54-40 plans acoustic experience in Kelowna
Prepare yourself for a completely different 54-40 concert at Kelowna Community Theatre on March 31.
The legendary pop/rock band from the Lower Mainland will still perform a series of iconic, enduring, chart-topping gems. Butsinger/guitarist/co-founder Neil Osborne, guitarist Dave Genn, bassist and co-founder Brad Merritt and drummer Matt Johnson will present an “inspired acoustic re-work of our most charished songs” from their 24 albums over the past 37 years for the History Unplugged Tour.
“It’s a different way of presenting ourselves but we’ve done them before. It’s an intimate, interactive kind of thing, lots of storytelling. And we’ve been enjoying it tremendously,” said Merritt in a phone interview from Phoenix, Ariz. where he was attending a spring training baseball game this week and “enjoying every minute of it.”
The quartet is about two-thirds of the way through the current tour and “it’s going great,” he said.
“I like to think that the people who come and pay money to see us are enjoying it as well. I think there are people that really want to see us this way and it gives them a totally different experience. They might have seen us play some rock festival 15 years ago and liked the band and like our songs, but this is just a whole other approach and it just gives them another window into the band and the songs.”
The quartet “toyed around” with the idea of acoustic performances for years and “it was always in the back of our minds,” he said.
“In 1999, we toured on something called Heavy Metal which became a live record for Heavy Metal Records. We did two sets and for the start of the second set, we sat on stools, six of us across, and played five or six songs acoustically. The idea first started then. And it really stems from seeing Nirvana on MTV do their thing. It’s just a neat thing to do. I think people are going to enjoy that no matter who you are. People respond to that,” he said.
“We opened up for the Rolling Stones in 2005. They played their normal rock set, Jumping Jack Flash and Satisfaction and everything else you can possibly imagine. And then, they walk out on this long catwalk and they set up right in the middle of the Saddledome and they play acoustically. It was the same thing. They played four or five songs out there, stripped down. And once again, people loved it.”
When 54-40 started working on its 14th full album Keep On Walking in 2013 (finally released on Jan. 26, 2018), “we interrupted it to do this acoustic record (La Difference – A History Unplugged) which came out in January of 2016. We started touring just before that came out and we’ve been touring on that ever since,” said Merritt who admitted some may see this transition as the ‘new 54-40.’
“We’re still going to be the old 54-40 as well. They are not mutually exclusive. If it’s not authentic, it doesn’t mean anything. We love it so much it’s going to be something that we’re going to do until we don’t do anything anymore. It’s fun and exciting and it keeps it fresh for us.”
The acoustic tour - featuring original arrangements of violin, guitar, banjo and mandolin — is not designed to attract a different demographic.
“We see a multi-generational audience. We see people our age, a little older. We see people that are 10 years younger than us and we see people with their kids as well. There’s no downside,” said Merritt.
The album Keep on Walking, by comparison, is in the classic, in-the-wheelhouse 5440 style. The towering rock anthem Sucker For Your Love, the album’s scorching new single, is propelled by electrifying lead guitar, thundering bass and soaring “Hey! Hey!” chants.
Then, there’s the breathtakingly intimate, candlelit ballad Hold My Kiss, which “wrote itself,” confirms Osborne, “as did a few others over my career like One Gun, I Go Blind and Ocean Pearl.”
Elsewhere on the new album, the hardcharging, horn-goosed barnburner Can’t Hide My Love contrasts sharply with the jangly and deceptively sunny title track.
Those four songs, whittled from 25-odd demos, were produced, respectively, by Garth Richardson (54-40’s Since When from 1998), Gavin Brown (Billy Talent, the Tragically Hip), Steven Drake (54-40’s Trusted by Millions from 1996) and veteran 54- 40 accomplice Dave (Rave) Ogilvie, whose multiple credits include 2015’s acclaimed career retrospective, La Difference – A History Unplugged.
In April 2017, the band was inducted twice into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame at both The 17th Annual Independent Music Awards (The INDIES) and the Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards.
Kelowna was scheduled to be the last concert on the tour but a Vancouver Island show had to be cancelled due to an ailment affecting Osborne and that concert has been rescheduled for April 7.
Tickets for the Kelowna show are available through Select Your Tickets at the Prospera Place box office or by phone: 250- 762-5050.