Canadian veterans Big Wreck named Record Store Day Canada Ambassadors for 2025on April 10, 2025 at 11:00 am

It hard to imagine there was time when Ian Thornley wasn’t cool. Read More

It hard to imagine there was time when Ian Thornley wasn’t cool. As the singer and primary songwriter of both Big Wreck and Thornley, he has been a mainstay in the national music scene since the early 1990s. His weighty baritone has been front-and-centre for thundering hits on both sides of the border, including The

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It hard to imagine there was time when Ian Thornley wasn’t cool.

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As the singer and primary songwriter of both Big Wreck and Thornley, he has been a mainstay in the national music scene since the early 1990s. His weighty baritone has been front-and-centre for thundering hits on both sides of the border, including The Oaf (My Luck is Wasted). That Song and Blown Wide Open.

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The musician, who studied jazz music at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, is renowned for his fierce chops on guitar.

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But he admits he wasn’t particularly confident as a 10-year-old budding music fan. He went to the record store in Toronto’s Dufferin Mall one day to buy Duran Duran’s megahit Rio, the first album he bought with his own money. Critical revisionism has been kind to the 1982 album, but at the tine it was perhaps not regarded as the coolest choice.

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“I was little bit sheepish going in there,” says Thornley, in a phone interview with Postmedia. “It was intimidating. There was a bunch of teenagers in there: Cool guys with leather jackets and patches on their jean jackets and stuff and then there is this little nerd walking in.”

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Like many music lovers who came of age in Toronto, Thornley would soon graduate from the suburban mall and began making weekend pilgrimages to Yonge Street so he could hunt for more obscure titles at A&A Records, Sunrise Records and Sam the Record Man. He would take the streetcar from his home and arrive early.

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“There was just something about it,” he says. “It’s so different now. It’s something I miss. As a kid, you were saving up your money because there was a new whatever record coming out. It meant something. Saturday morning they open at 10 and you had to be there when they opened to grab this record. Then you can’t wait to get it home and listen to it and look at the art work.”

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Big Wreck will serve as this year’s Record Store Day Canada 2025 Ambassadors, an honour that has also been bestowed on Triumph, The Tragically Hip, The Sheepdogs and Our Lady Peace in the past. While the title may not come with any real duties, the general idea is that the four-piece band will promote ndependent record stores in the lead up Record Store Day on April 12.

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As is often the case on Record Store Day, Big Wreck will be among the bands offering a special release for fans. It’s a new edition of their 2012 album The Albatross. While it may be hard to believe, this will be the first time the album will be made available on vinyl. It will be released as a double LP with new design with exclusive bonus tracks, live recordings and alternate versions of songs.A new CD will also be released.