Industry 45 - From the Drum Throne

Industry 45 From The Drum Throne feat. Brad Merritt of 54-40

Shane Christopher Neal Season 8 Episode 8

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0:00 | 8:26

Legendary Canadian rock band 54-40 have released their new album PORTO with the current Top 40 rock radio single “Running For The Fence” - recorded in Portugal with longtime producer Warne Livesey - and they'll be at Delta’s Barns To Beaches Festival on June 20.

But the bigger story is that this is one of the longest-running bands in Canadian music history still led by its founders: Neil Osborne and Brad Merritt have stood side by side since they formed the band as Vancouver teenagers in 1980, with drummer Matt Johnson aboard nearly 40 years. Across 45 years, 17-plus albums, and well over 2,500 shows, they helped invent a distinctly Canadian alt-rock sound alongside The Tragically Hip and Blue Rodeo - and inspired everyone from Our Lady Peace to the Arkells.

There's a remarkable backstory here too. Their classic "I Go Blind" was a song their own U.S. label deemed unworthy of a full release in 1986 - then, a decade later, Hootie & the Blowfish's cover landed on the Friends soundtrack and rocketed into the Billboard Top 5, and the royalties let 54-40 build their own Vancouver studio. It's one of Canadian music's great vindication stories, and the song was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2021. That thread - a band that did it their own way, outlasted the industry that doubted them, and is still making vital new music at 45 - runs straight through PORTO, which Osborne calls "an album about renewal and resilience."