Latest news with #FingerEleven
CTV News
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
The Tea Party, Headstones and Finger Eleven to perform at Caesars Windsor
Three iconic Canadian rock bands will be performing at Caesars Windsor. The Tea Party, Headstones and Finger Eleven are co-headlining on The Colosseum stage on Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m. The bands have announced a landmark joint tour set to kick off on Nov. 25 in Penticton, B.C. Organizers say the idea for the tour emerged organically, sparked by members regularly crossing paths at various music festivals. Despite decades in the Canadian rock scene, the three bands realized they had never toured together. What began as casual conversations quickly evolved into a clear mission: 'We have to find a way to make this work.' Finger Eleven's Scott Anderson: 'This tour is a rock lover's dream come true. Finger Eleven, Headstones, and The Tea Party have never toured the country together. Never before has there been an opportunity for us to join musical forces. This tour intends to right this wrong, nay, this massive injustice. I'm beyond excited and can't wait to see the fans' reaction to this lineup.' Headstones frontman Hugh Dillon: 'What's coming is a perfect storm of Canadian rock 'n' roll - an onslaught of the finest degree. A tour de force. A one-night-only opportunity for every Canadian, coast to coast, to witness the Headstones, The Tea Party, and Finger Eleven.' The Tea Party's Jeff Martin: 'While I can't believe it took this long for these three incredible bands to get together and head across our beautiful country, I promise all of you that it will have been well worth the wait. Prepare yourselves for some truly memorable performances.' Tickets go on sale Friday, July 25 at 10 a.m. online. Ticket purchases can be made on or Tickets can also be purchased at the Box Office on Friday, Saturday, and Show Days from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. For more information, visit and stay tuned for further details. Guests must be 19 or older to attend concerts and enter the casino and all other outlets.
Hamilton Spectator
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Canal Days hits all the right notes with 2025 lineup announcement
This year's Canal Days Marine and Heritage Festival will have an all-Canadian sound with a musical showcase featuring rock icons Sloan, Finger Eleven, The Trews and Big Sugar. The City of Port Colborne has officially unveiled the musical and event lineup for the 47th annual festival, promising a holiday long weekend of free concerts, fireworks, cruises and family fun Aug. 1 to 4. 'This is one of my favourite events each year,' said Mayor Bill Steele during an announcement at Vale Health and Wellness Centre. 'We couldn't have Canal Days without our amazing media partners, sponsors and volunteers.' Kicking off Friday, Aug. 1, at H.H. Knoll Lakeview Park, the main stage will open with HTZ-FM Rocksearch winners Small Town Strip Club, followed by 2024 winners The Feral Minks. Sloan and Big Sugar will headline the evening. On the Saturday, Ottawa's Boston Levi will start the evening by getting the crowd going before Finger Eleven takes the stage playing such hits as 'Paralyzer' and 'One Thing.' The Trews will close out the night with their classic songs, such as 'Not Ready to Go' and 'Highway of Heroes.' A planned rooftop concert for the Sunday was relocated due to logistical hurdles. 'I had to call (U2's) Bono and say, 'Guys, we can't have you on the roof,' Steele joked. 'He said, 'We're not coming.'' Instead, the music will continue on ground level at West and Sugarloaf Street, where U2 tribute band Desire will perform ahead of a 10-piece set by Main Event Music during a fireworks display. Steele addressed some of issues last year's festival encountered when a rowdy crowd eager to enter a free Billy Talent concert forced its way through fencing, saying steps have been taken to improve security. 'This year, we have committed to security upgrades to ensure the festival is a safe place for everyone,' he said. Capacity at H.H. Knoll Lakeview Park has been increased to 15,000, with gates opening at 6 nightly. Entry is not guaranteed to people who show up late, the city said in a press release. It is working with a festival security expert and adjusting the concert layout and entrances to improve crowd flow. A new security team, in co-ordination with emergency management partners, will oversee all safety measures. Additional rules include bag checks, no outside alcohol and a ban on smoking and pets. Lawn chairs are only permitted on Sunday at the West Street stage. Off stage, the festival brings back a suite of attractions. The 61-metre-tall topsail schooner Empire Sandy will offer cruises on Lake Erie and the Welland Canal, with discounted tickets available until June 30. The Kids Zone and Recreation Zone will return to King George Park, sponsored by South Coast Home and Sullivan Mahoney. Festivalgoers can also explore an artisan market, lighthouse tours, an indoor craft show run by the Optimist Club and a classic car show. 'Last year, (the car show) had approximately 900 antique and classic cars,' Steele said. 'All kinds of muscle cars, original 1920s Fords, Chevy Pontiacs, (they're) pretty cool cars so I encourage you to come down.' Port Colborne Historical and Marine Museum, from where Canal Days began in 1979, will host historical demonstrations and performances from Strong Water Singers and Métis Nation of Ontario. 'With each celebration, the event has grown,' said museum director Tami Nail. 'The grounds are filled with so much more marine and heritage fun for the whole family, we have games prizes and food.' The museum will have free admission. New is a Niagara Diecast Toy Show and downhill race at Vale Health and Wellness Centre. The festival will also have a sponsor-exclusive space with refreshments and air conditioning during the Sunday fireworks. GIO Rail, which signed on as presenting sponsor in 2024, renewed its commitment for four more years, alongside a $75,000 donation in sponsorship. 'We are honoured to return as Canal Days' presenting sponsor for 2025 and beyond,' vice-president and chief operating officer Neil Johnson said in a statement. Volunteers are still needed for the festival. Those interested can apply online or contact the city directly. 'We're so lucky to have the best group of volunteers, quite frankly, in the country, if not anywhere in the world,' said Steele. Full festival details and updates can be found at . Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
