With recent gigs from Yorkville garage-punk originals The Ugly Ducklings, vintage blues-rockers Mainline, and '70s hard-rockers Moxy, just to name a few, Toronto's old school rock players have enjoyed something of a revival of late.

Tonight it's local '70s heavyweights A Foot In Cold Water's turn when they make a rare, low-profile, and, as it turns out, completely sold-out appearance at Beaches area bar Mr. Slates.

Opening the show is Shawn O'Shea a T.O. rock veteran in his own right who, since the '60s, has done time playing everything from blues (Fat Mouth), pop-rock ('70s hitmakers Abraham's Children), to country-rock (The Backroom Boys, Delta Tango).

"I left home at 17 and stayed on the road for another 17 or 18 years," says O'Shea, now a youthful-looking 50. "I'm back where I started in many ways -- playing raw, rootsy riff-rock with a three- or four-piece band."

O'Shea waited until 2000 to release his first indie solo CD, Serfin' The Beat. He's finishing up production on the forthcoming album by country-swing local Angus McHardy and plans to have a second solo disc out by the end of the year.

As for Toronto's rock past, he can still wax romantic.

Max Webster

" I saw Goddo at the Arthur Pop Festival with lights, sound, and audience and that could've given The Who a run for their money in the '70s," he says. "When bands like Foot, Goddo, Crowbar and Max Webster used to play the Gasworks, the crowds would be lined up four-deep the whole block. The whole era was a musical renaissance."

As for O'Shea's biggest on-stage thrill?

"Haven't had it yet," he says. "Maybe it'll happen tonight. There have been a lot of highlights though: Abraham's Children's Ivor Wynn Stadium concert, where a minor teenage hysteria riot broke out and the police had to stop the show after the third song. Sharing a bill with Teenage Head at the Millhaven Pen. Getting to play bass for Taj Mahal's band for two sold-out Toronto shows when his bassist got turned back at the border. Jesse Edwin Davis actually taught me the bass parts 20 minutes before we hit the stage!"