THIS RECORD STORE DAY THING IS COOL BECAUSE I AM 100% BACK INTO VINYL
A CONVERSATION WITH DERRY GREHAN OF HONEYMOON SUITE
Record Store Day is nearly upon us! Record Store Day celebrates the culture of independently owned record stores. There are various exclusive vinyl releases, special-edition releases, and exciting in-store events at participating independent record stores. Each year, an ambassador is selected for the day in Canada, with previous Record Store Day Canada Ambassadors being Big Wreck, The Tragically Hip, and Our Lady Peace, among many others. For 2026, iconic Canadian rockers Honeymoon Suite are the Record Store Day Canada Ambassadors. Ahead of Record Store Day on April 18, I chatted with Honeymoon Suite guitarist and songwriter Derry Grehan.
“We are pretty honoured to be asked to do it,” Grehan states. “This Record Store Day thing is cool because I am 100% back into vinyl, and I applaud all of the stores that are now popping up and selling vinyl because it is a cool thing, and I am glad it’s back… When I was a kid, I grew up on vinyl. I put on vinyl now, and there is no comparison. When you are streaming something, it is all compressed, it’s MP3, and they are digital files, and they sound okay, but there is no comparison to when you put an album on a good turntable and a good stereo. Personally, I hear things that I hadn’t heard in a long time. The depths and the clarity on vinyl is amazing.”
To celebrate this occasion, Honeymoon Suite will be releasing an exclusive translucent red vinyl edition of their compilation album The Singles, featuring their greatest and most well-known tunes. It will be available only through independent record stores across Canada. “This only adds to the whole brand of Honeymoon Suite and making people aware that we are still out there making new music,” Grehan comments. “It sold extremely well back in the day. I think it’s perfect because it has all the big songs, the big singles. It is really a retrospective of the early career of Honeymoon Suite. People know probably every one of those songs, and I think it was a natural choice.”
The Singles album consists of tracks from Honeymoon Suite’s first three studio albums: their self-titled debut album, The Big Prize, and Racing After Midnight. “I think The Big Prize was probably our best sounding record in terms of production and songs,” Grehan says. “It is just truly an amazing-sounding record. A lot of people say that the songs are great. Bruce Fairbairn produced it. I think a lot of people would agree with me that it’s really a great-sounding album.”
Their timeless hit song “New Girl Now” is one of the tracks featured on the album. Reflecting on the legacy of the song, Grehan comments, “The message is simple, and it’s a fun song to listen to. Who knows why a hit is a hit? I think its simplicity is a big factor. It’s got a message that a lot of guys could relate to. I think I said something new in a different way. It had a great hook to it, and it caught on. It came out at the right time. That song has been good to us.”
SPILL NEWS: HONEYMOON SUITE NAMED 2026 RECORD STORE DAY CANADA AMBASSADORS
The band’s biggest hit, the catchy, hard-rocking anthem “Feel It Again,” which reached #34 on the Billboard Hot 100, is also on the album. “Our keyboard player, Ray Coburn, wrote that song during The Big Prize preproduction, if you will, when we were collecting songs to go and record,” Grehan shares. “Right away, we knew it was a very special song. He brought it to the band, and being a keyboard player, he had a very kind of soft arrangement, and we had to kind of rock it up. I came up with the clean guitar parts in the front, and we just turned it from a softer demo that Ray put together, which is a great track and made it into Honeymoon Suite. We put it through our filter and made it into what it is today. Hats off to Ray because it was a great track.”
Along with the heavier, more rocking songs like “Bad Attitude” and “Feel It Again,” the compilation album also features the power ballad “What Does It Take.” “I’m the rocker in the band,” Grehan says. “I grew up on hard rock. I grew up on Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and everything else. I love melodic hard rock like the ‘Bad Attitude’ stuff, but if you listen to any Honeymoon Suite record, there is really a cross-section of styles on all of our records. We don’t put out the same song nine times. I like the variety. I like to balance out an album. Although ‘Bad Attitude’ and ‘Feel It Again’ are great tracks, I think a power ballad was also a kind of requirement in the ‘80s.”
Another song on the album is the title track to Lethal Weapon, one of the most popular buddy cop movies of all-time. “After The Big Prize tour was finished, we wanted Bruce Fairbairn to do the third record, but he had just done Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and he was getting really busy, as you can imagine,” Grehan recalls. “He wanted to do it, but we probably would’ve waited a year or two for the time he was free because now he was a rockstar producer. So, we are looking around and feeling for other producers, and we needed somebody top-level to do it. We were with Warner Bros. at the time, and the famous producer, Ted Templeman, was head of A&R there. He was a fan of the band, and Warner Bros. Records was also tied in with Warner Bros. Pictures, so they had this new movie coming out called Lethal Weapon, and Ted, being the A&R guy, was in charge of putting the soundtrack together. This Lethal Weapon song, the title song of the movie, which was written by Michael Kamen, came across his desk. They needed someone to sing it. They needed a band to record it and sing it. Ted just off the top, I don’t know where he came to that conclusion, but he’s like, ‘Why don’t we get this Honeymoon Suite band from Canada. I really like the guy’s voice. Maybe we can bring them down here, and they’ll cut the song.’ We flew down to L.A., and that was our first meeting with Ted. Long story short, we went into the studio and cut the “Lethal Weapon” track from a little cassette demo that they sent us. Johnnie [Dee] sang it, and it turned out amazing. Like I said earlier, we were looking for a producer at that time for the third record, and one thing led to another, and Ted agreed to produce the third album, which is Racing After Midnight.”
In other news, Honeymoon Suite has also been working hard on a new album. “We are like five or six songs in already,” Grehan explains. “We put out two records in the last three years, and here we are again… These new songs are big melodic rock choruses, which I love and harken back to The Big Prize era. That’s where I want to go with them, but at the same time, when we record them, we don’t want to sound dated. We want modern production. When I say dated, I mean so it doesn’t sound old and refurbished. The songs are new and fresh. We are not changing our style because that’s not us and that’s not what our fans want from us. We stay true to our sound, but we will make a great-sounding record if we do it.”
Although fans will have to wait a little while to hear the new album, they can see Honeymoon Suite live this year, playing their classic hits. “We will be going out this summer and fall like we do every year,” Grehan says. “We are just booking up the festivals and stuff now, as many as we can – a lot of weekend shows.” Grehan also mentioned that Honeymoon Suite is still working out the details for a tour in the fall as well.
Artist Links
Main Photo Credit: Alan Zilkowsky
