Canadian rock, reggae, and blues outfit Big Sugar will open the 2026 portion of the Tour De Fort concert series at the Townshend Theatre next Wednesday night.
Active off and on since 1988, the band is currently the re-release of their 1996 platinum selling album Hemi-Vision and will play through the whole record during their show.
Gordie Johnson is the band’s lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter. Johnson says they have re-released several of their hit albums on vinyl and when they did the re-release of Hemi-Vision, they didn’t have the opportunity to tour for it so he’s happy to do it now.
“It’s been 30 years since we put out an album called Hemi-Vision, and that record has a bunch of our biggest hits on it, Diggin’ a Hole, If I Had My Way, songs like that,” he said.
“It’s now available on vinyl, in the 90s, it never was. There were no vinyl records in the 90s. So since we put it out on vinyl, and we’ve done that with a couple of our other older classic records, but when Hemi-Vision came out on vinyl, it was during COVID, and we didn’t get to go out and play any of the songs.”
The inspiration to tour the album came when they were touring with 1993’s Five Hundred Pounds on the inspiration of rocker Jack White.
“Over the summer this year, we were out there playing songs from Five Hundred Pounds, which is from 1993 and doing that all year. I guess Jack White of the White Stripes was a big fan of Big Sugar when he was a teenager, and decided he wanted to put out that record.”
White has been quoted saying the album is “the best blues-based record ever to come out of Canada,” and released it on vinyl through his label Third Man Records.
Following the success of the vinyl release of Five Hundred Pounds, they decided to release more of their music on vinyl.
“But over the summer, we hit a couple of cities that we played earlier in the [Five Hundred Pounds] tour. And so we decided, ‘we never did all of Hemi-Vision before,’ and it was a big challenge, that’s a complex record to try and create live. So we did a couple of shows, and the next thing we know, our agent was getting phone calls, and then before you know it, you’ve got a month and a half long tour driving across Canada, doing it,” Johnson said.
Johnson says while they’ll play through the album at each show on the tour, no show ever really sounds the same.
“We’ve never been a band that’s played things exactly like the record, you know, we change, stretch, reinterpret, and extend stuff. We’ve always done that, if people haven’t seen us before. So we’d like it to become like a bit of a musical trip. Every performance has to be its own performance.”
For a long time the band has had a reputation for giving some of the loudest shows in Canada, but Johnson says that in recent years they are playing to the size of the venue.
“That’s a reputation from 30 years ago when we were playing on festival stages and arenas every night. That’s also not a yardstick that we measure ourselves by anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time,” he said.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a rock and roll show. You’ll feel it, you know. It’s loud, but I don’t have trophies in the living room for the loudest band. I’m not trying to maintain a record, so we play at a volume that’s appropriate to the size of the space. You know, the last several years we’ve toured, and played theatres. Some of them are very plush, nice spaces, and we put on a more theatrical performance.”
Johnson added that the band has changed personnel over the years and no iteration has performed Hemi-Vision on stage in full like this.
“It’s a real challenge to breathe life into this thing,” he said.
“Some of these songs were never played on tour, so we’re the first Big Sugar group of guys that are playing these songs in front of people. I try to not use the word ‘recreate,’ because you can’t go back. There’s a different group of people, you know? Half the guys aren’t even alive anymore. It’s not strictly nostalgia. What we’re trying to do is breathe life into a thing that we haven’t stopped to consider in 30 years. In the case of my bass player and drummer, who are relatively new playing with me, they’ve never played these songs. So it’s being approached with a real, fresh energy.”
Big Sugar plays next Wednesday, Jan. 28, at the Townshend Theatre starting at 7:30 p.m. The concert is part of Tour De Fort’s sold out passport season and no tickets are available. However, passport holders who are not going to be able to make it to Big Sugar are encouraged to pass their passports on to someone who would enjoy the show.