CTV News
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
The Tea Party, Finger Eleven, Headstones to play in Edmonton as part of fall cross-Canada tour
Members of the band Finger Eleven pose for a photo on the red carpet during the Juno Awards in Calgary Sunday, April 6, 2008. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry McDougal The Tea Party, Finger Eleven, Headstones will all play at Edmonton's Rogers Place on Nov. 28 as part of a joint tour. The tour will start in Penticton, B.C., three days earlier. It's the first time they have toured together. 'What's coming is a perfect storm of Canadian rock 'n' roll—an onslaught of the finest degree. A tour de force,' said Headstones' frontman Hugh Dillon in an announcement on Tuesday. Tickets go on presale on Wednesday and general sale on Friday. The bands will play in Calgary the day after Edmonton.
Hamilton Spectator
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Is it art, or is it stealing work? Album cover designers stare down an AI future
TORONTO - Finger Eleven guitarist James Black has picked up a new instrument, one that pushes the boundaries of his visual imagination — generative artificial intelligence technology. The Toronto musician and graphic artist admits it's a controversial choice, but over the past year, he's been using the tool to help design his band's new album covers. Each one showcases grand concepts, stunning imagery and ultimately a piece of art that demands attention in an era where all musicians are jostling to stand out. 'We're in the blockbuster age where people like to see big, big things,' Black says from his office. 'Whenever I have an idea, it's usually something beyond what we have the resources to do, and AI means you don't have to put a lid on those ideas.' His work usually starts with typing a few descriptive words into AI software and collecting the images it spits back out. Then, he uses photo editing to fine-tune his favourites so they fit his original vision. Sometimes, he submits those altered images back into the AI to generate more ideas. 'There's quite a bit of back-and-forth where you're applying your own skill and then putting it back in,' he said. 'It's a little bit like arguing with a robot. You have to nuance it into doing what you want.' One of his first experiments was the cover artwork for Finger Eleven's 2024 single 'Adrenaline.' The illustration shows a curvaceous woman in a skin-tight red-and-white-racing suit, her head concealed under a motorcycle helmet. She's standing in the middle of a racetrack with her back to the viewer. A cloudy blue sky imparts an otherworldly calm. Anyone who's seen recent AI artwork will probably recognize the hyperrealistic sheen of its esthetic. Other familiar AI trademarks are there too, including a landscape firmly rooted in a dream world. Generative image models are trained on billions of photographs to learn patterns, such as recurring shapes and styles. They then use that information to construct images that can often seem familiar. Many fear that the tools also draw from copyrighted pieces without permission from their creators. It's a legal quagmire that only skirts the surface of the ethical debate around generative AI models. Beyond the copyright risks, critics fear the technology will cost album cover designers and photographers their jobs. But AI programs such as NightCafe, CoPilot and Adobe Firefly offer cutting-edge possibilities that many artists say they can't ignore. Still, Black said he understands there are ethical concerns. 'I'm definitely torn myself,' he said. 'But I'm using it because it extends as far as my imagination can go.' Other musicians have found that generative AI answers the demands of a streaming industry that pressures them to churn out new music, eye-catching lyric videos and other visual elements regularly. But some fan bases aren't sympathetic to those reasons. Last year, Tears for Fears was slammed on social media after they revealed the cover of their live album 'Songs for a Nervous Planet,' which had several familiar AI image traits. The illustration shows an astronaut staring straight at the viewer, their face concealed under a space helmet. They're standing in the middle of a field of sunflowers that stretches into the distance. A cloudy blue sky imparts otherworldly calm. The cover's creator, Vitalie Burcovschi, described it as 'art created by AI using human imagination.' But fans were quick to accuse the band of using AI that might have scraped copyrighted work. As blowback intensified, the English duo released a statement calling it 'a mixed media digital collage, with AI being just one of the many tools used.' Pop singer Kesha encountered similar flak for the cover of her 2024 single 'Delusional,' which featured a pile of Hermés Birkin bags with the song's name spray-painted across them. Fans instantly recognized common flaws of an AI-created image: misspellings in the song's title, sloppy digital fragments. Some demanded she redo the artwork with paid photographers. It took months, but the singer replaced the image with a photograph of herself tied to a chair. She assured fans it was created with an 'incredible team of humans.' 