Big Sugar consists of Garry Lowe (bassist), Gavin Brown (percussionist, drummer), Gordie Johnson (vocalist, guitarist), Kelly Hoppe (multi-instrumentalist).
Big Sugar was a Canadian blues- rock band.
The band, consisting of vocalist/guitarist Gordie Johnson, bassist Terry Wilkins and drummer Al Cross, officially formed in 1991, although the three musicians had already played together for several years as an informal jam band with members of the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, and as a supporting band for Molly Johnson's jazz performances. (Molly Johnson and Gordie Johnson are not related.) After Molly Johnson returned to rock music with Infidels, she helped her former bandmates to secure a record deal; their self-titled debut album was released in 1991 on Hypnotic Records.
Wilkins left in 1993, and the band recorded the album Five Hundred Pounds with the help of guest musicians, including Kelly Hoppe (a.k.a. Mr. Chill) and Garry Lowe, who would subsequently become official members of the band.
Big Sugar had slowly built a reputation as an outstanding live band, and Five Hundred Pounds consolidated it: the album sold 10,000 copies in Canada (the equivalent of selling 100,000 copies in the United States) without any real publicity or radio airplay.
Hoppe and Lowe began to bring reggae influences into the band's sound as well.
In 1995, the band released the Dear MF EP, which featured a cover of Traffic's " Dear Mr. Fantasy". Cross subsequently left the band and was replaced by Walter "Crash" Morgan, but Morgan wouldn't be with the band for long. During the band's tour that year, Morgan suffered an aneurysm, collapsing and dying on stage during a show in Iowa. Paul Brennan subsequently joined as the band's new drummer, appearing on their most commercially successful album, 1996's Hemi-Vision. Brennan subsequently left in 1997, and was replaced by Gavin Brown.
