By Will McGuirk
Happy Holidays Oshawa and welcome home CTD!!!. Cuff The Duke are going to wrap up this year with a pretty great bow. The alt-country outfit have announced a hometown show at the Oshawa Music Hall Saturday, Dec 7 2019. They will be joined by Say Ritual and Patrick Dorie. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Living Room Art Studio. The show has been cooked up by Matt Holtby of Say Ritual. It is the bookend to his April date with The Stables, aka To Oshawa with Love. Its his way, his band’s way, a way for all of these musicians to say we know, we see, we understand.
I think those of us in the Oshawa music scene are feeling in a bit of a slump. While there has been national media focus on some of the great things happening for our artists globally, locally, in the shadow of GM shutting down, there remains a sense of something being broken, something not being right, something missing.
So this is a welcome announcement from a band who has provided so many great memories and such great music over the years. We need this. We need more of this actually. We need more of our stories to be told, more of our past to be seen and heard, and we need more of all the great bands who are from Oshawa and Durham, who have moved on and out and up, to come home, every now and then, just to say hi, just to check in, and to inspire any young folks growing up in this town hoping to make a career out of music. Having the ex-pats return shows the young folks it can be done.
So yes Oshawa, heads down, face the changing winds, let’s get the getting to be done done and in December lets celebrate us and them and all of it all together.