World Music

Esteemed American singer-songwriter Joe Pernice has had a long and distinguished career encompassing a lot of different bands and personas, but right at the moment events have transpired so that a whole swag of them are active concurrently for the first time. His new outfit The New Mendicants – which he formed with current touring partner Norman Blake from '90s Scottish power-pop heroes Teenage Fanclub, with The Sadies' Mike Belitsky on drums – are his most pressing concern, but two of his other former glories remain active as well, one on the comeback trail after a lengthy hiatus.

“I've got three records in the pipeline,” the affable Pernice explains. “There's a new Pernice Brothers record that's going to come out [this] year, and this record I'm making with Norman Blake and my friend Mike Belitsky – the three of us have a band together – and I was in a band called the Scud Mountain Boys back in the day, and we broke up in '97 but we've re-formed and made a new record, so there's three new records coming soon.”

Scud Mountain Boys were one of the foremost alt.country acts of the early-'90s – miles removed from the more melodic indie rock that has characterised Pernice's output since – has he enjoyed delving back into that world? “I've loved it, it's been great,” he enthuses. “It was great because any kind of 'drama', shall I say, that was there in '97 or whenever it was, it was all gone and it was just like hanging out with my friends. It was great fun to pick it up, and we had a lot of [good times] recording the record, and the shows were fun and I'm looking forward to doing more of them.

“I think because I have other projects that satisfy me in other ways I don't have a lot of expectation – I'm not looking at the Scud Mountain Boys as having to satisfy all of my music desires, so it takes a lot of pressure off. Plus, we're just older and more chilled out, you know? That can't hurt.”

Scud Mountain Boys started out as a rock band, who would sit around the kitchen table singing country stuff for fun after shows until that became their primary passion.

“Yeah, we were like a heavier band and that was how we would unwind,” Pernice laughs. “I was in graduate school at the time, so none of us really had a real job, so we were able to kind of stay up late and drink and smoke and play music. So we would play gigs in our town, which was a small city called Northampton, Massachusetts – there was some really good gigs in that town and it had a really good, close-knit music scene, so there was always a gig going on – then we'd just hang out afterwards and just bring it down, and that's how it started. Then it got to the point where playing the chilled-out after-show gigs was what was really enjoyable, so we finally said, 'Screw it, lets just do this! This is what we really like!'. So we did.”

These days Pernice resides in Toronto, Canada, and it's in these climes where they're both foreigners that his relationship with Blake has flourished in the last couple of years. There are a lot of parallels between the work of Teenage Fanclub and The Pernice Brothers – they both deal in variants of sublime, melodic pop – so once they found themselves as relative neighbours a collaboration almost seemed inevitable.

“I met Norman back in '99 or 2000, and we never really kept in touch but mutual friends were always sending messages – 'Norman says hi', 'Joe says hi' – and a good friend of mine Ric Menck who was in the band Velvet Crush and who played with Matthew Sweet forever, he's known Norman for ages and sort of patched us together once or twice but it never came to be,” Pernice recalls of the union's beginnings. “Then Pat Berkery, who's playing drums for The Pernice Brothers, was over in Norway playing drums on a record and Norman was producing it – this was just last summer – and Norman was moving to Canada because his wife's Canadian and they were moving back, and Norman said to Pat, 'Can you put me in touch with Joe?'. So sure enough he got in touch with me and said 'I'm coming back to Canada, do you wanna hang out?', and I said, 'You're goddamn right I do!'. So we shot the breeze and hit it off, and we basically just decided to start recording, and we did. It was really that simple, there was not a lot of discussion.z”

With both Pernice and Blake being gifted songwriters the process could have worked any number of ways, but Pernice seems excited by the fact that the creative process for the new outfit has been really collaborative as they've worked together crafting The New Mendicants' debut album.

“We were bringing stuff in separately, but certainly nothing finished,” he tells. “For me the tunes I've been bringing into this band most resemble sketches more than on any other record I've made – these have been less complete than on any other record I've done – so I really do feel like it's a collaboration. It's a collaboration more than just one guy coming in with a completely finished song.

“I don't even think we've had any disagreements about stuff at all, he's pretty chilled out. And Mike too; Mike has a good ear even though he's playing drums – he's not playing guitar or piano or anything like that. We're all almost always in agreement, I think we just know what we like.”

And while their impending visit to Australian shores doesn't involve the full band, this rapport that Pernice and Blake have built up in recent times will still have plenty of chance to come to the fore.

“These shows are going to be just Norman and I, playing together,” Pernice reveals. “We'll sing some of the songs we've written for our new record, I'll probably sing and play along with some Fanclub stuff and he'll play a few songs of mine – we'll do it that way. I wouldn't say we're going to 'wing it', but I think it will be slightly casual. For me one of the things that I always thought [about] the idea of playing with Norman is I want to sing with him, because his voice is so good and I thought we'd really hit it off singing together, and it's been pretty cool. I just want to make sure that the songs are enjoyable for people to hear.”