Bios

Short Punks in Love is a folk-rock duo made up of Brian Cremins and Pearl Ratunil. Since forming in 2005, they have released two CDs and have regularly performed at a variety of clubs in Chicago. They have taken the stage with other Chicago acts including Bill Liggett, The Jungle of Cities, The Sam Saunders Machine, and Vortis.

Short Punks in Love began seven years after Cremins and Ratunil met as graduate students at the University of Connecticut. During the first year of their acquaintance, only one of them, Cremins, had ever played in a band. Brian Cremins’ first professional band, The Confessors, was a power trio influenced by The Police, Husker Du, Mission of Burma, and Rush. They released three EPs from 1995 to 1999 and performed throughout the Northeast, prompting the Boston newspaper "The Noise" to describe their music as “turbocharged roots-rock with amphetamine Stratocaster and advanced percussive technique.” In other words, lots of loud guitars and drum fills.

By the time Cremins and Ratunil had met though in 1998, The Confessors had stopped performing. The band’s drummer having suffered a serious illness, Cremins was left to his own devices and began exploring other styles of music with the help of "The Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music," a compendium of original recordings of bluegrass, blues, old-time, and folk musicians. The result was a kind of pop-inspired folk music or a folk-inspired pop music.

The pop influence is foreshadowed by Cremins’ early experiences with the guitar when he was 16 years-old. "My first guitar," he says, "was a plastic Mickey Mouse one from Toys R’ Us. I learned all my chords on it and even managed to play a few Velvet Underground tunes with it. But my favorite bands were The Replacements and The Go-Go’s.” After several years of separation, which saw Cremins finish his Ph.D. in English and African American Studies at UConn and Ratunil return to UIC to continue her doctorate in English, they re-connected in 2002 and formed Short Punks in 2005, one month after Ratunil started taking drum lessons. A self-described former “Suzuki Brat,” Ratunil had grown up taking violin lessons from the second grade (“Old, by Suzuki standards,” said Ratunil) to the tenth-grade. “I stopped practicing the violin when I started listening to U2,” she said.

It would be twelve years before she started again in 2000, taking fiddle lessons at the Old Town of School of Folk Music. “I wanted to un-learn all that Suzuki stuff. I could play read and play the violin, but I couldn’t communicate.”

In December 2005, Ratunil decided to take up the drums and began started lessons at Andy’s Music on West Belmont. Shortly after, she paired with Cremins, who became the lead guitarist, singer, and primary songwriter of the Short Punks in Love (named after a song he had written about two students in an English class he once taught in grad school). By February, she and Cremins appeared on Chic-a-go-go, the local cable-access kiddie dance show which showcases local bands.

But that was just the beginning. Within the next month they were openers at the Red Line Tap, and by August of 2006, they recorded their first self-released album, "Short Punks in Love." The songs on "Short Punks in Love" range from reflections on cats (“Rosie”) and sweaters to lyrics about Cremins’ native New England and his experiences living in Louisiana after grad school. The song “Twilight” is about the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. Short Punks’ songs reflect a wide range of influences, from the rockabilly of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochrane to the songs of Paul Westerberg and the electronics of Brian Eno. They’ve also been known to throw in a cover now and then, including Dylan’s “Highway 61” and Ricky Nelson’s “Garden Party.”

SPiL performs regularly throughout Chicago. New songs and live shows are listed on their new website (www.shortpunksinlove.com) and their My Space page (www.myspace.com/shortpunksinlove). They released their second CD, "Good All Over," in the spring of 2007, and they are currently writing and recording their third album, "Punk Rock Social Club," which will be released in summer 2008.