Steadily Deadly Fest to melt some faces in Yellowknife

The organizer behind a new music festival in Yellowknife says it’s “basically a day of getting your face melted off.”

Steadily Deadly Fest hails itself as “Yellowknife’s first exclusive punk, metal and alt fest since the early 2000s DIY days.”

The one-day festival features a lineup of 10 rock, punk and metal acts from the NWT and elsewhere in Canada.

“I just really wanted to get a flow of some bands from out of town to start coming by through Yellowknife,” organizer and musician Tyler White-Keyes told Mornings at the Cabin.

Steadily Deadly will take place at the Yellowknife Community Arena on Saturday, May 31 with doors opening at 2:30pm. The festival is restricted to people aged 19 and older. Tickets are available online.

Headlining the festival will be legendary Canadian punk rock band Belvedere, which formed in 1995 and recently finished a tour in Europe.

‘You’re going to have your mind blown’

“They’re one of my favourite bands and a lot of Yellowknifers admire them, a lot of Yellowknifers are influenced by them,” White-Keyes said.

“They are a good mix of both worlds between, not necessarily metal, but they have metallic elements infused with fast melodic skate punk so I feel like … even if you don’t know them, you’re going to have your mind blown just by their creativity. I feel like they’re the perfect band to close out the night.”

Beyond organizing the festival, White-Keyes will be performing with Party Crasher, a skater punk band that formed and played in Edmonton prior to the pandemic.

“It’s a bit of a revival,” White-Keyes said.

“I’m excited to get Party Crasher back for our version two.”

Appetite for heavy music

Also on Steadily Deadly’s lineup is Sun Starved, Yellowknife’s newest metal band.

Bassist Brett McGarry said the group originated from a one-night only cover band called Ptarmigan Archery that came together to play at last year’s Emo Night.

“After it finished we thought: ‘That was so much fun, why don’t we try to do something else in Yellowknife?'” McGarry said.

“There’s obviously an appetite for heavy music in town. There’s only a few heavy bands and really not as many as we thought there could be in Yellowknife, given the desire for that kind of music.”

Sun Starved plays both original music and cover songs. McGarry described the group’s sound as “heavy metal, just things that are loud, fast and full of heavy riffs.”

“We’re looking forward to playing a new venue. We’ve never played an arena or anything close to that size before,” McGarry said of Steadily Deadly Fest.

“We’re also excited for the lineup and being able to support some other local acts as well as acts that have come from afar.”

McGarry said the format of a day-long festival is also new to the group.

“We think Yellowknifers will really like it and so we’re just excited to get our music out there and hopefully excite some music lovers in town.”

 Another local band playing the festival is Parts.

Guitarist and lead vocalist Bradley Choquette told Mornings at the Cabin the band is working on a new EP it hopes to release this summer.

He said Steadily Deadly harkens back to the DIY music scene from when he was growing up in Yellowknife.

“It’s really nice to see Tyler doing it,” Choquette said. “Great person for it. He’s a familiar face around town and he pushes himself hard to get as much as he can done.”

Choquette said one of the musical acts he’s looking forward to seeing is rags, a solo project from Liam Baldwin-O’Neill, with whom he played shows in high school.

‘A full circle moment’

Baldwin-O’Neill, who now lives in Victoria, said he started writing new music and came up with the stage name rags when he was living in Raglan, New Zealand.

After moving back to Canada three or four years ago, he said he recorded a couple of EPs with a producer who had a home studio and the name rags stuck.

“It’s a passion project,” he said. “It’s me being like ‘OK, well I’m not going to try to monetize my music any more.’ … It’s a creative act.”

Baldwin-O’Neill said he will likely play an intimate acoustic set at Steadily Deadly and festivalgoers can expect a lot of banter with a mix of genres.

“I haven’t been back to Yellowknife for the better part of a decade so it’s going to be really cool to see people,” he said.

“It’s just going to be a lot of old connections so it’s like a full circle moment.”

Other acts set to play at Steadily Deadly include Yellowknife bands Gnarwhal, Fur Fox Aches and Brenden MacIntosh, as well as Fort Smith’s State of the Art and Edmonton-based Valley of Despair.

Ahead of the festival there will be a pre-show party at The Underground featuring HYFY, Caught by Holden and TURTLE. The pre-show party begins on Friday, May 30 starting at 8:30pm. A jam night will follow the show.

AJ Goodwin and Jesse Wheeler contributed reporting.