Chore (Chris Bell – guitar/vocals, Mike Bell – bass guitar, David Dunham – drum kit/vocals/synths/percussion) has gone back to work. After a 20-year recording hiatus, Dunnville, ON’s own post-hardcore (or “art grunge” as David cheekily puts it) “band’s band” has re-emerged with their fourth LP, Oswego Park – a labour of love they began building back in the spring of 2017.
MIKE: Oswego Park is a small residential survey out in the middle of nowhere, about halfway between Dunnville and Smithville, ON. Chris and I grew up very close to it and had friends from school who lived there. Dave was a town kid who grew up in Dunnville proper but also had friends out there. It was this odd thing, to feel like you were in the suburbs when really, it was just a little mirage out in the sticks. But to us, it was a “vibrant hub” of pre-adolescent social activity. Chris had the idea to name the record Oswego Park, and I was instantly sold. We’ve always waved a little Dunnville flag in our work. We altered the actual town seal in our t-shirt designs, and our videos and promo photos have mostly been shot on location in Dunnville through the years. We’re proudly driving it home with this album title. Chris has some lyrics on this record that are direct reflections of childhood memories made in Oswego Park.
During their initial run, spanning from 1995 to 2004, the band released three full-length albums through Hamilton’s Sonic Unyon Records: Another Plebeian (1997), Take My Mask and Breathe (1999), both with Brian Pettigrew on bass/vocals, and finally The Coastaline Fire (2002), with Mitch Bowden on guitar/vocals.
All three records were met with some acclaim and fanfare in the Canadian über underground aggressive-alternative music scene, with each one creating a little more excitement than the last. Though the acclaim and fanfare were both potent and impactful (landing the band on some critical year-end “Best Of” lists with widespread exposure provided by MuchMusic and the television crime drama 24), neither was enough to gain the momentum required, let alone sustain the existence of an outsider group trying to penetrate the gates of an already flooded and heavily guarded music scene. Too heavy for the indie kids, and too soft for the hardcore mob, Chore put in several years and miles of hard work until their amicable split in 2004.
CHRIS: Those early days were both fun and disastrous. We had no clue what we were doing and no one guiding us. Getting signed to Sonic Unyon early was a big confidence booster, but we squandered it from there. I don’t think any of us really realized the amount of work that was required and the pace that needed to be kept, especially when we weren’t making songs for anyone but ourselves. Managerial/agency-type people wouldn’t touch us with a 10-foot pole because we played too loud and looked completely awkward on stage. The best part of touring back then was the scenery through the van window and the laughs we had amongst ourselves. Making records has always been the most fun, and still is what I enjoy the most. The breakup was inevitable. There’s only so much punishment in failure a young man can take.
After working separately and together in various capacities on several musical projects throughout the 2000s and 2010s (see Don Vail, Alive & Living, Not Of, and Customaries, with Chris and Mitch also enjoying stints as members of Wintersleep and Broken Social Scene, respectively), the founding core trio of Chris, Mike, and David assembled in the spring of 2017 to start jamming and throwing ideas together again, simply for the fun of it. These sessions quickly generated new material that greatly excited the OG trio, inspiring them to keep the creative momentum going.
Of the handful of songs written during this initial, prolific burst of activity, “The Carcassist” and “Beware & the Obeyers” both appear on Oswego Park, while two others are being kept in the bank for a potential future release. “Face”, the very first song written by the reactivated trio, has already been released as a single, solely to benefit the family of the late Tony Jacome of Shallow North Dakota, who tragically lost his life to cancer shortly after its release.
However, a significant bump in the road brought their newfound momentum to a hard stop: the sudden shutdown of planet Earth, known as the global pandemic. The isolation and free time forcefully provided by the coronavirus, combined with the access to digital home-recording technology that did not exist when they wrote their first three records, brought forth a very fruitful period of writing for all three members. Chore 2.0 was suddenly (albeit remotely) back up and running.
Some of the new songs were composed individually, outright. Chris composed the majority of “Cowards Can”, “Canary”, “King”, and “The Invisible College” on his own. With edits made to the arrangements once presented to David and Mike, they were all ready to go and, as far as the band was concerned, potential singles. “Cowards Can” and “King” were selected as Oswego Park’s pre-release tracks.
CHRIS: “King” and “Cowards Can” were both written starting out with a drum groove. Once I had that groove, I wrote guitar parts to go with it, always with the caveat that Dave would change the drums to his taste once I shared anything with him. That happened in some cases, but not in others. “Canary” was a guitar and vocal blueprint to start, and “The Invisible College” was just riffs that I arranged and shared. Dave contributed considerably to where the arrangements ended up. “Grave Race” was a much more collaborative effort between Dave and me. I wrote and shared most of the guitar arrangement with him, and he added so much. Synths, drums, and singing. We wrote our vocal parts entirely separately, and they surprisingly combined almost perfectly when put together in the song.
Other songs, much like “Grave Race”, were composed more collaboratively. During the global layoff, Mike sat down with his bass, opened GarageBand on his laptop, and created some riff sequences that (once digitally deconstructed and rearranged by David, then handed over to Chris for guitar treatments) grew into “Meth Grad”, “Witch Uncle”, and “Suggestion”. A trifecta of the more chaotic yet tightly mathematical fare that Mike has always had a severe weakness for.
