Who Were The Beer Patrice?

Photo Credit: Angelo Marchini Montesinos

Lukas Wall on the End of the Band and What’s Next for Nathan Day

Local party punk rockers The Beer Patrice played their final show last month,
but life goes on for front man Harris O’Scumwater, better known as Nathan Day.
Even without the red jumpsuit.

At their last performance, the band announced that guitarist Dr. VonRompenstien
was leaving the province, and that the band would not be performing without him.
As Day explains, “life calls.” He is accepting of the band’s end however, and is
ready to branch out with some other musical projects, both as a musician and
as a producer with his YAR Records label. “I think everyone else is sadder than
I am,” laughs Day. “I’m never going to be any better at [performing with the Beer
Patrice] than I was at the peak of it … I’m really satisfied with how it ended.”

…

Beginning eight years ago as a side project for a group of friends who had all played
together previously in other bands, The Beer Patrice started out as a bit of a joke.
According to Day, the goal was to just have a great time playing music for themselves
and to write some wild and offensive tunes. As word about the group’s rowdy tunes
and performances spread, what started as a joke became a little more serious,
making the group in to one of the city’s must see acts. “We don’t know when the
change happened,” Day says, “but I think all the time before that was just being
really comfortable with the people you’re with on stage, because I don’t know if I could
do that with anyone else … you’re just building off each others’ enthusiasm, you’ve
got to really have no little voice in your head when you’re doing that, you’ve got to
just believe entirely.”

Day credits the supportive and close-knit group of musicians and music fans in the
city for making The Beer Patrice popular and he believes that the scene of talented
bands and artists in St. John’s is far beyond that of other Canadian cities because
of the isolation and close sense of community among musicians in the city.

“I’ve been on tour through every province and pound for pound, any band that I
could pick out in an equivalent genre of anyone I’ve seen on tour, Newfoundland
just kills it because of the scene here. It’s like a pressure cooker of wicked tunes.”

The Beer Patrice may have taken their last trip down the Harbourside Waterslide,
but that certainly doesn’t spell the end of Day’s musical endeavors. Day is a bright,
forward-thinking mind in the city’s music scene, playing with local groups Temples
and Allie Duff and the Happy Campers, as well as producing records for other acts on
YAR Records, like Mooch and Branch Ricky. Look out for future YAR releases for more
of Day’s work.