WL 368 - Sunday, June 17 – 11pm
Purveyor of: Personal, acoustic guitaring that fills one with significantly less rage than City and Colour.

With the success of their 2005 self-titled album Cuff the Duke discovered fame beyond their wildest dreams—not fame like AllMusic Bio fame, but fame like regular attention on ‘legitimate’ radio, TV, and record stores. So, in true rock star fashion, the band has fallen into self-parodying excess. Along with all the hookers and blow comes the necessity for a solo album, something front man Wayne Petti has provided in spades. Now Petti’s destined to collaborate with Rick Wakeman. Doug Nayler’s attempts to explain this to Wayne proved useless when they met up at a greasy spoon.

How do you feel when journalists write about Cuff the Duke coming from Oshawa as if you’ve just walked out of some sort of swamp somewhere?

It’s probably self-imposed. When we started we felt like we needed to have some sort of identity or something, we just gravitated towards this hometown that was sort of weird. We thought that people would just think that Oshawa was just some hick town, I dunno. It doesn’t bug me too much. The more time goes on it’s like, we don’t even live there anymore so it seems a little pointless now. But there was a time when we were all into it, because no one brags because they’re from Oshawa. It’s not something you generally talk about. The Inbreds never mention that they’re from Oshawa, they always say that they’re from Halifax. I don’t mind that people refer to us like that…We’re all sort of blue collar in a way anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal.

So you’re involved in three major musical projects: your solo stuff, Cuff the Duke, and the Hylozoists. What exactly is interesting about those three? What’s the relation between them for you?

Cuff the Duke has a certain sound that’s pretty straightforward. We tend to not go too far outside of what we do. So the Hylozoloists—I was living with Paul [Aucoin] at the time, when he was doing the rough mixes for La Fin Du Monde and I was like, “Are you going to do any shows when all of this is done? Cause if you need someone to play tambourine or something…” So then he got me to sing on one song, and it turned into me playing piano in the band. I wasn’t that good of a piano or organ player and I’m still not, but I just thought of it as a fun way to be in a band and not have to sing. That was kind of exciting. And also it was completely different than what Cuff the Duke did, in 5/4 and all these different time signatures. Really, the songs are very simple but since there’s so much going on they get very complex.

The solo record, I just had a bunch of songs. I’d hit a stride musically, and I had a bunch of songs for the new Cuff record. We knew the sound that we had going into that, and I had all these extra songs lying around. The record [City Lights Align], you know, I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. And it was a challenge to put out a song that was just acoustic and vocals. That’s really hard to do when you’re in a band…It was just a way of trying to record in a different way. The solo record is an extension of Cuff the Duke, really. It’s just a more laidback, chilled out version of it.

Do you think it was easier for you to get a solo album released because you’re the front man of Cuff the Duke?

Yeah, probably. But…Outside [Records] who put it out also put out Woolly Leaves and Baby Eagle (both solo projects by members of the Constantines). It’s not like those two guys or myself are going to sell tons of records…It definitely made some people more willing to listen to it, but then the other side of that is that they’re that much quicker to judge it. They could have just as easily said, you know…

Written it off as front man vanity project #2178?

Yeah, there are two sides to it. Really I didn’t try and have it put out, I just did a show with Steve [Lambke of Baby Eagle] and Blood Meridian at the Horseshoe…I think it kind of caught me off guard when it started getting reviews. Before, with album reviews, you’re in a band and you’ve got the camaraderie. If you get a good review it’s “Okay, whatever” and if you get a bad review “Whatever”, you’ve still got that camaraderie…Even when I do interviews it’s more uncomfortable talking about yourself than it is talking about a band and something you did together. Maybe not uncomfortable, but just different than I thought it was going to be.

By Doug Nayler