Big Wreck: Grace Street (new album)

Yea. It's soooo good. Apparently they're doing 500 seat theater shows on the East coast and just flooring people.

Wish they'd come west but I doubt it's worth their time...
 
I've been listening to Big Wreck and anything Ian puts out since early 2000. Why any of that material hasn't gained more recognition is beyond me. Oh wait, it's because it's great! lol

Cool story. My 13 year old son who is very artistic but doesn't play an instrument (arrrggg) was in the car with me. I had just purchased the album "Ghosts" (2014?). We were talking about something with the music in the background. Keep in mind his musical tastes are all over the place and rarely comments on my music although we like some of the same stuff. He stops mid conversation and says "I've heard you play this guy before. He's really unique in a cool way." My reply was "Good ear".
 
Amazing guitar talent and vocal talent. So glad somebody here clued me in because I didn't know anything about Ian until last year :(
 
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I caught their show in Calgary a while back. I've always thought they were severely underrated, especially as a live band.
 
To find the real beauties on the new album, you have to look past the first songs on the new album though, IMHO.
Too much overly compressed power stuff at the start.
 
Been a fan of these guys from their early days. I have often wondered why they didn't /don't get more traction. Very underrated IMO
 
Their debut album was 20 years ago and produced three huge hit singles in Canada. Constant rotation on rock radio at the time, and still regularly on classic rock radio. I'm not aware how big it was elsewhere, but it seems clear that none of their subsequent albums went that big. Even still, it seems crazy these guys are touring to crowds well under 1k in clubs.

For anyone just discovering them, I'd recommend starting from the start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Loving_Memory_Of...

EDIT - with this post I found a bug in the forum software.. the link requires the dot dot dot (...) at the tail end of the URL for it to work. It seems the forum software is stripping the 3 dots off the hyperlink.

EDIT 2 - I was surprised to see my BW photos above on my work computer, since my office network has blocked Imgur along with Netflix, Soundcloud and all the other good stuff. Looking closer, it seems this forum is now doing a new trick (proxy.php?) I like it!
 
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Robboman said:
EDIT 2 - I was surprised to see my BW photos above on my work computer, since my office network has blocked Imgur along with Netflix, Soundcloud and all the other good stuff. Looking closer, it seems this forum is now doing a new trick (proxy.php?) I like it!
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Yes, when I moved the forum to https I also started proxying images in our memcached setup.
 
Robboman said:
Their debut album was 20 years ago and produced three huge hit singles in Canada. Constant rotation on rock radio at the time, and still regularly on classic rock radio. I'm not aware how big it was elsewhere, but it seems clear that none of their subsequent albums went that big. Even still, it seems crazy these guys are touring to crowds well under 1k in clubs.
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I kind of get the low attendance now -- TPatG didn't chart well. It was, speaking as a fan here, not a radio-friendly album...it didn't have the indie rock sound to it that ILMO had. And then they went away for a decade. That kind of disappearance is hard to recover from. Even Thornley (the band) wasn't the same sound as Big Wreck, so hard to call it a continuation.

And the guitar rock they play isn't as popular now as it once was.

I think it's all just a lot of bad timing, really. They were like 3-4 years too late with ILMO to really ride the indie wave hard. They were rising on ILMO while that kind of music in the mainstream was in its ascendency.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm just happy I'm getting to hear new music from them these days.
 
I like the new record. A little trippy in places and all sorts of great tones. I'm so happy I got turned on to Big Wreck via Ian's interview on Anderton's YouTube channel.
 
Ok... so as this is an Axe FX forum... what amps would you go to for Ian's core tone? He's playing a PT100 and a Hedgehog live... neither is modeled here. Anyone chased this tone?
 
I just saw them in Moncton on the 10th and bought VIP so about 30 of us got to see 2 songs before the concert started and the first one was Skybunk March which is an instrumental. It was amazing. I had front row for the whole show . I have seen them 5 times in 18 years and you can see and feel that they love playing. Ian Thornley is the most talented person I have ever seen live. If you love guitar and ever get the chance to see Big Wreck live, do it.

P.S.
watch the Suhr party videos
 
From John Suhr via The Gear Page:

"As far as Ian Thornley
That was a set neck modern we built him a while ago not a Pete signature.

This is from Ian...
The active amps are off stage, the PT100 on the top and present is a spare.
Off stage the amp rack is a PT100 (always on and switching channels with pedals in front and AxeFX for wet stuff in loop)
Hedgehog that is always on dirty with a volume pedal in front of it. Heel cleans up the Hedgehog, toe gives it gas, Hedgehog is dry no effects.
I can swell it in when the PT is clean and floor it when the PT is dirty.

Amps off stage in an amp rack is the norm these days, Keith Urban used our amps for years in a rack off stage (frustrating for the manufacturer) but... It makes it easier for load in, hook ups and tear down. That is why Ian sometimes puts the PT100 (spare) on top of the cabs"
 
The Whale said:
Ok... so as this is an Axe FX forum... what amps would you go to for Ian's core tone? He's playing a PT100 and a Hedgehog live... neither is modeled here. Anyone chased this tone?
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I don't know about amps, but if anyone has compressor settings recommendations for his compressed tones I'm all ears. He gets stunning, heavily compressed slide tones.
 
iaresee said:
I don't know about amps, but if anyone has compressor settings recommendations for his compressed tones I'm all ears. He gets stunning, heavily compressed slide tones.
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Have you tried Larry Mitchell's compressor settings from his presets? It's pretty solid as well with humbuckers.

I'm kind of curious to try running two amps always on with one of them swelling between clean and dirty. That's kinda cool.
 
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