I started the Pernice Brothers with my only brother Bob back in 1996. I was still in the Scud Mountain Boys at the time, and Bob and I wanted to make a pop record (or at least one more "pop" than the records the Scud Mountain Boys were making.) I was still signed to Sub Pop at the time, and they agreed to let me make a Pernice Brothers album.

It became obvious to me pretty quickly that I wanted to leave the Scud Mountain Boys and do the Pernice Brothers full time.

Though Bob never had any intentions of touring, we released two seven inch singles (on Sub Pop and Summershine) prior to making what would become Overcome by Happiness. Since the name was already out there, I just decided to keep it.

Bob is in the band. He just comes and goes as he pleases. Peyton is (and always has been) the band's main guitar player. Bob is very good at complimenting the arrangements at various stages of completion.

You're on your own with BMI. I don't know all of the intricacies, but you would have to license the performance rights from them. For more info, go to www.bmi.com.

For our part:

1. The Podcast must be free to the person downloading/listening
2. Every effort must be made to position the Pernice Brothers song in such a way that it can't be edited and downloaded as a stand-alone song. In other words, talk over the intro or outro.
3. We also wouldn't mind if the song was encoded at a quality that wasn't the absolute best, to deter theft of the song [128kbps or lower recommended].
4. The Pernice Brothers must be identified in the podcast somehow, and if appropriate, we would be very grateful if the podcaster included a link to www.pernicebrothers.com
5. We ask that the podcaster let us know about the availability of the podcast, in case we'd like to hear it. (Joyce)

I have no interest at all in listening to myself sing, especially a tape of a live show. It would be like watching an hour-long video tape of myself trying to pick up a girl who is clearly out of my league and clearly uninterested. That said, there are people who enjoy watching that kind of thing. Just as there are people who like live shows on tape. I also understand that if anyone goes through the trouble of coming to show, asking permission to tape and then does so, that person is obviously a fan.

I'm not going to say go ahead and tape away. It is nice to be asked, and I don't recall ever telling someone who asked that they couldn't tape a show (though I might). Once a tape is made, it's probably going to split and multiply through some kind of miracle of mitosis or miosis or whatever, and find its way to all sorts of crazy places. I'm not about to do anything about that UNLESS THEY ARE BEING SOLD. I always ask nicely the first time, and this is no different: Please, don't sell recordings. Thanks.

Ashmont Records Inc., probably wouldn't mind having a documented copy for the Pernice Brothers archive we're assembling (for Joe's mother, who has the most extensive, and probably most complete collection out there).

Hey, I loved my tape of the Jam's last gig, and though I no longer have it, it's not because I sold it. My high school girlfriend GAVE IT AWAY! (Joe)

See above. We’d rather it wasn’t happening, but we won’t (can’t?) do anything to stop it. Selling tapes though is the kind of behavior that your mother would not be proud of. (Joyce)

It’s really truly not that we have anything against any particular place.

Ex-US: The reason that we don’t work outside of the US all that much has nothing to do with an ethnocentric view. It’s that we don’t have trust funds, never won the lottery, and most of us are just barely making the mortgage payments. Touring is really expensive, especially outside of the United States, and we can’t afford to go out on any tour in which we don’t cover all of our expenses and the guys don’t get the less-than-subsistence wages they’ve grown accustomed to. Border crossings have also become even less fun in the“war on terror” world that we live in.

US: It’s all logistics. We can afford to be out for a certain number of days, and it often comes done to what looks best on a map. Beyond that, there are usually some considerations with regard to promoters in particular cities with whom we have long-standing relationships, or where we’ve had good shows before.

Lyrics for “Live a Little” can be downloaded as part of the EPK.

We’re not opposed to posting lyrics necessarily, but don’t really understand why everyone wants to be able to get them so easily. When we were kids, we worked for lyrics. We’d first tape the songs off WRKO 680AM in Boston by putting the microphone of the tape recorder against the speaker from the transistor radio. Then we’d fast forward past the Dale Dorman intro and start scribbling the lyrics, hitting rewind and re-listening until we got them. “We had joy.” Rewind. “We had joy, we had.” Rewind. “We had joy we had fun we had.” Rewind. And so on. We just don’t want you to miss a crucial part of your musical development. You kids just want it all handed to you.

We're just a small family-run operation, and purely a vehicle for the artistic output of Holbrook, MA's second most famous resident (the first being Bush II former Chief of Staff Andrew Card) Joe Pernice. We have no intention of putting out records by anyone else ever. The problem with sending us demos, is that it makes us feel really guilty. We don't have time to listen to them, because Ashmont Records isn't even our full time job. We have full-time jobs and families and pets, etc. Some of us even make attempts at a social life. So these tapes/CD's come, and they sit in a big pile, and never get listened to, because there aren't enough hours in a day, but every day we walk buy them and feel guilty (we were raised Catholic). Or, if they were handed to us sometime out on the road, they stay in the van, and then get boxed up, because the last thing ANYONE wants to do on the last day of a tour is scour the van for forgotten belongings. But we feel rally bad about it, because someone made the trouble to make it, and give it to us, and has a (reasonable) expectation that someone will listen to it. But the reality is, no one will. So if you have any sympathy at all, just don't send them. Now we really feel like jerks, but wouldn't you rather know? (Joyce)

Coming Soon

A ZIP file is a compressed file format. It's a lot like a suitcase in that it can contain many other files. The reason you might use a ZIP file is to compress (or make smaller) a large group of files in order to send it to someone. There are numerous programs available for Windows and Mac OSX that will open a ZIP file.

There's a wide variety of reasons Christopher aka Chief may have deleted your post. The top culprits are as follows:

1. You're a spammer. If you're trying to promote a band, please do it elsewhere, if you want to DISCUSS a band or artist, please, by all means!
2. E-bay auctions. Again, spam.
3. Personal attacks. There's really no reason to verbally attack someone on an Indie band's website. Really unneccessary. Try to act like an adult.
4. Direct linking to copywritten work. Please don't link to illegal mp3s from this site. It just looks *very* bad. If there's a mp3 a band has posted on it's own website, feel free to link only if the remote website is kosher with hotlinking. If you don't know what that means, don't link.
5. You've really annoyed me. If I kindly ask you not to do something, please do not argue with me. Further, don't ignore me and do it again. That's just not right.

(Christopher)