Defunct Local Band Profile Series: Treble Charger

Due to the incredibly slow pace for news on the local metal, hard rock, and punk scenes, I am bumping this month's Defunct Local Band Profile up three days to give the site some content within our general rule of "at least one post every three days." Our next proper news post will hit the site by Tuesday, I hope! Now, this month's feature profile post looks at another inactive local band as randomly selected from our band links, and we drew quite a big one this time, making this (in all likelihood) our longest single band installment to date! Here's what you should know!

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Treble Charger
 
Genre: Alternative Rock/Pop Punk
 
Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie/Toronto, Ontario

Members: (Members not in their last known live lineup are in italics. This information may be incomplete, particularly regarding their touring bassists & drummers post-reunion. Let me know if you can fill in any blanks!)

Greig Nori, vocals/guitar
Bill Priddle (Pointless), guitar/vocals
Darcy Yates (The Great Lakes Swimmers), live bass
Ian MacKay (The Soulkicks), live drums

Devin Bronson (Avril Lavigne), guitar
Rosie Martin, bass/keyboard
Dave McMillan (Big Wreck), live bass
Morris Palter (Red Fish Blue Fish), drums
Trevor MacGregor (Four Square), drums
Jason Pierce (Our Lady Peace), live drums

(Note that Wikipedia credits Richard Mulligan as their current drummer and Rosie Martin as having returned to the band on bass, but there are no citations listed there to corroborate this, and neither played in Treble Charger's most recent concerts. Also not listed above are session drummer Mike Levesque, who performed on most of "Maybe It's Me", or Bill's Pointless bandmate Dustin Goodall, who was announced to play bass on their next album, but hadn't publically been confirmed to have joined the band otherwise.)

Audio/Video: Treble Charger released five albums in their original run, including the indie/alternative leaning "nc-17" & "Self=Title" in 1994 & 1995, their commercial breakthrough "Maybe It's Me" in 1997, and their pop punk-centric albums "Wide Awake Bored" & "Detox" in 2000 & 2002. All are easy to find on major streaming services and for sale online, and do turn up in local music stores as well. A new album was in the works as of 2018, but updates were sporadic at best. The band also covered Neil Young's "Albuquerque" on the 1994 tribute album "Borrowed Tunes", and original songs of theirs were featured in a lot of compilations and promotional CDs in the 1990s & 2000s. Numerous videos from their live concerts (pre- and post-reunion) exist on YouTube, as do music videos for many of their singles. Here's the music video for their biggest hit, 2000's "American Psycho"!

Info/Analysis: Arguably the biggest band to come out of Sault Ste. Marie in any genre, Treble Charger formed in 1992, a few years after Greig & Bill met in high school. Originally named nc-17 (the eventual name of their debut EP) before a name conflict with an American group, the album of the same name gave them their first early recognition, most notably via the single "Red". Success and notoriety steadily grew with "Self=Title" (complete with CD-ROM zine content) and their major label debut "Maybe It's Me", which hinted at the more rock-based sound they would take in the early 2000s. Treble Charger peaked in Canada with the release of "Wide Awake Bored", and saw similar success (if less sales) on their last CD "Detox", both featuring their classic lineup of Greig, Bill, Rosie, and Trevor. Their last three albums all went gold or better in Canada, and each album netted at least one Juno Award nomination, while they also had notable airplay & promotion on MuchMusic. 

Bill left Treble Charger in 2003 due to dissatisfaction with their pop punk shift, and they played one tour with Devin on guitar, ending in 2004. The band went on hiatus the following year, and officially disbanded in 2006, with Greig focusing largely on production and Bill performing in various solo and band projects. In 2012, Greig & Bill reformed Treble Charger alongside touring bassists & drummers, and would play concerts off and on through June 2019, primarily on Canadian festival lineups, including a handful of hometown dates at events like Bon Soo & Rotaryfest. A public statement on band activity was last made in August 2019 via this Sault Star article where they finally confirmed their periodic teases about recording a brand new album here in Sault Ste. Marie, but no public statements have followed in the past year (the pandemic & their minimal online presence are acknowledged.)

It's hard to sum up a long and successful career like Treble Charger's succintly, especially given their huge change in sound after the 1990s, but they proved themselves nationally and have a lot of memorable songs & live dates to show for it! I admittedly prefer their pop punk material with Greig on lead vocals to the Bill-led indie rock of their early albums, but they were always a very talented band with a knack for catchy songwriting, and Rosie, Morris, and Trevor were all more than capable on their instruments along the way. Treble Charger may quietly still be plugging away on that new album for all we know, and hopefully we'll see them back out there down the line!
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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! This series will return on or around December 10th, pandemic willing, as we'll finish 2020 in Sault Michigan for our next randomly selected profile, namely of Tarnished/ex-Banned frontman Alex Traynor! Look for that then, and for more news and notes on the site next week! Thanks everyone!