ON STAGE
What: Big Wreck and Monster Truck with Brkn Love
Where: Bodine Family Hall, Mary Winspear Centre, 2243 Beacon Ave.
When: Friday, March 25, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $81.90 from tickets.marywinspear.ca or 250-656-0275
Big Wreck have been busy from a studio standpoint, releasing both a new E.P. and trio of standalone singles to streaming platforms in recent months. And it appears more new music is on the way from the four-time Juno Award nominees.
Big Wreck 7.1, which arrived last year, is reportedly the first in a trilogy of planned mini albums from founder Ian Thornley and bandmates Chris Caddell (guitar), Sekou Lumumba (drums) and Dave McMillan (bass).
“I adore being in the studio and creating and the hit you get from hearing your music come out of the speakers. That’s quite a lift and it feeds something in me,” the singer-guitarist said in an interview with the Calgary Herald.
“But you tend to get to a point after two or three months of that where you say: ‘OK, I need to get on the road.’ Then you get a different hit, but it’s just as impactful from playing for the audience and playing with the guys and watching the songs grow from night to night and evolve.”
With provincial health restriction now lifted, the band is able to honour a series of rescheduled shows, including a Sidney stop with fellow Ontario rockers Monster Truck on Friday that is nearing sold-out status. Big Wreck will perform 15 shows over the next 23 days — an action-packed run that requires more caretaking today than it did when the band debuted in 1997, Thornley said.
“I’m just a hell of a lot more responsible nowadays than I used to be. I did that ‘the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll will take care of you’ and all that bullsh-t. Well, no, you take care of yourself: Everything from normal routines, to trying to eat as healthy as you can, to trying to get enough sleep.
“I’d say the last 10 years, we really started to focus on everything else around the show that would make the show better. Whereas, 20 years ago, everything around the show was ‘How do I fill up this boredom until we get on the stage and rock?!’ As you can imagine, for an early-20s, libido-driven idiot, there’s a lot of fun ways to fill your time, but they don’t necessarily make your show better.”
Big Wreck’s recent run of studio activity — which includes the single Middle of Nowhere with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback — was capped this month by a timely recording of the Sting song, Russians, from which 100 per cent of the proceeds benefit the United Nations Refugee Aid Organization, which aids refugees affected by the war in Ukraine.
The studio environment during the recording session for Russians, released March 4, was considerably improved from the atmosphere in 2021 when the group recorded Big Wreck 7.1, Thornley said.
“As you get to the end of the recording process, usually you have label people come by and friends or fellow musicians come by, [but] there was none of that. Not a lot of high-fiving. It was a socially distanced, masks-on thing. You take what you can get.”
