Podcast: Gone, gone, gone — Chilliwack’s Bill Henderson reflects on saying ‘Farewell’ as tour hits central Alberta

That includes an Aug. 8 stop in Rimbey, Alberta for the ‘Rock the Track’ music festival, co-headlined by Tom Cochrane, Theory of a Deadman, Trooper, Moist and more.

Lead singer and the man who’s been there from the start, Bill Henderson, spoke with rdnewsNOW and The Everything Red Deer Podcast this week from his home on Saltspring Island, B.C.

Henderson, now 80, says the summers off after this one will be nice, but the next few months will be chock full of making one last batch of memories with his bandmates — brother Ed Henderson, as well as Jerry Adolphe and Gord Maxwell.

“I think it’s pretty much been my favourite tour. We’re getting full houses, sold out shows, and the people are fantastic. I just love doing my job,” says Henderson.

“We’ve got young people coming to the shows, I can see they know the lyrics, and people are really happy to be there.”

The tour has seen the quartet criss-cross the country with stops in Calgary, Vancouver, St. Catharine’s, Minette, Toronto, Sherwood Park and Parksville.

After Rimbey, it’s Winnipeg, Ottawa, and several more before the grand finale Nov. 21 in Mission, B.C., which the geographically-knowledgeable will know is pretty close to the city of Chilliwack.

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Chilliwack singer Bill Henderson (left) and drummer Jerry Adolphe (right) at Toronto’s Massey Hall in May 2025. (Tracey Savein-South Paw Productions/Supplied)

Back in the late 1960s, the band was known as The Collectors, but needed a change in direction.

In fact, their latest record had been mixed, pressed, and labels were being made.

“What the hell is your name?” Henderson recalls his crew being asked at that point. “You’re either The Collectors or The Connection.”

“Then we had an earnest conversation and finally decided on The Collectors,” says Henderson. “We were exhausted with the naming thing, but [then-bandmate] Ross [Turney] pressed on and said, ‘What about Chilliwack?'”

The group knew it was the name of a city in the Fraser Valley, but the American and international fans they hoped to woo would mostly be none the wiser.

“I had done some research and found it meant ‘valley of many streams,'” adds Henderson.

‘Chilliwack’ indeed comes from the word ‘Tcil’Qe’uk,’ which in the Salish language of Halkomelem, means ‘valley of many streams.’

Thus, Chilliwack, the band, was born.

“Unfortunately, Americans [still] ended up calling us Chili Wack.”

The band disbanded around 1988, before reforming in 1997.

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A vintage Chilliwack poster, circa 1974. (dkpr public relations/Supplied)

Before that, in 1992, former member Brian MacLeod, whose voice famously does the ‘Gone, gone gone…” in ‘My Girl,’ sadly died of cancer.

Henderson and other musicians staged a benefit for MacLeod a year prior in Vancouver, while Henderson was a member of newly formed group UHF.

“I play his solos,” says Henderson, asked if he still does anything all these years later to keep MacLeod’s memory alive.

“I’ve never copied people’s solos; most guitar players, when they’re learning, they learn by copying other people’s work, and learning to do it exactly the same way with the same sound and same energy. I never did it that way, but Brian did incredible solos, like on ‘My Girl,’ so I learned them.”

He’ll also talk about Brian during sets, calling him, “One of the most important people that was ever in the band.”

MacLeod left the band in 1983 to work on another project Canadian music geeks may know as The Headpins.

And that’s despite winning Producer of the Year with Henderson at the 1983 Juno Awards for ‘Whatcha Gonna Do,’ the lead track on their tenth album, Opus X.

But Chilliwack forged on, and has had at least 26 members come and go, with Henderson the constant.

His brother Ed joined the reformed band in 1997.

“[Our biggest accomplishment was] possibly mixing ‘My Girl’ because we spent three days, 24 hours a day on it. Brian and I worked in shifts, and it was amazing because the thing about Brian was he was such a stickler for detail. It was amazing how tight everything had to be,” Henderson shares.

“It produced a really amazing sound.”

Ed Henderson during a recent performance on Chilliwack’s Farewell to Friends Tour. (dkpr public relations/Supplied)

Among other things, Chilliwack was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2019, and Bill Henderson was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2015.

To the band’s fans, who, as he noted, are still coming out in droves, Henderson says thank you.

“Without them, it couldn’t happen. You can only go so far on your own,” says Henderson, who, as hard as it is to believe, is currently receiving singing lessons from his own daughter, a professional vocal coach.

“You can practice and come up with things you think are just wonderful, but until you play before an audience and they get bored, you don’t know that it’s not wonderful. The relationship is important, because you need it to land in somebody’s ears and they have to respond.”

If there’s one thing Henderson wants to be clear about, this year is it for the band, as much as they’ve all enjoyed the ride.

Tickets for Rock the Track are at showpass.com, and tickets for any of Chilliwack’s other final performances on their ‘Farewell to Friends Tour’ are at GoneGoneGone.com.

Listen to the extended version of our conversation with Bill Henderson, featuring several fun stories not in the story above, on the Aug. 3, 2025 episode of The Everything Red Deer Podcast!

by Josh Hall | @Vancan19

Podcast: Gone, gone, gone — Chilliwack’s Bill Henderson reflects on saying ‘Farewell’ as tour hits central Alberta

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