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| Mike O'Neill, top and Dave Ullrich reunite
as The Inbreds tomorrow at Lee's Palace Santa Cruz
night. | |
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| Duo discovers that Inbreds in the bone
BEN
RAYNER
POP MUSIC CRITIC
As a rule, one should always maintain a healthy
distrust of rock reunions.
How quickly such self-imposed imperatives crumble,
though, when a band tempts the fate of its own good reputation
and announces its reformation. Thus we can wholeheartedly
celebrate the return of long-lost Canadian indie-pop duo the
Inbreds at Lee's Palace tomorrow night.
The short, sweet Inbreds catalogue — four albums of
meltingly catchy bass/drums minimalism released to localized
pockets of acclaim for about six years during the 1990s — is
one of the most criminally underappreciated in Can-rock
history, and well due for rediscovery at a time when Canadian
independent music is widely regarded as the bee's knees.
Plus, it's not like Mike O'Neill and Dave Ullrich are
doing this as a Guess Who-sized cash grab. The "reunion" is
not a tour, but actually just a friendly one-off gig for Tyler
Clark Burke's Santa Cruz club night.
"When they say it's `one night only,' it really is,"
pledges Ullrich, 34. "About a year ago, Tyler basically just
sent this really long email out of the blue to the Inbreds
mailing address with all these reasons why she thought the
Inbreds should do a show. And the thing about it was it was
very specific ... `Here's what I suggest we do.' She was
really laying it out there and you couldn't deny it."
With O'Neill still residing in Halifax — the adopted
home the Inbreds chose after their first couple of formative
years in Kingston — and Ullrich enjoying life as a new dad (he
has a 3-month-old daughter) and computer professional out on
the Danforth, there has been precious little opportunity for
the pair to play together since the Inbreds' amicable break-up
six years ago.
Ullrich got up onstage with his old friend once to
perform the Inbreds standard "Any Sense of Time" at one of
O'Neill's solo shows here in Toronto, but that's been the
extent of their collaboration since their final run of touring
in support 1997's Winning Hearts.
"The last show that Mike and I ever did was in 1998,
and it was actually at the Toronto Street Festival," recalls
Ullrich. "It was outside, with this
Shakespearean-slash-Biblical rain the whole time, and only
for our set. My mother came to our show — she'd seen,
like, maybe three Inbreds shows ever — and she was there,
standing dead centre, through the entire rainfall. It was
unbelievable. She was soaked to the bone by the end of it."
Music has remained a constant in both gentlemen's lives
despite the end of their band. O'Neill has his aforementioned
solo career, which has yielded two fine records of
Lennon-esque (or Inbreds-esque, if you prefer) ditties —
2000's What Happens Now? and last year's The Owl
— and recently spent many months slinging guitar as part
of Sarah Harmer's touring band. These days, he also does sound
work for movies and television, including the entire score for
the movie Love That Boy.
Ullrich, meanwhile, has come back to his roots a bit
more recently: Last spring, after a long sojourn in the
technology business, he launched Canada's first proper
all-digital label, Zunior Records (http://www.zunior.com/), with friend and
business partner Terry Scott.
The non-profit Zunior's mandate is simply to provide
deserving artists with a means of meeting demand for their
records that avoids the costs of pressing CDs and distribution
and the hassles of dealing with record labels —
something with which the Inbreds were reasonably familiar.
"Part of the theory is to set up a framework that's a
little different and that kind of operates a little outside of
that," says Ullrich, who was proud to offer O'Neill's The
Owl as Zunior's first exclusive online-only release.
"That's the thing with digital — there's a way to operate an
entire career outside of that framework. If you don't want to
get bitten by the sharks, you can stay out of the water."
Zunior's site relies on no-cost, open-source software
("It's very punk-rock in its origins and development") and the
artists who put their recordings up for sale get most of the
money collected from sales. Prices run, by the way, at a
measly 88 cents per track or $8.88 per album, including
downloadable artwork.
In addition to O'Neill, the label currently offers
downloadable music from the Dinner is Ruined, the Rheostatics,
former Local Rabbit Ben Gunning, the Wooden Stars, Scribbled
Out Man and others, to say nothing of much-prized Inbreds
oldies and rarities.
Ullrich's eventual goal is to see some hot young act
graduate to a major-label career through Zunior, or perhaps
even rely on the world of "virtual" music distribution for an
entire, successful run. Either way, he's pleased at the rate
the label has been growing, even if it means he now has two
day jobs.
"What I wanted to do was create something in the spirit
of indie-rock, in the spirit of open-source and in the spirit
of open standards," says Ullrich. "And it's worked really well
... Every week, every day, we go a little further."
Check out Zunior Live! at the Horseshoe Tavern on March
24 with Scribbled Out Man, Wax Mannequin, the Golden Seals,
the Mountainside Band and Silent Five.)
Additional
articles by Ben Rayner
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