by Bill Pearis

Joe Pernice and Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake both call Toronto home these days and, what with their similar musical styles, have joined forces under the name The New Mendicants. They have recorded a 6-song EP for their upcoming Australian tour which includes three new songs, "covers" of Pernice/Blake songs as well as their take on INXS' "This Time" which you can stream below. The EP (cover art above) is being made available for non-Australians via the Pernice Brothers webstore. An album, titled The Book of Norman, is due out sometime in the near future.

In other news, Joe Pernice's '90s era country-ish band The Scud Mountain Boys (whose 1996 album, Massachusetts, for Sub Pop is a classic), have recorded a new album that is due out at some point this year. He's promising a new Pernice Brothers album too, though details on that are hazy at best. In the meantime, The Pernice Brothers' genuinely fantastic 2001 album, The World Won't End, recently saw its first-ever vinyl release which is well worth picking up. You can stream it below via Spotify.

New Mendicants stream and Australian tour dates are below.

Continue reading "Joe Pernice & Norman Blake are The New Mendicants, ready EP and Australian tour; Scud Mountain Boys recording new LP"

by Bill Pearis

Joe Pernice (of Pernice Brothers, Chappaquiddick Skyline and Scud Mountain Boys fame) wrote about The Smiths album Meat is Murder for the 33 1/3 series, one of the few (only?) titles that was a short story, not an essay. That led directly to a book deal for Joe's first proper novel, It Feels So Good When I Stop, due out August 6 on Penguin imprint Riverhead. That book will spawn a soundtrack, a single and a tour, including an August 7th show at Bowery Ballroom with The Walsh Brothers. (Tickets are on-sale.) Here's the back-of-the-book blurb:

In the vein of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, Pernice's debut is a coming-of-age tale for the modern-day slacker, and an unlikely love story with a masculine perspective--but with a mordant humor and unexpected warmth that will resonate with male and female readers alike. Set to a carefully curated soundtrack of Nick Drake, The Pogues, and Peter Frampton, It Feels So Good When I Stop is the story of a deeply flawed but irrepressibly likeable hero stumbling towards adulthood, learning about heartbreak and redemption, and struggling to love and commit on his own terms.

Joe adds:

It's not a book for kids, which is a general way of saying it's not for anyone offended by raw language and sex. I sent an email to my family telling them that my book should not be read by anyone under twenty-one, anyone over fifty-five and Judy (my sister).

There's also a It Feels So Good When I Stop CD:

Though the book is not explicitly about music, there are quite a few incidental (and not so incidental) musical references throughout. Songs ranging from James and Bobby Purify's "I'm Your Puppet" to The Chills' "Rolling Moon" to "That's How I Got to Memphis" by Tom T. Hall to "Soul and Fire" by Sebadoh. Ashmont Records is planning on releasing in some form--somewhere around the publication of my novel--the "soundtrack" to It Feels So Good When I Stop.

The It Feels So Good When I Stop soundtrack is out August 4 on Pernice's Ashmont label, and features nine covers and one new song, though maybe not in this order:

Continue reading "Joe Pernice - a book, an album & 2009 Tour Dates (Bowery)"