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Randy Bachman takes care of business

Tours Greatest Stories Ever Told
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Drawing on his decades-long musical career, Randy Bachman has enough rock ’n’ roll stories to keep an audience enraptured for hours.

Add in the life and musical reflections of his eldest son, Tal Bachman—a bandmate the past two years—and the storytelling possibilities take a major leap.

Therein lies a key part of the appeal for the Bachmans’ new tour, Greatest Stories Ever Told. The show lands at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney on November 14.

Describing how this father-son blending of life tales plays out, Randy points to two songs released more than 30 years apart.

He famously wrote the beginnings of the Guess Who’s “These Eyes” (1968) on the piano as he waited for a woman to come downstairs for their first date. “I tell people, ‘Remember that woman I met in Regina? Well, I married her and had six kids, and this is our first child, and now he has a hit record,’” he says. “Then Tal tells the story about how he wrote ‘She’s So High’ [1999] about a girl in high school in White Rock.”

Tal, 54, has children of his own, whom Randy calls natural musicians like their father. For Tal, growing up around Uncle Burton (Cummings) and Uncle Fred (Turner, from Bachman-Turner Overdrive) and being influenced by his dad’s musical journey come through in the new show.

Bachman fans likely remember the Every Song Tells a Story tour coming to Victoria 20 years ago. Its origins came from a conversation Randy had in London after watching a performance by the Kinks’ Ray Davies.

Onstage, Davies told of how, during a living room rehearsal, his brother Dave blew up his amp and got the guitar sound for ‘You Really Got Me.’ Backstage, Randy complimented the British rocker on his “great story.” When Davies told him he could have a show twice as good, Randy asked what he meant. “He said, ‘You’ve got two bands to tell the stories about.’”

That musical storytelling has been a hit with audiences ever since. Randy keeps the verbiage spontaneous and carefully watches the crowd before launching into the song. “You’ve got to be like a standup comedian, or like with kids, telling them a bedtime story. If a pillow fight starts, your story’s not good enough.”

Also keeping the 79-year-old guitarist/hit-maker busy these days is doing media for the upcoming Netflix documentary Lost and Found. The film chronicles his longtime search and ultimate reunion this summer with his 1957 Gretsch Chet Atkins model guitar, on which he wrote many hits. The instrument was stolen from a hotel room in 1977 but was tracked down in Japan by a fan in 2020. Randy travelled to Tokyo in July 2022 to meet the rock guitarist who had bought it from a vintage guitar shop in 2014, and trade him a “sister” guitar he had found in Ohio.

The Sidney show winds up an 11-show, 10-city tour that hits many a “Prairie Town,” like those Randy wrote about in his 1992 song of that name. Coming off a summer season playing large outdoor venues with Cummings, Randy looks forward to playing more intimate venues.

“You can’t tell the stories to a crowd of 4,000 or 5,000 because there’s too much diversion going on. When you’re sitting in a little room with good sound and they’re listening to you, that’s when these stories are really relevant.”

For tickets to the November 14 show, visit tickets.marywinspear.ca or call the box office at 250-656-0275.