Don Pyle has lived one of the most genuinely singular creative lives in Canadian music, and ‘Rough Description: Love Letters and Ghost Stories From a Life in Music’, out May 26th from ECW Press, tells that story with the kind of candor and dark humor that only someone who has actually lived it could pull off. Pyle, drummer and co-founder of beloved instrumental group Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, the band behind the Kids in the Hall theme, brings a sharp observer’s eye to 304 pages of memoir that are alternately hilarious, melancholic, and consistently impossible to put down.
The book covers an extraordinary amount of ground. Pyle traces his earliest bands, the absurdity and rewards of touring, his evolving relationship with his mother, a life-changing car accident, and the genuinely improbable chain of events that turned a punk rock pen pal connection into a career in showbiz. His working relationships with the late Dallas Good, legendary producer and engineer Steve Albini, and the iconic Kids in the Hall comedy troupe all figure prominently, and Pyle dishes on all of it with the kind of unguarded honesty that makes music memoirs worth reading in the first place.
What sets ‘Rough Description’ apart is Pyle’s perspective. A photographer, film and TV composer, producer, and writer with 15 albums to his name, he approaches every creative discipline as part of the same continuous stream, and that unified sensibility gives the book a texture and depth that goes well beyond standard rock memoir territory. The chapter on how the Ramones rewired his teenage brain alone is worth the price of admission.
‘Rough Description’ is available for pre-order now ahead of its May 26th release from ECW Press, in paperback at $24.95 CAD, with digital editions also available. For anyone who came of age with Canadian indie music, comedy, and punk in their bloodstream, this is essential reading.