Arkells perform in Quebec City on July 4, 2024. The band just ended a Canadian tour for their ninth album, Between Us.Amy Harris/The Canadian Press
On a rainy Wednesday night mid-June at Toronto’s iconic Lee’s Palace, a giddy Max Kerman stood on stage. “We told our agent if we could ever sell out Lee’s Palace, we’d be millionaires,” the Arkells frontman mused. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd erupted in laughter. The joke here: Everyone in the room knew how this would end. Yes, Lee’s was stretched to its 600-person capacity tonight, but in two nights, Arkells would play to a sold-out crowd in a venue 25 times bigger.
But first Kerman took his time to savour this intimacy. “All we ever knew was what was in Now magazine. The smallness of that world is such a special thing,” he told the crowd. It felt as though he could make eye contact with every single person in the room.
I’ll admit, seeing the same band three times in the same week is not my typical lifestyle. But when Arkells announced their unusual tour plan, I was intrigued. Twenty years into their career, Canada’s pre-eminent rock ‘n’ roll outfit is playing with volume. Volume as in noise but also volume as in mass and volume as in output.
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The five-piece band from Hamilton, Ont., just capped a Canadian tour in support of their ninth album, Between Us, with tour dates structured as “takeovers.” The idea is simple enough: In each city, where possible, Arkells would play a small, medium and large venue. For example, in Edmonton, they began at the Buckingham (capacity about 200) and ended at Midway Music Hall (capacity about 1,500).
In Toronto, this meant opening at Lee’s Palace, moving on to the city’s newest stage, History (cap: 2,500) and sticking the landing at Toronto’s best venue, the RBC Amphitheatre on the waterfront (cap: 16,000). The experiment proved a brilliant exercise in creating intimacy, during a moment when there is much haranguing about the live music experience.
Back to volume as in noise: What immediately stood out to me at Lee’s Palace was how loud the crowd was. For the smaller shows, Arkells played through their most recent album in its entirety for the first hour, before launching into a sampling of their catalogue. On the nights of the biggest venue, they served up predominately hits. And even though the new record has only been out for a few weeks, it seemed like everyone in the room already knew all the words.
The smallness Kerman refers to served to elevate the new songs. In a small room like Lee’s, Arkells attacked the new material with a deep ferocity. By the second song, the banger What Good?, no one was standing still.
And here is volume as in mass: On the second night, at History, Kerman quipped, “I don’t know if we have the skills to make a good TikTok, but we do know how to connect to a live audience.” The crowd was his instrument, moving with him, parting at his urging, until his ecstasy became theirs. Extraordinarily, the Arkells setlist on night two had virtually no overlap with the show at Lee’s.
Yet by the third night, Arkells showed their true range and versatility. They made use of the gigantic amphitheatre stage with arrangements that allowed the spotlight to shift around. Here, they playfully crowded keyboardist Anthony Carone; there, they huddled around drummer Tim Oxford.
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Perhaps the biggest flex Arkells had to offer was volume as in output. This is a band that is in its third decade, yet in the last five years alone they’ve put out four albums. It is no small feat to onboard a new generation of fans to your most recent music, while managing to maintain your OGs.
Among music people, the highest brag is seeing a popular artist in a small venue. To me, there is quiet genius in this tour structure. The core argument seems to be that as ticket prices get more and more expensive, the incentive to stay engaged with live music will need to change.
Arkells are suggesting that intimacy is the ultimate incentive. In Vancouver, they kicked off their three shows at a strip club. I would have loved to have been there when they played a legion hall in Calgary a few weeks ago. Arkells are early on this, but I suspect they will not be the only ones. Stadium icon Shania Twain just played a tiny pub in London.
When you have built that intimacy, it radiates outward. Almost to emphasize the point, Kerman donned a jean jacket emblazoned with the Lee’s Palace logo as he took the stage at the amphitheatre. The only way to know where you’re going is to remember where you came from.