Joanie Loves Chachi band kicks high with My Brother’s Karate
Joanie Loves Chachi has been laying down its brand of pop-punk off-and-on for the past 14 years. The Chilliwack trio of Dean Young (guitar/vocals); Barry Higginson (drums); and Norm Thody (bass/ vocals) have four albums to their credit. Having logged in far more than the mythic 10,000 hours of time said to be required to master one's art, the band is punching well above its past successes with My Brother's Karate.
The album has debuted in a few top 10s on a number of North American college radio charts and hit No. 1 in Glassboro, N.J. It has also been added to the Discovery Channel archives, which has the potential to open doors to music program placement.
“We did a whole radio campaign working with Tinderbox out of St. Paul (Minn.) and they focused on the single Issa Knife, the second song on the album,” said Young. “The sound has always had equal parts pop focus and punk, and we certainly have our rock pedigree in our back pockets. My Brother's Karate won in the punk category at the most recent Fraser Valley Music Awards in November, which was very cool.”
That rock pedigree Young speaks of is the time Thody logged in playing with the band Mystery Machine at various stages. Mystery Machine enjoyed a solid cross-canada following, releasing well-reviewed albums such as Headfirst into Everything in 1998 on Nettwerk Records. Early on in the Joanie Loves Chachi's period, its song Please Keep off the Grass was featured in the Space Channel series Alienated. But the band had trouble capitalizing on that stroke of luck.
“In our early stages, Joanie Loves Chachi got some great shows such as the Slam City Jam, and being featured on Alienated was great, but we also drifted apart for a period after that doing other things,” he said. “Then we came back together and it all started moving really fast and the new album came about quickly. This is the first time that we've really gotten behind an album with a proper radio campaign and publicity, and the difference, even at this weird time, is really obvious.”
Young finds that the press for the new album is predominantly coming from areas other than B.C. and thinks that the radio campaign's focus targeting U.S. outlets and certain Canadian locations played a big part in that coverage. One of the musician's targets was to bring the new material to indie-friendly local radio such as the University of B.C.'S CITR using the positive results from American markets as a motivator for getting playlisted.
“I kind of like the idea of a local promotion where they play a song and ask people to guess which local band this is and, in the end, we deliver a prize to the winner,” he said. “Every time the song is played, a clue can be given as to who we are. Because we aren't going to be doing a lot of playing right now (because of the virus)."
Fortunately for Joanie Loves Chachi, My Brother's Karate has a few more obvious singles that can be selected out of the 11-song set. Tracks such as the head-bobbing Hypercritical, the handclap-along cover of the Laverne and Shirley theme — Making Our Dreams Come True — and the chiming title track all have singalong potential. Anyone who enjoys acts such as Jimmy Eat World, The Offspring and many Warped Tour sounding acts will encounter much to appreciate in Joanie Loves Chachi's sound.
So far, no duet has been planned for a cover of the theme song, When You Look at Me, from the TV series the band takes its name from. Apparently, the trio aren't dedicated Scott Baio and Erin Moran fans who can quote lines from the short-lived Happy Days spinoff that ran for two seasons in the early '80s. The name came about in a much more random way.
“The bass player from Mystery Machine, Shane Ward, came up with it after seeing us play a gig,” said Young. “I was staying at his place in Vancouver and he told me we needed a name and I asked him what came to mind and he said, ‘Joanie Loves Chachi.' Right then and there, I knew we had it.”
He thinks it reflects the band members' tongue-in-cheek approach to making music for fun first-and-foremost.