Artist / Band

Chilliwack

Origin Vancouver, British Columbia, 🇨🇦

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Biography

Chilliwack is one of Canada’s most enduring rock bands. The Vancouver group grew out of The Collectors in 1970 and moved through progressive rock, country-tinged pop and hard-edged pop-rock, producing some of the best-known Canadian radio songs of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through every lineup and label change, the band was built around Bill Henderson: lead singer, guitarist, principal songwriter and producer, and the high, clear voice on ‘Lonesome Mary,’ ‘Crazy Talk,’ ‘Fly At Night,’ ‘California Girl,’ ‘My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone),’ ‘I Believe’ and ‘Whatcha Gonna Do (When I’m Gone).’

The Collectors had grown out of the C-FUN Classics and The Classics, the house band tied to Vancouver radio station CFUN and CBC television’s Let’s Go. When singer Howie Vickers left The Collectors in 1969, Bill Henderson, Claire Lawrence, Glenn Miller and Ross Turney carried on under a new name. They chose Chilliwack, after the Fraser Valley city east of Vancouver. The name comes from the Halq’eméylem Ts’elxwéyeqw, often translated as “valley of many streams,” though Stó:lō elders have explained it as the point on the river where travel by paddle ended.

The early albums kept The Collectors’ exploratory spirit. The 1970 debut on Parrot and the 1971 A&M double album were built on long arrangements and improvised passages drawing on rock, folk, jazz, blues and psychedelia. Henderson was already the lead singer and main writer, and Lawrence’s flute, saxophone and keyboards were central to the sound. Miller left in 1970 and returned in 1971, the year Lawrence departed.

‘Lonesome Mary,’ the opening track of the double album, gave Chilliwack its first hit. It reached #9 in RPM and #75 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1971 and early 1972, packing the band’s melodic sense into under three minutes. The trio of Henderson, Miller and Turney recorded All Over You (1972) in Vancouver and kept to shorter songs.

Guitarist Howard Froese joined in 1973. Riding High (1974) came out on Terry Jacks’s Goldfish label, and Jacks produced its hit ‘Crazy Talk,’ which reached the Canadian Top 10. After Rockerbox (1975), the band signed with Mushroom Records in Vancouver.

Dreams, Dreams, Dreams (1977) was the band’s first platinum album in Canada. It carried ‘California Girl’ and ‘Fly At Night,’ which reached #7 in RPM and became one of the defining Canadian radio songs of the decade. Lights From The Valley followed in June 1978 and also went platinum, with ‘Something Better,’ ‘Baby Blue’ and a version of Iain Sutherland’s ‘Arms Of Mary,’ a rare cover in the Chilliwack catalogue.

The lineup changed around those records. Miller and Turney had left by the time Lights From The Valley came out, Brian “Too Loud” MacLeod replaced Froese during its sessions, and Ab Bryant joined on bass for the 1978 live dates. Breakdown In Paradise (December 1979) gave the band a minor hit in ‘Communication Breakdown,’ but Mushroom Records went bankrupt soon after and the album lost its promotion. Chilliwack regrouped as Henderson, MacLeod and Bryant.

That trio made Wanna Be A Star (1981), released on Solid Gold in Canada and Millennium in the US. It went platinum. ‘My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone),’ with its finger snaps and call-and-response hook, became the band’s biggest hit, reaching #3 in RPM and #22 on the Billboard Hot 100, and ‘I Believe’ followed at #13 and #33. The two songs took Chilliwack onto American television, including American Bandstand, Solid Gold and The Merv Griffin Show.

Opus X (1982) also went platinum. ‘Whatcha Gonna Do (When I’m Gone)’ reached #17 in RPM and #41 on Billboard, and Henderson and MacLeod won the 1983 Juno Award for Producer of the Year for it and ‘Secret Information.’

MacLeod and Bryant then left to concentrate on Headpins, the hard rock band that had started as their side project. Henderson made Look In Look Out (1984) and kept touring with new lineups, which brought Claire Lawrence back around 1985, until he disbanded the group in December 1988. He went on to write for film and television, including the Genie-winning ‘When I Sing’ from Bye Bye Blues and six years as music director of the Canadian Sesame Street. He also produced other artists, worked as an advocate for songwriters and copyright, and formed the folk trio UHF with Shari Ulrich and Roy Forbes.

Henderson relaunched Chilliwack in 1997, and the new lineup has kept the songs on Canadian stages since. There And Back – Live came out in 2003. In 2015 Henderson released ‘Take Back This Land,’ a protest song whose video featured his daughters Camille and Saffron Henderson. It became a rallying song during that year’s federal election.

Chilliwack was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2019 and Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2023. Henderson received the SOCAN Special Achievement Award in 2014, was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015, partly for his work on copyright protection, and entered the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2023.

-Robert Williston

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ST (1970)

7 tracks

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Sundown

#1 Side 1 05:40
Every Day

#2 Side 1 03:42
Seventeenth Summer

#3 Side 1 06:04
Ballad

#4 Side 1 05:00
I Got You Fixed

#1 Side 2 03:48
Rain-O

#2 Side 2 06:47
Chain Train

#3 Side 2 07:02

II (1971)

Showing 10 of 14 tracks

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Lonesome Mary

#1 Side 1 03:04
Eat

#2 Side 1 03:17
Rosie

#3 Side 1 05:04
Ridin'

#4 Side 1 03:02
Ride-Out

#5 Side 1 04:50
Always

#1 Side 2 02:26
Changing Reels

#2 Side 2 13:34
Shine

#1 Side 3 05:16
Claps - Chants

#2 Side 3 02:32
Whistle - Flute Pads

#3 Side 3 02:08

Lonesome Mary b/w Ridin' (1971)

2 tracks

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All Over You (1972)

Showing 10 of 11 tracks

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Singing the Blues (All Over You)

#1 Side 1 03:27
Ground Hog

#2 Side 1 03:06
Chickenshit Man

#3 Side 1 03:36
Hot Winds

#4 Side 1 03:24
Nothin' to Do

#5 Side 1 05:32
The Fields and the Sea

#1 Side 2 03:45
Rock N' Roll Music

#2 Side 2 02:45
Things Keep Changin'

#3 Side 2 02:13
Me and You

#4 Side 2 03:02
Hit Him With Another Egg

#5 Side 2 02:40

Groundhog b/w Me & You (1972)

2 tracks

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Riding High (1974)

7 tracks

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Come On Over

#1 Side 1 04:32
Crazy Talk

#2 Side 1 05:24
There's Something I Like About That

#3 Side 1 02:50
Makin' Time

#4 Side 1 05:40
Riding High

#1 Side 2 05:21
Time Don't Mean a Thing To Ya'

#2 Side 2 02:46
Far Side of the Sun (Suite): Far Side of the Sun - Drifting - Secrets

#3 Side 2 08:34