The Awesome Team

The Awesome Team were a Toronto alternative rock and power-pop band with roots in the punk scene of northeastern Ontario. Singer and guitarist Joey Clement came from Kirkland Lake. Guitarist Geoff Major and drummer Dan Beeson grew up in New Liskeard, had known each other since they were six and had been playing in punk bands together since elementary school. Clement inherited a Les Paul from his grandfather at ten and came up on the Beatles, 1980s metal and 1990s punk. The three met through the northern Ontario band circuit and took the group south.

The name was in use by 2002. A demo of ‘Kirkland Lake’ from that year credits Joey Dale, Geoff Major, Gabriel Champagne and Joey Clement, with the band listed in both Kirkland Lake and Toronto. That November they played Brewster’s Bar and Grill in Pickering with Meadowvale, and on September 6, 2003 they were at the 360 in Toronto with Smooch, on a poster showing the four of them in KISS face paint.

Their promotional material from the period credits them with Spirit of the North, the Toronto Long & McQuade Battle of the Bands and the Canadian championship of the 2003 SoBe Ultimate Altitude Buzz, along with Canadian Music Week showcases and a live appearance on 102.1 The Edge.

In the spring of 2004 the band cut six songs at Joao Carvalho Mastering in Toronto. Carvalho recorded, mixed and mastered the sessions and co-produced with the band. The self-titled EP came out on their own imprint as AT04CD, crediting Clement on vocals and guitar, Major on guitar and backing vocals, Beeson on drums and backing vocals and Morgan Smith on bass. Smith had played in both the Toronto and Vancouver scenes. Gabriel Champagne, one of the four names on the 2002 demo, takes a separate credit for bass guitar on the recording.

‘Drive’, ‘The Last of My World’, ‘Brace Yourself’, ‘Sayonara’, ‘This Wont Take Long’ and ‘What Makes Angelica’ sit on the melodic edge of early-2000s alternative rock, thick guitars and punk speed under big choruses. A 2005 review put the mix of hooks and heavy guitar next to Weezer. Exclaim! heard Jimmy Eat World and the later Get Up Kids, named the band one to watch at Canadian Music Week 2005 and said the hooks were already drawing industry interest.

‘The Last of My World’ went furthest. Its video put the band in front of a barn that was actually set alight, close enough that Clement remembered his back scorching while they played. It went into rotation on MuchMusic in late 2005 and stayed about ten weeks. The song also turned up in the fifth season of Degrassi: The Next Generation, in ‘Together Forever’, under the scene where Leo tells Craig he wants to manage his band.

In February 2006 the band went out on their first Canadian tour, fourteen shows in under a month, three of them opening for The Trews and the rest as headliners. The run took them to Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton, with Ontario dates at Lee’s Palace and the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, the Underground in Hamilton, the Industry in Sarnia, and shows in London and Kitchener alongside The Trews, Rocketface and Staggered Crossing. Clement said they were writing for a full-length to be recorded within the year.

The album never appeared and the trail goes quiet after the spring of 2006. The EP outlasted the band: Fontana North still carried AT04CD and its original barcode on a 2011 distributor bulletin, where the title was marked discontinued.

Beeson and Major later surfaced in the Guelph band Dent, Beeson on keys, bass and vocals and Major on drums. Beeson went on to play lap steel and sing with Lowlands, and recorded, mixed and mastered their 2012 seven-inch at Magnetic Studios.

-Robert Williston