SUM 41
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, 1925 Blanshard St., Victoria
When: Friday, Jan. 10, 6:50 p.m.
Tickets: $41-$75 from the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre box office (250-220-7777) and
Sum 41 has played approximately 2,000 concerts to date, including more than 100 last year alone.
The remarkable run comes to an end following the band’s performance in Vancouver on March 30, during the live Juno Awards telecast from Rogers Arena. After that, Sum 41 will officially retire after 28 years as a group.
“What I’m happy about is that we didn’t get to the point where we hate each other, or the point where 100 people were coming to our shows,” said bassist Cone McCaslin, 44. “A lot of bands decline, and the morale gets down, and you kind of just quit. This is a good time for us to go out, in a way. While we’re happy.”
Only 13 concerts remain on Tour of the Setting Sum, the band’s year-long farewell tour. The final leg with opening acts PUP and Gob gets underway Friday in Victoria, at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, before winding down Jan. 30 with the second of two concerts at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.
Following its appearance at the Juno Awards, that will be the end for McCaslin, singer-guitarist Deryck Whibley, drummer Frank Zummo, and guitarists Dave Baksh and Tom Thacker.
“Those [years] feel like they were just last week,” McCaslin said, taking stock of the band’s longevity. “I can’t even believe that we’ve been around that long. It doesn’t feel like it.”
The Grammy-nominated quintet from Ajax, Ont., is bowing out in grand style. Theirs is a high-profile farewell, including dates at 20,000-seat arenas such as Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome and Edmonton’s Rogers Place — where Sum 41 has never performed. The band has appeared at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in the past, but it has been more than 17 years since they played the Blanshard Street venue.
Sum 41 did not tour the country extensively during its time together, so the band made an effort to play key Canadian cities this time out, according to McCaslin. “I’m really happy we’re able to end it here, because we take a lot of sh-t from Canadians sometimes for not playing in our home country enough.”
The group first played Victoria in 2001, when McCaslin was just 20 years old. He has fond memories of the show held at the former Legends nightclub in the Strathcona Hotel, thanks to an incident with an aggrieved passerby.
“There was a guy outside our tour bus, and he was yelling at us, saying ‘You’re the flavour of the week, you’ll be gone tomorrow,’ ” McCaslin recalled with a laugh.
Time has not been kind to that assessment. Sum 41’s career accomplishments include more than 15 million records sold and two Juno Award wins. Its eighth studio album, Heaven :x: Hell, was released to high acclaim last year, and the band will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame during the Juno Awards gala next month.
McCaslin was 16 when the band formed, and he spent his remaining teen years gigging hard with Sum 41. Things got serious for the group in 2000, when they joined the Warped Tour for dates in Montreal and Toronto. Months later, stardom was looming, thanks to their hit, Fat Lip, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard alternative charts in the U.S. and led to an appearance on Saturday Night Live.
The members partied hard in the early days, McCaslin said. That pace is far removed from today’s upstarts, with whom Sum 41 often tours. “When I go to festivals, and see young bands, it’s pretty tame, to be honest,” he said with a laugh.
Whibley has battled chronic back pain for two decades, which resulted in regular breaks from touring. Sum 41 announced their final tour a year ago, and began the farewell trek in February. “When we started the tour, I looked at all the dates and thought, ‘There’s still a lot to go.’ It didn’t feel like the end. But now, with three weeks to go, it feels like the end is near — and it’s a little strange.”
Retirement couldn’t come at a worse point, timing wise. Sum 41’s brand of bratty pop-punk is back in vogue with younger audiences, and attendance numbers for their recent concerts have been substantial. In 2022, Sum 41’s performance in Bologna, Italy, drew 14,000 attendees, their largest concert total in Europe to that point.
In November, the band smashed that record with a performance in Paris that drew more than 35,000 fans.
McCaslin has zero reservations about walking away from a surging career. “Pop punk was totally dead in the late 2000s,” McCaslin said. “We would service a song to radio, and they wouldn’t even listen to it. We were told, ‘We don’t play your band anymore.’ But music always goes in cycles.”
New projects will emerge, he said. But he’s in no hurry.
“I have two young kids, and I think it’s only right of me to be home for a while. I wouldn’t mind taking six months off, and do nothing.”
