By Jim Barber
In order to really experience the essence of a band, you’ve gotta see them live. Although the first phase of their career in the public eye lasted only five or six years, Canadian rockers Sven Gali made quite an impression. Yes, their music videos garnered loads of play on MuchMusic (Canada’s equivalent to MTV), and their singles got tons of spins on radio, but it was in a live setting where they truly made their reputation, built a loyal fan base and rocked the rafters of every venue they blasted into.
Starting out as a cover band on the highly-competitive Toronto club scene in the late 1980s, the band that would become Sven Gali, chose to switch to almost exclusively original material, which not only added to their popularity, but earned them a record deal with BMG Canada. A couple of key live showcase gigs in the hotbox pressure cookers of New York City and Los Angeles sealed the deal. By the beginning of the 1990s, the lineup had solidified to include vocalist Dan Wanless, guitarists Andy Frank and Dee Cernile, and bassist Shawn T.T. Minden. The drum stool has been a bit of a Spinal Tap-ish issue (although there have been no fatalities), as current (and fifth) drummer Dan Fila has the longest tenure. More about this in a bit.
After a brash, bodacious and frankly pretty damn badass self-titled debut album in 1992, the vicissitudes and vagaries of the music industry hit Sven Gali hard, to the point where about a year or so after the release of their second album, Inwire in 1995, they broke up.
A one-off reunion took place in 2007, followed by two performances at benefit concerts to help Cernile, who was gamely battling cancer (he died in February 2012), kept the dream of a full-on reunion afloat. It came to fruition in 2018, followed by a new EP called 3 in 2020. The COVID pandemic stifled the band’s momentum, but also increased pent up demand for Sven Gali, who have indeed returned in a proud and profound way with the release of a new live album, Sven Gali: Live at the El Mocambo.
It features three of the band’s founding members, Wanless, Frank and Minden, with the addition of the aforementioned Fila on the kit and guitarist Sean Williamson, who also joined in 2018.
The new live album, recorded in one night in September 2024, is as much about the past as it is about the present and future for the band. Sven Gali Live at the El Mocambo focuses on the band’s incendiary and hugely successful debut album, which featured hits such as ‘Under the Influence,’ ‘Tie Dyed Skies,’ and arguably one of the best power ballads to ever come out of the Great White North, ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.’ But it also captures the energy, edge and unmistakable talent of an act who now brings a couple of decades more experience and proficiency as players to the table.
“We have been asked many, many times about doing a live album, because people always appreciated Sven Gali as a live band. We thought this was a great way to sum up Sven Gali as a band, and we also wanted to celebrate that first album. We’ve always wanted to do it, and we wanted to, I guess capture the energy of Sven Gali from back in the day, but also as a sign of more things to come, because we have a lot coming down the pipe. Some of it I can talk about, and some I can’t. For us, it was nice to just finally play that record after years and years of people asking about it,” Wanless explained.
“And you know what, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been very fortunate as a singer to play with such a good band. The guys are awesome and they’re incredible live. And [the live album] was a great way for them to showcase their talent. We always took pride in our live show. We said to ourselves back in the day that when we don’t have it, or we don’t feel that we’re not putting everything we have into the live show, then we’re letting ourselves down so that’s the day we stop. And to this day, even though we’ve gotten older, we still have that energy and that passion and that love for our band. So, we wanted to put all that across to people the way it should be heard – live.”
Legacy is becoming more and more of a focus of bands from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as they not only want to ensure their place in the firmament of the music business and in the hearts and minds of music lovers, but also to leave something for friends and family – especially those that may not have been born when Sven Gali was racing up the charts and kickin’ ass on stages ‘back in the day.’
“All of us have families now. And our kids are of the age where they appreciate music and they’re so stoked to see it live, and they’re proud of it. They say, ‘wow, you guys really give ‘er!’ And we have acceptance from a lot of younger people in general out there too of the music. So it’s nice for all of our families and friends to see it again, and for people who never saw it back then, but who’ve heard about it for years and years,” said Wanless, who added that even though he still has his rockstar voice and rockstar strut and can command a stage in front of a badass band, he’s ultimately still ‘dad.’
“I don’t think I’ll ever be cool in the eyes of my kids. Honestly, my wife will tell me every day that I’m a nerd. So, they keep me humble. I tell the kids what I do is like another kid’s father going out and playing pick-up hockey a couple nights a week. It’s Friday night hockey, or Friday night soccer. For us, we just go out and rock with our friends.”
And those friends include a huge number of ‘old’ fans who rocked out with Sven Gali during their initial 1990s run and came back when the band returned for good in 2018 and continue to come out as we move into the second half of the 2020s. The ‘kids’ are now the parents of kids, and most of these kids are now of concert going age themselves or even out of the house beginning their adult lives. In a phenomenon seen throughout the music industry, the young fans of the 1980s and 1990s are now empty nesters at the height of their earning capacity and looking for cool stuff to do. Enter the rock and roll bands of their youth!
