When I asked Brad Merritt if he imagined the band would be still going after all these years in, he thought about it for a moment – and told me that he said once in an interview “When the Rolling Stones quit, that’s our 20-year warning.”
The Stones are still out there. So is 54–40.
What strikes you talking to Brad is how little nostalgia there is in the room. For a band 45 years in, they are remarkably uninterested in looking backward. The operating philosophy, as Merritt describes it, is simple: what’s next? And right now, next is Porto – 11 songs recorded in 11 days at an all-analog studio in Portugal, live off the floor, no net. “Neil’s vocals have never been better,” he told us. “We’re immensely proud of what we were able to achieve there.”
I’ve been a fan of 54–40 since the mid-eighties — back when they were part of the same Vancouver scene that gave us a whole generation of bands that didn’t sound like anything coming out of Los Angeles or New York. There’s something deeply satisfying about sitting down with someone who helped define the soundtrack of your twenties and finding them still restless, still pushing. Brad talked about the early years — recording from midnight to seven in the morning, then heading straight to work — with the matter-of-fact tone of someone who has never expected it to be easy and was never disappointed.
The Hootie & the Blowfish story was fun. Turns out Darius Rucker and the boys were fans back in 1989, hanging around after shows at the 9:30 Club in Washington eating 54–40’s pizza. A few years later, they recorded “I Go Blind,” a song Brad wrote. It landed on the Friends soundtrack. Radio played the crap out of it. It became the third most-played song in the United States that year. “We actually did make some money,” Brad said, with obvious satisfaction.
54–40 played the very first SunFest on Vancouver Island, they’ll be playing at the very first Burns to Beaches Festival in Tsawwassen, and are set to headline the inaugural Rock the Range at the Qualicum Beach Memorial Golf Course on September 12th.
There’s a pattern there, he acknowledged. They tend to kick off new things.
Bands that last this long usually show up at the end of things. 54–40 keeps showing up at the start.
Hear the full conversation with Brad Merritt on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP30PulsePodcast
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/