For My Sunday Song #379, we are talking about “Let it Ride” and not the BTO version, but the cover by Big Sugar. Deke’s choice is another Canadian band, but he is mixing it up by picking a cover song. The song is off this Toronto band’s 1998 album ‘Heated’ which went platinum in Canada with over 100,000 album sold.
The song has a great story with it as it was inspired by a bus touring traffic incident with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. While driving from one town to the next, the band got boxed in between some 18 -Wheelers and when the trucks and the bus pulled over at the next rest stop, they actually confronted the truck drivers. And truck drivers being as cool as they normally are, they told the band to basically calm down and let it ride. The song itself is about a guy that apparently has lied to his girl and he is telling her to forget about and move on…yeah…I am sure that went over well.
Big Sugar has taken this song and really changed it up. The guitars don’t sound like this 70’s hit did, no. They brought some crunchy guitars and then there is almost a swagger to it with a reggae vibe. The vocals aren’t full of harmonies, now they have a darker edge that only Gordie Johnson can do. They have brought the song in to the 21st Century in a big way. Heck, they even added another 1:20 to the song with more guitars and well more everything. A totally different vibe, they made it their own song. Which I like to see they put in a lot of effort thinking how they wanted to present this song.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 