Slotted between Finger Eleven and The Tea Party on a fully loaded triple-headliner bill, Kingston’s Headstones blew the roof off the Great Canadian Resort Toronto on Friday, December 5 with their trademark gritty, punk-rock set.
Trent Carr’s guitar attack, Tim White’s low-end punch, and Jesse Labovitz’s relentless drum assault formed the perfect battlefield for Hugh Dillon, who spent the night launching himself into the crowd, pacing aisles, grabbing shoulders, and turning every inch of the 5,000-seat theatre into his own personal warzone.
“This is fucking awesome,” Dillon said, after climbing back onto the stage, sweat-soaked and grinning behind his dark shades.
Midway through the set, a medley of classic covers gave Dillon space to dive into the kind of story only he can tell: part confession, part comedy, part emotional gut-punch.
While wading through the crowd, Dillon stopped in front of a fan.
“Do you know what his name was, sir?” he asked. “Gord fucking Downie.”
The setup?
A story about selling weed in high school — and how only one person ever paid him back.
“And that mother fucker showed up in Toronto and suggested we get a rock n’ roll record deal,” Dillon said, right before the band tore into “New Orleans Is Sinking.”
But the heaviest Downie moment came next, as Dillon introduced Pink Floyd’s “Time” with a memory from Kingston Collegiate: sitting alphabetically beside Gord, two kids obsessed with rock n’ roll, movies, and drugs, dreaming about bands before either of them had a stage to stand on.
He talked about the record Downie handed him in those years, the one that cracked his world open.
“I realized as a young man there was a correlation between boredom, loneliness and suicide. And this mother fucking kid was super fuckin’ mature for his age… This record he gave me changed my mother loving life and I dreamed big after that and never looked back.”
Near the end of the set, Dillon pulled a move we haven’t seen our years of SWOMP concert coverage.
He began twirling his microphone in a giant circle over his head, letting it smash into the stage again and again, metal-on-wood cracks echoing through the theatre. When he reeled it in, the mic head was dangling sideways, hanging on by a few wires.
He held it up like proof of a crime scene, ripped the head clean off, and tossed it to a fan in the front row.
A souvenir from a man who never half-asses a thing onstage.
Along with staples from their nearly 40-year career, the band played two tracks off their brand-new album Burn All The Ships: “An Effort To Forget” and the surging, radio-dominating “Navigate.”
SWOMP’s Headstones Photo Gallery:
Out now on Dine Alone Records, Burn All The Ships marks Headstones’ 11th studio album, and it’s one of their most dynamic yet — swinging between snarling punk, brooding restraint, and the kind of no-bullshit rock they’ve built their reputation on.
“Navigate,” featuring Dallas Green, has already exploded into the Active Rock Top 5 and stayed there for months.
The newest single, “An Effort To Forget,” pairs Dillon’s trademark bite with Emily Haines’ unmistakable voice.
“If there is such a thing as a perfect storm creatively AND collaboratively for this band, ‘An Effort To Forget’ IS that song,” Dillon says.
Haines adds: “Instant Headstones classic. I love how the song turned out.”
The album pushes deeper, darker, and sharper — exactly what you want from a band that refuses to fade into nostalgia.
More details are available at https://headstonesband.com/.