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Big Sugar would go on to have bigger records and hotter singles during their career, but Five Hundred Pounds remains the band’s most beloved artistic endeavour, a jazz-blues-reggae pastiche that landed Johnson and Co. a best new group nomination at the Juno Awards in 1995. Big Sugar has a deep catalogue by this point, so deep cuts from Five Hundred Pounds rarely make it into the band’s concert setlists. In fact, some of the tracks were never played live when the record was released. Johnson said he’s eager to make up for lost time.
“I wasn’t even 30 when that record came out, so I’m a different player . I have several decades of life on these fingertips and this throat,” her said. A noted car enthusiast — that’s his 1970 Dodge Charger in the video for Ride Like Hell — he uses an auto analogy to explain the difference between Big Sugar in 1993 and Big Sugar in 2024.