PULSE - August 30, 2001 On The Road With Big Wreck - by Joel Naphin A few years back Big Wreck played in Cayuga for the May 2-4 weekend. On the way to the show the band's tour bus broke down and had to get towed in. "That was a long time ago!" laughs guitarist Brian Doherty in a recent phone interview from him home outside Cincinnati. At that time, Big Wreck's debut album, In Loving Memory Of....(1997), was making its mark all over Canada and the U.S. with such hit singles as "The Oaf (My Luck Is Wasted)," "That Song," "Blown Wide Open," and "Under The Lighthouse." Fast forward to 2001. Big Wreck releases its sophmoric album, The Pleasure And The Greed, produced by Dave Jerden (Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, Talking Heads). The first single "Inhale," gets immediate attention and lots of airplay. But why did it take four years for this new album to come out? Doherty explains, "Well, we did a lot of road time on In Loving Memory Of... We toured that for a good two years. then we had some off time, a few months. We did some writing and demoing on and off. Played a few shows here and there. The rest was talking about who we want to do the next record with and choosing songs and stuff. You may call a producer and he'll say, 'Ok yeah, I want to do the record', but a lot of that is when he is available. Someone like Jerden, who does a lot of big records, can't just do it right away. There was a wait there but we spent three months in L.A. and then another couple of months recording in different places and doing remixes and stuff like that." Big Wreck is rounded out by guitarist/vocalist Ian Thornley, from Toronto, bassist David Henning and drummer Forrest Williams. The band formed in 1992 when all four members met in Boston while attending the Berklee School of Music. By the mid-90's the band signed to Atlantic, got management and released its first album shortly thereafter. Thornley is the main writer in the band, writing "95-98 per cent" of the material. For The Pleasure And The Greed, Doherty says they didn't try to do anything intentional to make the new album any different than its predecessor. "Well, in terms of writing and stuff for what it's going to sound like, we didn't really set out to do anything intentionally. It's just doing it and whatever comes out - generally comes out. There was a lot of material, there was like 40 songs (or) something like that, maybe more that had been written on the raod or Ian had done at home or whatever. It's definitely a little bit different of a record. It's got a lot more heavy stuff on it, I think and there's a lot more guitars, a lot more vocals." Doherty's favourite song on the new album is the last track, "Defined By What We Steal." "I like the changes and the arrangements and the outro is really cool, it's got a great vibe to it. It's very different from everything else we did on the record." The second single "Ladylike," was recently released and Big Wreck finished the video for it about a month ago in Toronto. On the current Canadian leg of this tour Big Wreck will play two shows with members of the Edmonton/Toronto symphony orchestra. The Toronto show is October 6. "It's a big Du Maurier sponsored event. They told us we could basically do whatever we wanted," says Doherty. "We got Eric Johnson to come in on it, which is amazing! He is someone me and Ian have looked up to." The show will also include the Uzume Taiko Ensemble of drummers, members of Le Cirque Eloize and "an acoustic jam with some of our Canadian musician friends," which Doherty says he can't reveal at this time or "I'll get yelled at," he laughs. "You'll know soon." "We're just doing these two shows with the symphony. The rest is on our own, of course, in Canada. We're going out till somewhere around November 10. I believe November 10 is the last day then we'll probably take a little breatk and see where we're going from there. We might be getting into some states stuff by then. It's hard to say, it's too early. I don't really know." The Pleasure And The Greed is currently out only in North America. Doherty says there aren't plans aas of yet to release the album elsewhere. "Right now I think we're just conentrating on North America, see how this year goes, see what kind of offers come up and see what happens," he says, adding, "In terms of going overseas or anywhere else I don't really know too much about that. I don't think we released too much, I know we got some play with "The Oaf" and so on and so forth but I don't think that we were getting enough spins or really selling records or we had enough distribution to really justify spending lots of money to go over there. Otherwise, I don't really know. There really hasn't been much talk about it. We're just focusing on Canada and the U.S. right now."