Just like James Brown, Propagandhi's got a brand new bag.

OK, so maybe not a brand new bag, exactly, but definitely a brand new member. After nearly 20 years as a trio, the local agit-prop/punk combo became a foursome last fall, thanks to the addition of new guitarist Dave (The Beaver) Guillas.

The lineup change also begat a new source of creative inspiration; one that might even see the notoriously studio-shy act going back to the boards within the next two years.

"There seems to be a lot more potential right now than there ever has before for something to happen soon, and just way more options, especially with Beaver in the band," explains Propagandhi co-founder and frontman Chris Hannah. "He's already come up with a bunch more stuff that seems to have spurred Todd (Kowalski, bass) and Jord (Samolesky, drums) and I on. So probably next summer we'll be doing more recording. Not this summer, but next."

You can't really blame the guys for their somewhat sporadic approach to recording (four full-length albums in 17 years), or touring (the band spends an estimated two months per year on the road, if that). For one thing, all four members have other pursuits to occupy their time. Hannah and Samolesky founded local record label/co-operative G7 Welcome Committee 10 years ago (though Samolesky has since bowed out to focus his energy on the Canada Haiti Action Network), and Kowalski is a jiu-jitsu trainer and frequent volunteer at The Welcome Place, a group dedicated to helping recent immigrants acclimatize to life in Winnipeg.

Plus, performing was never really Hannah's bag, so to speak.

"I always disliked it, and we never really did that much of it," he says. "To me, that's not what being in a band is about, and it's not what making music is about ... It's about creating music or creating art that stokes you to the max, without anybody being there to judge it or applaud it. You make it alone in your basement, and if it's good, it's good. Nothing else matters."

That said, the band will be playing its first local show in more than a year this Tuesday, and in typical Propagandhi fashion, the Garrick Centre gig will double as a benefit for both Sisters in Spirit (a national campaign to raise awareness about violence against aboriginal women) and Sage House, a local resource centre for sex trade workers.

Hopefully, the show won't be plagued by either illness or injury (the band's last gig, in October 2005, saw two members fighting the flu while Kowalski tore a nasty gash in his leg mid-performance). For if there was ever a band that deserved the critical accolades and fan adulation that have come its way, it's Propagandhi, though Hannah still tends to downplay both the achievements of the band and G7.

"When you see the mechanism of the music industry working for 10 years, all your idealistic ideas about how you can leverage it, they disappear," he says. "It's a huge shell game of nonsense, like every other industry. I guess, so far as what we did on our own, the vast majority anyway, we're not unhappy with -- artistically and politically, the stuff we released -- but we constantly talk about ways we could wrap the whole thing off. But then it never happens."

Until that day comes, fans should keep their eyes peeled the G7 DVD Live From Occupied Territory, featuring two documentaries -- one on the Grassy Narrows Blockade, the other on the International Solidarity Movement -- as well as Propagandhi footage from a 2003 gig at The Zoo.