People keep saying it’s a reunion, but Ian Thornley disagrees.
He said it was a much more natural process that brought him and guitarist Brian Doherty back together after parting ways as Big Wreck in 2002.
“It’s not really getting back together,” Thornley said. “We just lost touch with one another.”
Either way, the band which scored such hits as The Oaf (My Luck is Wasted) and Blown Wide Open, is together again with a new album and a tour, which travels through Nanaimo Sunday (April 29).
Doherty and Thornley met while students at Berklee College of Music in Boston and formed a band with the same goal that all do – to make music.
That was the case for a lot of bands in the late 1990s, but what also emerged was what Thornley described as corporate rock – a formula for hit songs that included four-chords and a catchy line about insecurity.
“That’s usually reserved for the pop scene,” he said.
When it came time to record a follow-up to In Loving Memory of …, the pressure was on.
“They kept saying, we need a hit,” Thornley said. “I did not fit into that.”
After the second album, The Pleasure and the Greed, the band parted ways, with Thornley establishing a new band under his last name. There, he focused on the craft of writing and produced Come Again and Tiny Pictures.
It was during a Thornley show that Doherty filled in, and the reconnection between the two musicians began.
Then, they recorded. Albatross was released earlier this year.
“The idea was not to go in and make a Big Wreck album,” Thornley said. “We just wanted to make a record.”
The difference between the two bands is the more natural feeling of the music from Big Wreck.
“There’s a little more room for jamming,” Thornley said.
When the show comes to Nanaimo’s Port Theatre, it’ll be one of their first, with Thornley describing a roller-coaster ride of eras, moods and emotions.
“There’s a lot of twists and turns,” he said.
The show also features Rikers and The Day He Quit at 7 p.m. Tickets $35. Please call 250-754-8550 or visit www.porttheatre.com.
arts@nanaimobulletin.com
