It’s little surprise that three live shows for the local debut of rock super group The Authentics this Friday and Saturday at White Rock’s Blue Frog Studios have already sold out.
The good news, however, is that home viewers can still buy tickets to live stream the event for the 7 p.m. show on Saturday (May 6).
The Authentics’ show brings together Rocket Norton (the Rocket Norton Band, Prism, Seeds of Time) along with long-time collaborators Al Harlow (Prism), Ab Bryant (Prism, Chilliwack, the Headpins), John Hall (Prism, Seeds of Time) and world-famous percussionist Ray Ayotte.
Also featured are two guest performers who are no strangers to White Rock: Tom Lavin (The Powder Blues Band); and Denise McCann, original lead singer of the Headpins, who used to live here.
It’s a show billed as cover hits from all of their careers – plus selected favourite songs, drawn from everything from Motown and Rolling Stones’ classics to the best of Canadian rock from the last five decades.
For veteran drummer, author and entrepreneur Norton, it’s a case of doing what he loves to do surrounded by musicians he’s been working with for 50 years or more.
But there’s no way the concert cannot be framed – and coloured – by the fact that Norton was diagnosed with cancer in February of 2021.
After a first course of chemotherapy, which lasted until the end of 2021, Norton had seemed to have turned a corner. He’d started to eat again and regain some of the 70 pounds he had lost after his diagnosis.
But in April of 2022, his oncologist had even worse news for him – the cancer had moved into his lungs, making it inoperable. He was given, at most, six months to live.
But the strong-willed Norton has never been one to surrender meekly.
Finding a second round of chemotherapy almost worse than the disease itself, he switched over to an alternative program offered by BC Cancer – a personalized oncogenomics (POG) program, which analyzes a patient’s DNA codes to determine an individual course of treatment.
“The treatments are going really well,” he said, noting that he has already beat the original prognosis twice over.
Most importantly for him, he has resumed practising and organizing shows, and working on several new projects – and that may be the best tonic of all.
“When somebody tells you you’ve got six months to live…I thought about it and decided I’m going to keep on doing all the things that are important to me.”
Living one day at a time was not a stretch for him, he added.
“I’ve always lived that way, and this is not going to change that. When the days run out, I don’t want to feel like I missed anything.”
He has had wonderful support from friends and loved ones, he said.
“My friend Bruce Allen, who used to be my manager, called me up when he heard about the cancer. He said ‘you can’t die – you’ve got a show to do’.
“Then he sent me a T-shirt that said ‘F**k Cancer’.”
That became the title of a benefit concert in Vancouver he organized last October, which brought out 33 musicians from some of the biggest bands in Canada – and raised more than $322,000 for the BC Cancer Foundation and the POG program.
“F**k Cancer isn’t profanity, it’s a battle cry!” he said.
Playing with the Authentics at Blue Frog is a chance to work with musicians he has known so long they virtually breathe in sync, he said.
“John Hall and I started a band at Winston Churchill High School in 1965 that became the Seeds of Time – he was 14 and I was 15,” he said.
“I met Al Harlow at the PNE when he was playing at a thing they had called Teen City. It was a high-energy show – a great part of the PNE. Al would have been 15 or 16 then. He was amazing. I’d never heard anyone like him – he had this Pete Townshend thing going that wasn’t ‘bluesy.’ We really hit it off and played lots of music together.”
This collaboration ultimately became Prism, in which they were joined by Ab Bryant, who is a little younger than himself and Harlow, Norton recalled. Bryant was also a member of Chilliwack and the Headpins, for whom McCann was the original vocalist.
“I called up Denise about this show – she lives in L.A. now – and said come on up and she said ‘when is it? I’m there’.”
“Ray Ayotte is a famous percussion manufacturer, known for his hand-made, custom-made drums. He and I became pals and we often play in groups when I like to have percussion as well as drums.
“And Tom Lavin is another legendary performer in Vancouver – he was actually the original bass player for Prism for the first six months of touring, but he was already putting together the Powder Blues.”
Visit www.bluefrogstudios.ca for details.
alex.browne@peacearchnews.com
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