Taber Titans and Spider Entertainment presents Raise the Roof — a charity concert to raise funds for the Taber Community Centre featuring The Road Hammers and the Hammer Jam with Michelle Wright, Trevor Panczak, Dan Davidson and Big Sugar’s Gordie Johnson Mar. 28 in Taber.
According to Johnson, The Road Hammers get a bunch of friends together and put on these shows to raise funds for charity events and organizations in need. “It’s a really cool thing to spend your time doing. When you put the effort into something like that, so I’m all for it.”
“I’ve done it more than once with them. It’s nice to give back to communities and every community in Canada we look at as one of our communities. When you do what we do for a living, you get into every nook and cranny of a country, and you get to know the people, and you get to value the sense of community you see all over Canada. So, when Taber needs a fundraising concert, I’m there,” he adds.
This summer is full of outdoor shows, but in between all the gaps with this year’s tour dates, Johnson’s been busy making a new Big Sugar album. “So, just trying to put the finishing touches on new Big Sugar artwork.”
“There’s all this stuff that goes with it. Hopefully, we’ll have that ready at the end of this calendar year. So winter, we’ll have new Big Sugar music, which we were playing a little bit of out on this last tour. It was well-received,” Johnson says.
Johnson explains the band is back down to a three-piece Big Sugar from a 12-piece. “It sure allows me a lot more room to play the guitar. I’m having a renewed romance with playing guitars. I’m quite fond of it. I recently went and bought a bunch of guitars, customized a bunch of guitars, built a bunch of guitars and wrote a bunch of heavy guitar music for my power trio.”
With being out on the road touring, Johnson adds it’s nice to have people wanting to hear your music. “I’m thrilled to go out and play it.”
“It’s like, ‘oh, we got to play Digging a Hole again. No, we get to play Digging a Hole.’ It’s our song. It’s cool to be able to do that every night,” he says.
Johnson looks forward to the Taber show this weekend. “It’s going to be fun because we don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen. With The Road Hammers, everyone is friends with them.”
“I’m really looking forward to playing with everybody. I guess I’ll be bringing a steel guitar and playing a bunch of steel guitar, as well as bringing some Big Sugar rock and roll out there.”
For more information about the event, visit online at spiderentertainment.ca. The show starts at 7 p.m.
