Big Wreck to bring tour to Wingham Town Hall Theatre
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
In the 1990s, the band Big Wreck was formed in Boston, Massachusetts by four college students with a dream: to make rock music. The band’s eclectic sound really caught on in Canada - they had a number of hit songs that made the Top Ten list, and frontman Ian Thornley’s status as a bona fide Canadian citizen earned the band a permanent position in the zeitgeist of the Great White North.
Over the years, Big Wreck has broken up, reunited and gone through multiple line-up changes, but the dream of rocking out remains the same, and on Oct. 5, they’ll be bringing that dream to Wingham’s historic Town Hall Theatre for the very first time. In anticipation of what will surely be a memorable show, The Citizen gave Thornley a call for a quick chat about his upcoming gig.
It may be his first time coming to Wingham, but Thornley is no stranger to the small-town show. “If you roll through a smaller town, they seem pretty appreciative of the fact that you’re rolling through,” he explained. “And that can often be a little more joyous than your run of the mill ‘oh, here comes Big Wreck again.’ I think, as a band, we can feed off that, and it sort of becomes a bi-directional thing... if there’s a great energy in the crowd, it usually means there’s a great energy on stage. And vice versa. That energy is circular - it goes around.”
Their most well-loved songs, like “The Oaf” and “Blown Wide Open” were big hits when they first hit the airwaves, and have since gone on to become staples of “Can-con (Canadian content)” radio. But, even though Big Wreck was born in the 1990s and went on a bit of an extended hiatus for a few years after the turn of the new millennium, they’ve also been making new music along the way. When he’s not packing for his trip to Wingham, Thornley spends most of his free time working on new songs and listening to British-band Muse with his five-year-old son.
Technology has evolved slightly since Big Wreck recorded its debut album, In Loving Memory Of..., and Thornley’s songwriting style has evolved along with it. “It’s great nowadays for if you’re just out for a walk and you have an idea for a melody, an idea for a lyric, or whatever it may be, it’s so much easier to grab your phone and record it. And I have hundreds of little sketches, little ideas, some things that have fallen in my lap... you leave yourself a little trail of breadcrumbs, and then I can come back to it and see if it still wants to be planted. In some respects, it’s become a little more personal, because I don’t have to get together with a bunch of guys and bash something out in a garage to hear an idea that’s fully formed. I can just do it in my home.”
Of course, he also sees the downside to the convenient ease of the modern age. “I think where it’s different, and maybe not as much fun as when you’re young, is that half the joy is just getting together with your buddies and bashing out a new idea and having it turned into something right before your eyes...”
The online age also spawned the era of social media - a ubiquitous accessory of the young and an acquired taste for those who remember the days before the iPhone. “Sekou, our drummer, is great at social media, and he enjoys it. I kind of battle with it. I go back and forth. Sometimes, I’m like ‘okay, this is great. This is a great way to get my stuff out there.’ And then I wonder why I’m doing it. There’s sort of an internal struggle - why do I care if people like this? But then, it’s like, the entire music industry is based on having people like what you do. Back and forth - the internal struggle. I have friends and family helping me.”
Besides playing music, Thornley is most looking forward to just hanging out with his bandmates. “We don’t all live next door to each other anymore, so we get together and have a laugh and pick up the conversation where we left it at the last show.”