Brock Pytel, best known as the singing drummer for late 80’s Montreal pop-punks Doughboys, has just released his new solo single, ‘Anemic Heart’.

The single is the follow up to his 2022 single, ‘Hurrah Hooray’. The Vancouver transplant’s two latest singles were both from a session he did in 2011 at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango with Howard Bilerman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arcade Fire) after some Doughboys reunion tour dates with The Foo Fighters. The track features two of his former bandmates, Jonathan Cummins on the Jazzmaster, and Jon “Bond Head” Asencio on bass (both of whom are in Montreal’s The Low Sixes) and was mastered by Ronan Chris Murphy (Gwar, King Crimson). Accompanying the new single is Pytel’s video for ‘Anemic Heart,’ filmed and edited by prolific Vancouver artist RD Cane. The video features blurry cityscapes, fires and idyllic beach scenes that compliment Pytel’s melancholic lyrics and harmonies, painting the contrast of a love gained, then lost.

It’s really great to have you. How have you been lately? Have you found the isolation creatively challenging or freeing?

Brock Pytel: It is super awesome to chat with you! I have been mostly really good lately, thanks!

I found the COVID isolation to be a bit of a mixed bag, honestly. On the one hand, I’m pretty introverted, so I have no problem keeping to myself and just immersing myself in my own creative projects and focussing on self-care. On the other hand, there were times when the band could not even meet together at our rehearsal space due to the public health order here in Vancouver. That went on for quite a while. All together, we went over two years without playing a gig.

I also was going through some health stuff and a breakup at the time so, yeah, it was challenging.

You just recently released a new single. What’s the story behind ‘Anemic Heart’?

Like many of my songs, ‘Anemic Heart’ is part confessional, part imagination. The protagonist is reflecting on a failed relationship and the shortcomings that may have led there, with the usual complement of mixed emotions. I’d had the first line of the chorus kicking around in my head for a while. When Howard Bilerman handed me the keys to the studio (Hotel2Tango) after our first day of work there, he said, “Write something new for tomorrow”.

Everyone went home and I got to work on the couch with an old archtop. Jonathan Cummins, Jon “Bond Head” Asencio and I tracked it the next day.

This new single is a follow-up to ‘Hurrah Hooray’. Are you planning to release an album in the near future? Can you reveal some details?

There are a couple more things from those H2T sessions in 2011. One song, ‘All or Nothing,’ has since been re-recorded by SLIP~ons, and there is another with some really nice background vocals that is still unfinished. I would love to get that done, but the current focus is the new SLIP~ons EP, which is ready to be mastered when Ronan Chris Murphy gets back from Peru next week.

You have some familiar faces playing with you on the latest singles, tell us more.

Yeah, as I mentioned, it’s Jon “Bond Head” Asencio playing bass and singing harmonies, and Jonathan Cummins playing guitar. The really angular Jazzmaster stuff you hear all over the track is Jonathan Cummins. He also played a bunch of guitar on ‘Hurrah Hooray’. The crazy bend right at the beginning is his clawhanding because he was doing a punk rock jump off the ledge of the control room glass. Howard just left it in there. The Ebow part in the bridge of ‘Anemic’ Heart is me.

How was it to be back together with former bandmates?

Playing with those guys is so natural, especially for a song like ‘Hurrah Hooray’. I showed Jonathan Cummins the parts and then we ran the song down a couple times while Howard Bilerman worked in stealth mode. I don’t think we needed more than three or so takes. We did spend a bit more time on the second tune, maybe because it is a bit more subtle.

What was the production process like? What was it like to work with Howard Bilermanand and Ronan Chris Murphy?

Howard is very intuitive and supportive and incredibly humble and generous. The whole vibe at H2T is just super inspiring. As I mentioned, Howard will just be quietly going about his business setting microphones and such so you really don’t have to think about anything but playing your instrument well or singing the note. He is really about capturing the moment, and is not interested in getting perfect takes or comping things together ad nauseum.

