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Two guys walking into a bar would be typically be a setup for some kind of a wisecracking cautionary tale. But in the case of Montreal’s The Low Sixes, it’s the impractical origin story that led to the birth of the punk-injected power pop band.
The four-piece — assembled from a hefty lineup of the scene’s indie veterans – began unassumingly enough as singers and guitarists Jonathan Cummins and Brendan Drouillard returned home from an extensive European tour with their other project, heavy psych rock band USA Out of Vietnam, and debriefed over some drinks at the local waterhole, Barfly.
The conversation quickly turned to developing a new project and, soon enough, the two were recruiting friends, drummer/singer John Milchem (Starvin Hungry) and bassist/singer Jon Asencio (from Cummins’ other band, renowned ‘80s/’90s Montreal indie punk band Doughboys), to form The Low Sixes. Asencio has since departed the band with mutual friend Alan Hildebrandt (Priors) taking over bass duties though Ascencio appears on the band’s debut, The Oshawa Tree, out October 4, 2024 on Forge Again Records.
“The band was mainly put together to escape the job doldrums, it wasn’t until we decided to record four songs at Le Stuzzio with Ryan Battistuzzi that provoked a surprisingly positive reaction from our friends that we decided we would turn into an actual band and do an entire record,” says Cummins, adding that the band hopes to “erase the ‘cool’ factor” often associated with DIY underground music. “Montreal has a very large experimental scene (Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Colin Stetson, Tim Hecker etc.) and although we love that music, we are sort of reacting against it as we believe everybody can appreciate a good pop song,” he adds. “We want to be as inclusive as possible and be the band that can bring entertainment back to small stages and DIY spaces again.” Case in point: The quartet recently played a birthday party in Ottawa for friend and artist Dirty Donny who has created imagery for Metallica and Aerosmith.
The Oshawa Tree shares its name with the “less-than-perfect city” of Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. “The title came to me while I was trapped in Joshua Tree National Park in California with no money or passport to get back to Montreal,” Cummins recalls. Songs like the retro-tinged lead-off single, “Ryan’s Favorite Song” (named for the album’s producer and with an accompanying music video directed by Hildebrandt himself) have been thread together by a common love of British Invasion harmonies, 1970s AM radio, and catchy, melodically-driven punk and power pop from the likes of Redd Kross, Rocket From The Crypt, Big Star, XTC, T Rex and Cheap Trick as well as touches of Guided By Voices, The Buzzcocks and The Beatles. Second single, “Teenage Crime Wave” was even their unabashed attempt to namedrop The Kinks’ Ray Davies; it’s a song “about getting too old to lug around your Peavey Backstage amp,” says Cummins. The album also features guest vocalists Olga Goreas, who is now a permanent member, and Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes), Chance Hutchison and Jackie Blenkarn (Private Lives) and keys from Patrick Watson.
Across the album’s nine tracks is a “universal pop theme of boy meets girl, girl dumps boy,” says Cummins, “but if people are willing to bend an ear there are some sharp lyrical turns to be found.” He adds, “Overall, there was a definite attempt to be up to snuff with the music that influenced us while never taking itself too serious or becoming self-indulgent. The music really comes from a fan’s perspective and is a love letter to power pop music.”
