Joe Pernice

American musician and writer (Massachusetts, 1967), now resident in Canada. He has fronted various bands including Scud Mountain boys, Chappaquiddick Skyline and Pernice Brothers. Even Nick Horby envies Joe Pernice, of whom he said, “One can accept, reluctantly, Pernice's apparently inexhaustible ability to knock out brilliant three-minute pop songs. Just about any Pernice Brothers record contains half a dozen tunes comparable to Elvis Costello’s best work. But now it turns out he can write fiction too, and so envy and bitterness become unavoidable.” Indeed, Horby has good reason to beat his breast. The six albums of Scud Mountain boys and Pernice Brothers, Joe Pernice’s two key bands, are nothing less than a passport to artistic eternity. Not content with that, he had the gall to publish a novel, It Feels So Good When I Stop (recently translated into Spanish by Blackie Books: Esta canción me recuerda a mí). This is no typical rocker-novel product but a superb piece of human narrative, acerbic and full of pop, up there with the greats of the genre.

Bio written by Kiko Amat, co-director of CCCB's Primera Persona festival