Discovery is an odd term, especially when related to the idea of creative process. Do we ever actually discover anything? Or is there a grand energy pushing and pulling us towards poles of connection or rejection?
I remember years back hearing a guy at work say he “discovered Pink Floyd’s music” the night before and how it rocked his world. He then proceeded to misquote “Hey You,” saying “the worms ate into his head,” and with that I was set off.
I calmly set down the wrenches in my hands, took off my safety glasses, then delivered this line as a friend’s older brother had said to me just five years prior when I was 18:
“You didn’t discover shit, man. Floyd is like the Bach of rock. The music found you.”
Point leveled. Nods of agreement from the other mid-twenty-something shop technicians. Agreeing we had just proved ourselves as true fans of rock music and taught an important life lesson to this youth. He had much more to learn.
Sitting here sipping my London Fog, thinking back on days when music had found me, brought many moments of humor to mind like the one shared above. Being inducted, baptized, immersed into music is a wonderful thing. Timeless. A joy of the human experience to be savored.
I was raised in a relatively sheltered home. Baptist church members, attending three services per week. Gospel quartets were the only live music groups I had seen. My dad diverted me from the CD stores at the mall to the Christian bookstore’s selection of “albums.”
In the early 2000s, I was a middle school kid who had just picked up music. Tuba was my weapon of choice, and the world was changing for me as this music thing started sounding very different than anything I had heard.
The Film Almost Famous was my gateway into the deeper world of rock music, singers, songwriters, and all things 1970s. “One day… you’ll be cool.” The promise William’s sister leaves with, before seeking freedom of her own. Leaving her collection of records under his mattress with a note on the stack saying, “Listen to Tommy with a candle burning and you’ll see your entire future.”
William listened. One zigzagging step after the other leads to a writing assignment with Rolling Stone and tour bus access with the hot, up-and-coming band Stillwater. William finds his voice, but also the truth behind the music. He comes home forever changed, but also having forever changed these stars on the verge of burnout.
This is my William Miller piece for Rolling Stone. I don’t have a writing contract, a magazine with a demanding editor, or even a following. I don’t know the band, or the truth behind the lyrics, and if you were hoping for an interview I am sorry to disappoint.
However, you’re reading a Salt and Signal Studios piece. I have a band that I love, music that reached me during a time of need, and something to carry with me forever.
Big Wreck is a band out of Canada, and that is more than I knew about them three years ago. Sad to say, in the USA unless you seek it out, music does not cross over national borders as readily as one might think.
Ian Thornley heads up the band with lead vocals and lead guitar (guitarsss if the doubleneck is at play). Ian produces a sound that is deep, rich, and complex. Dave McMillan holds down the low end on bass and backup vocals. Sekou Lumumba is the resident percussive pocket master. Chris Caddell handles rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and backup vocals.
This is a powerhouse set of musicians with a deep discography to pick from. How had I not heard any of their work until 2023?
From fall 2022 through the winter of 2023, I was living through and battling complications because of my severe health condition, Crohn’s disease. I had gone from being able-bodied and self-sufficient to slowly degrading in health and losing grip of everything I was trying to control.
In February of 2023, I had an operation called Total Proctocolectomy with End Ileostomy. This was a multi-faceted, robotically assisted surgery that resulted in 13 hours under anesthesia. I woke up freezing cold, in immediate pain, and confused about where I was or what had happened.
Something remarkable had occurred in the suffering.
Rebirth.
The months after surgery were brutal. I was healing physically, but along with the recovery came unexpected conflict with the surgical team. Medical experts now flipping the script. Pulling back their support of my career, patient advocacy work, and in effect placing my life on immediate hold.
I was sitting with the weight of betrayal. A body now forever altered. Future unknown.
