Northern Dial Artist Profile

The Watchmen

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Formed in Winnipeg in 1988, The Watchmen built their reputation through relentless touring before releasing McLaren Furnace Room in 1992. Daniel Greaves's resonant vocals and Joey Serlin's guitar writing gave the band an immediately identifiable centre, and songs such as "Run and Hide" helped move them from Prairie clubs into the national Canadian rock circuit. Their second album, In the Trees, became the decisive breakthrough: "Boneyard Tree," "All Uncovered" and "Lusitana" drove the record to platinum certification in Canada and confirmed the group as one of Winnipeg's most visible rock exports of the 1990s.

Brand New Day followed in 1996 and earned a JUNO nomination for Rock Album of the Year, while 1998's Silent Radar renewed the band's commercial momentum with "Stereo," "Any Day Now" and "Say Something." The album also experimented with web and CD-ROM features at a moment when bands were beginning to treat digital media as part of the record itself, earning a MuchMusic award for its use of new technology. Across those records, The Watchmen balanced muscular guitar rock with melodic songwriting and Greaves's unusually commanding voice.

The band announced a farewell in 2003 but later reunited for recurring Canadian performances, and the continuing audience for those shows has kept the catalogue active well beyond its original radio era. The Watchmen's significance is partly regional and partly national: they demonstrated how a Winnipeg band could build a major Canadian career through touring, durable albums and songs that became fixtures of 1990s rock radio without surrendering the identity of where they came from.