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Almost.

There’ll be one more live gig for the Ajax, Ont., rockers before they go their separate ways: the Juno Awards ceremony at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena on March 30, where after eight studio albums, 15 million records sold and such international radio hits as “Fat Lip,” “In Too Deep” and “Dopamine,” Sum 41 will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

“It’s probably the biggest surprise of our career,” said frontman Deryck Whibley in a recent Zoom interview from Winnipeg. “When we were told, it was like the last thing that was ever on our minds. It was a huge shock, a huge surprise and a huge honour.”

Aside from this national recognition and an upcoming event in Ajax, where the street his old high school is on will be renamed Sum 41 Way, Whibley, 44, says he’s not thinking too much about what’s going to happen after the band’s final bows, preferring to concentrate on the here and now.

“I always have somewhat of an eye on the future, but I’m very much focused on the present,” he said. “We are very deep in this tour, and it takes a lot of my focus.

“I’m just enjoying my time with the guys and trying not to be consumed with what I’m going to do afterwards,” he continued, referring to charter members guitarist Dave “Brownsound” Baksh and bassist Jason “Cone” McCaslin and more recent recruits guitarist Tom Thacker and drummer Frank Zummo.

“Because we’ve been on this tour (for latest album “Heaven :x: Hell”) for over a year now, my only plan is, I need to go home and spend some time with family, decompress for a second and see what happens.”

Whibley’s also looking forward to enjoying the small things in life, like “being able to take my kids to school and pick them up every day.

“I have a two-year-old daughter, and I would love to be able to read a book to her every night before she goes to bed.”

While he hasn’t had much time to reflect on the blessings of a satisfying career, Whibley says he’s been thankful.

“I constantly have a lot of gratitude towards what we’ve been able to experience,” he said. “I don’t really think of it too much in terms of where we fit in music: I think that comes later on, whether you’ve left any kind of mark, good, bad or indifferent.

“I just think about how great my life has been and everything I’ve been able to experience and achieve.”

Whibley also takes great pride in the fact that Sum 41 is engineering its own exit.

“The important thing was to go out on our own terms: to write our own ending, to write our whole story,” Whibley said.

“Once (“Heaven :x: Hell”) was finished, it felt, creatively, like our work had been completed. This record was everything I’ve always wanted to do and encapsulated our entire sound from beginning to end.

“I just don’t know where else I’d want to go after this.”

According to Whibley, the band’s current jaunt — billed as the Tour of the Setting Sum — has been going swimmingly.

“I was actually surprised by how great (audiences) have been,” he noted. “Our shows have always been fun and there have always been crazy mosh pits and people body surfing. It’s always been wild.

“But I think this time it’s gone even more crazy. More than that, I like seeing the emotion on peoples’ faces every night. To hear how loud people are singing — it’s this togetherness vibe in these big arenas and stadiums that I wasn’t quite expecting.”

Controversial book

If there is a cloud on the horizon, it’s the recent court proceedings between Whibley and the band’s former manager, Greig Nori.

In “Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell,” his autobiography published last October by Simon & Schuster, Whibley alleges that Nori initiated and manipulated him into a non-consensual sexual relationship that lasted years.

In the book, Whibley alleges that shortly after he turned 18, both men attended a party where Nori kissed Whibley while the latter was high on ecstasy. Whibley, who writes that he felt “extremely uncomfortable” about the nature of their relationship when he was sober, then chronicles several encounters where he says he tried to end the sexual aspect, only to bow to pressure from Nori to continue.

According to Whibley, the intimate relationship finally ended in 2002 when he talked about the arrangement with a mutual friend of the pair, who confronted both men and told them it had to end. Nori was dropped as the band’s manager in 2004.

In response to the book’s accusations, Nori hired a defamation lawyer and denied all allegations, issuing a statement that the relationship between him and the singer was consensual and that “Whibley initiated it, aggressively.”

Nori filed a notice of action on Jan. 3 with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, stating that he was seeking more than $6 million in damages for “libel, breach of confidence, intrusion upon seclusion, wrongful disclosure of private facts and placing the plaintiff in a false light” from both Whibley and Simon & Schuster over the claims published in the book.

Whibley responded by filing his own court notice of action on Jan. 6, stating that he was seeking $3 million in damages from Nori for accusing him of “being a liar,” and claiming that the ex-manager’s denial of the frontman’s allegations “were false and/or inaccurate and would tend to lower the reputation of the plaintiff.”

While none of the allegations have been tried in court, the filed notices of action give each party 30 days to provide official statements of claim detailing their arguments and may be followed by statements of defence.

Whibley, who had previously sued Nori to reclaim music-publishing ownership rights (and wrote that he got the outcome he wanted via a 2018 settlement), said he’s unsure of the next step in his current court battle.

“I don’t know where it goes — that’s a legal question,” he said. “All I know is I stand behind everything I said in the book. I’m fine to go down this path because it’s the truth. I’ll tell the truth whenever and wherever, under oath, in front of a jury.”

But that’s for another day: in the meantime, there are still tickets available for Sum 41’s Jan. 28 appearance at Scotiabank Arena. And if there’s a message that Whibley wants to impart to the fans that have stayed with the band since its 1996 beginnings, it’s one of appreciation.

“There’s been a lot of ups and downs and we’ve gone so many different ways musically and people stuck with us,” Whibley said. “There’s people who like our pop-punk stuff, certain people who only like the heavy stuff and those who just like the slow stuff.

“Somehow it all kind of works together. Everybody comes to the show and it’s like this big family vibe.”