Peter X Anthony

Local guitarist Peter Anthony has spent the last 13 years on the road playing in various rock bands. Now he makes his home in Collingwood and is working with his own sounds.

"I've toured North America a couple of times with bands like Pippy Strange, Razor and The Verge", said Anthony who moved to Collingwood three years ago. "I've moved up here to get away from the whole rat race thing".

While he may have escaped the rat race, he has definitely not left behind his music. Instead, he has gathered together a band to take a unique message to local audiences and those who congregate in his old city stomping grounds.

Anthony's band, Staghound-X, is meant to sound generic with the "John Doe" factor but is also meant to make a point. "We thought the name would be cool", he explained in a recent interview. "We're like the head hunting dog fending for himself in a numbered world".

With a two-hour show of about 30 songs, Staghound-X has styled itself to take people away from their workaday world into an adventure away from the technology of television. This is expressed clearly in his song People Who Need Stimulation.

"The song says the television shouldn't suck you in and turn you into a zombie", he said. "Instead, it tells people they should get out and play with their kids".

Though Anthony may be the front man for the band, he is backed by some well known local musicians who have been playing together as Staghound-X now for about seven months.

The band members are Karen Witt and Laura Somers on vocals and percussion; Blair Jones on guitar and keyboard; Scary Harry on bass and vocals, and Bruce Campbell on drums.

"Our show is half acoustic and half electric", said Anthony. "We do everything from Latin ballads to hard rock and it's all original".

As the songwriting power behind the band, Anthony on his guitar has brought the band quick success. The band has just completed a one-hour Rogers Cable special which was taped live at The Gateway. It's called Circus In My Living Room and will air in July on the local community station. The band has also just signed a three-year, two-CD recording deal with Echo Hill Entertainment. The band will go into the studio in September.

"Everything is going great with this band", said Anthony, adding Staghound-X hopes to be out of the studio and on tour across Canada to colleges and universities in October.

But, before he hits the road again, Anthony will be seen locally as the house guitarist at the Gateway jams on Sunday nights, and Staghound-X will be playing the upcoming Collingwood/Georgian Bay Family music festival. - Kate Russell for the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin July 8, 1998

It's funny how things go. Some months, I rate the best CD that crosses my desk with a generous two and a half stars. This month, the planets must be properly aligned. Nothing clocked in below three and a half.

Like Staghound-X,for example. I was prepared not to dig this project, but the playful funnybone of the stuff and the unexpectedly imaginative range of styles combined to carry the day.

This type of guitar-oriented, rock-flavoured pop is not my usual drink, but there's no denying its strangely abrasive charm (imagine a likeable outlaw rogue in a cornball black and white adventure movie) which has infused into both the songs and the performances a theatrical flair for mugging to the gallery. But, it's all pulled off with a straight face, which serves to heighten the intrigue and fascination.

The album's biggest problem might be its diversity. Is the average voter with a CD player and 25 bucks equipped with the capacity and patience to listen to this stuff? I have less faith than I used to. - John Howard for Reverb Magazine August 19th, 1999

"Kill ugly radio...that's our motto." The words roll so comfortably from the tongue of Collingwood guitarist/singer/songwriter Peter Anthony, it seems natural to forget for the moment that bands, even his, require the support of radio in order to reach the audience at large. Anthony's band, Staghound-X, is releasing a debut CD, Strap On. Furthermore, the follow-up package already is in pre-production. Without airplay, though, the existence of the recordings is merely academic, one of those tree falling in the forest questions. Radio, after all, takes music from studios to ears. It enlarges crowds from 200 beer-drinkers to the thousands (or millions) tuned in.

"Yeah...kill ugly radio," Anthony repeats so there can be no mistake. "What's going on in the music business is crap. Radio is unlistenable." But there's more to this than a foolhardy bent for self-destruction. Music not only requires talent and competency, in order to matter, it must also be born of confidence, courage, daring, and a willingness to throw caution to the wind. Safe music is uninspiring in its blandness,. Dangerous music can make one tingle with excitement.

The key is knowing the difference between foolhardy and daring, not an easy read; the two often overlap. The music of Staghound-X takes the sort of chances that allow listeners to conclude band members have engaged in one or the other, perhaps both.

Anthony calls it "hard pop." It's as apt a description as any for his rock-influenced non-rock. The work is imaginatively theatricaland infused with intriguing twists and changes of pace which keep the listener both teetering off balance and pondering the next corner.

"This is really jazz in a different form," Anthony says.

He may think so, but jazz fans won't. Still, it's something in a different form, all right. Anthony's influences include Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Miles Davis, King Crimson and Max Webster, so the sense of this being derivative work which has evolved according to a clear vertical path can't be pinned down. Zappa and Waits show up; Davis doesn't.

Anthony's father was a musician.

"I was raised on the blues," he recalls. "When I was a kid, Domenic Troiano and Mendelsohn Joe used to sit in our kitchen. We'd listen to my father's favourite blues, Elmore James and Big Bill Broonzy. Dad's recording project was called Staghound X. That's where I got the name."

Overall, Strap On leaves the impression it is a series of whimsical story linesunderpinned by weaves of R&B styled guitar grooves over which linear strikes of sometimes searing rock lead lines have been superimposed. In theory, that combination is risky. It works, depending on your taste.

Staghound-X was put together piece by piece over the past couple of years. Drummer Bruce Campbell and bassist Scary Harry are versatile "old" pros. Anthony shares lead and background vocals with Karen Witt and Laura Somers. Everyone sings with gusto but, of course, the variety of voices splits the focus. Whether the high foreheads in label marketing and and broadcasting will deal with that remains to be seen.

"If the industry isn't interested in this, I'm not interested in the industry," says Anthony defiantly. "I have faith in the public's taste. I get that from the response at our live shows. I'm confident something's going to happen. I've got that feeling in my gut, my soul, my heart. When I get that feeling in my gut, it's true. That's what drives me. It's sacrilege the way some people approach music. There's no creativity. Music has to be from the heart, but heart is what's missing today. Do we just want to feel our asses rumble, or do we want to get into it and push the envelope?"

Staghound-X is without a label deal. Whether that is to continue will be sorted out by history. For the time being, the band itself and producer/manager Blair Jones will serve as their own high foreheads. The plan is to move systematically at the local level, from region to region, with live performances and radio blitzes. That's doing it the hard way, but without a label deal, the realistic way. Ditribution means little without radio airplay. Which brings us back to radio.

"We'll start in this area," Anthony says. "We'll go microcosm by microcosm, one station and area at a time. From here we'll try Brampton, then on to somewhere else. We'll spread the word live. Radio won't be able to ignore it. But there's no use booking a tour in Nova Scotia if no one there has heard of us, so we still need radio. Europe is our ultimate goal. There's a sensibility there to how they listen. I have no qualms about going there and becoming a millionaire then coming back to my home and dying land."

Radio, then, remains the big imponderable. Stations have their stylistic formats. Artists whose work easily fit those formats generally like the status quo. Artists whose work slips through the cracks or misses completely are almost always critical of what seems to them the industry's deplora - John Howard for Reverb Magazine July 29, 1999