“We’ve got the OLG Stage near where I live, and my wife and I go to a lot of shows there ourselves. And there’s a lot of great acts coming through; a lot of different acts that I’ve never thought to see. It’s given us a new excitement for live music and reminder back to when we were younger, because that’s what we did back then. And, also, when you’re first in a band, especially one that was on the road as much as Sven Gali, you don’t get to see a lot of other bands because you’re on tour yourself. So now, because we’re not on the road like we were before, I can circle back and see a ton of them,” he said.
“It’s funny because all the people that are our age that were our fans are still our fans, which we’re totally grateful for. But what’s cool is their kids know who we are. And now we’ve got their kids and our kids and their friends coming out to shows – they’re Sven Gali fans too. I see a lot of younger faces in the crowd, which is cool because young people are bombarded with so many different kinds of music, but they still choose to like what we did and are doing. At my house, my kids will have Sven Gali on and then go from that to Korn to Post Malone, to Lady Gaga and even to Johnny Cash. We have everything playing in my house. My son was really digging Deep Purple the other day and he loved it. It was the [1984] Perfect Strangers album with ‘Knockin’ At Your Back Door.’ And then I’ll hear my daughter listening to 1970s music, or I’ll walk past her room and there’s 1980s music. So, it’s really cool that the kids are not just stuck on one genre, and that they really, really listen to music.”
Wanless talked about the importance of the El Mocambo as a live venue. In many ways, it was – and is – much like many of the other rock and roll clubs that dotted the downtown of Toronto for decades. Always a favourite with performers and artists though, it became a cultural touchstone in the 1970s after two of the most iconic live albums in the history of the Canadian music scene were recorded there. One was by the Canadian legends April Wine, led of course by the now dearly departed but sorely missed Myles Goodwyn. The other was by a little band from the U.K. called the Rolling Stones.
“It was just a great intimate venue where so many amazing bands visited and went on to do amazing things. The list is as long as my arm of bands that have played there that have done great and recorded live records there, one of them being the Rolling Stones of course. And I remember The Police played there and George Thorogood; the list goes on and on of the history of that place and the music that came through that room,” said Wanless.
“We understood the importance of the place. There’s just so much nostalgia there, and it became the cool thing to record there. We did it there because of that, but also because we wanted to do something in Toronto where we lived and where we started. And since they renovated and re-opened the place [in 2021] they did a fabulous job. It was beautiful. Everything from the washrooms to the sound is so much better. The whole vibe is so great in there now. And our friends Coney Hatch did a live recording there recently also, so we figured it was a good place for us to do it too.”
Coney Hatch’s 2021 live album focused on the breadth of their career, whereas with Sven Gali, as mentioned above, the focus was on the debut album.
“It was always the intent to do that. As we talked earlier about that legacy thing, we just wanted to say this is when we were at our best. This was how we wanted to be remembered and how we want to be seen today. We’re telling fans, ‘come remember us as we are, but also how we are now and hey, listen to what we’ve got coming in the future for you,’” Wanless said about the impact of the first album, which led to massive opportunities for the band to tour with their heroes, including the likes of Foreigner, Meat Loaf and Def Leppard at a time when the latter was arguably one of the biggest bands in the world.
“The time it really hit me, when I thought, ‘wow, this is cool,’ was when I walked up on the stage for the first Def Leppard show. And that’s when I stood out there and I really, literally, and this might sound cliché, but I literally had flashbacks of being in the basement when we started, me and Andy [Frank] jammin’ fricken ‘Smoke on the Water,’ when we were kids. And it just all came back to me in that moment. And it was proof to me that if you stay in the game long enough, and you keep working and you keep honing your craft, whatever it is you’re doing, the right time will come. And I’m a true believer in that and I instill that in my kids for their careers and what they’re doing now.”
Besides playing the brilliant and bombastic classics from the first album, Sven Gali also pays tribute to the late great Lemmy Kilmister by covering the iconic Motorhead anthem, ‘Ace of Spades,’ on Live at the El Mocambo.
“We were at The Rainbow Room when we lived in Los Angeles for a while, and Lemmy was always at the Rainbow. One time I saw him at the bar, in his space and it was, like, ‘there’s an icon, right there.’ And it was just so heavy and awesome. But when we saw him there, we always kept our distance, we always gave everybody their space because everybody was there, all these famous people. Although, one time we sat down and had chicken wings with John Candy. He said, ‘sit down, we’ve got some Canadian boys here!’ All the other celebrities we just shied away from them and gave them their space because they were just there to relax. They don’t want people crowding around them,” he said.
Wanless has probably also had to proffer up the other life lessons to his kids that come along with adult working life, regardless of the industry: that it can be a roller coaster – and often a bumpy one.
