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Peo­ple assume that Lumpy got its name from a char­ac­ter in the old Leave It To Beaver TV series.

That would be con­ve­nient and amus­ing, but the truth is more of a side effect than a direct hit.

Tom is music reporter with The Province, a Van­cou­ver daily news­pa­per. He was writ­ing a memo­r­ial for Erik Nis­sen, the man who man­aged NAL where the as yet unnamed band reg­u­larly rehearsed. In his memo­r­ial to a sup­port­ive man who had died of a com­bined stroke and heart attack, Tom described the music com­ing out of each rehearsal stu­dio until he reached one where some lumpy 50 year old men were play­ing their favorite rock songs.

“That’s us, isn’t it,” var­i­ous mem­bers exclaimed after read­ing this part of the memo­r­ial. Thus Lumpy.

The band formed so Bill could learn to play gui­tar. The strat­egy was sim­ple. Rather than read from a book or take lessons, he would sink or swim with expe­ri­enced musi­cians. He called on Vern Beamish , Bruce Faulkner, Ron Hys­lop and Ron Moores, who used the time to drink beer. Tom came in to sing in order for Bill, who had sung in a pre­vi­ous band, to con­cen­trate on his play­ing. Late 70s punk rock was their entry to per­form­ing rock and roll but col­lec­tively the six play­ers had a for­mi­da­ble knowl­edge of rock that stretched back to its beginning.

It started, as most bands do, by kick­ing around a few old favorites. Even­tu­ally, at Vern’s insis­tence, some orig­i­nals by Tom were intro­duced to the reper­toire. Nine of them formed the basis of the first Lumpy album.

Like the songs, the record­ing was sim­ple. Lumpy set up and played in NAL’s record­ing stu­dio. It per­formed the songs as if live at a club. No fuss was made over arrange­ments nor sounds. There were few addi­tional takes. Over­dub­bing was min­i­mal, mostly to rein­force a few cho­ruses. Mix­ing also was quick. Engi­neer Mark Hen­ning recorded the whole thing.

Lumpy still rehearses at NAL, still plays its favorite rock songs. Tom still writes, Bill has become a fear­less gui­tar player. Vern still adapts Tom’s songs for the band and Bruce and the two Rons use the time together to drink beer.

Lumpy is Vern Beamish, Bruce Faulkner, Bill Har­ri­son, Tom Har­ri­son, Ron Hys­lop, Ron Moores.