Joe Pernice

Saturday, May 9th

Doors at 7 | 8pm show

Tickets

Sunny, I Was Wrong

"When a song comes, I make sure I don’t let it go by," says Joe Pernice. "Maybe it’s my age. Get it all out while you still can." Sunny, I Was Wrong, his first studio album of new material under his own name, was born during a period of concentrated inspiration and productivity.

Songs were coming almost more quickly than he could get them down on tape, as though they’d been waiting to pounce at just the right time. With a little help from his friends, Pernice fashioned a handful of them into a refinement of the qualities that have distinguished him as a songwriter: aching melodies, arrangements that nod to pop’s past without getting mired in nostalgia, and deep empathy for the characters in his verses.

Pernice has been catching songs for thirty years, first with Scud Mountain Boys and then with the Pernice Brothers. Instead of the Pernice Brothers moniker, he emerges as a solo artist with Sunny, I Was Wrong (after two solo efforts home-recorded and self-released during the pandemic in 2020: Richard and the Barry Manilow tribute Could It Be Magic). "It was always just me and other people, but in this case there’s almost none of those other people. My brother Bob sings one vocal, and Patrick Berkery plays one drum track. They’re the only two left who I was playing with regularly. It felt like it was time to move on."

Not long ago, Pernice found himself with time on his hands. "For years I coached baseball for my son," he says, "but when he became a little more independent, I stopped coaching and suddenly had all this freedom." Riding bicycles provided long stretches of calm and helped clear his head so he could write prolifically. "My mind is always going, which can be good and bad, but riding a bicycle is really the only thing that shuts my brain off. It gives me clarity and focus, so I was able to write like crazy."

Ideas arrived quickly, sometimes as full songs and sometimes as snippets. He overloaded his phone with voice memos and kept guitars around the house. "One Saturday I woke up and wrote four songs in one day. There was nothing special about that day. It was just when the songs arrived." Two of those songs appear on the album, including "I’d Rather Look Away," which features Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake.

He wanted a studio record that felt cohesive: "I didn’t want just a hodgepodge of tunes. I didn’t want to make a concept record, but I wanted something that needs to be heard from start to finish. I wanted it to be a destination. An event." Overwhelmed by the number of songs he’d written, Pernice turned to friend Warren Zanes to help select and sequence the record. Zanes helped cut some songs and find the flow.

Pernice then hired a band of Toronto players to bring the songs to life, including Barenaked Ladies’ Jim Creeggan on bass, Mike Evin on piano, and Mike Belitsky on drums. He sent demos, rehearsed in Jim’s studio, and recorded live on the spot. The live-in-studio approach lends an intimacy and spontaneity to tracks like "The Black and the Blue" and "It Won’t Be Me" (featuring Rodney Crowell). "There might be one or two takes where the tempo moves here or there. We could have done it again, but there’s a thing to it. You always want to go with that rather than beat the song to death."

"Deep Into the Dawn" came as one of those songs that felt like it needed another voice. Pernice reached out to Aimee Mann, who agreed to sing on the track. He was surprised when her harmony matched the one he sang on his demo. "I just sent her the track with my lead vocal. I didn’t send her the demo, because I wanted her to do her thing. But the harmony she sings is exactly the harmony I sang on the demo—that ooh oooh ooooh part in the background. I couldn’t believe it."

Sunny, I Was Wrong ends with "It Got Away from Me," which features Jimmy Webb on piano. Pernice recalls Webb calling to give a bit of production advice—suggesting they start the song with the back end of the chorus—and then playing on the track. "I might get hit by a bus tomorrow, but Jimmy Webb plays on a song I wrote. Nothing can change that." Webb’s piano enters about halfway through the song, adding a consoling commentary to Pernice’s reflections on missed opportunities and regrets.

The album tallies up things that get away from us: friends and lovers we haven’t seen, old promises, and forgotten dreams. "Making music is not always easy, but it's still magical for me when you find that thing that makes the song pop. I don’t think I’ve made a better album than this one, or one that pops like this one. It feels like I’ve made a big leap."