Ronan Chris Murphy is similarly easy to work with. We have known each other since like 1987, and he is a Virginia boy, so he grew up listening to stuff like that Faith / Void Split split LP. He was careful to preserve the dynamics of J’s mix (J Robbins mixed ‘Hurrah Hooray’ at Magpie Cage last year) but he also half-jokingly sent me a “Major Label” version which we, of course, did not use.

Until recently your life was occupied with the film industry, tell us more about what you did.

Well I still work in film/TV to pay the bills, but I try to minimize the long hours and stress as much as possible. I’m a rigging grip. That means basically I spend a lot of time up on the roofs of soundstages or various locations, driving around aerial boom lifts, et cetera. Grips works under the director of photography, along with the electrics and camera departments. We also do a lot of work for VFX providing greenscreens, et cetera.

Tell me about SLIP~ons?

SLIP~ons is the band I formed about ten years ago after I went home to Vancouver following those H2T sessions. I played drums on a session or two for Brian Minato and we eventually started working on demos of some of my songs. ‘Apart,’ ‘Science Fiction’ and a few other things, one of which evolved into ‘Undivided’ on the forthcoming ‘Heavy Machinery’ EP.

I’d played drums in Mongoose for a little while, so we roped Shockk (Rob Matharu) in on guitar. At that time Adam Fink (Actors) was our drummer. Shane Wilson saw us doing some Replacements covers at a local gig and swore that he would join the band. We’ve been pretty casual but have had some decent shows opening for Propagandhi, Swingin’ Utters, Supersuckers, and so on.

I’m excited to discuss your days with Doughboys. What kind of records would we find if we visited your teenage room before forming your first band?

I formed my first band in like sixth or seventh grade. At that time I was pretty much listening to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper Band. Before that it was Kiss and Cheap Trick. When I left home at about 16 I was listening to a lot of Neil Young, and that was what really inspired me to pick up a guitar and start writing songs. The first records I listened to as a very young child were my mom’s Simon & Garfunkel LP’s.

Doughboys first tour (1987) | Photo by Chris Barrows

Would you like to elaborate on the formation of the band?

John Kastner and I went to high school together, along with Sean Friesen, Paul Remington, and Glenn (TJ) Collins. When those guys were in Asexuals, my band at the time played on a couple of local community shows with them. Sean and Paul were the first guys to play Clash records.

A few years later, I ran into John in the Plateau area while he was postering for a Tupelo Chain Sex show. He told me he’d left the Asexuals and was starting a new band and asked if I would join. I was the singer in a band at the time and didn’t have any drums. He said, “If I get you some drums, will you join?” and I said I would.

Not long after, we went to this gear rental place in Dorval and got that black 70’s Ludwig kit (which is still owned by Bruce Cawdron who used it on the first couple Godspeed You! Black Emperors) and that Music Man combo amp that John Kastner used on the first tour. We drove to Toronto and basically kidnapped Scott McCullough and brought him back to Montreal. We held some informal auditions for the bass player job, but “Bond Head” (Jon Asencio) was more or less already the guy. We broke into Failsafe’s practice space at the Psyche Industry local for our first rehearsal and I busted Ewan’s bass drum head. Sorry Ewan.

How did you get signed to MTL Records?

That was a sort of convoluted thing. ‘Whatever’ originally came out on Pipeline Records, which was run by a local distributor at the time called Bonaparte. We did our entire first four months on the road in the states with no LPs in stores anywhere and when we got back to Montreal, a number of things changed. We licensed ‘You’re Related’ to be in this feature film and a byproduct of the deal was a remixed 7” of that song. MTL was basically the imprint created for that purpose.

It must have been very exciting to record the material for your debut album? What do you recall from ‘Whatever’ sessions?

The first thing that comes to mind is how awesome Studio Victor was. We’d done the first demos at La Majeure, but Victor was this old RCA studio which had been built to record large acoustic ensembles. It had super high ceilings with steam bent mahogany panels curved for favourable reflections. We played all the basic tracks live in that big room together. Fast. Lenny Pinkas from Men Without Hats came in and played this gorgeous baby grand piano on ‘I Remember’. I think I sang ‘No Holiday’ and ‘You’re Related’ lying down on the floor with a big Neumann above my head.

