Our Lady Peace Celebrates 30 Years of Music With Old Friends Collective Soul in Oshawa

The city of Oshawa is known for a few things: Bobby Orr, General Motors, and their love for rock and roll.

On the evening of March 5th, the entire city showed up and filled the Tribute Communities Centre to celebrate 30 years of hits from Canadian legends Our Lady Peace with their pals, the legendary Collective Soul from Atlanta.

Before the show, I was lucky enough to meet Raine and the boys at a special meet and greet. They were very nice people. I was a big fan of OLP when I was young, explaining to Raine that I had their album “Naveed” on cassette. The meet and greet ended right as Collective Soul was taking the stage, and I rushed to my seat to catch the show.

I was excited to see Collective Soul because I’d never seen them, and their first album was one I’ve loved for a long time and cherished as a child. I remember getting the CD from the library and making a tape copy of it, which I still have.

Ed Roland and the boys hit the stage and played all the tunes you’d ever want to hear. They kicked it off with a newer song called “Mothers Love” but immediately ripped into classics like “Heavy”, “Shine” (which featured a great story during the breakdown about Aerosmith as they teased a bit of “Livin’ on the Edge”, and “Precious Declaration”. They broke it up with a new song called “Keep it on Track”, but it was all hits the rest of the set.

They brought the house down with the classic “The World I Know” but then brought it back up with a cover of the AC/DC banger “Dirty Deeds”, “Gel,” and the big closer “!Where the River Flows”. This was a great performance, and I was glad to catch them after all these years.

Next up was the headliner, Our Lady Peace, who were there to celebrate their anniversary and perform a career-spanning retrospective of music from their 10 studio albums. The crowd was extremely enthusiastic about these homegrown legends, and their setlist was all over the place to showcased their massive repertoire of hits.  Honestly, I had forgotten how many hits these guys have, but I was quickly reminded when song after song, the memorable songs kept coming. The band had some cool visuals that went along with the show, which OLP has often incorporated. They’re very unique band, though their sound is constantly reminiscent of the Canadian rock revolution of the 90s. It’s safe to say that out of all those bands, Our Lady Peace is by far the most successful, and their performance reminded me of that. They have always been very supportive and aware of their fans, as was evident when a chunk of the show was songs picked online by the fans.

They opened with an onslaught of hits, including “Supermans Dead”, “One Man Army”, “Innocent”, “Is Anybody Home,” and “Life”. They followed up with “If This Is It” and “Sound The Alarm,” and then Raine made a touching speech about the influence of the Tragically Hip on him, followed by a cover of the Hip classic “Locked in The Trunk of a Car,” one of my personal favorites by The Hip. The place went mad. There is nowhere in Canada you will go and not hear people get excited about The Tragically Hip. They closed their set with bangers like “Whatever”, “I want to be your drug”, “In Repair”, “Somewhere out there,” and the classic “Clumsy”.

The band left the stage but returned for an encore. Raine moved across the arena to a piano that was set up and performed a solo version of “Not Enough,” followed by the classic “4 am” which brought the house down. He rejoined the band on stage after for a couple more classic bangers, “Automatic Flowers” and closing the show with “Starseed”.
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This was a night to remember, filled with nostalgia, and it made me really reappreciate Our Lady Peace. They were a time and place in my life, and I’m happy to see them still doing their thing.

The fact that they were authentic and truly nice to me that night also made my night, A night I won’t soon forget. The 12-year-old me was definitely high-fiving the current me at that moment.