I was waking up early, before the sunrise most of those days. I would switch on my stereo, crank the volume and begin the day with my heavy rotation at the time. Queens of The Stone Age, Chris Cornell, Foo Fighters, Jason Isbell, Young the Giant, AC/DC, Nathaniel Rateliff, The Blue Stones, Maggie Rogers, Mastodon, Otis Redding. There are hundreds of names on those playlists made from 2020 through 2023. I would hear a riff, lick, lyric and just add the song to a playlist.
During all of this, a new EP popped up under my suggested bands list. Big Wreck, huh? Interesting name. 7.3 was the title of the EP, and “Haunted” was the name of the suggested track. I hit play.
Time and Place.
For something to reach out to you time and place are important.
It was March of 2023. It was early morning as the sun was beginning to come up. More specifically, I was in a place personally to hear something special. Listening to music for the purpose of listening to music. My heart was sick, my mind was dark, and I thought I was alone.
Then Ian’s voice came through my speakers…
Lossless playback for digital music lays tracks out in such a fashion that they can be felt with similar depth to that of vinyl.
I sat in the center of my living room before my Pioneer system and let the music wash over me. I was reached by the gentle intro of the song, drawn in by Ian’s voice. Met with the tidal immensity of the layered guitars filling the chorus and conclusion of the song.
I was in one of those moments of feeling fully understood by an artist. Melody had always been my escape. Other numbing distractions had entered life, but the purest escape has always been music.
I was walking around feeling haunted, with the weight of a severed relationship on my heart. Aching for days gone by. Mourning things that were unclear.
Wondering if that person—my person—was feeling this same pain…
Damn man. All this from a few passes through a new track.
My next thought was, “I really hope this guy has more where this came from.” And to my pleasant surprise Ian and the guys did in fact have much, much more music where “Haunted” came from. I had a new sound in my ear, and it itched. I needed something to scratch it. I finally had a new artist that I could settle in with for a while.
I have spent the last two years with very few days without a Big Wreck, Thornley, or Ian Fletcher Thornley track playing throughout my day. In an effort to keep this new love pure and enjoy the music for what it is, I avoided the pitfalls of personal life write-ups.
I researched lyrics, watched interviews, and dozens of live performances but that was it.
Ian made it clear in a few interviews that his writing is absolutely personal. Often written so that only the person in his mind would catch the reference, but laying out a song and story filled with vibrant theme.
Once I realized Ian is a writer’s writer and that he uses cinematic imagery, I connected even more with the music. Thornley’s Tiny Pictures is on the nose with the cinematic idea in the track “Make Believe.”
His line: “This is what it feels like, coming down, We’re all in the movie, can’t turn it off or shut it down, This is what it feels like, if that’s so, Then where is the director to tell us where the hell to go?”
Brings a smile to my face every time I hear it. I wish I wrote it! Such a light way to approach a heavy subject and deliver a song the does not fit into the box of genre.
“If All Else Fails” off 7.1 tells this amazing story of two young lovers being jealously pursued, concluding on a cliffhanger with:
“Through the bar code made of oak and pine, Through the landscape laced with mines, They ran, they’re still on the run today.”
Beautiful imagery, all backed by this signature guitar sound that Ian has manufactured. I think that is the hook. It is one thing to be a good lyricist; it’s another to be widely accepted as a good guitarist.
It is with outlier qualities that Ian approaches both of these skills. His Berklee-backed music theory education shines through every bit of production he does.
“Under the Lighthouse” strikes again with this gut punch of a lyric:
“Down here under the lighthouse, Upstairs you see for miles, Keep my name under the white out, And just let me miss you all the while.”
Song after song I was connecting with where I was at, hearing guitar riffs that blew anything on the radio out of the water, and a progression album to album of experimentation along with sonic clarity. Concepts, connecting themes, nods to guitar greats of the past.
All of this built on a quality of production that was undeniable to my ears. I kept wondering how the U.S. and Canadian border had kept something so great hidden away in the great white north.
Pages was released in November of 2023. On release day I played it cover to cover for almost the whole day. I was relatively recovered from my surgery, but still nowhere near 100%. I was back in the gym, and finally able to carry a rucksack again.
