Big Wreck celebrates 20 years with tour
Big Wreck will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its ground-breaking debut album, In Loving Memory Of, with a 35-date North American tour including a March 5 concert at Kelowna Community Theatre.
The Canadian-American rock band was formed in 1994 by lead vocalist/lead guitarist Ian Thornley, rhythm guitarist Brian Doherty, bassist Dave Henning and drummer Forrest Williams while they were students at prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass.
In Loving Memory Of produced their first Top 10 singles in the U.S: The Oaf, That Song and Blown Wide Open, and earned double platinum certification. The band found even bigger commercial success in Canada, scoring four top-40 hits.
Current band members — Thornley, Doherty, Dave McMillan on bass and Chuck Keeping on drums — are performing In Loving
Memory Of in its entirety as well as fan favourites.
Tickets to the 7:30 p.m. show can be purchased through Select Your Tickets at the Prospera Place box office or by phone at: 250762-5050.
In an interview before a concert in Grand Prairie, Alta., frontman Thornley said the fan reception has been “great so far, awesome. It’s been mostly sold out; people have been coming out in droves to hear this music. It's been great for the band diving into some of its older material and it seems like the fans were ready for it.”
Going back 20 years was quite an experience, he admitted.
“Initially, during rehearsals, I was having a lot of flashback memories, remembering different places that we were and different people that we were hanging out with, all kinds of little snapshots,” he said.
“Now it’s to the point where I’m just thinking music and it's lovely music to play. But sometimes, I get caught up in the moment. There's a lot of 23-, 24-year-old me woven through a lot of this music. Sometimes, it can catch you off-guard and you get a little choked. For the most part, it’s been a lot of fun.”
The band broke up in 2002 and Thornley moved back to Toronto to form the band Thornley. Doherty moved to Camlachie, a small community near Sarnia, Ont., where he taught guitar, prepared students for university or conservatory entrance requirements and formed the indie band Death of 8.
However, in 2010, Doherty filled in as a guitarist at a Thornley show and that led to joining the band as a permanent member.
A successful tour promoted as An Evening with Thornley and Big Wreck led to a new version of Big Wreck with the addition of Thornley members.
“Honestly, it's kind of the same as it ever was. Going from Big Wreck initially and then Thornley; that really wasn't a solo project. That was just a band with an unimaginative name (he laughs) but it was still a four-piece rock band. We were a fivepiece for a bit, but it was still just playing rock 'n' roll, the sort of rhythm of writing constantly, recording when you can and then touring off that recording,” he said.
Eight years later, “it’s not like it’s so different now. We behave differently for sure. We’ve matured; we’re adults; we try not to get sick, especially touring Canada in the winter. Your daily grind is still your daily grind. None of that has really changed.”
Preparations for the In Loving Memory Of tour were simple: “I was away with my significant other for a week and I started listening to that first record to recap, as a refresher. I don’t need to sit and learn the songs or anything; I just need to hear them. And then, like ‘OK, locked, I got it.’”
The band’s fifth (and newest) studio album, Grace Street with the first single, One Good Piece of Me, moved up to top spot on the charts in November.
“I love this most recent record,” said Thornley but he struggles to explain how his music has evolved since 1994.
“I don't know how to articulate what the differences are and how it's grown and how it's changed. For the most part, I've always chased melody. Maybe the construction of it has changed through the years but I'm still searching for the perfect melodic turn, the perfect change, marrying the perfect lyric to that.
“I still haven’t found it, but I’m still searching for it. Wherever that search brings me, I think you have to trigger yourself and follow it as opposed to saying: ‘Nope, we're not going there.’ If that's where the music wants to take you, that's where you go."
As for his inspiration: "Honestly, I beg, steal and borrow from everywhere. There could be something that ‘I never listen to that' or 'This isn't something I enjoy,’ but you do it anyway. Guaranteed you find things that you adore about it. I can dig through a lot of current pop music and be like ‘OK, I find something in here; there's something tangible’ even though every ounce of me is begging me to stop. I’m like ‘OK, I know that there’s a bumper sticker hook coming up; there it is.’Maybe there's a killer solo on it or something.
"My point is: you are what you eat and I like to try to be careful with what I'm putting in there. If something rubs me the wrong
way and feels formulaic and not authentic, I'm going to turn it off pretty quickly. But having said that, sometimes if it sneaks in the back door, it's just like 'OK, this is formulaic and not authentic but it's great.' And you turn it up and enjoy it."
Did he ever imagine while growing up that his adult life would be like this?
“Not a chance, no way. I never really looked that far forward. It was always kind of scary. Honestly, I would have imagined that I would just be doing music of some kind somewhere, in some way, shape or form, but still slugging it out.
“The way that we are? No, I wouldn’t have imagined that.”
When the tour ends in Hollywood, Calif. on March 10, Thornley plans to go to “a beautiful spot south of L.A. that I’d like to visit maybe for a day or two just to sort of decompress and unwind.
“I’m constantly writing and I’m constantly documenting ideas and ‘Wouldn’t it be cool ifs?’ I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of them since the last record. I want to start flushing the ideas out and start building a new record from the ground up and just kind of see what kind of shape we're in. I’m sure it will take on a life of its own.
“I need to start putting those pieces together and having discussions with the inner circle, what are we aiming for, what do you think. I don't have a specific timeline on it, but I know that when I'm on the road, even as long as I’ve been on the road now, I guess we're a month-and-a-half, I’m just itching to get to a place that's not moving and start concentrating on the other side of it,” he said.
“I love both touring and recording equally but you're doing one non-stop for a while, you sort of crave the other. There’s a romance to being in a different city every night and really perfecting the set and seeing old friends and all of that.
“But after a couple of months, that can get stale and it’s the same thing with the studio. It’s nice to have a balance.”