ZOOBOMBS with MUZINO and KNIFEY as part of Canadian Music Week at the Silver Dollar (486 Spadina), Tuesday (April 18), 11 pm. $10 and with SEBADOH, WALRUS and others at the Horseshoe (370 Queen West), Thursday (April 20), midnight. $20. cmw.net.
The May 1 closing of the Silver Dollar as we know it will mark the end of an era for Toronto concertgoers. But perhaps no band will feel the sting as much as Japan’s Zoobombs, who mark the occasion with a final show there during Canadian Music Week. (They also play the Horseshoe for CMW two days later.)
Every year the electrifying garage rockers pack up their gear and leave Tokyo to play the gritty barroom and hang out with their good friend, the club’s booker, Dan Burke. By frontman Don Matsuo’s count, they’ve played the Silver Dollar at least 15 times.
“I think [the first time] was in 2005, the year we got second-best act of the year at CMW,” he says.
Zoobombs made their Toronto debut in October 1998 at the El Mocambo, where the support act was an unknown band called Pez. You know them now as stadium rockers Billy Talent. Matsuo remembers that night well.
“It’s the club the Rolling Stones played,” he says. “So the El Mo was a special venue for us. We made [Bomb You Live] there, which was one of my dreams. I’m really proud of it. Bear’s Banquet: Live From Deep Night In Toronto is another. I’m so glad we made two different live albums in the same city.”
Matsuo says it’s the “good people, good food and good music” that make Toronto worth returning to annually, but it’s the relationship he’s built with Burke and the Silver Dollar that makes his visits here so special.
“I love the Silver Dollar,” he says. “The atmosphere and staff are really familiar. I’m really sad about it closing. I’m feeling like I’m losing my own home.”
This ritual of theirs to play Toronto every year comes down to the efforts and devotion of Burke, one of the band’s biggest cheerleaders. Matsuo considers him family.
“Dan Burke is almost the first white guy who really loved us,” he says. “And always encouraged me, showed [me] the way, too. I feel that he is a real father to me. I’m very happy that I have such a tight connection with him. Beyond the race, religion, backgrounds and age, I love him as my soul family.”
Matsuo says Zoobombs will follow him to whatever venue he ends up booking next, be it the replica version of the Silver Dollar that will reopen after the adjacent high-rise student residence gets built, or elsewhere.
“We’ll go to the place where Dan is,” Matsuo insists. “He is the boss.”
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