There is something quietly apt about Big Sugar playing a city called Kingston. The band’s own description of their sound — “Detroit blues meets Detroit Rock City meets Kingston Ghetto” — invokes a different Kingston, the Jamaican one that anchors their reggae roots, but the point holds either way: this is music built at crossroads. The ¡EARTHLINGS! Live tour brings Gordie Johnson and his long-running power trio to the Kingston Grand Theatre on Wednesday, March 24, a stop on a multi-date Ontario run behind the band’s first studio album in seven years.
About the Show
Seven years is a long gap between records for a band that never stopped working the road. Big Sugar logged 34 shows in 2024 alone and has accumulated over 207,000 documented touring miles, a pace that makes any studio silence conspicuous. ¡EARTHLINGS! breaks it. The band’s own characterization of their live performance is that it delivers “passion, laughter and comradery,” which is either publicity language or an accurate summary of why 12,664 fans have set Songkick alerts for them. The evidence leans toward the latter.
The Kingston date is formatted as an “Evening With” — two full sets, not the compressed single-set booking common at this venue tier. Gordie Johnson on guitar and vocals, Anders Drerup on bass, and Root Valach on drums will work through the new material alongside catalog standards including “Diggin A Hole” and “All Hell For A Basement.” Reviewers from earlier tour stops report audiences still clapping and singing through the encores; for a Wednesday night in March, that is about the best possible outcome.
Johnson grew up in Windsor, Ontario, close enough to Detroit to absorb its blues and rock traditions firsthand during regular visits in the 1970s and ’80s. That geographic crossroads became the foundation of Big Sugar’s sound: Roots Rock Reggae, as the band self-describes it, layering blues-rock guitar through rhythmic structures drawn from Jamaican tradition, with Motown harmonic sensibility woven through. Johnson’s own standard for the work is characteristically unambiguous: “If you are any good…anytime you plug your guitar in, should be history, right?” Whether ¡EARTHLINGS! clears that bar is what the tour is built to answer.
Venue & Logistics
The show is presented by Grand OnStage in the Rosen Auditorium at the Kingston Grand Theatre, 218 Princess Street, Kingston, Ontario. Show time is 7:30 p.m. For more upcoming shows in the area, see the North Country concert calendar.
Tickets
Tickets are priced at $44.50 – $59.50, plus HST and fees. Buy tickets