The Tea Party, I Mother Earth to rock Pickering Casino October 28

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Published July 12, 2023 at 12:15 pm

The Tea Party. Photo Francesca Ludikar

Iconic Canadian bands The Tea Party and I Mother Earth will highlight an October show at the Pickering Casino Resort.

Pre-sale for the October 28 concert began Wednesday (password TTPIME) with general sale for the 2,500-seat venue at the casino going online Thursday morning.

“Canadian friends,” began a message on social media from The Tea Party, a band formed in Windsor in the early 1990s and one that has sold three million records since then, “We are so pleased to announce a tour alongside our old friends I Mother Earth beginning this fall.”

The Tea Party, which disbanded in 2005 before reforming six years later, has been described as a band that fuses blues, industrial rock and psyche-blasted progressive rock with Middle Eastern and Indian influences.

Not to be confused with the former alt-right political movement in the U.S. (“So much damage has been done to our name,” said bass player Stuart Chatwood in 2011), The Tea Party has been nominated for 22 Much Music Video Awards.

Their 2019 Black River EP is the band’s first recording since 2014.

I Mother Earth. Photo Gene Schilling, Canadian Press

I Mother Earth also formed in the early 1990s and also broke up once, taking an eight-year hiatus between 2004-2012.

Considered a bit of an outlier in the alternative era and often mistaken for heavy metal, the band also shares a love of fusion with their tour mates as I Mother Earth combines traditional hard rock with grooves, extended jams, psychedelic lyrics, and Latin-based percussions.

Their first full-length record, Dig, won a Juno Award in 1994 for Best Hard Rock Album, beating out childhood idols Rush for the award. The night also cemented a long relationship between the two bands.

I Mother Earth was formed when Hamilton brothers Jag and Christian Tanna met Toronto vocalist Edwin, who left the band in 1997, only to rejoin in 2016 in time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1996 album Scenery and Fish.

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