Agassiz

A brief history of how to start a band. Also, your chance to WIN BIG!

On December 8th my band Agassiz will release a six-song album called Pulse 1D. It is our fourth effort as a band. It was recorded and mastered by John Paul Peters at Private Ear Recording and mixed by Christopher John Hannah. It will be available through the usual streaming sites, and I’ve included one song below for your viewing and listening pleasure.

It feels nice to be almost halfway to 90 and still playing in a rock band. You must excuse the mid-life sentimentality, because I’m feeling especially nostalgic about all the years I’ve spent rockin’ out in bands. So much so, in fact, that I think I will bring you along for a trip down memory lane in which I recall all the winding roads I’ve rocked and rolled down. So, strap on your solar powered laser beam guitar¹ and hold on tight, cuz here we GO!

By January of 1993 I had been playing guitar for a few months. I had taken some lessons but once I was able to string together a few chords I was more interested in writing tunes than learning techniques. This is the correct way to learn an instrument, by the way. Learn to play while you learn to write songs. All those flaws you ingrain into your muscle memory and that are impossible to unlearn become your style. Or something like that.

Anyways, I hated high school, and my shyness and insecurities led me to cultivate a “do not talk to me” facade that kept me feeling pretty invisible. Yet, somehow this super tall kid named Robbie not only noticed me, he knew I played guitar. He played guitar too, and invited me over to his basement to “jam.”

Robbie and I quickly formed a band we called Populist Manifesto. Robbie was already a fan of Propagandhi and their political lyrics, and was no doubt influenced by the song “Anti Manifesto” in the coining of our name. At first, Robbie and I took turns playing drums and guitar, but it quickly became apparent to both of us that he was the better drummer and I the better guitarist, so we played to our strengths, as it were. Soon our friend Randal joined on vocals and we were off.

But one day Randal farted and would not admit it. That was the end of Populist Manifesto.

Robbie and I continued, our band now called Jabba the Butt and featuring me on…gulp…vocals. By this time we were both a little better at our respective instruments, so the songs were getting more complex and more interesting. We were still definitely in the punk vein, but with influences including bands like Rush. Not that we could play anything like Rush, but we were both into them and their weird time signatures. I was also really into Star Trek, so my lyrics tended to be outer-space themed.

To the sheer dismay of all of you, I am sure, Jabba the Butt would not endure.

I graduated high school with a whimper and settled into a life of staying up all night and sleeping in til mid-afternoon. I was just totally lost—dazed and confused, you could say. Robbie and I had drifted apart, until one day he called me and said he met a guy and that he thought the three of us should start a band. I had nothing better to do, so I pulled on my cargo pants over top of my pyjamas (because who has the time to change out of pyjamas, am I right?) and stumbled over to Robbie’s basement.

I am glad I dressed for success, because this encounter down in Robbie’s basement was truly the first day of the rest of my life. Robbie was already my good bud, even though we hadn’t seen each other for months, and awaiting me down in that suburban Winnipeg basement was a young man named David Tkach.

In Robbie and Tkach I would find the creative sparks that would ignite my internal combustion rock engine for years to come. This was the late ‘90s, and Robbie and Tkach were into “emocore” bands like Mineral, Braid, Cap’n Jazz, Texas is the Reason, Knapsack, and so on. They turned me onto this music, and before you knew it we were all dyeing our hair black. All three of us already had naturally dark hair, so we had definitely reached the “none more black” level of emotiveness.

I was a sad sack back then, to be sure. Just totally lonely and lost. But I had this new emo band I could use as a vehicle for my whining and complaining. Tkach and I both played guitar and sang, Robbie played drums, and we found a bass player named Kevin. We called ourselves Kid Icarus at first, but changed our name to March December Swing. We played a ton of shows around town, mostly at the Royal Albert Arms. We recorded a couple of songs, one of which ended up on a split 7 inch for Permafrost Records. We even had a show booked down in North Dakota—my first foray into international touring—but were held up at the border for so long we missed the show. We had a pretty good time staying at the promoter’s apartment, though. (Top tip for the kids: if you’re a 19-year-old from Canada and find yourself travelling to the States, please know that Everclear is a DANGEROUS BEVERAGE.)

By the turn of the millennium, March December Swing had fizzled out. I can’t recall exactly why, but I know I had started feeling pretty embarrassed by my lack of singing talent and never wanted to sing in public again. Tkach and Robbie might have felt the same way, because soon after we formed a band with no singing, just instruments (Tkach switched to the bass guitar). We called it Giant Sons.

Giant Sons was a band for about two years, from 2001 until 2003. We played a ton of local shows, again mostly at the Albert; we recorded two albums, Consonance and Dark Satanic Mills; and we even went on tour with friends from another local band called The Down and Out. This “tour” was a bit of a joke as we played only a small hand-full of shows throughout Ontario with many days off in between. But it was a ridiculously good time.

In retrospect, Giant Sons was the first band I was in that created good music that I am still proud of. The three of us were like brothers: we fought all the time and we laughed all the time, and somehow worked together to create a bunch of tunes that, I think, were honest expressions from each of us. We started gaining a bit of attention from the local scene and were even invited to open for Propagandhi at the West End Cultural Centre. That was one of our last shows because, dammit, Tkach had ambitions beyond the band and in 2003 he moved to Montreal for grad school.

