Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar took some time to chat with Scotty Evil about the band’s new single, “The Better it Gets”, new video, and album Eternity Now, soon to drop! And the location of an iconic guitar…
Scotty Evil: First album in a while, loving the new track!
Gordie Johnson: Thanks. And yeah, we definitely had lots to say. This is our first record in a long time with Universal…it’s great having them as collaborators and not like a giant corporate entity. The old way as compared to now…it’s pretty striking. To have a guy on the other end of the phone who is just super invested in the creative side of it. Every way we’ve approached it is just different from the way it’s gone in the past. We’ve built our own studio, and in there I mix other people’s records as well, but to be able to do our own creative projects…like our reggae label which is going to come out later in the year…we do all our own graphics, video, poster art…everything is generated in house now.
SE: When do you think that shift happened? Is it a generational change do you think?
GJ: I unplugged from it for so long…when I moved to Texas, almost 20 years ago…we didn’t move to a different music industry, we moved to NOT a music industry…more of a culture industry. Music just occupied a different space in our lives. More of a cultural expression and less of a business…I don’t know when it happened but I was very pleased that it had changed (laughs).
SE: I wonder if it’s the technological change now where bands can produce themselves via Garage Band and not have to pay big money for big studios…
GJ: Well, at the end of the day it only matters how it sounds…I also worked in big studios for a long time…up until recently. I have a certain standard with what I expect to do with the sound and technology has evolved so quickly. It’s just over two years ago I was on the phone with the guys at Universal Audio and they enticed me into trying an all-software based program. I’m known as analog guy…I’ve mixed records for Warren Haynes, Government Mule…that world of people who love their analog gear. Even the reggae artists I work with… it’s old school sounding. So for them to talk me into “trying” it their way…I’m like okay, if it doesn’t SOUND good I don’t care what it is. How easy it is to use has nothing to do with it…but HOLY CRAP, the first time I tried it…you’ve got to be joking! Does it ALL sound this good?
I just started trying their plug-ins…I’ve got hundreds now. I’m not gonna make the digital stuff sound like anyone else’s…I’m gonna twist the knobs until it sounds right to me and that’s where the human/computer interface…when that becomes invisible then it doesn’t matter to me anymore. It’s when I work for other clients, who aren’t sitiing the room, looking at the technology, they’re only hearing the result at the other end of it. So when I send Warren Haynes a live mix of a show that’s 3 1/2 hours long…and he listens to the ENTIRE thing…and his notes back to me are “that sounds great, what kind of tape were you using?’…he doesn’t need to know I was using VIRTUAL tape. It just matters how it sounds, it doesn’t matter how you get there.
There’s still wonderful gear out there to use, but half the time it’s broken…if you love the sound of the 70s, well that gear was new in the 70s…it’s not new now. And people don’t play that way, so you’re not recording the same source material. It started becoming an impediment to me, preventing me from realizing my vision. Now I can go into my own studio, at 7:45 in the morning and make things sound the way I want them to sound…which is some funky old 70s dub (laughs), funky sounding stuff…you can do that but you have to have that intention first.
SE: I think that starts when you’re young; happy to be playing a guitar through an amp, to when you are a veteran and you find more tools to get the sound that’s in your head…
GJ: That trickles all the way down from guitar playing. I get those questions all the time; “what kind of gear do you use to get your tone”…well first of all I get my tone with my hands and I amplify it with some gear…I mean, it kind of doesn’t matter? (laughs) what you plug in to…there are guitar players I’ve known all my life…anything they pick up or plug into sounds the same…”how you getting that dirty tone” well, I’ve got dirty hands (laughs) my clean is somebody else’s dirty tone and it just gets dirtier from there (laughs).
SE: Very true. And as an example, you’ve got Alex Lifeson playing on your title track…I’m a pretty massive fan of Rush in general…
GJ: So HOW freakin cool is that? That I can call a guy like that up and say “Hey man, you wanna play a solo on one of our songs?” To which he said yes…but here’s the funny thing though…I sent a very specific email, saying “would you play a solo in this part here”…what he sent me wan entire Dropbox folder of acoustic guitar parts left and right, to a Turkish banjo instrument called a Cumbus; he played it in the outro and the second verse and then he played a couple of takes of the solo…I mean, are you freaking kidding me? (laughs)
SE: Merry Christmas!
GJ: Dude…(laughs) when I opened the file, I could not believe it. There was a life-affirming moment. And what a great pal. Super supportive, and he has been my entire career. One of those people who is very down to earth, very encouraging…I couldn’t have more love for a dude. One of the loveliest people I know.
SE: Must be a Canadian music thing. You also share your love of double-necks as well…
GJ: Did you know that the double neck guitar on “Diggin’ a Hole” is the same guitar that’s on A Farewell to Kings?
SE: (laughs) I DID know that!
GJ: It still doesn’t sound true when I say it, so I have to say it in interviews once in a while!
