Summer Concert Nights - Part One

With the warmer weather upon most of us in the Great White North, there will be a rise in the number of concerts that happen outdoors at various venues across Canada. I suspect that a number of you who stop by this blog will take in a performance or two when it comes to those summer concerts, so HBIC decided to save all its best performers in hockey jerseys for this occasion! Being that I'm not a concert promoter in any way, I do appreciate those artists who celebrate hockey, and you can see the full list here of artists who have been found or submitted to me. Let's check out which artists are being added this time!

We'll start with a Canadian band who has appeared before, but lead singer Max Kerman of the Arkells went all out on Tiktok when he announced the stops for the 2024 Big Feelings Tour across Canada. Because YouTube sucks, I had to kill the song on that video, but Kerman went all out in announcing stops with hockey jerseys! In his video, he appeared in a Calgary Flames jersey, an Edmonton Oilers jersey, a Halifax Mooseheads jersey, a Kelowna Rockets jersey, a Kitchener Rangers jersey, a London Knights jersey, an Ottawa Senators jersey, a Saskatoon Blades jersey, a Vancouver Canucks jersey, and a Victoria Royals jersey! I'm sure he could have worn more, but that's a pretty good haul for the Arkells' lead singer!

Speaking of Canada, let's stick with Canadian artists as Tate McRae likely has a closet full of jerseys as well. I'm not even going to ask how she has this many, but let's run through these: a Boston Bruins jersey, both an older red Calgary Flames jersey and a black Calgary Flames jersey, a Seth Jarvis Carolina Hurricanes jersey, a Chicago Blackhawks jersey, a personalized Colorado Avalanche jersey, a Dallas Stars jersey, a Jaroslav Slafkovsky Montreal Canadiens jersey, a 2024 NHL All-Star Game jersey, a New Jersey Devils jersey, a personalized New York Islanders jersey, a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey, a Seattle Kraken jersey, a personalized Tampa Bay Lightning jersey, a Vegas Golden Knights jersey, and a Washington Capitals reverse retro jersey! You wonder if she has a closet exclusively for jerseys.

We'll shift to an American singer-songwriter as Noah Kahan has shown he has a deep appreciation for hockey. He picked up a pile of jerseys on his recent tour, so let's go through his collection as we see him in a personalized Dallas Stars jersey, a Minnesota Wild jersey, a personalized Montreal Canadiens jersey, a personalized Nashville Predators jersey, a New York Rangers jersey, a Brady Tkachuk Ottawa Senators jersey, and a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. Kahan is an admitted hockey fan, so it's not surprising that he's picking up jerseys for his collection at virtually every concert tour stop.

We'll dive into the one-off jerseys now as we start with the late Aaron Carter who seemed to gravitate towards wearing jerseys as he got older. Here he is wearing a USHL Omaha Lancers jersey! I would assume he wore this in Omaha, but I couldn't find any information on when he wore it. In any case, he wore it at least once.

Jess Meuse has a black SPHL Birmingham Bulls jersey, but she also has another red Bulls jersey! The Texas native seems to be a fan of the SPHL franchise! No word on whether she owns a stake in the team.

We had a couple of Chicago Blackhawks fans add some threads to their closets. Chance the Rapper has a Blackhawks jersey, but he added a 2025 Winter Classic jersey to his collection. Some will say that Dan Aykroyd is an actor, but his musical talents allowed him and John Belushi to release a handful of albums as the Blues Brothers. That's how Dan Aykroyd gets his name on the Chicago Blackhawks' list! Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine is one of the Blackhawks' faithful as he is often seen at the United Center for games!

I'll fully admit that I've never heard Yo Yo Honey Singh's music, but it appears he's a Los Angeles Kings fan. He mostly works in the hip-hop, pop, and bhangra genres of music. His big hit was "Glassy". Joining him as a Kings fan is Suro Khetchian who the Kings invited to the Staples Center as part of their Armenian Heritage Night on February 22! Again, I am not familiar with his music, but he accepted the Kings' offer to perform that night! That's pretty cool!

Jelly Roll seems like a fun guy, and the rap star was on tour last year. On that tour, he stopped in San Jose where the Sharks gifted him a jersey. He also stopped in North Charleston, South Carolina where the ECHL's South Carolina Stingrays ensured he got a jersey there! This is not a slight to Jelly Roll, but what sizes are those jerseys?

Speaking of the Stingrays, they gave out another jersey to Kelsea Ballerini when she stopped in North Charleston on her tour! Ballerini also headed north up the east coast, and she landed in Buffalo where the Sabres gave her the most bedazzled Sabres jersey I've ever seen! I'm not a fan of these bedazzled jerseys. They look sequined, and there are no sequined hockey jerseys. That's just silly.

Speaking of the Sabres, Buffalo gave a 50th anniversary jersey to Theresa Phondo. I had never heard of her, but she's a multi award-winning Afro R&B Gospel Artist from Malawi. And now she's a Buffalo Sabres fan as well! Joining her on the Sabres' list is American rapper West Side Gunn who wore the blue Sabres jersey. Beauty jersey!

Canadian singer Roberta Battaglia was a "golden buzzer" contestant on America's Got Talent, but she's been performing for a while. One of the places she showed off her vocal talents? She sang the anthems at an AHL Toronto Marlies game where she donned the Marlies' colours! The young lady is from Toronto, but is also fluent in Italian!

We'll end this first entry of the summer concerts with a look at Pearl Jam's performance in Philadephia. They dedicated their song "Given to Fly" to Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau that night, and they displayed Johnny's Gloucester Catholic High School jersey and Matthew's ECHL Reading Royals jersey during the performance. That's a pretty awesome thing for Pearl Jam to do, so I wanted to be sure to include it on this article. Well done, Pearl Jam. That's classy.

That will bring the first day of musicians in hockey jerseys to a close as there were a pile of images there. Yes, it centered mostly on two people as Max Kerman and Tate McRae boasted their incredible collections of jerseys, but we'll see more artists tomorrow when Part Two of this article is published. Again, if you want to see the full list of musicians wearing or holding jerseys, you can see the full list here!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!