When Marshall Veroni moved to Hamilton in early 2020, he was looking for a place where he could play his music, meet other musicians and find a community.

Then the pandemic hit and he was in a new city, his tour cancelled, leaving him feeling both alone and lonely.

When the city was finally opening up, Veroni kept looking for his people and that’s when he found the Shaky Knees Club.

“Joining Shaky Knees Club, I just felt like for the first time I was experiencing what it felt like to find that community I had been thinking about,” he said. 

Shaky Knees Club is a collective for songwriters, which holds monthly workshops for local artists in a cosy home setting, and seasonal showcases in churches, restaurants, and book and music stores across Hamilton. 

In 2023, local artists and former classmates Elise Bird and Hannah Sloots say they were looking to turn the often lonely process of songwriting into a warm, communal space when they co-founded Shaky Knees Club.

Last summer, Veroni performed his song Regression 2, at the club’s first recorded showcase at Last Supper Books. The song came together as a challenge to write music inspired by the word “mirrors.” 

Veroni used it to revisit painful memories of a time when he avoided his own reflection because the very prospect of self-reflection was overwhelming. Examining his struggles with confidence and people-pleasing, he wondered when they started and where they came from.  

The song says, “When I come home I regress / like a kid who hasn’t left yet / who was taught how to stay speechless / when someone’s talking down.”

It helped him come through the other side, resigned to the quiet truth that “we all do the best we can with what we think it is we have.”    

Music, community ‘can save us, if we let it’

Sarah Bellsted performed at that Mirrors showcase as well. She moved to Hamilton from Toronto in 2021 and joined Shaky Knees in the winter of 2023. She says there’s something special happening in this city.

“The only reason I’ve been able to make music and keep going with it is because of the community I’ve found,” she said. “There is something so warm and supportive about the art scene here that I just haven’t seen anywhere else.”

She wrote a moving ballad about her relationship with her twin sister that juxtaposed a soft, lilting tune with lyrical intensity.

“But I’ll reign it in / round up all the miseries / and take them on the chin […] Set aside / the fear that I’m / a flame without its twin.”

The club’s influence has started to grow beyond the city. Inspired by Shaky Knees, Halifax folk artist Matthew Joel founded City Kid Songwriters, which held its first showcase last spring in Nova Scotia. 

Bird, the Shaky Knees cofounder, noticed how much the Hamilton club means to the artists who learn and perform.

“What it’s become has been shaped by the people who have been a part of it, and I’m so proud of this community for making it something so joyful and vibrant, Bird said. “Creating something really meaningful together, in a way that tethers us to one another…

“I think that can save us, if we let it.” 

Veroni agrees.

“To feel seen for the first time since moving to the city… was invaluable. Shaky Knees Club saved me from a limited view of what was going on musically in Hamilton, and gave me a community where there was none.” 

The Mirrors showcase was made possible by Hamilton’s City Enrichment Fund. With the grant, Bird and Sloots created a video of the night’s performances, available on YouTube, and compiled an album titled Mirrors, which is available on Bandcamp. Their next show will be on April 15 at The Gasworks.

It’s an exciting time for music in the city. Hamilton will host the 55th Juno Awards on March 29, with many events leading up to the live show at TD Coliseum, including a six-day concert series featuring local talent from Hamilton and the region.