Northern Pikes singer release debut solo album just as band reunites by Andrew Flynn, Canadian Press. Thursday, July 27, 2000

The former member of '80s rock heroes The Northern Pikes is grateful he's been given the opportunity to produce a solo album after nearly a decade in retirement.

As if that wasn't enough, his old band is getting back together, too, and not just for another reunion tour. The Pikes are already working on new material for a comeback album and having such a full plate again is just fine with Potvin. "All I did my adult professional life was sing for my dinner," says Potvin, who released Heartbreakthrough last week. "I feel incredibly fortunate to be here talking about the album and having a second shot at the Pikes as well -- because there's not many people who get a single shot, let alone two of them."

The Northern Pikes got together in Saskatoon in 1983 and began a career that peaked in hits Kiss Me You Fool, Girl With a Problem and She Ain't Pretty, all from 1991's double platinum-selling album Snow in June. They toured as the opening act for major superstars like Duran Duran,  David Bowie and The Fixx.

Potvin, bassist Jay Semko, guitarist  Merl Bryck and drummer Don Schmid seemed poised to do great things, but the album didn't crack into the American market as it was expected to. The follow-up, Neptune, wasn't as well received as Snow in June, even in Canada. The band fell apart under pressures from without and within and finally broke up in 1993. "We were tired, we were burnt out," says Potvin, who moved from artist to talent scout, taking a job in Polygram's artists and repertoire department. Semko released a solo album and then became one of the principle music writers for the TV series Due South. About the same time, Potvin's marriage collapsed and he began to grapple with diminishing self esteem and all the baggage that came with what apparently was the end of his career in the spotlight. 

"I was 30 years old and I thought I was done with that -- that part of my life was over. It was time to grow up and get a real job. So I got this great job and threw all the guitars in a corner of the house. I always felt like anyone could be a rock artist, that what I had been doing wasn't special, sort of a glitch on the screen, a little bit flukey."

Two years later, Potvin began to feel the music's pull again. "I feel pretty goofy bringing this up, because it's so cliche, but I began to feel a hole in my life. I was happy again in my personal life, I had a good job, it paid well, but I was missing something."

A chance invitation to a songwriting workshop was the catalyst that suddenly woke Potvin up to the fact that he wasn't finished being an artist: "Literally from that point on I began scheming about how to make a record."

The material that would ultimately  become Heartbreakthrough was rooted in Potvin's own experience of a disintegrating marriage and its consequences. "This was tough, this was a hard record to make," he says. "I realized quickly that the only thing that has true meat on the bone are things that come from inside me. I wanted to make, because of the subject matter,  something that was very direct. I wanted there to be a dignity and a humbleness about it." As he was putting the finishing touches on his own project, Potvin and his former bandmates were approached by  their former label to help put together a greatest hits package.

"When they got together, everyone seemed keen to talk about a reunion tour. It just seemed like a natural thing. Everyone's timetable was pretty open so we thought maybe we should go out just for a laugh."

They booked 13 dates, mostly in Western Canada. It worked out better than anyone expected. "What the Pikes tour did was make us realize that there were a lot of people who still cared," says Potvin. "We couldn't get over it, people were very excited to see us again. The down side was we began to feel towards the end of the touring we've done this year like a bit of a heritage act it was regurgitation, we were really just out there playing the old show." They thought about leaving it at that, "so we don't embarrass ourselves." But nobody was really keen to quit after an enticingly successful tour. "The only way to rectify that situation was to start recording again," says Potvin.

So the quartet booked a studio and pooled their unpublished material (which turned out to be considerable) for a new Northern Pikes album.

Whatever happens now, whether the band reunites permanently or not, is still up in the air.

This record, Potvin says, is both for themselves and for fans. "Things are different now," says Potvin.

"You're 23 years old and you sign a big worldwide record contract with Virgin and you definitely have designs on that big American brass ring. It's not like that now. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to do this again and I would be extremely content to be able to just pay my mortgage and put food on the table and be able to sing doing that. If I can do that, that's amazing."