Black Pontiac

         Black Pontiac is a Vancouver based rock band that is breaking out of the underground scene that they’ve dominated since their debut and is taking over the world with their unique blend of rock, punk, and new wave feel. Some of the most fun I’ve had at local concerts has been at Black Pontiac shows, as their personable stage presence and upbeat energy radiates through the crowd, creating an environment for music like none other. Their catchy rock tunes and phenomenal instrumentals blend perfectly with their frontman’s almost rap-like flow and his incredible lyricism. The band is composed of lead singer Matt Purkiss, Mack Riddell on guitar, his brother Sam Riddell on drums, and bassist Avery John Shoesmith, but you can just call them all “Mr. Pontiac”. Recently, the boys took to the road with indie Vancouver band Gradeschool (whose Soup Can Collective interview can be found here), and performed a wildly successful tour across Western Canada. Their brand new EP Ponyboy 2 is available now on all streaming platforms, and prior to it’s release, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the band to chat with them about tour highlights, the brand new release, and Harvest Crunch cereal.

Something I’ve noticed you do as live shows is you introduce every band member as “Mr. Pontiac”. What started this, and is there an element of alter ego to it for you guys?

Mack: Matt forgot our names.

Matt: Yes, yeah, that is correct. I think it came from The Hives who had this character within their lore called Randy Fitzsimmons who acted as almost the mascot, or a central figure for the band, so that no singular personality dominated over the rest of the band members. Because everyone is Mr. Pontiac, it's not like with the 1975 for example, it's not Matty Healy and the other guys. I also just can never hear people's names when they get introduced to the show, but everybody remembers Mr. Pontiac.

Speaking of live shows, you just toured Western Canada with fellow local band Grade School, can you talk a bit about how that tour went, or any highlights?

Matt: Those guys are great. We love those guys, they’re hilarious. Cody's a great songwriter, great musician, very inventive producer, and he's got that personality that's hard not to like. I think more bands should be using the power of collaboration, because that just makes things like tours that much easier. With our combined draw, we were able to go on a really successful tour that ended up generating a profit.

Did you have a favourite stop on the tour?

Matt: It must have been Kelowna, surely.

Mack: I think mine was the Silver Star. We got put up in a three bedroom, one of the bedrooms had bunk beds, but it was a three bedroom with a massive marble countertop in the kitchen, a hot tub, a fireplace and massive dining room table. It just had everything. And you know, compared to the hotel rooms that we usually stay in, it was like we were gods. I think we all freaked out when we got there and they treated us really well at Silver Star, and we just lived like kings.

Matt: A local Promoter in Vernon, his name is Noah McLeod, he's part of a group called Local Losers Underground and they set us up with the show there as part of a concert series at the Silver Star Mountain Resort.

The Ponyboy 2 EP is releasing soon which I’m super stoked about, can you talk a bit about that project? Is it sort of B sides from the original EP, or how is it connected?

Matt: We wanted a way to connect it to our journey in a way that felt succinct and fluid, and it matches the scattered nature of the rest of our discography. I think Ponyboy, and even by extension, the first album, was very much a process of us throwing shit at the wall to see what stuck. And Ponyboy 2 is a little bit like that, but a little less in that it's slightly more focused. We have more creative control, and it's just a continuation of this journey, that will eventually hopefully find us in a place where we understand what Black Pontiac is and what it is we sound like and what we do. I think we get closer to that every day.

I’m always eager to hear what artists found that they learned about themselves or what their takeaway is from their own art, is there anything that this EP has taught you? Whether about yourself or about your creative process?

Mack: Oh, that's such a great question. I think for me, just as a guitar player, I have been coming to the realization that most of my favorite takes happened in the first one to three takes, and usually when I try to make something perfect, it gets worse. I don't really like pure perfection, so I found in this EP that really became apparent. I think that something that I'll take further into our future projects is just playing subconsciously the first couple takes. That's what you really want to play, and your brain gets hijacked by wanting to create perfection and you create something a little bit worse. I think completed is going to be better than perfection.

Matt: It's never going to be perfect. And I think part of the charm, and one of the things that we like about working with Matt Di Pomponio, who engineered this last record, and produced and engineered the album, that was his big philosophy. I think coming from more of a harder edged punk background, he was never worried about perfection, and I think that almost made it better.

Since “People Pleaser” it seems there’s been a shift from illustrated album art, to live photography. Did anything inspire this switch, or is there any significance to the single covers we’ve seen thus far that you want to talk about?

Matt: All of our earlier art was done by our good friend Adam Rashid, and he did a really great job, and we were really stoked on the stuff he did for us at the time, but I felt like we needed to move in a direction that was a little bit less cartoonish, a little bit less graphic design. Initially, I think we liked how much colour and how much saturation and how busy everything was, and I guess this time around we wanted to try something that was a little bit simpler. A little bit more straightforward, a little bit more minimalist. With this new string of singles, Arkin and Luke from First Floor Collective have been a huge help in seeing that vision fully realized.

While we’re briefly touching on album covers, I am so curious is there any significance to the Harvest Crunch cereal box on the cover of the first EP?

Matt: Ohh, so you don't know the Harvest Crunch lore?

Me: I do not, can you share a bit about that?

Matt: I think we archived those original videos; I archived the footage when we were promoting “People Pleaser” because I felt like we needed to rebrand. I wasn't involved in the Harvest Crunch thing because I was busy recording. This was during the recording of Ponyboy one, while I was tracking the vocals, that was when they started the skits. And the plot of at least one of them revolved around this box of Harvest Crunch. And it became Sam's box of Harvest Crunch that someone was either allowed to eat or not allowed to eat, and it just became this cult thing, this inside joke, and people started bringing boxes of Harvest Crunch to shows. So, we had to throw a little easter egg in.

Mack: Now we have gnome lore.

Matt: Yeah, that's a whole other conversation.

Me: Can I hear about the gnome lore?

Mack: You just gotta watch our latest Blue Blood Baby series now available on Apple TV.

I do a segment on Soup Can Collective called song of the week where I highlight whatever song is really sticking out to me that week, something I just can’t get out of my head. What are your songs of the week at the moment?

Mack: Ah, I know mine. Mine is still “Million Dollar Baby” by Tommy Richman. It was like the song of last month, but it's still stuck in my head because it had such a good hook.

Matt: I think mine would be “either on or off the drugs” by JPEGMAFIA off his new album “I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU”. The story of how that song came together is kind of insane. He took a Future song and then used AI to turn it into an early 2000s singer-songwriter song, and then he sampled that and used it in his song.

Me: Sam and Avery, do you guys have a song in your head this week?

Sam: Yeah, it's called “Blue Blood Baby”, available on all streaming platforms.

Avery: Mine would probably be “Smoking Out the Window” by Silk Sonic, Spotify did its magic and knew that I would respond ridiculously to it. It just came on one day and I was like ohh, here we go again.

As I like to feature local artists, if you could collaborate with any other Vancouver musicians, who would it be? Either on one of their tracks, or having them on a Black Pontiac song.

Matt: Kid In PJ's or Kid Filthy. Or both, I think that would be insane.

Mack: I think Peach Pit.

Sam: Yeah, I would get Peach Pit to rerecord all of our guitar.

Mack: What the hell?

Avery: You know what? I'm taking that one too. I agree with Sam.

Sam: And I'll get them to rerecord all the bass.

Avery: I guess I disagree with that one.