Wil Andruschak

Metal promoter Jess Morrison says ‘non-confrontational’ metalheads were attacked at show

Calgary metal promoter Jess Morrison has been going to shows in the city since 2003, and until recently, she’d never seen a fight at any of them. “I’ve never even seen two guys get in a scrap,” she says.

Now Morrison is looking for a new venue after a fight broke out during a September 13 show at the Thirsty Dog Pub, where she’d been booking shows for about five months. “There were never any issues,” says Morrison of the Thorncliffe Heights venue. “There was the odd person getting in my face saying ‘I’m not paying cover….’ That was pretty much the only issue that I had.” However, Morrison says that changed in early September when she was threatened by one of the bar’s customers who didn’t like the music. “He said, ‘you keep bringing your people, I’ll keep bringing mine.’”

Thirsty Dog owner Torsten Merker and Morrison give different versions of what happened the night of the 13th, when Montreal metal band The Gods of Now and local metalheads Bravado were playing at the venue with a couple of other bands.

Morrison says the man who threatened her at the previous show came in after 1 a.m. with seven or eight men who started trying to pick fights with the metal fans in the crowd while Bravado was still playing. “It happened really fast,” she says. “It basically turned into a scene from the movie Road House. Stools were flying. I had a stool thrown at me and it hit me in the hand…. My boyfriend got a stool hit across his back twice and got punched in the face despite just standing there doing nothing. It all happened so fast. There were beer bottles being smashed and flying everywhere.” Morrison ended up with a large bruise on her arm. A drummer from one of the bands needed stitches.

According to Morrison, people were just enjoying the music when they were confronted by the men — “gangbangers,” she calls them. “Despite the fact that metalheads have this reputation for drinking blood and worshiping the devil, that’s just not the way it is,” she says. “They’re there to enjoy the music, and most of those guys and girls are the most non-confrontational people around. They’re there for the shows.”

However, Merker counters that the fight wasn’t so one-sided. He describes the men who came in as “hip hop guys.” The two groups, he says, have a “disdain” for each other. “I don’t know which one was the worse,” says Merker, adding he’s not sure if the men were gang members or not. “If they are, they’re probably small fish. They’re not like the ones that go around shooting people.”

The police eventually arrived on the scene. “The fight was already broken up and people were dispersing [by the time police arrived], so there weren’t any charges,” says Cst. Dave Hare, the police community liaison officer for the area. “We couldn’t determine who the offenders were or who the victims were.” One person, however, was charged with drug possession.

Now Morrison is looking for a new venue — even though she had more shows booked at the Thirsty Dog. “Me and all my friends and all the bands that I promote just basically came to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it,” she says. “That’s all they have to fight for — some venue, some bar? Let them have it. It’s just not worth it…. I would never be able to forgive myself if I did another show there and somebody got stabbed or shot or worse. None of us would put it past those guys.”

At the Thirsty Dog, Merker won’t miss the metalheads. “Basically, we sort of said from now on we’re just going to cancel most of these death metal shows,” he says. “It’s just not worth the headache.”