For 25 years, Thinking of Pinky has been entertaining Rainy River District Residents with their rocking musical stylings, from the Emo Fair to Rainy Lake Square. The foursome hit the square again tomorrow night for the latest instalment in the Summer Sounds in the Square series.
The most common question the band gets is: ‘Where the heck does your weird name come from?”
While it really means nothing, it gets the band a lot of attention for its weirdness, according to founding member, vocalist and rhythm guitarist Cliff Pidlubny.
And that’s the point.
“It was 2001, New Year’s Eve, and we just started riffing band names,” Pidlubny said. “And out of nowhere came Thinking of Pinky, and everybody went, ‘What’s that mean?’ It means nothing; it means whatever you want it to mean.”
“For about probably three or four years after our band started in 2001, we were playing the Rainy Lake Hotel and other areas, people would come up to me on the street and say, ‘hey we were talking about it at work, what does your band name mean?’ and yeah, that’s exactly it—you were talking about it at work. Basically, it was just a marketing thing.”
In its current formation, the band consists of Pidlubny, John McEvoy on drums and vocals, Chris Denby on lead guitar and vocals and Craig Wood on Bass.
Each member shares vocal duties with Pidlubny, with McEvoy and Denby all sharing songs as lead vocalist and Wood mostly as a backup vocalist.
McEvoy said he started singing because they were working on an AC/DC song and his voice fit the bill, and for him it’s not too hard to sing and play drums at the same time.
“Most of the time, no,” he said. “It usually keeps you in the pocket; there’s the odd one that’s off time, but there’s not that many of those.”
While in the band’s earlier days they recorded some originals, Pidlubny says they’re a cover band at heart.
“Scott Downs and Dan Jones were original members of the band, and they were songwriters, and they wrote songs, and we recorded probably two or three,” Pidlubny said. “But, in the long run, we’re a cover band.”
McEvoy says the band plays a wide array of music, from classic rock to pop.
“It’s classic rock, a little bit of country, some pop, I guess,” he said. “Older pop music, I think that covers it.”
McEvoy says the band likes to see people enjoying the music.
“We like to see people enjoy the music, having fun,” he said. “We strive to make people have fun, make sure they have a chance to dance.”
The band has a bit of a busy schedule over the next few weeks as they’ll also be on the small stage at the Emo Fair and will hit the Atikokan Bass Classic as well, before that.