How did that lead you to Restless Records and the release of ‘Home Again’?

Restless didn’t come into the picture until a bit later. We showcased at the New Music Seminar in NYC on the next big US tour. I think that was where that relationship began. When we got to California, ALL had some recording time, so we took advantage of the opportunity to work with Bill and Stephen at Third Wave in Torrance and tracked all of those songs. We’d been playing them all live so it didn’t take that long.

What are some of your favourite gigs you did?

There were so many memorable gigs! From crazy all ages ones in Appleton, WI to opening for Suicidal at Fender’s Ballroom, First Avenue in MPLS with the Descendents (who’s set was documented on Liveage), the time we played in a chicken wire cage on a bill with Rollins Band, ALL, Short Dogs Grow, and MIA…

“It was to be in the band OR go shave my head and be a monk”

You left the band in 1990. Would you like to tell us what was happening around the time?

As I remember, we had waited quite a while for ‘Home Again’ to come out. We were divided about signing with Restless in the first place and the touring had really ground us down. There had been some tense moments.

That fall, I took a ten day Vipassana retreat and found it really beneficial. I found myself conflicted between really wanting to keep digging into that (Vipassana meditation) and going to Europe with the band. I was pretty extreme back then. Everything was very black and white, and the idea of playing in a punk rock band AND developing a meditation practice did not occur to me as a possibility. I was sort of avoiding the conflict in the band as well. For me it was to be in the band OR go shave my head and be a monk. The middle path didn’t seem possible.

In the spring we sat down with Paul Newman, who we’d known as the drummer for NoMind, and arranged for him to replace me. The Doughboys went to Europe and I went to Western Massachusetts for the summer and then to Igatpuri.

Tell us about India and how it affected your life?

That’s challenging to put into a short answer! I spent a lot of time sitting in a meditation cell. I travelled on pilgrimages to some Buddhist sites. Rajgiri, Bodhgaya, Lumbini, Saranath, Kushinagar. Hung out with monks. I eventually came to the conclusion that it was not the time for me to live the life of a Bhikkhu.

Making music is too important. This sort of hit me one night at a concert at Rang Bhavan in Mumbai. It was L. Shankar on stereophonic violin, with Vikku Vinayakaram on clay pot and Zakir Hussein on tabla.

So in terms of how it affected me, it was a big left turn, which ultimately led me back to where I started with a bit more wisdom and compassion. I had some stuff I needed to face, and I bit off a bit more than I bargained for, so it took a while.

There’s a less known project called Heather. With it you released ‘Calluna Vulgaris’. Please tell me about it.

Ha! This was a band I played in briefly when I was living in Seattle. My wife at the time played bass and Ronan Chris Murphy played guitar. ‘Calluna Vulgaris’ was some stuff Bond Head and I recorded in the shed behind his place in Montreal on cassette 4-track. He had this goofy guitar with like three or four strings all tuned to the same note that he just droned on like a tamboura. I read bits of the Salla Sutta over it and I think we made a hundred cassette copies with photocopied covers.

What are some of the most important players that influenced your own style and what in particular did they employ in their playing that you liked?

Well, in terms of drumming, Bill Stevenson really influenced me. I learned how to be able to play the right hand eighth notes at faster tempos for the whole set from him. Before that I was using the butt ends of my sticks and running out of gas after three songs, and crazy gluing my blisters. It was basic stuff like being relaxed and letting the stick do the work. I also lifted the surf beat from him, which he probably got from the Last.

I had a teacher at Berklee named Ed Kaspik who was a tremendous support to me, and really inspired me in terms of odd time shapes, and polyrhythmic stuff. As far as songwriting, Neil Young, Bob Mould, Grant Hart, Paul Westerberg, Buddy Holly…