When Prince gave his interview for the Toronto Star, he said:

"AS U KNOW THE HEAD OF LIVE NATION, MIKE RAPINO, IS ORIGINALLY FROM THUNDER BAY, CANADA. WE ALWAYS PROMISED 2 COME 2 HIS HOMETOWN 2 DO SOMETHING HISTORIC. THIS BAND IS A WELL-OILED MACHINE NOW. IT’S A PERFECT MIX OF MUSICIANS 2 WRECK HOUSE IN ALL OF CANADA."

(Source: http://www.thestar.com/en...-class-act )

What no one, including the Toronto Star, seemed to pick up on was that the interviewer was asking a question related to how inclusive Prince's Canadian Tour was, and then Prince immediately started talking about playing Thunder Bay, a location NOT SCHEDULED on his Canadian Tour. I'm pretty sure I'm Thunder Bay's biggest Prince fan, so you can imagine my disbelief when I was reading that Prince was telling the Toronto Star that he PROMISED to do something HISTORIC in my hometown. It really felt like someone was playing some elaborate prank on me. Thunder Bay is an isolated (the closest "big city" is Minneapolis, but even that's 6 hours away) city of 120,000 people, so if Prince came to play here it would be a HUGE deal. I was very excited about this as I thought it might mean Prince would play a surprise show somewhere between the London and Winnipeg dates, but the Winnipeg show came and went, and Prince never played here.

I found it interesting that before Prince did the Toronto Star interview, I had made this post on prince.org:

http://prince.org/msg/12/...sg_8322363

I didn't think Prince read my post or anything, I just thought it was cool that I posted what I thought was a good argument for why Prince should play Thunder Bay, only to find 2 weeks later a quote from Prince stating that he was coming to Thunder Bay for one of the same reasons I suggested (i.e. that Thunder Bay is the hometown of Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino).

Again, I thought Prince was referring to doing a show on his current Welcome 2 Canada Tour, because the question Prince was answering was:

"The “Welcome 2 Canada” leg of your current, rather marathon tour is pretty extensive, touching down in spots such as London and Saskatoon and Halifax that an artist of your stature might not normally be expected to hit. How long has it been since you dug in and hit this many ports of call in the Great White North? Did anything in particular motivate this spirit of diligent inclusivity?"

I got the impression that Prince thought "Yeah, you don't even know how inclusive... I'm playing Thunder Bay", and then gave the answer he did. Otherwise the answer doesn't completely make sense to me, as the interviewer is clearly asking about the inclusivity of the Welcome 2 Canada tour. However, the tour's trucks with all of Prince's equipment would have passed through here already.

Any thoughts on this?

Thunder Bay is a really short flight from Minneapolis, so I guess the concert could happen at just about any time. I'm still hoping they touch down in T. Bay on their flight back to Minneapolis from the West Coast.

I can think of a few venues in town that would just be mind-blowing to see Prince play in, but I can't guess which one he plans on playing (if he's already got one in mind). For example, we've got the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium (from their website: "Considered to be one of the finest concert halls in North America, the Community Auditorium offers some of the best acoustics in the world."). But if Prince is going for a surprise show, along the lines of something like New Morning, there are some bars here that would be fantastic for Prince to play too.

That's exactly what I read from that article as well. If you hear anything - ANYTHING -please Org note me!!! Be in the car/on a plane in a minute!

When I read that article I let all my Tbay friends know....also expected it to be between the ON/Winnipeg shows but you never know....

Hi trixiepeg. Will do. I would love to know what's going on with this. I hadn't heard anything about it since the Toronto Star article. I think of those who did hear, they kept it pretty quiet because people started to assume there would be a concert announced with short notice, followed by a mad rush to get tickets. Presumably some of Michael Rapino's hometown friends have the inside scoop, but I don't know anyone who knows him. Even though the show hadn't happened when I expected it to, Prince used such strong words that I'd still be quite surprised if it didn't happen altogether.