"You need people to remind you you're not superhuman"

Cows don't care if Much Music is playing your video, says Big Sugar's Gordie Johnson

By Sandra Sperounes, Edmonton Journal (July 12, 2001)

Cars, cigars & and barnyards.

Such is the life of Big Sugar's Gordie Johnson.

When the Hugo Boss-clad frontman isn't cruising down the highway in his Charger, chomping on stogies or wailing away on his double-necked guitar, he's out on his in-laws' farm in central Alberta, decked in his overalls and work boots. Johnson says it's an escape from life in Toronto and keeps him — no pun intended — down to earth. Cows, you see, don't care if MuchMusic is playing your video.

"My job is a fantasy job. You're made to look larger-than-life and people go, 'Wow. It must be so cool.' You know what? It is so cool, it's really cool. But once in awhile, you need people to look at you and say, 'What're you doing with your hair there today? Are you going out with pants looking like that?' " says Johnson, who grew up on a farm near Medicine Hat.

"You need people to remind you that you're not superhuman. You cannot fly. Take the cape off and come back down to earth."

But Johnson would also be at home drinking rum on the beaches of Jamaica or strutting down the cafe- and-bar-lined streets of Montreal. Much of Big Sugar's music is sweetened with reggae beats, not to mention French translations. The band's seventh and latest effort, Brothers & Sisters, Are You Ready? was simultaneously released with French lyrics as Brothers & Sisters, Etes Vous Ready? It's a first for an English-speaking band.

"I'm not into trying to trick people into thinking I'm a Francophone," says Johnson. "When I'm in Quebec, I don't act like I'm from Val d'Or. I'm an English performer living in English Canada trying to entertain people."

Johnson admits he needed to take a few baby steps to work up to Brothers & Sisters, Etes Vous Ready? He frenchifized his first tune, "Open Up Baby", for Big Sugar's 1996 disc, Hemi-Vision. Then came the French EP, Chauffé A Bloc, three years later.

"Singing in French probably first occurred to me on one sleeping morning while looking at a cereal box and thinking, 'Oh my God! It's both in English and in French! No wonder we're not selling any records in Quebec -- we haven't done the translation thing,' " says Johnson. "So I called my record company and said, 'I can't believe we forgot to do that.' They said, 'Forgot to do that? Nobody does that.' So I decided to work on it."

Being a natural-born killer of the French language, Johnson relied on his pals from Les Respectables, a Quebecois rock group, to help out with the translations and navigate any cultural differences on Brothers & Sisters. Par example, most Quebec residents and their dogs smoke — so "Nicotina" became "Tina Gasolina". And no, it's not about a girl with a solvent habit. She just has a cool car.

"You can smoke in the grocery store in Trois Rivieres, so Nicotina just doesn't have that same ooh-she's-bad vibe," says Johnson. "It just didn't sound cool to my Quebecois chums."

While the translation process slowed down the recording of Brothers & Sisters, so did Johnson's busy schedule as a producer and guest musician. He remixed Big Sugar's songs into ExtraLongLife, an album full of dub tunes under the Alkaline moniker. He recorded and toured with Double Trouble and The Black Crowes, who also commissioned Johnson to record reggae remixes of "Lickin'" and "Cosmic Friend". He produced Wide Mouth's latest funk-fest, Stew, then toured with the trio. In Edmonton, he even found himself playing with Canada's favourite boy band, The Moffatts.

It seems if Johnson is near a stage, he has to jump on -- even if only to shake a tambourine.

"Did you see me jam with The Moffatts?" he tee-hee-hees. "I played with The Black Crowes and The Moffatts in the same year. Yes! You know what, they were really good. I was surprised. There's so much boy-band dreck out there -- it's intolerable -- but those guys can actually really play. They put on a really good show. Call 'em what you want, but they'll at least grow up to be real musicians."

Oddly enough, Johnson didn't use any guest musicians on Big Sugar's Brothers & Sisters, Are You Ready? But he did recruit a new band member, Mojah, to add a third guitarist and fifth member to the mix. Johnson says it made sense to bring Mojah (a "Rastafarian guy from Trinidad") into the fold.

"Back in the '80s, when I first moved to Toronto, Mojah introduced me to West Indian culture in this city and the country. It just changed my whole attitude to the city," says Johnson. "We brought Mojah on the road with Alkaline and we just had so much fun, we looked at each other and said, 'Why aren't we doing this all the time?' We didn't have a reason, so we're playing together."

With the addition of Mojah — not to mention the influence of Jamaican bassist Gary Lowe — Brothers & Sisters sees Big Sugar adopting more reggae riffs and moving away from its bluesy roots. But the boys seem to rock out heavier than ever, thanks to Johnson, guitarist Kelly Hoppe and drummer Al Cross (who sat behind the skins on the band's 1992 self-titled debut and left soon after).

"I bring the guys in unprepared and I record their first reaction to something, Kelly especially and he hates me for it," says Johnson.

"I'll play him a track, he'll listen to it in the headphones and play along, and I'll invariably record that and three or four other takes after that. But then, I always use the first one. He just hates that. But it's such a nice reaction to the music. The same with Garry. It keeps a who-can-guess-what-happens-next feel to the thing."

It's no wonder Johnson likes to keep his music unpredictable and spontaneous -- it's a reflection of his life. Rock star, part-time farmer, producer -- he can only guess what happens next.

Back to the top
Back to the interviews index