A Northern Pike Dives Back Into Making Music by Deena Waisberg, Chapters.ca July, 2000

“I’m glad to be singing for my supper again,” says Potvin, who has just released his debut solo album, Heratbreakthrough.

When the Pikes went on hiatus in 1994 after 10 years of pumping out rock hits, Potvin took a job at a label doing A&R. Then Potivn’s marriage dissolved. “I thought I wouldn’t play music anymore. I really felt I could just walk away from it,” he says. But when he took a songwriting workshop about two years into the job, he began to feel a hole in his life. “I really loved it. I would wake up in the morning and look forward to it more than anything else, and I had this yearning to do it again.”

So he gave up his regular paycheck and returned to what he considers to be his calling -- making music. “Except for those four years, I was a professional musician my entire adult life and it’s pretty much all I’ve ever wanted to do,” says Potvin.

Rather than put together a band, Potvin elected go it alone and bring in musicians. “I wanted the experience of handling a record myself, because my entire recording career to that point had been shared with three other people.” Also the Northern Pikes had reunited this past winter for a club tour, and it got them thinking about working together again. (Now the Pikes are planning to go into the studio in August and release a new album next year.) Potvin’s solo debut is somewhat of a personal diary, where he lays bare many painful experiences of his marriage breakup. “What Will I Do” speaks about the dilemma of what to do with gifts a former mate leaves behind when the  relationship ends, while “Too Late” recalls saying the wrong thing all the time. Appropriately, the lyrics are direct and straightforward. “I wanted to unload a lot of feelings and not play around too much,” says Potvin. However there are a few lighter moments on the disc. The sexy and rhythmic “Heaven Is What You Leave Behind” and the sunny “Red Summer Sun” both offer rays of optimism. 

There are similarities between this album and the Northern Pikes’ discs. Potvin’s guitar stylings are familiar as well as the predominance of vocal harmonies. Potvin asked Lesley Stanwick to contribute vocals on songs, including “Free as a Bird” and “You’ll Just Have to Wait.” “In the Pikes there’s a ton of three-part harmony. It’s a vocal heavy band. The first two albums I didn’t sing or write and I was encouraged all along to hone those crafts,” says Potvin. But not everything is the same. He’s particularly proud of the song “Free as a Bird” because of its unorthodox arrangement. “It’s not verse, chorus, verse, chorus. It’s not standard kind of fare.” He almost didn’t include the vulnerable song, which voices a desire to rise above criticisms artists receive from industry insiders, but producer Terry Brown convinced him to. “I realized that I was carrying around this fear of going back and doing this because my experience is that record companies can be extremely cynical environments. That song is kind of like sticks and stones may break my bones, that was kind of the idea,” he says.

But this time, Potvin has a different focus. It’s not superstar status, which he was after when he was 23 years old and had just signed a big worldwide deal. Now Potvin wants to pay his rent, make music and develop a loyal audience.

The Northern Pike is simply thrilled to be back in the swim of things. “I’ll just keep making music and playing shows until people don’t come any more.”