Being back out on wooded trails brought freedom that had been long suppressed. I also needed music to help push through these long intervals. My body was not what it used to be, and my legs were shaky many days.
“’Cause I’m fine, I’m rooted down, Those walls ain’t coming down, As the better part of us goes up in flames…”
“In Fair Light” was a call to arms. A reminder of what had been lost. A reminder to not let the internal battle burn away and consume the good man within me.
I would shoulder my pack, then lean into the battle before me. Rooted down, defiant against being perceived as weak or incapable.
The summer had felt unending. Getting through work days felt like marathons. That season was marked by restless nights, dehydration, and many days wondering when the next hat would drop. Having an ileostomy is not for the faint-hearted.
My post-op body was not able to sustain the hard labor I used to do. My life of spending weekends felling trees with the boys, splitting firewood, and washing it down with cold beers was over. This had been the first summer of massive transition.
What had happened to me would not come out in the wash.
I was having the hardest time in the shower. Nothing to cover up the scars on my body, and the mental scars seemed to burn at the sight of them. Words and voices from recent months would circle in my mind, feeling rejected by those I should have been able to trust most.
I had a literal hole in my abdomen. A permanent reminder of not only the disease that had ravaged my body, but all the periphery of life that came with it.
“As summer breaks apart, And innocence has turned to ash, I’m sure you don’t recall You burned a hole, a blind spot until fall”
“I still feel the freeze and burn that was there all summer long Day by day, try to wash it off of me, I still feel the freeze and burn that was there all summer long Day by day, gonna become part of me”
“And while I’m still trying to understand, Just do your worst, This revelation’s cursed, Finding out who’s really got your back, I never heard, I never said a word”
Another funny result of this season of suffering.
Revelation.
What I appreciate most about Ian is his writing never stays in one place. It seems from my seat that he allows his music to grow with him, and reflect the modern person rather than the relic that formed the framework.
In all of this I learned that as a creative we need to get things out. We need to grow and change, but it is also okay to be sentimental. To mark the scars and tattoos that we gained along the rocky bits of our path.
I did that in the way of long form writing, putting a blog out, and reaching out to fellow patients. It was never perfect and still is not.
I put stories together, delved back into music after years of leaving it on the shelf. Started new hobbies. Sucked at multiple things. However, in all I do I hope my heart speaks loudest, and great intention is felt in whatever work I produce.
This is why I chose to write about and to Ian Thornley, along with all of those that compose his body of music.
I was inspired by a person who made tough choices when potential big checks were on the table. A guy who wrote through the painful circumstances of life but also left room for the bright and joyful ones. He has never neglected the craft and now is known worldwide as a guitar virtuoso changing the game in real time.
I leave you with the words of Ian from his song “This is Where My Heart Is” as they echo where my heart is today, and the contentment found while searching for a lighthouse to draw me back to shore:
This little map is never wrong, they say
But it was underneath the seat then, And just like your favorite song,
We got lost deep inside the romance,
We always knew, we were never going home We always knew, we were never coming home
I’ve always lived my life
Opened up on a shirt that’s got no sleeves
This is where my heart is (repeat 4x)
While we were on the breeze
Dark clouds were somehow keepin’ up
And sifting through the seas for so long,
That’s gotta mess you up
We always knew, we were never going home
We always knew, oh, we’d never be alone
At least I know we tried
We passed the test but never found a home
This is where my heart is
Legal Statement: All lyrics quoted in this piece are the original work of Ian Thornley and are the intellectual property of Ian Thornley and Big Wreck Music.
All references to song titles, album titles, and any associated logos or trademarks are the property of Ian Thornley, Big Wreck Music, and/or their respective rights holders.
This article is a non-commercial tribute and personal reflection piece created under fair use provisions, with the intent of honoring and analyzing the artistic contributions of Ian Thornley and Big Wreck. No copyright infringement is intended.
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