Big Sugar (CA)
From Toronto
Popularity
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About
Big Sugar built their reputation the hard way, through relentless live shows in Canada before radio ever paid attention. Formed in Toronto in 1988 by guitarist, singer and songwriter Gordie Johnson, the band welded blues and rock to a deep reggae groove, largely thanks to Jamaican born bassist Garry Lowe, whose bass sound Johnson described as the sonic foundation he had always been searching for. Harmonica and saxophone player Kelly Hoppe, known as Mr. Chill, brought old school R&B and blues into the mix, and the combination gave Big Sugar a genuinely hard to categorize sound. By the late 1990s they were opening for The Rolling Stones and playing Woodstock 1999, and their 1998 album Heated went platinum in Canada. They even recorded full French language versions of their singles for Quebec radio, a move that paid off with serious airplay across the province. Between 1996 and 2016 they ranked among the top 25 best selling Canadian bands in the country, which says plenty about how well that blues, rock and reggae mix landed with audiences.
