Artist Biography
by Kurt Wolff
The cult popularity of
Uncle Tupelo and its spin-off groups
Wilco and
Son Volt
opened the doors for what became an entirely new generation of
musicians who grew up in the punk rock generation but found genuine
connection with traditional country music -- especially as interpreted
through
Gram Parsons, who's more or less the granddaddy of country-rock. The
Scud Mountain Boys --
Joe Pernice,
Stephen Desaulniers,
Bruce Tull, and
Tom Shea -- clearly fit into this camp.
The band originally played electric rock & roll under the name
the Scuds.
Pernice,
Desaulniers, and
Tull
formed the group in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1991, and they
gained a respectable local following. But the bandmembers soon tired of
hauling equipment around and found they much more enjoyed the after-show
get-togethers playing acoustic country songs around the kitchen table
at home to the stage. Finally they decided to haul the kitchen table to a
club. Finding the response positive, they've stayed with the new
format.
The band's debut album,
Pine Box
(originally just a cassette release), was recorded live around the
kitchen table and featured slow, intensely quiet originals alongside
covers of '70s pop-country songs such as "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves"
and "Please, Mr., Please." Their second album,
Dance the Night Away -- which added a couple of rock songs from their
Scuds
days into the mix again -- came out on Chunk Records in 1995, and
national interest in the band grew quickly. In early 1996 they were
signed to Sub Pop, and the label released the band's third album in less
than two years,
Massachusetts.
It proved the band's last, however, although
Pernice and his brother
Bob soon recorded a new album,
Overcome by Happiness. Billed under the name the
Pernice Brothers, it appeared on Sub Pop in 1998. Many more followed over the next ten years, alongside solo
Joe Pernice material under his own name as well as under the
Chappaquiddick Skyline moniker. The
Scud Mountain Boys reunited in 2012 and released a brand new collection of songs,
Do You Love the Sun, the following year.