Robbie and I continued, this time as a five-piece called Rough Music, filled out by our friends Matt, Matt and Brock, whose hardcore band Standstill had just broken up. The five of us were a very strange melange of personalities and musical influences. The music came out weird and, I think, unfocused. We recorded one album, and listening to these songs now I hear so much unrealized potential. If I’m being honest, I think interpersonal issues within the band were a barrier to us finding our legs. We didn’t communicate very well. One of our last songs was, in fact, about how dysfunctional we were!

Rough Music came to an end in 2005, when Robbie moved away for grad school, just like Tkach before him. (Seriously, why weren’t my friends as content as I was being an aimless loser?) For the first time in years, I was on my own, with no band to keep me from flailing into the depths of despair.

But not for long.

During the summer of 2006 I was invited to join Propagandhi, local punk legends that were massively influential to me as a guitarist and as a human being. Just like starting a band with Tkach and Robbie all those years before, this was one of those life-defining moments. In the ensuing years I finally started to find my confidence and didn’t feel so aimless.

At first it was a “fake it til you make it” situation. I definitely did not feel worthy of the task at hand: playing fast, technical music. Remember earlier when I said those flawed playing techniques that you ingrain into your muscle memory become your style? Well, that’s actually horse shit. The way I had been holding a pick for all those years made it physically impossible for me to play Propagandhi songs as well as I needed to. I worked hard to keep up, but I came to realize that my flawed right-hand technique was always going to hold me back.

So, I went back to the woodshed and spent months unlearning the way I had always played and learning the proper way to hold a guitar pick. During this time we rehearsed almost daily and even toured Australia. It was very stressful as I was essentially relearning how to play the guitar. I remember one show in particular when, during soundcheck, I experienced the utmost panic as I just could not play “Purina Hall of Fame” tightly. My new right-hand technique, even after weeks of practice, still did not feel comfortable, and my old way of playing sucked. So, in the hours remaining before the show, I simplified a few parts so that I could get through the song without having a panic attack. Of course, the other guys noticed and were like, “What the hell man?”

I persisted, and after nearly a year the new technique finally felt comfortable. As a result of this huge change in my playing style, I became a WAY better guitar player. It may sound trivial, but committing to switching how I held a pick was a huge accomplishment that fed my confidence and helped me start to feel like I was worthy of being in this band.

Tour photo, c. 2007.

I was with Propagandhi for nine years, until 2015. My time in the band was the most valuable education I’ve ever received. But all good things must come to an end, you dig?

Five-card stud, nothing wild… and the sky's the limit.²

In 2015 I had a brand new daughter and a brand new job as a teacher, but I was band-less and, therefore, lost. I remember seeing Propagandhi play their first show without me at the Park Theatre here in Winnipeg and I literally cried the whole time. What was I thinking? was the question that spiralled in my mind. It was a tough time.

Enter Derek Hogue to save me from myself. Derek had played drums in a band called Silence Equals and also worked with G7 Welcoming Committee Records, who rereleased the Giant Sons “catalogue” as an anthology back in 2006. One night, at a party my partner and I had hosted and that Derek was the last to leave, he asked me if I’d be interested in getting together to jam. “Yes please!” was my response.

For our first few jams we played a Giant Sons song called “Minneapolis” and a Fugazi song called “Arpeggiator.” I don’t recall when or how we decided, but it was clear early on we were going to be an instrumental band. We jammed just the two of us for several months in a tiny sound-proofed room Derek had built in his basement to play drums in. Down there we wrote a couple of songs and quickly found our sound. Yet we were missing something. We needed a bass player. But who?

In the summer of 2017 I saw Tortoise play the West End Cultural Centre here in Winnipeg. At this show I bumped into my old friend Ryan Nash—a fixture of the Winnipeg music scene, a musical wizard, and former member of The Down and Out who I had toured with when I was in Giant Sons. He asked what I’d been up to so I mentioned Derek and I were trying to start an instrumental band but needed a bass player. He said he’d do it, even though he’d never played bass before.

Thus, a beautiful musical relationship was born and has since sustained me through the trials and tribulations of parenthood and a nerve-shattering day job. Together, the three of us have now written and recorded twenty songs spread out over four releases, Pulse 1A, Pulse 1B, Pulse 1C, and Pulse 1D. We call ourselves Agassiz after the massive glacial lake that, for thousands of years, covered this land we live on.

If I have my way, we will be a band until we are old(er) and grey(er).

Looking back, what I am most grateful for is how my involvement with music has connected me to really great people. These people have guided me through what would have otherwise been an aimless life. I kinda feel like I owe everything to my participation in this little culture.

I will leave you with an Agassiz performance from 2019—one of the very few shows we have played. I hope you connect with our music, but, ultimately, creating it together with Derek and Ryan is the connection that really counts for me.

1. The first to name this really stupid reference in the comments will receive a free download code for Agassiz’s new release, Pulse 1D.

2. The first to name this even stupider reference in the comments will receive a free download code for Agassiz’s new release, Pulse 1D.