Big Wreck about to hit the road for the first time in years
After 25 years in the music industry, it’s understandable that Ian Thornley had established a certain routine in his life.
As the vocalist and primary songwriter of Big Wreck and later Thornley, the Toronto-born musician has gone through the same creative cycle numerous times. It usually finishes with a lengthy run on the road. But due to the pandemic, the live component has largely been absent for much of 2020 and into 2021.
“You live with this music in your head and then with your hands and then on a piece of tape or on a hard drive and then you start building it in the studio and then you get more and more intimate with it and then you release it to the world and it belongs to them,” Thornley says. “Then you go out and share it with them. To not be able to get that part of the equation has been pretty difficult for all of us, I think.”
Big Wreck is rectifying this in a big way, although not without a few initial snags. While the act has performed a handful of outdoor shows since the pandemic began, Thornley and his bandmates were set to launch an ambitious cross-country tour last week in Sidney, B.C. behind Big Wreck: 7.1, the first of a planned trilogy of new EPS. But even before the catastrophic flooding hit that province, the band was forced to postpone the entire Western Canada leg of its tour due to “government imposed capacity restrictions in a few markets.”
The tour will now start with a Dec. 2 sold-out show in Belleville, Ont.
Known for its melodic, anthemic rock songs, Big Wreck’s material has always seemed custom-made for the stage. So it’s hardly surprising that Thornley has more than a little pent-up energy in the reserves from his lengthy downtime.
“It’s the lifeblood for musicians like me,” he says. “I adore being in the studio and creating and the hit you get from hearing your music come out of the speakers even better than you imagined it initially. That’s quite a lift and it feeds something in me. 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. That’s been a rhythm of my life for 25 years.”
Still, Thornley will admit that while hitting the road has been part of his lifestyle for nearly three decades, his general lifestyle has changed over the years. Thornley and the late Brian Doherty formed Big Wreck in the early 1990s when they were Canuck students at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. By 1997, the band had scored a major record deal and released its debut, In Loving Memory Of ..., which delivered radio-ready hits such as The Oaf, Blown Wide Open and That Song.
While the band officially broke up after their 2001 sophomore record, The Pleasure and the Greed, Thornley kept up the pace with his namesake outfit before reforming Big Wreck for 2012’s Albatross. Through much of it, he enjoyed a typical rock-staron-the-road lifestyle. But he now admits it isn’t really sustainable.
“I’m just a hell of a lot more responsible nowadays than I used to be,” he says. “I did that ‘the spirit of rock ’n’ roll will take care of you’ and all that bulls--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.”
That said, encroaching maturity hasn’t seemed to have much of an impact on the band’s energetic sound and Thornley’s penchant for writing youthful, angsty anthems. Songs such as Fields and Bombs Away feature many of Big Wreck’s hallmarks: the layered guitar crunch, the weighty punch of Thornley’s baritone, the soaring drama of the choruses. In fact, the press material suggests the new songs capture the raw impact of the band’s first two albums.
Thornley doesn’t seem particularly interested in comparing the new work to the old, except to say that there is inevitable overlap. Thornley, bassist Dave Mcmillan, guitarist Chris Caddell, drummer Sekou Lumumba and co-producer Eric Ratz worked during the pandemic, which required a bit of an adjustment but essentially was “no big deal.”
Recording and performing without band cofounder Doherty, who died in 2019 of cancer, has been a much bigger adjustment. Throughout Big Wreck’s history, he was always a reliable sounding board adept at both inspiring Thornley’s creativity and occasionally reigning it in.
“I still check in with him every now and then,” Thornley says. “Would Brian think this is cool? If it passes that test I think it’s winning.”
Big Wreck 7.1 is now available.