Last Friday an interesting record came across my music listening adventures. The group was called Trans-Canada Highwaymen and the song was called “Theme From the Trans-Canada Highwaymen.” It was a silly song but I clicked on the bio because I was curious about where these guys with an amazing geographical name were from. They were vaguely familiar sounding.
Turns out the band is a Canadian “super group” featuring Sloan bassist Chris Murphy, Odds guitarist Craig Northey, former Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page, and The Pursuit of Happiness‘s Moe Berg. They came together to record a bunch of AM rock radio staples of a by-gone era.
The boys were aiming to create a record that harkens back to the old K-Tel compilation album. And they wanted to cover all those classic Canadian Content bands that might have shown up CJCH.
The album even has an incredible title and cover, Explosive Hits Vol. 1.
On this album, you’ll hear Steven sing “Undun” (The Guess Who), “Rock Me Gently” (Andy Kim) and “(I Believe) There’s Nothing Stronger Than Our Love” (Paul Anka). You’ll hear Craig sing “Tonite is a Wonderful Time to Fall in Love” (April Wine), “Make My Life a Little Bit Brighter” (Chester), “Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat” (The DeFranco Family) and “Can’t Catch Me” (Bim). You’ll hear Chris sing “Lovin’ You Ain‘t Easy” (Michel Pagliaro), “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” (The Poppy Family) and “Carry Me” (The Stampeders). You’ll hear Moe sing “Pretty Lady” (Lighthouse), “Raised on Robbery” (Joni Mitchell) and “You, Me and Mexico” (Edward Bear).
Here is Steven Page talking about the project, “we’d been sporadically doing shows for a couple of years and having a blast laughing at each other’s jokes and playing each other’s smash hits. The question eventually arose. ‘What should we do next?’ We knew, whatever it was, it should only include smash hits. It was Chris who said ‘how about Explosive Hits?’. We laughed …so therefore it had to happen. Covid locked us all down so the plan was hatched to each hand pick a few Canadian AM rock radio hits from the very late 60’s and early 70’s. Our AM radios had helped shape our DNA and none of us had strayed too far from our inner child. Our arrested development was going to make this easy. We’d record our parts remotely and they would be aggregated and mixed in the Odds North Vancouver studio. Out of the blue Steven surprised us all with a new song that described our origin story — ‘Theme from TransCanada Highwaymen’. It was obviously an Explosive Hit so we had to throw it on our growing bonfire of Canadian rock heaters. So…four Canadian musical mavens from the 80’s and 90’s sing the Canadian songs of the 60’s and 70’s. Makes total sense. As Moe says, “Don’t think too much about it. Act now.”
OK, yes the band sounds a lot like your Dad and his friends’ cover band that play a show or two at the local pub . Let’s leave you with a slice of Haligonian nostalgia. Trans-Canada Highwaymen covering April Wine.
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