Courtesy of Corey Poluk
Bespectacled punk dude Joel Butler once impressed Southern Albertan audiences with his work in the surf-tinged garage act Myelin Sheaths the pogo-worthy punk of The Moby Dicks and the nihilistic hardcore of Stressed Out. Then two years ago he left Lethbridge and never looked back.
“I tell myself that I moved to Vancouver to go to school but there hasn’t really been that much school happening” says Butler. “I’ve done everything from mental health work to construction to bartending since I’ve been out here. Beer drinking and being a dick also occupies a lot of my time.”
Of course music is still in the cards for Butler who now fronts the fantastic punk act Nervous Talk. Vocal and guitar duties are shared with Todd Taylor the former Timecopz member who moonlights as the bassist for B-Lines and the band is rounded out by drummer Trevor Racz (The Ballantynes) and bassist Shane Grass (Shitty Neighbours).
Nervous Talk started in 2012 soon after Butler relocated to Vancouver. “The idea was to start a band in Vancouver once I moved here and focus on a style of music that I hadn’t messed with much in the past” he says. “I had some ideas for a dream team band lineup before moving out and Trevor and Todd were both on it as I’d met them through music/vandalism way back. I met Shane later and he’d have been on the list if I’d met him before. Good bunch of dickheads.”
In their brief existence the group has already dropped a 7-inch for Mammoth Cave Recording Co. The release is simple in every way from its title (the self-explanatory Introductions) to the content of its three songs each of which is a brief blast of terse tight punk. “In my opinion Nervous Talk songs sound the way they do because of the other members” says Butler. “Todd’s style in both songwriting and guitar playing is something that my brain is incapable of.”
Butler admits that he has no problem with longer songs (“‘Ramble Tamble’ rules” he says repping CCR) but he simply doesn’t write them. That’s far from intentional.
“I don’t really try to write songs” says Butler. “Never really have. When I sit down and try to write stuff it sucks 90 per cent of the time.”
Instead the frontman says his ideas come to him at unexpected moments. “Melodies or words or whatever always pop into my head when I’m doing something completely unrelated — driving working waking up etc. Pieces of songs just come out of nowhere and if I don’t record them right away I usually forget them. My phone is full of 30-second clips of me whistling or humming tunes. It’s kinda creepy.”
Nervous Talk have written a full-length album which will arrive in Canada from Vancouver-via-Ottawa imprint Hosehead Records early next year with a U.S. label considering a release as well.
Before that Nervous Talk will bring Butler back to Alberta this weekend. In the two years he’s been gone Butler says he’s missed his friends family and cheap beer (“Olympia in particular”) along with “house parties steady employment and the Red Dog Diner” a now-defunct Lethbridge hot dog joint he once serenaded in The Moby Dicks.
As for what he was happy to leave behind in Alberta Butler also has a list prepared. “I don’t miss fights 1000 kilometre-an-hour winds the smell of feedlots or maybe the Red Dog Diner” he says. “I don’t know how I feel about that place. Probably best not to think about it.”
