Joe Pater

Joe Pater started playing music in a high school band in Kingston, Ontario in the early 1980s. The Slinks wound up being a (very small) part of Canadian music history thanks to the later accomplishments of their lead singer. He also played in Hungry Tim in Kingston in the early 1990s, and in Atomica in the Valley in the mid 2000s – recordings of both can be found on the Derailleurs SoundCloud page.

His current main musical endeavor is Les Dérailleurs, a band that plays punkish original music. He also performs as Vernon Valiquette when he plays “Glam-a-Billy” covers (Hank Williams meets Marc Bolan). The next Vernon Valiquette show, with Liam Hurley, will be on the Forbes Library lawn, for the Fête de la Musique on June 21, 2018 which he is helping to organize (the first VV show was June 21, 2015 in Nantes). Pater has also begun playing with the members of Hungry Tim again in Kingston, and plays with fellow linguists as the Headless Relatives.