Biography
In Winnipeg, guitarist and songwriter Réjean (Rej) Ricard teamed up with drummer Jacques (Jake) Dubois to launch The Telepathic Butterflies. Earlier they had played together under the names Mayonnaise and Groove before adopting their present moniker, which originated in a passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions, while sharpening a crisp, clever power pop approach. Their debut album, Nine Songs, was cut in D.I.Y. fashion and issued independently in 2000 even though it contained twelve tracks; bassist Eric Van Buren was recruited shortly afterward. The album was later remastered with four additional tracks and reissued in 2003 by the New York label Rainbow Quartz under the title Introducing the Telepathic Butterflies. Rainbow Quartz followed with the band’s second album, Songs from a Second Wave, in 2004, and four years later released Breakfast in Suburbia in 2008.