THE WIVEZ ARE: Jordy Birch – guitar & vocals  |  Slam T. Hide – drums & vocals  |  Rob Edmonds – bass & vocals

Frontman Jordy Birch (ex Pure/Guilty About Girls), drummer Slam T. Hide (ex of The KLF,/Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction) and bassist Rob Edmonds (who designs posters for the likes of The Cure and Tom Waits) got together over a mutual love of 60s surf music and punk.

What initially started as a casual get together then blossomed into something The Wivez want others to hear.

They first released “Dead In The Middle,” “Havana” and “Baby, I’m Bored” in 2016 on Van City Records (VCR). All of the songs were recorded with a (mostly) one-take ethos, and are available on Spotify and Apple Music, including the Steve Miller-inspired “How Weird is Now,” and “The Death of Me,” with its Ramones-like “baby, baby, baby” dance-floor lyric that’s a euphemism for sex. Ironically, it was Joey Ramone who walked in and told Birch to turn the music down in the Pure dressing room pre-show in the aughts.

“The other day I listened to ‘Baby I Love You,’ the Ramones version, and that quintessentially describes where I’m at right now,” says Jordy, who took a decade off from music – his last project was Guilty About Girls in 2008 – to raise his two sons.

It is a weird time for The Wivez now, whose members all started in bands pre-internet era, where videos were “delivered” on tape to MuchMusic, including Pure’s “Lemonade” to “Rick The Temp” (Campanelli, ET Canada) for his first-ever interview. The band defiantly played “Anna Is A Speed Freak,” not their current single, when they performed on the MuchMusic Video Awards.

And lest anyone questions the band name, Jordy says “We all have strong women in our lives. The three of us are more like the 50s housewives – we get coffee together, we drink wine together, we eat Sunday dinner together… and we rock out together.”

By Karen Bliss: Freelance journalist Billboard, Rolling Stone. Publisher and Editor-in-chief at Samaritan Magazine.