Power Pop Goes the Peg
The Perms are part of this city’s very own pop/rock explosion
John Kendle



OK, let’s just go ahead and call Winnipeg Canada’s current capital of ’60s-influenced power-pop and rock bands.

Think about it… in the past few years, bands such as Novillero, The Waking Eyes, Quinzy, Telepathic Butterflies, Alverstone and The Morning After have all strapped on their Rickenbackers and Epiphones, Gibsons and Gretsches, plugged in their Voxes and Fender Twins, invited up a horn player or two and gone on to make old-fashioned dancin’-and-celebratin’ poparockarolla music.

While the styles and approaches of the above acts vary greatly — from The Morning After’s Who-meets-Northern Soul to Novillero’s Jam-inflected rock — they all refract their tunes through a modernist lens and deliver with unbridled passion and energized stage presences.

Rejoining this loose group of power-pop acts is a familiar name — The Perms, who have finally followed up their 2002 effort, Clark Drive, with an oft-delayed, new full-length effort titled Better Days.

Originally formed in Brandon in 1997 by brothers Chadwick and Shane Smith, The Perms first gained notice in 1998 with Tight Perm, an audacious debut that earned the band raves in Winnipeg and prompted a move to the provincial capital as the millennium turned. The energy jolt of that move prompted Clark Drive. The band even ended up with a U.S. distribution deal through Not Lame Records, a boutique label that handles bands of similar ilk. However, after a year or so of touring behind that record The Perms suddenly went quiet, save for a few quick tours and the occasional local gig.

Where were they?

Fans got their answer this summer, when the group re-emerged with a lineup that is now settled on the Smiths — Chad, 26, on guitar and vocals and Shane, 28, on bass and vocals — playing with drummer John Huver, 21, and keyboardist/saxophonist Scott Perry, 27.

“Every time we do an album we say, ‘OK, we’re not going to take two years to do the next album,’ but then it happens,” Chad says.

“It’s money. It’s wanting to put out something we’re really happy with. It’s a lot of little things that all add up,” he says.

“In the end, we’re glad we took the time to put that little extra effort into it because it shows, I think. It’s hard because you want to come out with new stuff out every year or two, because that’s what the majors do, but being independent you have to spend a lot of time finding the money and making sure the money is there.”

Recorded over seven or eight months last year (“I’m not sure anymore,” Chad says) at Winnipeg’s Private Ear Studios and produced by Private Ear partners Neil Cameron and Lloyd Peterson, Better Days is an upbeat, uptempo package of 11 songs shot through with sweet harmonies, chiming guitars and even a full horn section.

“For any guy in the band it’s ’60s pop,” says Chad, explaining the group’s genesis and influences. “That’s what we grew up with, with our parents playing that music for us. We’re into The Beatles, Beach Boys, The Who, a lot of that kind of genre. I probably have every Beatles album there is.

“Our dad played music all his life. He played guitar in bands all his life, and that’s how me and Shane really got into it. The albums we heard as kids were all his.”

It was from the broken pieces of one of Shane’s first bands, The Flower Pots, that The Perms initially formed. With an album of songs written and ready to go, Shane asked his younger brother’s band to help him record it.

“We just sort of did that and then officially formed right after that,” Chad says, then explains the first record’s innocent, family-snapshot cover featuring two curly headed Smith boys seated on Dad’s knee.

“Yes, that is us on the first album cover,” he says, then quickly points out, “(My hair) was natural. Shane’s perm was given to him by our mum, which he got beat up quite a bit for.”

As for the clichéd question, Chad says he and Shane are nothing like Noel and Liam Gallagher or Ray and Dave Davies.

“As far as us being brothers goes, there’s always a kind of pitted rivalry, and we have our disagreements and whatnot,” he says. “But we’re all headed towards making great music, so there haven’t been any real great fights or anything like that to report.”

Though all the band members are either in school — Chad himself is in the joint degree program in Creative Communications at Red River and U of W — or working, the younger Smith says that, even as three of the four approach their late 20s, they have no plans to slow down.

“Sometimes, when you’re an independent act (working in fits and starts) is the only way you can do things.

“We’d like this to be our full-time career. It’s not like we’ve given up. Work and school are things to keep ourselves busy and, if we could, we’d work on the music full time.”

Now that Better Days is out, the band plans to be busy soon. There’s the Oct. 27 release gig at the West End, the Skalloween gig at Fort Garry C.C. on Oct. 30, a show at Dylan’s on Nov. 18 and then lots of roadwork. A trip west is slated for Christmas, followed by an Eastern Canadian and U.S. swing next spring.

“To go back to what the album’s called, Better Days, I just think we’re at a stage where we’ve come into our own,” Smith says. “Now we can show people.”