Pot luck

>> Montreal’s Penelope hook up with their heroes

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

For Montreal francophone punk band Penelope, it must have been a dream come true. Last summer, the trio packed up their van and high-tailed it to hardcore’s famous Inner Ear studios in Washington, D.C. (where Fugazi and Minor Threat have recorded). There, they laid down their record under the watchful eye of hardcore legend Dave Smalley (Down by Law, DYS, All, Dag Nasty) and had it engineered by Don Zientara, whose name appears on almost every single Discord Records release.

“As a teenager, I really dug Dag Nasty, so I was pretty happy when Dave Smalley agreed to produce us,” says drummer Eric Roberge. “It really was a dream come true. We sent him the first record and he said he wanted to work with the band and we pretty much took it from there.” Smalley was so taken with the band he even got out of the producer chair and contributed backing vocals on seven of the 12 songs, while the band repaid the favour by doing a French version of Down by Law’s “D.J.G.”

Despite being from D.C., Smalley’s knowledge of French made it easy for him to sing the lyrics. “Dave had a real good background in French because he lived in France for awhile. He had a really good accent when he sang and would talk to us in French as well as English.” Another guest player on the record was guitarist Brian Baker (Dag Nasty, Minor Threat, Bad Religion), who put down some guitar on three of the songs. “That happened as more of an accident. I was asking Dave if he knew of anybody who had any pot and he phoned up Brian. He didn’t have any pot but he ended up coming down the next day and played guitar on three songs in about two hours.

“We were going to include some English songs on this record but unfortunately ran out of time in the studio. We definitely want to do a cross-Canada tour with this record, hopefully as a support act, and I think next time we will definitely include some more English songs.” :

With Fifty Nutz at Petit campus on Friday,Jan. 18, 9pm, $6