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Burton
                      Cummings & Neil Young 1987


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"It all began in 1980 when four young Winnipeg lads got together with an idea of
a band that brought together the 'World’s Greatest Entertainers' live on stage."


Free Ride

L-R:  Rick Kosheluk, Tom Pshednovak, Brent Degryse, Wayne Hlady

A few years ago, Wayne Hlady was putting together a Shania Twain tribute act as part of his duties with Bravo Concert Productions.

One afternoon, the woman fronting the group arrived at rehearsal carrying a new dress she intended to wear onstage, remarking it had cost her $250. One of the guys in the band remarked, “Jeez, we’re going to need to get a lot of jobs to pay for that,” to which Hlady immediately replied, “If you think $250 is a lot of dough, you definitely don’t want to be in a Beatles band.”

Although Hlady won’t divulge exactly how much Free Ride spent a few years ago on colourful get-ups depicting the Beatles during their Sgt. Pepper period, he motions up with his thumb three times when a scribe asks, “$1,000? $2,000? $3,000?”

“We carry 14 guitars, each one of which is an exact replica of what the guys in the Beatles and Stones used,” he says, adding his Ludwig drum kit – which he guesses he’s torn down and set up 100,000 times through the years – is precisely the same as the kit Ringo Starr employed in the early ’60s.

“If somebody offered me $1 million for that kit tomorrow I wouldn’t take it,” he says with a laugh. “When I’m done playing, that will go to my daughters. There are way too many memories associated with it to ever let it go.”

David Sanderson
Excerpt from LONG, WINDING ROAD published in the Winnipeg Free Press, January 4, 2020

Free Ride

Free Ride

Free Ride

Photo credit:  James Bordass
Free Ride

Photo credit:  James Bordass



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