b"Early '70s Gibson Blue Ridge used to write and record Overcome by Happinesshe story begins in an average kids bedroomHarvard, who owned and founded Fort ApacheMusic was merely a hobby for both of the Pernice somewhere outside Boston and somewhereStudios in Boston. The Lemonheads recordedbrothers. Bob was working toward a career in in the 1970s. Young Joe Pernice was trying to writethere, as did the Pixies, Throwing Muses, Dinosaurengineering, while Joe wanted to write books, his first songs, if only to impress his brother, Bob,Jr., and scores of other indie bands. Joe Harvardmaybe get a job in academia. Around the time he six years his senior. His earliest efforts were merewas our second cousin, says Bob Pernice, but weenrolled in the graduate program at the University retreads of popular songs he heard on the radio,thought of him as our first cousin. He was a mon- of Massachusetts in Amherst, he formed a rock for which he rewrote the lyrics and tried to passster in the Boston music scene, but we had a littleband called the Scuds with two new friends, gui-it off as a wholly original composition. Bob wasband with him called the Country Cousins. At thattarist Bruce Tull and bassist Stephen Desaulniers. impressed by his talent for mimicry, but alarmedtime everybody who played in any kind of rock bandFurther proving Bobs contention that all bands by the kids knack for plagiarism. The experiencein the 80s suddenly discovered Patsy Cline andgravitate countryward, the Scuds gradually might have been embarrassing, but it gave Joe aGeorge Jones and all those people. So everybody,morphed into the Scud Mountain Boys, who strong grounding in the principles of songwriting:including us, was playing country music. Whenspecialized in a very austere brand of twang. As a melody and meter, structure and style, rhyme andJoe and Bob did some recording with their moresongwriting project, it was in some ways an exten-reason. I didnt pick up a guitar or a bass until Iprofessional relative, Joe Harvard credited thosesion of Joes poetry studies: The Scud Mountain was 15 or 16 years old and Bob was 21, he says.tapes to the Pernice Brothers. There wasnt any- Boys really opened my eyes to songwriting, he Hed been playing guitar for as long as Id beenthing special about the name, says Bob. It wassays. By making things simple, I could make alive, so of course he was always my biggest influ- more like: Here are my cousins, theyre brothers,things more complex. I was getting down to the ence. My first guitar, which I still have, was his. so what else are you going to call them? Nothingbasics, and it was exciting. I felt like I was learning from those sessions was ever released, but itto build the foundation of a house instead of trying A few years later, Joe was playing bass in a pickupmarks the very first very tentative lineup of theto start with the roof.band with Bob and their second cousin, JoePernice Brothers as a music entity."