Shania Twain Plays Dream Gig at Tiny Toronto Dive Bar
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- Shania Twain performed at Toronto's 78-year-old Horseshoe Tavern on Friday for the first time, telling the crowd the 500-capacity Queen Street venue had been her dream since her bar-band days in northern Ontario.
- The $40 tickets sold out in minutes and were non-transferrable; diehard fans who couldn't get in listened from the sidewalk but couldn't see the backroom stage.
- Twain debuted four tracks from 'Little Miss Twain' (due July 24) — 'Dirty Rosie,' 'I'd Be Loving Me,' 'Stranger Things,' and 'Faded Blue Jeans,' a collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme.
- The 75-minute set opened with hits 'Come On Over' and 'Any Man of Mine,' with Twain, now 60, strumming acoustic guitar throughout alongside a six-piece band led by longtime music director Brent Barcus.
- Twain wove in deeply personal stories about growing up in Timmins — her mother's dream that she'd be 'the next Tanya Tucker' (Tucker sings on the album's title track), learning to drive her father's pickup at age 10, and her childhood fantasy of a Daniel Boone-type partner.
- Twain recently opened 12 stadium shows in London for Harry Styles and last month played another underplay at the Shacklewell Arms pub, where she imitated Stompin' Tom Connors — a Horseshoe fixture immortalized in a mural alongside Tragically Hip's Gord Downie.
Why it matters: A five-time Grammy winner with 100 million albums sold chose a 500-capacity dive bar over an arena to debut material from her first album in years — a deliberate career-rebooting move that frames her as a northern Ontario songwriter returning to her roots, with the Horseshoe's alumni (Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, the Rolling Stones) lending her set historical weight.
