The Tea Party rocked the Algonquin Commons Theater on Feb. 27, with their high energy live rendition of their album Transmission that released 20 years ago.
From start to finish the crowd was filled with excitement. Jeff Martin seemed to sense this and loved to engage the audience at different points of the show. Martin is the lead guitarist and vocals for the three man band. He would go from them up on their feet to telling them to make some noise.
When The Tea Party first stepped onstage, they started with two songs then took a couple minutes to verbally introduce the show. “So here’s the thing, when we were creating Transmission in 1996. I could never imagine that 20 years on we’d be celebrating this, let alone that I’d be here,” Martin said.
“These three boys from Windsor, they came out firing on all cylinders and they put out a couple of pretty good records but the second one, The Edges of Twilight…” Martin was immediately cut off by the crowds loud screams.
When the sounds died down, he continued. “We could have put out part two or part three or part four but that would have been too easy for those three boys… So, what we decided to do (for the Transmission album), we went down to pretty dark places in order to bring the beauty back up.” Martin finished, he promptly introduced the next song and the show began.
The Tea Party was opened by a newer band The Road Heavy formed in 2014. One of the lead singer’s Pat Jones only had good things to say about The Tea Party. “Growing up they were one of the first bands I listened to when I was starting to learn guitar,” Jones said.
Jones also stated that his highlight of the tour was when Martin joined their band onstage for a couple of songs in their opening act.
When Transmission originally released it was third on the Canadian charts. It also was nominated for a Juno award in 1998.