Bachman rolls into Brandon April 17

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This article was published 26/03/2025 (365 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Randy Bachman says he remembers what a big deal it was when The Guess Who would get gigs in Brandon in “the early days” during the mid-1960s.

“To be a band in Winnipeg and actually drive out for a gig in Brandon or Portage la Prairie, it was like, we’re on tour!” Bachman said as he laughed.

“You know it may have only been two hours to Brandon, but you’d get back at four in the morning, and you really felt like you’ve been on a rock and roll tour. And that gears you up for other cities, so it’s part of the whole thing that you go through. It was really great,” Bachman said.

That was then and this is now. Bachman is sharing stories about The Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive from his home in Victoria, B.C., while promoting BTO’s upcoming cross-Canada tour with a scheduled stop at Brandon’s Westoba Place on April 17.

The tour is called Back in Overdrive 2025 with a show that includes April Wine and the Headpins. Bachman said his band will be making the trip in Shania Twain’s bus, adding he has already claimed her master bedroom in the back.

“We’re starting in Victoria, and we have two buses and three trucks,” Bachman said. “The other bands have their own buses so it will be quite an entourage. I mean — three bands, all their crew and all the sound and lights. It’s going to be big.

“This is the ’70s classic rock Canada-is-great tour,” he added. “And Canada is great compared to the States. This is the Canadian outcry; that we are proud to be Canadian.”

Bachman has written a new single called “60 Years Ago,” which will be released March 28 and is one of many songs he promised BTO will play in Brandon, along with some Guess Who medleys including “These Eyes” and “American Woman” and BTO tracks like “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” “Takin’ Care Of Business” and “Roll On Down The Highway.”

Along with Bachman, there are four other members of BTO.

Randy’s son, Tal, is on vocals and guitar — “he grew up playing all The Guess Who and BTO songs,” Randy said.

Brent Knudsen joins in on guitar, Lance Lapointe is on bass and KoKo Bachman, Tal’s wife, plays the drums.

Bachman, a renowned guitarist, said he won’t be bringing his cherished 1957 Gretsch 6120 guitar on the road. It was stolen from a Toronto hotel room in 1976, and 45 years passed before they were reunited.

A soon-to-be-released documentary has been make about the theft and how the instrument was recovered in Japan.

“That guitar is called the Magic Guitar, the Orange Gretsch, and is what I learned to play when I was 15. I wrote and played every hit song on it, like “Laughing,” “Undun,” “American Woman” and “Takin’ Care Of Business.”

At one time, Bachman had more than 300 Gretsch guitars that he sold to Fred Gretsch, the grandson of the company’s founder, who used the collection to open a museum in Savannah, Ga.

When Bachman is on the road, he said, he plays a seven and a half pound Gibson Les Paul guitar that was specially made for him, because his original weighed 15 pounds and was getting too heavy for the stage.

“Most guitar players, you have to have a Fender, either a Telecaster or Stratocaster. And you also have to have a Gretsch that has a certain tone, and you have to have a Gibson. Those are the three rock and roll guitars,” said Bachman.

The day after the Brandon show, BTO will be honoured at a ceremony in his hometown of Winnipeg, when the Disraeli Overpass will be given a new name.

“They’re renaming the Disraeli Overpass, the bridge there that goes from one side of Winnipeg to the other, to the Bachman Turner Overpass,” Bachman said.

“And that’s why I wrote the song “60 Years Ago,” about growing up in Winnipeg in the ’60s when we were all teenagers, with me and young Burton Cummings and Fred Turner all starting out in our little bands, and how we’re still going today.

“And on the bridge, there will be a rubber hose on the road — and when you cross it, you’ll hear the line ‘Let it roll down the highway.’ I think that’s going to be really cool,” he said.

Classic rock is wherever you go now, added Bachman. He calls it a collective consciousness that brings a sense of nostalgia no matter what age is in the audience.

And at 81 years old and a cancer survivor, Bachman said he’s “very grateful to be alive.”

“I feel 30 when I’m on stage, and I’ve seen the audience, which is maybe from nine or 10 years of age up to 80 or 90, all singing and enjoying the songs.

“And I’m so happy that they know the songs. If they bring an album to sign, I do because they’ve bought it, whether it’s second hand for a buck, or they bought it in the old days for three bucks or bought it now.

“We stay until the very end and sign everything that we need to sign.”

For information about tickets to BTO Back in Overdrive, call the Keystone Box office at 204-726-3500.

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