MIKE: When it comes to writing for Chore, my most high-level influences are metal bands with a capital “ME”: Metallica, Melvins, and Meshuggah. Those three basically encapsulate my taste in hard music as I’ve aged. Metallica owned my teens, Melvins took over in my 20s, and Meshuggah has set the bar for the majority of my adulthood. I also can’t deny the strong influence of other lifetime favourites like Helmet and Faith No More. Those acts are all hard and aggressive while being thoughtful and, most importantly, they don’t take themselves too seriously. That’s my thing. Dave and Chris both get that about me and know exactly what to do once I show up with something. Once Dave writes vocals and Chris writes his guitar parts, my jaw just hits the floor every time. It’s awesome.
In late 2022, after five years of intermittent writing and rehearsing, having composed more than enough music to fill a single LP, the trio decided to reach out to their old label boss and long-time cheerleader, Tim Potocic, to gauge any interest in releasing a fourth Chore record. Tim gave an immediate thumbs-up, and just like that, Chore was back on the Sonic Unyon Records roster.
CHRIS: Tim was immediately receptive to our request for help with releasing another Chore record. He and the Sonic Unyon team (which has done a complete turnover since we last bothered them) have always been supportive of us, even though we’ve always been a constant struggle of disorganized, anxiety-ridden troglodytes.
It was with very little deliberation that they decided to record and mix the new project with their former Chore bandmate Mitch Bowden, who had spent the years following Chore’s initial run building and developing Mechanical Noise, a recording studio of his own design just outside of Dunnville.
MIKE: Mitch wasn’t with us for the writing of these new songs. The three of us found the process of working strictly as a trio intriguing, since we’d never made a proper go of that configuration when we originally formed (before quickly expanding into a quartet with Brian). We extended an invite to Mitch at some point, and he was hesitant to commit for personal and logistical reasons. But when it was time to decide who to record and mix with, we saw that as the perfect way to entice him back into the fold.
CHRIS: Mitch has the ability to make everything he touches better. It was a no-brainer that we wanted to have him record and mix the record. Not only because he’s been a member of the band, but also because, on his own, he’s a force of musical intelligence with great discretionary instincts. The familiar and relaxed feeling that came with being in his studio to make this record was like no other studio experience I’ve had, and it was the best one I’ve had. I tracked my own guitars and vocals at home for budgetary reasons, but the fact that I could do that freely was a testament to the scenario Mitch was willing to entertain for us.
Studio sessions were arranged and executed much like the writing process – sparsely and intermittently – but yielded potent bursts of progress. Dictated by the band’s busy personal schedules, as well as the peaks and valleys of creative inspiration (as David and Chris still needed to pen lyrics and melodies for a large portion of the new set), the recording process took longer than anyone had hoped. However, the band took this as a blessing in disguise. The arrangement they had with Mitch and Tim provided a more open-ended schedule, offering the time and flexibility they needed to finally get it right, a luxury they’d never had on previous Chore productions.
As David was writing lyrics, he heard a voice from the past, screaming some of the new lines into his head. That voice was Brian Pettigrew. Brian was an integral part of the band throughout their earlier years, serving as bassist and co-writer on the first two Chore albums. He also contributed a menacing, trademark vocal bark on the more aggressive material from Another Plebeian. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, David reached out to Brian to see if he’d like to perform some backing vocals on a couple of tracks. Brian jumped at the chance. David then told the others the good news.
MIKE: I jumped when Dave announced that Brian was going to do some vocals. I was thrilled. Things didn’t end nicely with him back in 1999. We blindsided him when we told him he was out. It was brutal, and we didn’t talk for years. Having all five of us working together now is something I’d never even dreamed of. It’s been amazing to reconnect at this point and in this capacity.
Brian’s bark can be heard backing up David on “Beware & the Obeyers” and “Meth Grad”. With Mitch at the helm for the album’s final mixdown, the group’s excitement spiked with every completed track as Mitch shared his work, song by song.
MIKE: Whenever Mitch sent us a mix, we were all in our group text just going “HOLY SHIT! MITCH! YES!” Chris and Dave both added a lot of extra sounds and parts to the basic tracks, so they were much more in tune with finding the right balance between it all. I was mostly just saying “once Chris and Dave are happy, I’m happy”, because it already sounded so above and beyond anything we’ve released before.
With Oswego Park finally complete and set for release, Chore are more excited to share their music than ever before. Are they also excited to hit the road to promote the new album? Not so much. All three members are now fully employed adults, married with kids and paying mortgages. A far cry from the carefree, part-time pizza shop employees still living with their parents in the late ’90s.
They do plan to celebrate the release of their first full-length in over 20 years with a special live event in their second hometown of Hamilton, ON. Beyond that, they’re happy to let whatever momentum the album’s buzz might create dictate their future activities, if any.
MIKE: I really don’t know what to expect in terms of reaction, so I’m keeping those expectations firmly in check. Our close friends and cult of hardcore fans who have been wishing and waiting for this to happen will hopefully be very happy with what we’ve come up with. I have no idea if this album will have any further impact or significant reach beyond that. The big difference between now and 2002 is that we’re not worried about it one way or the other. We’re already so pleased that we’ve come back together and made what we all strongly feel is our best record, that whatever comes out the other side is just gravy. If the record drops, we play our one big reunion show, and then we all go back to our lives like nothing happened, that’s just fine. If this record somehow actually manages to generate some sort of buzz (which has never been our thing, lol), that would really be something else. But I’m already completely satisfied with the whole experience. As adults, we’ve finally made the record that we were always trying to make when we were kids.
The band is dedicating Oswego Park to the memory of their fallen brother Tony Jacome and to Chris and Mike’s late, great father, David Bell, who passed away in early 2022.
