simmons said.
By 1978, Max Webster were headliners in most major Canadian markets, although they continued to tour extensively with Rush outside of Canada, supporting the band over 200 times.
However, in the space of a few years, a lack of support from their American record label stalled Max Webster’s career. That lack of support, combined with the departure of key band members, led Mitchell to dissolve Max Webster in 1981.
The following year, Mitchell began his solo career, developing a new sound and releasing a self-titled mini-album. In 1984, he released his debut full-length solo album Akimbo Alogo, which produced the songs “All We Are”, “Feel it Burn”, “Lager & Ale”, and the lead single “Go for Soda” — his only charting single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
VIDEO: “Go for A Soda” – Kim Mitchell
VIDEO: “Patio Lanterns” – Kim Mitchell
With lyrics by his Max Webster bandmate Dubois, “Go for Soda” remains Mitchell’s best-known song outside of his Canada. It served as the campaign theme for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in the U.S., was featured in the opening scene of a 1985 Miami Vice episode, and was used in a series of television commercials for the U.S. soft drink Mr. Pibb.
Mitchell’s seven subsequent albums saw a string of hit singles including “All We Are”, “Patio Lanterns”, “Easy To Tame”, “Rock And Roll Duty”, “Rockland Wonderland”, and “America”.
He has won three Juno Awards, including Most Promising Male Vocalist in 1983, Album of the Year in 1988 for his second solo album Shakin’ Like A Human Being, and Male Vocalist of the Year in 1990.
Although Mitchell has only released two albums in the last 25 years (2007’s Ain’t Life Amazing and 2020’s The Big Fantasize), he continues to tour and perform songs from Max Webster and his solo records.
“I don’t stress out about all the stuff around being a touring musician any more,” Mitchell said in a May 2016 interview with Jim Barber of MusicLifeMagazine.net. “I am where I am in my life and my career, so I am just going up there and relax and do my thing.”
“I am all about customer service. People are coming out to hear certain songs and hear me playing them. But they have been morphing and going through some changes. So Go For A Soda sounds a little different the way we play it on a given night. And we will start to jam out on some of the songs and be a little freer with the arrangements. I like to give people what they want.”
Mitchell last appeared at Musicfest in 2017, opening the season with a Canada Day concert as part of the country’s 150th birthday celebrations in Peterborough. In 2012, his August 4th appearance was cut short by bad weather, but he returned on August 21st to play a full show before thousands of classic rock fans. He also performed at Del Crary Park in 1997 and 2002.
With files from Paul Rellinger.
