Punk-rock legend wild frontman, generous human

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This article was published 04/12/2024 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mitch Funk, the towering, deep-voiced frontman and lyricist of iconic Winnipeg punk bands Personality Crisis and Honest John, died on Monday after a lengthy battle with the blood cancer multiple myeloma. He was 65 years old.

A totemic figure in the city’s burgeoning 1980s punk scene, the Windsor Park-raised Funk cut a linebacker-sized silhouette in dimly lit basement and barroom venues, first as a teenager in the crowd in the 1970s and then as a physically imposing, deceptively agile lead singer, known for climbing amplifiers fast, falling to his knees hard, and only counting his bruises the morning after.

A pillar of the punk community, Funk co-founded the five-piece Le Kille in 1978 before taking the microphone in 1979 for Personality Crisis, a band that developed a cult-like following on the strength of Funk’s out-of-the-box showmanship and the roaring, soaring brand of punk rock captured on the band’s lone album, 1983’s Creatures for Awhile.

“Personality Crisis was the best band that ever happened,” says Deb Wall, who lived with Funk in the 1980s at a residence called the House of Beep — named for the citrus drink — while playing with acts such as the Ruggedy Anns and the Wurst, Winnipeg’s first all-female punk band.

“Winnipeg punk rock royalty has lost a king.”

“They were an electrifying band that set the bar for all other Winnipeg bands, and all other Canadian punk bands, really,” says punk historian Chris Walter, who met Funk in 1979, long before writing Warm Beer and Wild Times, an authoritative biography of Personality Crisis published in 2008.

“They had a tendency to blow out-of-town acts off the stage — even the Circle Jerks and the later D.O.A. lineups.”

Recorded in San Francisco and initially released by Risky Records, Creatures for Awhile is now a rare and desirable LP that earned the band, which opened for Billy Idol in 1982 at Winnipeg’s Le Rendez-Vouz, diehard fans as near as Calgary and as far away as Japan.

There’s a case to be made that nearly 45 years ago, Funk helped lay the foundation for Winnipeg’s punk emergence at Wellington’s, an empty discotheque on the subterranean level of the St. Charles Hotel.

After getting their start at the Marion Hotel, the band convinced the downtown venue’s owner to let them headline an all-punk bill featuring fellow locals Stretch Marks and the Unwanted, who would all share space on the influential Better Youth Organization 1984 compilation album Something to Believe In.

Behind the neon-clad Funk’s booming vocals and Jon Card’s concussive drumming, Personality Crisis transformed Wellington’s in one night.

“The (fans) ripped out the brass railings around the dance floor, smashed the giant red heart hanging from the ceiling,” recalls the band’s guitarist Richard Duguay, who says the club’s owner shut the power down mid-set.

“They had never seen anything like it.”

After Funk and Personality Crisis knocked down the disco ball, Wellington’s went on to host influential punk, new wave, and garage acts such as the Cure, D.O.A., SNFU, Images in Vogue and the Exploited.

Personality Crisis developed a strong fanbase in Alberta, and the band spent a few years in Calgary before returning to Winnipeg. Funk went on to co-found Honest John in 1987 with John Campbell, Mark Langtry and Aaron Smith.

With Honest John, Funk was known for getting his audience involved in the show, inviting 120 fans to join him on stage at the Spectrum (now the Pyramid) and holding a wrestling match in a regulation-sized ring at the Zoo in Osborne Village.

Ahead of the final Honest John gig in 1998, Funk, who worked for decades as a kindly orderly at St. Boniface Hospital, offered the following epitaph for the band in an interview with Free Press music reporter Bartley Kives: “At least they tried.”

Twenty years later, Funk and Personality Crisis reunited for a concert at the Pyramid to celebrate a reiusse of Creatures for Awhile, mastered by Craig Boychuk and organized by Patrick Michalishyn of Winnipeg label Sounds Escaping.

In 2017, 44 years after its initial pressing, the album climbed to the top of the charts at campus station CKUW 95.9 FM.

Funk didn’t dwell on the past too much, his friends and bandmates say, preferring to spend his time with his Cairn terrier Annie, his late partner Evelyn, and his family, especially his brother Aaron Funk, a recording artist who performs as Venetian Snares.

”He was a total team player. We all suffered together or we all prospered together. The best bands always come out of a gang, and we all had each other’s backs,” says Duguay, who recalls his former bandmate’s startling generosity.

“Mitch wasn’t your normal punk.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com