Friday, Jan. 23 is album-release day for trailblazing B.C. rock band 54-40, formed 45 years ago in Tsawwassen and still creating new music.
Eleven songs on the band’s 16th studio album, Porto, were recorded in Porto, Portugal with longtime producer Warne Livesey.
For 11 days they worked quickly at Arda Recorders in the midst of a day-long power failure on the Iberian Peninsula.
Bed tracks of drums, bass, guitars and keyboards were recorded live, reports Dave Genn, the band’s South Surrey-raised lead guitarist.
“That’s how 54-40 records most of the time, if possible, but this time we really made sure we were prepared to get great performances with great sounds so that we didn’t need to replace anything later,” Genn told bio writer John Lucas. “As a result we feel we’ve captured an energized and immediate-feeling record.”
Singer-guitarist Neil Osborne and bassist Brad Merritt are founding members of 54-40, joined by Genn, drummer Matt Johnson and, on keys in concert and studio, David Osborne.
Key new songs are “Running for the Fence,” “Die To Heaven,” “Time Will Tell,” and “Virgil.”
“It felt like the songs were writing themselves, we just had to get out of the way and let them happen,” recalled Neil Osborne, who says the album is about “renewal and resilience, about the work it takes to keep creating, to stay connected and to keep loving what you do.”
The Porto cover photo, a composite of images captured by both Genn and Livesey, shows Osborne walking over an iconic bridge, high above Douro River, as he made a daily pilgrimage to the studio on the other side.
“Normally that bridge is covered in tourists,” Osborne explained, “and there’s buses going by, and below there’s a train that goes by, so it’s one of those rare moments where it’s the isolated guy on the bridge with the umbrella. The funny thing is, about three minutes after that, the wind blew my umbrella and inverted it and broke it right up, so I was completely soaked when I got to the studio.”
Check 5440.com/live for the band’s concert calendar, and read more about Porto on 5440.com/announcements/5440-porto.
Back in September 2023, 54-40 played a triumphant homecoming concert at the inaugural Barnside Harvest Festival, where a 10,000-strong crowd filled Ladner’s Paterson Park for the band’s 90-minute set of familiar hits.
During “Nice to Luv You” Osborne borrowed appropriately home-town “Blow at High Dough” lyrics from The Tragically Hip. For “Baby Ran” and the Ministry-ish “Radio Luv Song,” Dave Genn’s guitar was so gloriously loud that he apparently wanted to be heard across the bay in Crescent Beach, where he grew up. Barnside’s best moment was when Genn invited son Beckett to air-guitar during “Ocean Pearl,” near the end of the 17-song set. A beaming Beckett was all smiles as his dad riffed away beside him.
Backstage, Merritt said Barnside was the band’s biggest gig in Delta to date, but not their first.
“We played the Tsawwassen Sun Fest in 1981 or maybe 1982,” the bass player recalled. “The band before us didn’t like us, so they attached the plug to the PA to their van, drove off and then broke the plug, and we were done after about five songs.”