Tour De Fort’s passports have almost sold out for the 2025-206 season in anticipation of their big season opener, Canadian legends Crash Test Dummies.
Originally from Winnipeg, the band took off in the early 90s with the success of their 1991 single “Superman’s Song,” featuring the distinctive vocals of lead singer Brad Roberts. The Times caught up with Roberts ahead of their upcoming tour through Northwestern Ontario.
Roberts says the music still has wide appeal as the band has toured extensively over the last while.
“We’eve been touring quite steadily for the last five years,” he said.
“We’ve been touring in Australia, Europe, the UK and America and Canada. It just keeps going, it’s not just a trickle it’s a steady stream.”
The band experienced international recognition starting with 1993’s “God Shuffled His Feet” when the album’s first single “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” was featured on radio stations across the United States, peaking at number four on the Hot 100. The single hit number two in the UK and hit number one in Australia.
The song has nearly a quarter billion streams on music streaming platform Spotify over 30 years after its release.
Roberts credits nostalgia with the band’s sticking power.
“You know, I think people have a sense of nostalgia that takes them to the music of their youth,” he said.
“So we end up with a lot of crowds of people who first found out about our music when they were younger and then there’s a different contingency which is their children and sometimes their grandchildren. They come to our shows together as families, so it’s cross-generational. As for sticking power, aside from sentimental value I really don’t know it’s just a beautiful mystery.”
“Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” was even covered by Weird Al Yankovic, which Roberts says was great.
“Even back then it was a huge deal that we were covered by Weird Al, he even used that cover of our song as his first single on that album,” Roberts said.
“That was a huge recognition for us, huge advertising and we were delighted.”
One of the other big boons to their success was having their cover of XTC’s Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead chosen for the soundtrack of the movie Dumb and Dumber.
“At the time, Crash Test Dummies were doing a cover song of an XTC track, The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” Roberts said.
“The reason that we took on that song was because I wanted to feature Ellen on a lead vocal. But we never recorded the song. We just did it live. It was just a cover song for our live show. Then when they were making Dumb and Dumber, they came to us and said, ‘would you like to record this for a movie?’ So we ended up having that as a single and it grew in popularity to the point where it was one of our big hits.”
Those in attendance at Crash Test Dummies’ Sept. 19 concert for Tour De Fort will get a taste of those older classics as well as some of the band’s newer material, Roberts says.
“We do a combination of a few old classics, as you call them, and some other newer material. It’s definitely a mixture, but we do lean heavily into the “God Shuffled His Feet” album, because that was our biggest album worldwide,” he said.
“Funny enough, in Canada, our first record was very successful, but it didn’t get any success outside of Canada. The second one did, although it didn’t do well in Canada at first, our single came out in Canada, did nothing, and it was only because it took off in the States that our career was even revived.”
Crash Test Dummies kicks off the 2025-26 Tour De Fort season at the Townshend Theatre on Friday, September 19, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. The only way to ensure you have a seat at the show is to buy a passport which gets you into six shows for the cost of $130. There are fewer than 100 passports remaining. Passports are available in person at Ski’s Variety and the Fort Frances Public Library with cash, or online at tourdefort.com by credit card. Passports will be picked up at the first show of the year.
