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Winnipeg’s Ben Lowe is the new face behind the bass for acclaimed Cana­di­an blues/​rock/​reggae sta­ples Big Sug­ar, but it’s in his blood — he’s the son of late Big Sug­ar bassist (and reg­gae icon) Gar­ry Lowe.

We talked about car­ry­ing on his dad’s lega­cy, find­ing time to play music with his own trio here in Win­nipeg, and much more.

As reg­u­lar lis­ten­ers know, I like to include songs by the inter­vie­wee in each episode, but Ben said he was­n’t sure he had any of his own mate­r­i­al he was ready to share (yet)… ​“so why not use some Big Sugar?”

…so I found a pan­dem­ic cut of ​“If I Had My Way,” fea­tur­ing a whole bunch of Cana­di­an celebri­ties (and Ben han­dling some of the vocals/​acoustic gui­tar), so that’s in here… and I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to force some tracks from Big Sug­ar’s 20+ year old ​‘Alka­line’ dub project on you.

Ben’s obvi­ous­ly not play­ing on these (but his dad is), and I remain — to this day — shocked that ​‘Alka­line’ isn’t more wild­ly known. It rules. It’s still my favourite Big Sug­ar-relat­ed project to date, although we’ll see what the new line­up has in store for the future.