SE: It sounds like you have some variety in the rest of the tracks on the album…
GJ: On the record it’s very streamlined actually…the entire record, except for one cover tune, which lyrically and musically occupied a very important part in the story arc. My wife Alex and I sat down and wrote the entire record almost in one night. We sat down and looked at all the forces in life that were stacked against us in that moment and had the hard talk…do we even want to do this? Is music even important? Our daughter got sick, our bass player (Garry Lowe) died, people left us and let us down and I’d let people down. All these bigger questions than rock and roll. It just put this amazing perspective and clarity on things. It’s amazing when you have a clear conscience and a clear mind, what you can accomplish. Things that would have been too hard to say in a different era but boom, we just sat down and wrote it. In terms of the lyrical arc of the record, only songs that fit that storyline ended up, in that song order. Including the cover song. The Garry Wright song, it fit right into the storyline…like writing a screenplay.
SE: I think that’s been lost a little bit in the last couple of decades, where musicians have been pushed to a more single-release mindset versus crafting an album from track one to the outro on the second side…do you gravitate towards artists that think like that instead of the latest single?
GJ: I so do not care about (laughs) what other people listen to, the unfortunate truth of it. Some of my contemporaries are very plugged into what everyone’s doing. I never cared! In the 70s I didn’t listen to what was current, I listed to stuff from the sixties. I always dug Killing Joke, they were from the 80s…I loved the sound of those records. So I go back and draw from my own creative well of influences for zero regard for what is popular. Do you think I started playing reggae because it’s popular? (laughs) we play it because people like it…not because it’s part of a big corporate machine. We don’t swim in that pool, heck we don’t even go to that community centre. Our songs got played on the radio back in the day, kind of beyond our control. We sure don’t sit down to do that. Luckily people are watching!
SE: Well it certainly seems like your fan base are digging it.
GJ: Big Sugar has always had a very diverse mix of ingredients, musically speaking but I think this record is maybe the most distilled, down to a single essence. We certainly have dabbled, a LOT, in reggae and dub, blues and even jazz, to a point; where this record…even though the songs aren’t sonically the same, everything coalesced it feels like. Maybe because it was done so quickly, we had been through so much to get there…it seemed like we were just bogged down in an old way of thinking. Once we cleared the decks of a lot of dead weight, it made things happen quickly. And it’s the same people on every song, aside from Alex Lifeson as a guest. That white double-neck is hanging in the studio as a constant reminder anyways (laughs) so he was kind of there already. And he also played at one of our last Toronto shows with Garry, Al was our special guest…he was going to be there anyway. But other than that, all of the writing, singing, playing is just our group of people, our little gang of five people. Our daughters are singing back-up vocals on some of the songs…it’s really really in-house. Even the album cover design is done by my daughter; poster designs, artwork, album covers…unapologetically we create stuff…we make it. I can do it…so we do!
SE: It’s neat to see the artist genes run in a family…
GJ: The album art was already to go…it had already been delivered (laughs) it was out the door and my son came home from college and went “Oh no. No no no. You can’t put this out, this has to be changed…” (laughs) “I’m not showing this to my friends, it’s CRINGEY” (laughs) he said the word “cringey” and of course my daughter, who had worked on it said “Yeah pop. I didn’t want to say anything but…” (laughs) it’s YOUR JOB to say something “yeah pop it’s cringey, we gotta redo it”. So we stayed up all night, sent it to the record label with apologies…
SE: Tour dates?
GJ: Well yeah, we’ve got meetings all week pertaining to all of that stuff. We don’t really go on tour to promote records…the record perpetuates us moving forward. We make music; we were gonna come play for you anyway. Now we have new stuff to play…we’re not just there to sell you stuff, we made it because we had something to say. When we take the stage, it’s with a great deal of conviction. It’s hard to do, you know. It’s fun but airports, hotels, suitcases…the other 22 hours of the day really suck. You gotta REALLY want to do this (laughs) but my wife reminds me it’s really fun to be on tour…there’s also good coffee to find in every town now.
SE: Good coffee fixes everything. Speaking of which, you’ve played in Vancouver quite a bit…do you have a certain venue you really dig when you get down here?
GJ: We’ve played The Commodore more than just about any room in the country, so there’s a long history there, but…we’ll play to 6000 people, we’ll play to 60 people. When I play in Austin, sometimes we play to 6 people. Austin is that kind of town, where you can play to a sold out crowd at Stubbs one night then the art gallery for 15 people…it’s still an awesome show (laughs). That’s not the thing that defines it.
SE: Well I’m certainly excited to see you the next time you’re out this way.
GJ: Well thank you. It’s coming…we have a deep conviction in what we’re saying and what we’re doing with the new material…we’re really anxious to come out and show it to everybody.
Check out Big Sugar’s new video “The Better it Gets“, below and stay tuned for concert dates and album updates as they come. If you wish to pre-order Eternity Now, go HERE.
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written by Scotty Evil