After their sparkling debut record, Sven Gali wanted to be at the epicenter of the rock music business, which the American west coast, and so moved there with the desire to soak in the atmosphere in anticipation of a follow up record, which would eventually become Inwire. It was recorded in Seattle by Kelly Gray, who would go on to play with Queensryche, and features guest turns from Blind Melon’s Christopher Thorn as well as Kevin Martin and Scott Mercado from Candlebox. What was meant to show the evolution of the band’s sound did not translate to the fans or the industry and the time, eventually leading to the band’s break-up in 1996 – a hiatus that lasted 12 years.
“We went to Seattle to do our second record, and we got caught up in the big grunge wave, which seemed to be changing all of music. We had all these guys like Christopher from Blind Melon and the singer of Candlebox [Martin] and it was a departure from who we were. But we were growing. We spent all of our lives as young musicians writing that first record. So, as we progressed and got more experience, we wanted to step outside the box. We didn’t want to be known as just a ‘hair band.’ We didn’t like being lumped in with that, because we felt we had a lot more to offer,” Wanless explained.
“So, we stepped outside the boundaries of what people perceived that we were, but we stayed true to what was in us at the time. I think the people that followed us felt it was too much of a departure from who we were. And then, obviously, with grunge, the music, radio, the industry, everything changed, We left Seattle and when we got home there was news of us possibly going on the road with Candlebox in the States but as soon as we started that U.S. venture Dee got into a Sea-doo accident on our vacation. He broke his pelvis and there was a lot of other stuff that happened to him, so he was in hospital for a long time. That halted any momentum we had for quite a period of time and then things just slowly drifted apart.
“It got to the point where we got pretty discouraged about the music scene at the time. We were happy with what we did, because we knew that we had a lot to offer music-wise as a band. But it was the personal and the business side where, even though we were still hoping to do several more records, it kind of just fizzled away. Some of us were getting married and my wife was very, very supportive of me through the whole music thing and understood what was happening, but there’s a point where I had to make some decisions here. She stood by me, but I wanted to do it right by her and get my life together and just move on.”
Wanless had some ‘day jobs’ before opening his own landscaping contracting business in the Niagara Region, where he still lives. Kids came, the business expanded, and life was good. An 11-year hiatus ended with a reunion show in Thorold, Ontario in August of 2007. Cernile was shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer, with two benefit concerts featuring the band and many guests organized for August of 2009. Cernile died on Feb. 25, 2012, at just 46. Seven Gali again returned to hibernation.
But rock and roll never really left Wanless’ heart and in 2018 a long-hoped for more permanent reemergence happened, thanks to the band’s current drummer Dan Fila, best known for being the founder of Canadian progressive metal band Varga.
“I always enjoyed physical work, but the business grew to the point where I was doing quite well, could hire some employees. I’ve now scaled it back to where it’s manageable and I can enjoy my family. We helped get Varga signed to BMG Music and we always appreciated his drumming, so we became friends. When Dee was better, we did some demos with Dan for fun, but nothing came of them at the time,” he said, as he discussed about how Sven Gali got together again.
“Then one day I was in my garage working on some cars and I got a call, and it was Dan. And he said ‘Dave, listen. I’m just sitting here listening to Sven Gali [the album] and jamming. Do you want to come over?’ It had been a long time, but I went over for a couple of days, just for fun. I thought about it for a bit and then decided to call our bass player T.T. [Minden] a call because I hadn’t seen him in forever and I told him to meet me and Dan just to jam and hang out. Then Andy got involved and all of a sudden it went from a jam to actual rehearsing. And it felt so good, so we said, ‘man, we gotta keep going here. This is good!’”
This led to a new single called ‘Kill The Lies,’ and the previously mentioned three-song EP in 2020. Today, in 2025, as the world seems back to some sense of normalcy in the wake of the COVID pandemic (‘normal’ being a relative term of course), Sven Gali is ready to move on with more musical adventures.
Speaking of Fila. It isn’t lost on Wanless and his bandmates that there has been an issue with keeping drummers, a la the fictional band in the film This is Spinal Tap.
“We always tell him to have a fire extinguisher next to his kit. I am kidding, but I’ve got to say, this really wouldn’t have happened without Dan. He was the driving force from the beginning of getting us back together, he’s the guy who controls our social media and all that. We feed off his energy now that we’re all united again. And he’s also quite savvy about all aspects of the music business too. A lot of young bands don’t understand that you need to have that element. We’re fortunate that all the guys in the band are very business minded and successful in business in our own rights. We fund everything ourselves; we don’t need anybody’s help for anything. We do our own videos; we do and sell our own merch. We don’t have to worry about any outside investors or label people telling us what to do,” he said.
Sven Gali: Live at the El Mocambo comes out June 13, and on the same evening, Black Frame Studios in St. Catharines will host a special release party (information on the band’s Facebook page). Later, on June 21, Sven Gali will share the stage with The Killer Dwarfs at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto.
“There’s going to be more shows in the fall. We’re getting a lot of interest in taking this show across the country, not just the east and west coasts, but the whole middle of the country. We’ve got a lot of interest from Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Moncton and out west too,” Wanless said.
For more information, visit https://www.svengali.ca.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
