Please note that all of the personal messages left here for Joe are not actually seen by Joe, and some of them actually embarrass us a great deal. This is the band's "official" myspace page, in that those who "administer" the page are, in fact, employees of Ashmont Records, Inc., member, Dorchester Board of Trade.
This is the domain of well-meaning record company bureaucrats with no artistic talent, who make money by exploiting the talents of people like Joe Pernice. Joe Pernice blogs fairly regularly at www.pernicebrothers.com, but not here.
Over a 15-year career in music, Pernice has made 13 full-length records. He began in the mid-90’s, with Scud Mountain Boys, who released two albums (Pine Box and Dance the Night Away, later compiled as The Early Year) before signing to Sub Pop and releasing Massachusetts, considered by many to be an alt-country masterpiece.
In 1998, Pernice disbanded the Scuds and assembled Pernice Brothers, recording Overcome By Happiness (Sub Pop), called “a startling slice of beauty” by The New York Times and “A thing of pernicious beauty indeed” by The Irish Times. In 1999 and 2000, he released two records, under the names Chappaquiddick Skyline and Big Tobacco. (More or less considered solo records, they do feature assorted members of the Pernice family circus, so that designation is a bit misleading. This naming inconsistency also dogs the enterprise to this day, and therefore, Pernice promises to call everything Pernice Brothers from now on, until he changes his mind.)
In 2001, Pernice and his manager decided that they were as capable of not selling many records as anyone. They founded Ashmont Records, releasing a series of Pernice Brothers records, featuring various players, beginning with The World Won’t End, which was called a “lush, perfectly realized record” by The Onion (not ironically). 2003 brought the release of Yours, Mine and Ours, called “a monumental record from a towering talent” by Magnet. A live record and DVD, Nobody’s Watching/Nobody’s Listening was released in 2004. In 2005, Discover a Lovelier You came out, and the song “Amazing Glow” was included in the legendary “Partings” episode of Gilmore Girls. Pernice performed the song on the show. Live a Little, called “a stunning album” by Spin was released in 2006.
In 2009 Joe Pernice published his first novel, It Feels So Good When I Stop (Riverhead/Penguin), and Ashmont released a soundtrack of the same name, more or less, featuring Pernice covering songs referenced in the novel. (A novella, Meat is Murder, was published by Continuum Books in 2003, as part of their popular 33 1/3 series. It remains one of the bestselling books in the series.)
A New Pernice Brothers album comes out on June 15, 2010.
CDs and t-shirts available for sale at www.pernicebrothers.com.
