Joe Pernice
Joe Pernice | |
|---|---|
 Joe Pernice playing with the Pernice Brothers, 2006 | |
| Background information | |
| Genres | Indie rock, Alternative pop, Chamber pop, Alt-country, |
| Years active | 1991–present |
| Labels | Sub Pop, Ashmont, |
Joe Pernice is an American indie rock musician and writer, who has fronted several bands, including the Scud Mountain Boys, Chappaquiddick Skyline and the Pernice Brothers.
He is currently based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,[1] where he is married to Canadian musician Laura Stein, formerly of the band Jale.[2]
Music career
Pernice formed the Scud Mountain Boys in 1991, in Northampton, Massachusetts. The Scud Mountain Boys released three albums before disbanding in 1997.
After the break-up, Pernice formed the Pernice Brothers. The band released their first album Overcome by Happiness in 1998 for Sub Pop. The band released The World Won't End in 2001, under Pernice's own label, Ashmont Records and Yours, Mine and Ours in 2003. After a 2004 tour, the band released their first live album in early 2005, Nobody's Watching/Nobody's Listening, and, in June of the same year, released their fourth studio album, Discover a Lovelier You. The band released Live a Little, their fifth studio album, in October 2006. In 2007 he co-produced the Transnormal Skiperoo album for Jim White. In 2009, Pernice released a solo album called It Feels So Good When I Stop, which was an album of cover songs, marketed as a soundtrack for his debut novel of the same name. In June 2010, the band released its first album in four years, Goodbye, Killer.
During the 1999-2000 hiatus of the Pernice Brothers, Pernice recorded under his own name, issuing the album Big Tobacco, and as Chappaquiddick Skyline, who issued their sole self-titled album on the Sub Pop label. Chappaquiddick Skyline was made up of Pernice Brothers band members playing songs written by Pernice, which he joked were not worthy of the Pernice Brothers banner. He has also released a single "Pega Luna Manny" along with Jose Ayerve, a member of the Pernice Brothers, a song about Boston Red Sox player Manny Ramirez which enjoyed moderate success when the Boston Red Sox won the world series that year, for the first time in 86 years.[3]
In 2012 Pernice recorded a version of the Joe Jackson song "It's Different for Girls" for a fund raising cd titled "Super Hits Of The Seventies" for radio station WFMU.[4]
Writing career
In 2003, as a part of Continuum Publishing's 33 1/3 series of short books about some of rock music's most important and influential albums, Pernice issued Meat Is Murder, a semi-autobiographical novelette about the Smiths' 1985 album of the same name, and its impact on his teenage years.
In 2009 Pernice published his first novel, It Feels So Good When I Stop, via the Penguin Books imprint Riverhead Books. The book features a narrator down on his luck, "hiding from the wreckage of a one-day marriage by holing up in Cape Cod with his soon to be ex-brother in law."[2] The book is somewhat based on Pernice's own life experiences.[5][6] He is also intermittently working on a screenplay for Meat is Murder with actor Neal Huff.[7]
Along with the release of his latest CD, Goodbye, Killer, Ashmont Records published a limited-edition collection of Twitter tweets between Pernice and his label co-owner Joyce Linehan. These tweets currently are serving as the basis for an ongoing series of short, humorous videos featuring puppets of Pernice, Linehan and some other characters. The videos can be seen on pernicebrothers.com.
References
- ^ http://www.avclub.com/articles/joe-pernice,32391/
- ^ a b "Write what you know". Eye Weekly, September 23, 2009.
- ^ "Greatest Hit: Let us now praise famous Manny". Boston Phoenix, October 15, 2004.
- ^ Super Hits Of The 70's
- ^ Khanna, Vish. Conversations: Joe Pernice. Exclaim, October 2009
- ^ Klein, Joshua. Joe Pernice: It Feels So Good When I Stop, Pitchfork Media, August 2009.
- ^ "Joe Pernice at work on Book, Smiths screenplay". Pitchfork, July 23, 2007.