Furnaceface

Furnaceface was a Canadian punk indie rock band formed in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada which was active from 1989 to 2000. The group consisted of vocalist and guitarist Pat Banister, vocalist and bassist Slo' Tom Stewart, and drummer Dave Dudley. In 1993, Furnaceface won the Canadian Music Video Association Award for best independent video for "About to Drown" from Just Buy It., and another one a couple of years later for Best Editing for "How Happy Do You Want to Be?" from This Will Make You Happy. History The band, formed in Ottawa in 1989, consisted of vocalist and guitarist Pat Banister, vocalist and bassist Slo' Tom Stewart and drummer Dave Dudley. Furnaceface evolved out of Fluid Waffle, which also included guitarist and vocalist Steve D'Annunzio. Furnaceface started playing shows late in 1989 and released their first single, "Sucked into Drugland," on Skull Duggery Records. After releasing this and the "New Pad" single, they toured across the U.S. and Canada. Their first full-length release was the Let It Down cassette, which was recorded by Andrew McKean, mixed by Marty Jones, and released in 1990. Jones recorded their second cassette in 1991, Just Buy It., and went on to engineer all the Furnaceface releases. After the first national tour for "Just Buy It" Jones (as "Smarty Moans") joined the group as a fourth member playing keyboard and guitar. After the original cassette version of Just Buy It. was released, Furnaceface signed to Cargo Records to release a remixed (by Bob Wiseman of Blue Rodeo fame) and re-sequenced version of the album on CD and cassette. Furnaceface also released their next two albums, This Will Make You Happy (1994) and unsafe@anyspeed (1996), with Cargo. Around the time of Just Buy It.'s re-release, Furnaceface decided to start a festival, called Furnacefest, to promote local bands as well as larger acts. In 1995, after two years of performing with the group, Marty Jones decided to leave the band to concentrate on being a producer and co-running Sound of One Hand Studios. After Cargo Canada folded, Furnaceface would release a fifth and final album in 1999 titled And the Days are Short Again… on their own label Upright Records, which had the single "Heartless" on it. Around 1999, Pat Banister moved to Vancouver to work as an art director in the film industry. In Banister's absence, Dave Dudley and Tom Stewart have joined with Blake Jacobs of Hot Piss to create Manpower, who perform occasionally around Ottawa.