'AI is a Pandora's box that we as a society have collectively opened, and I think it's important that we keep human ramifications in mind as we learn how to use it as a tool and not as a replacement,' she said in an Instagram post in May. Illustrator and musician Keenan Gregory of the band Forester says he used AI technology to extend the background of an old photograph so it could fit on the cover of the band's upcoming EP. The original image for 'Young Guns' was taken in the 1940s as a vertical photograph and showed bass player Dylan Brulotte's grandfather strolling through the streets of Edmonton. Gregory needed a square shape for the album cover, so he put the shot into Photoshop's generative AI tool, which artificially extended the frame's left and right edges with more detail. He removed certain background elements, like storefront signs, with a blend of traditional photo editing techniques. 'Typically, an artist would have to do that manually,' he said. 'But having AI provide you with options, which you then edit, is very powerful.' Gregory said he considers AI one of a photo editor's many tools, adding he didn't use it to make the cover for Royal Tusk's 'Altruistic,' which earlier this year won him a Juno Award for best album artwork. Even when musicians are transparent about using AI, some fans are not ready to embrace it, as British Columbia rock band Unleash the Archers learned last year. Vocalist Brittney Slayes said their concept album 'Phantoma' told the story of an AI gaining sentience and escaping into the real world in the body of an android. To explore the album's theme, Slayes said some of her songwriting drew inspiration from ChatGPT suggestions, while they used visual AI programs to create inspiration images for songs. She said the band also filmed a music video for 'Green & Glass' and then fed the finished product into an AI model trained on artwork by Bo Bradshaw — the illustrator for the band's merchandise. It spat out an AI-animated version of the video. 'We paid to license all of his artwork ... so he was compensated and he was credited,' she said. But the reaction was swift. Some listeners accused the band of theft, alleging that despite paying for Bradshaw's work, the AI tool likely used other unlicensed art to fill out the visuals. 'We didn't realize that even though our model was trained after one artist, the program was going to fill in the blanks with others,' Slayes said. 'People didn't care. The second the word 'AI' was used, we were targeted. You know, the usual Twitter uproar, being like scraped across the internet as these terrible people that use AI in their music.' Unleash the Archers responded on their socials, issuing a statement acknowledging they had unintentionally implied their video featured original artwork by Bradshaw when it was actually produced through an AI program without his direct involvement. Their statement recognized how fraught the risks are for bands eager to explore new technology, saying that 'while we were expecting some controversy, we weren't expecting as much as we got.' Slayes said the backlash has forever sullied her connection to the album, which she originally intended as an exploration of an inevitable AI future. Instead, to her, it's become a reminder of how fast-developing AI technology is provoking deep-rooted anxieties. 'People are still afraid of it,' she said. 'And for good reason, because it is taking jobs.' For other artists, she urges them to think carefully about how they introduce AI into their own projects: 'If you're going to use AI for your artwork, you've got to have a really good reason.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Is it art, or is it stealing work? Album cover designers stare down an AI future
TORONTO – Finger Eleven guitarist James Black has picked up a new instrument, one that pushes the boundaries of his visual imagination — generative artificial intelligence technology. The Toronto musician and graphic artist admits it's a controversial choice, but over the past year, he's been using the tool to help design his band's new album covers. Each one showcases grand concepts, stunning imagery and ultimately a piece of art that demands attention in an era where all musicians are jostling to stand out. 'We're in the blockbuster age where people like to see big, big things,' Black says from his office. 'Whenever I have an idea, it's usually something beyond what we have the resources to do, and AI means you don't have to put a lid on those ideas.' His work usually starts with typing a few descriptive words into AI software and collecting the images it spits back out. Then, he uses photo editing to fine-tune his favourites so they fit his original vision. Sometimes, he submits those altered images back into the AI to generate more ideas. 'There's quite a bit of back-and-forth where you're applying your own skill and then putting it back in,' he said. 'It's a little bit like arguing with a robot. You have to nuance it into doing what you want.' One of his first experiments was the cover artwork for Finger Eleven's 2024 single 'Adrenaline.' The illustration shows a curvaceous woman in a skin-tight red-and-white-racing suit, her head concealed under a motorcycle helmet. She's standing in the middle of a racetrack with her back to the viewer. A cloudy blue sky imparts an otherworldly calm. Anyone who's seen recent AI artwork will probably recognize the hyperrealistic sheen of its esthetic. Other familiar AI trademarks are there too, including a landscape firmly rooted in a dream world. Generative image models are trained on billions of photographs to learn patterns, such as recurring shapes and styles. They then use that information to construct images that can often seem familiar. Many fear that the tools also draw from copyrighted pieces without permission from their creators. It's a legal quagmire that only skirts the surface of the ethical debate around generative AI models. Beyond the copyright risks, critics fear the technology will cost album cover designers and photographers their jobs. But AI programs such as NightCafe, CoPilot and Adobe Firefly offer cutting-edge possibilities that many artists say they can't ignore. Still, Black said he understands there are ethical concerns. 