Sum 41 are preparing for life off the road when they sunset their career after playing their final shows together next month.
Next month the Ajax-based pop-punk band will play the last leg of their farewell tour, with shows across the country culminating in two final shows at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena on January 28 and 30.
Frontman Deryck Whibley recently spoke to iHeartRadio Canada’s Jesse Modz and JD Lewis about the band's last hurrah, admitting, “The weird thing for me is I don’t ever really look at particular shows or single dates. For the first time, this is actually hitting me that the Canadian run is gonna be the last run.”
"I look at it as a whole rather than just certain dates,” he added. “And everything up until this tour has felt like, ‘Well, we’ve got so many more tours still ahead, so many more legs of the tour to do, so many more shows to [play],’ whereas now there’s only four more weeks left, and this is the final run. So it’s finally hitting me that it’s coming to an end.”
As the band reach the final leg of the Tour of the Setting Sum, Whibley says he will be leaving the nostalgia up to others, after travelling the world playing every city imagineable for the better part of his life.
“I think that comes down to the individual, and I’m not necessarily a super-nostalgic person," he said. "I do think of the past fondly and I remember it well, but I don’t spend much time in memory lane. Everywhere I go, everything I do, every tour that I do, every city that I go to constantly reminds me of some wild story or some bad story or something, or even just something boring – some great restaurant I’ve been to or whatever it is. I can’t go anywhere in the world without having, like, ten different stories to tell.”
He will spend the holidays recovering before the band kick off the Canadian leg of the tour. Just two weeks ago Sum 41 had to cancel their Australian dates after Whibley was hospitalized in Australia with pneumonia. But Whibley says he is on the road to recovery.
"I'm good now," he said. "You know, it was like a week of just feeling kind of sick but you know nothing too crazy. Unfortunately we had to cancel some shows 'cause I had no lung capacity for about seven or 10 days but that was about it."
Whibley also spoke about Sum 41's upcoming induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, which is set to happen March 30 during the live broadcast of the 2025 Juno Awards. He said the band was completely caught off guard with receiving such an honour.
"Oh my God, when we got the news it was just such a shock and a surprise," Whibley said. "We were just so excited. But it was the last thing we ever expected or thought about."
Watch the full interview below.