'I'm definitely torn myself,' he said. 'But I'm using it because it extends as far as my imagination can go.' Other musicians have found that generative AI answers the demands of a streaming industry that pressures them to churn out new music, eye-catching lyric videos and other visual elements regularly. But some fan bases aren't sympathetic to those reasons. Last year, Tears for Fears was slammed on social media after they revealed the cover of their live album 'Songs for a Nervous Planet,' which had several familiar AI image traits. The illustration shows an astronaut staring straight at the viewer, their face concealed under a space helmet. They're standing in the middle of a field of sunflowers that stretches into the distance. A cloudy blue sky imparts otherworldly calm. The cover's creator, Vitalie Burcovschi, described it as 'art created by AI using human imagination.' But fans were quick to accuse the band of using AI that might have scraped copyrighted work. As blowback intensified, the English duo released a statement calling it 'a mixed media digital collage, with AI being just one of the many tools used.' Pop singer Kesha encountered similar flak for the cover of her 2024 single 'Delusional,' which featured a pile of Hermés Birkin bags with the song's name spray-painted across them. Fans instantly recognized common flaws of an AI-created image: misspellings in the song's title, sloppy digital fragments. Some demanded she redo the artwork with paid photographers. It took months, but the singer replaced the image with a photograph of herself tied to a chair. She assured fans it was created with an 'incredible team of humans.' 'AI is a Pandora's box that we as a society have collectively opened, and I think it's important that we keep human ramifications in mind as we learn how to use it as a tool and not as a replacement,' she said in an Instagram post in May. Illustrator and musician Keenan Gregory of the band Forester says he used AI technology to extend the background of an old photograph so it could fit on the cover of the band's upcoming EP. The original image for 'Young Guns' was taken in the 1940s as a vertical photograph and showed bass player Dylan Brulotte's grandfather strolling through the streets of Edmonton. Gregory needed a square shape for the album cover, so he put the shot into Photoshop's generative AI tool, which artificially extended the frame's left and right edges with more detail. He removed certain background elements, like storefront signs, with a blend of traditional photo editing techniques. 'Typically, an artist would have to do that manually,' he said. 'But having AI provide you with options, which you then edit, is very powerful.' Gregory said he considers AI one of a photo editor's many tools, adding he didn't use it to make the cover for Royal Tusk's 'Altruistic,' which earlier this year won him a Juno Award for best album artwork. Even when musicians are transparent about using AI, some fans are not ready to embrace it, as British Columbia rock band Unleash the Archers learned last year. Vocalist Brittney Slayes said their concept album 'Phantoma' told the story of an AI gaining sentience and escaping into the real world in the body of an android. To explore the album's theme, Slayes said some of her songwriting drew inspiration from ChatGPT suggestions, while they used visual AI programs to create inspiration images for songs. She said the band also filmed a music video for 'Green & Glass' and then fed the finished product into an AI model trained on artwork by Bo Bradshaw — the illustrator for the band's merchandise. It spat out an AI-animated version of the video. 'We paid to license all of his artwork … so he was compensated and he was credited,' she said. But the reaction was swift. Some listeners accused the band of theft, alleging that despite paying for Bradshaw's work, the AI tool likely used other unlicensed art to fill out the visuals. 'We didn't realize that even though our model was trained after one artist, the program was going to fill in the blanks with others,' Slayes said. 'People didn't care. The second the word 'AI' was used, we were targeted. You know, the usual Twitter uproar, being like scraped across the internet as these terrible people that use AI in their music.' Unleash the Archers responded on their socials, issuing a statement acknowledging they had unintentionally implied their video featured original artwork by Bradshaw when it was actually produced through an AI program without his direct involvement. Their statement recognized how fraught the risks are for bands eager to explore new technology, saying that 'while we were expecting some controversy, we weren't expecting as much as we got.' Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. Slayes said the backlash has forever sullied her connection to the album, which she originally intended as an exploration of an inevitable AI future. Instead, to her, it's become a reminder of how fast-developing AI technology is provoking deep-rooted anxieties. 'People are still afraid of it,' she said. 'And for good reason, because it is taking jobs.' For other artists, she urges them to think carefully about how they introduce AI into their own projects: 'If you're going to use AI for your artwork, you've got to have a really good reason.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2025.
