Gerry Mosby (bass, keyboards, vocals; 1st album)
Paul Kersey (drums, percussion)
Paul Cockburn (guitars, vocals; 1st album)
Brian Gagnon (bass, guitars, lead vocals)
Jacques Harrison (keyboards, lead vocals; 1st album)
Paul Dickinson (guitars, lead vocals; replaced Cockburn)
Carl Calvert (bass, lead vocals; replaced Gagnon)
During the early '70's, Daffodil recording act Dillinger released two obscure progressive rock albums to some critical note, but poor sales. Drummer Robert Harrison was homesick for Quebec and with his departure to join Offenbach, Dillinger's long and sprawling progressive leanings subsided leaving room for fresh ideas and so Brian Gagnon, Jacques Harrison and Paul Cockburn brought in drummer Paul Kersey (Max Webster) and Gerry Mosby who was added to the line-up to do double duty on bass and keyboards. The new, tougher, hard rock line-up was christened by manager Cliff Hunt as The Hunt.
Their eponymous 1977 debut on GRT Records was well receive in San Antonio, Texas of all places. The album's cover graphics featured an embossed hand with blood streaked fingers which gave the act a moment's notoriety, but after GRT caved to pressure from complaints by retailers, they issued a jacket with just the red-streaks minus the hand. Still, the album fell on deaf ears in Canada.
And despite some noteable FM airplay, the band was relegated to the Northern Ontario bar circuit playing inaccessible locales such as Cochrane, Ontario. Some of the members lost confidence immediately and before long, Mosby had left to join Rhinegold as their bassist. By 1978 Harrison and Cockburn had also bailed leaving Gagnon and Kersey to regroup.
Ownership of The Hunt's recording contract had shifted back to Daffodil due to GRT's impending collapse, and president Frank Davies offered Gagnon a chance to record another album. During 1979 Gagnon toiled over a new recording playing nearly all the instruments and with the drum segments he couldn't play himself, Kersey was added to the sessions.
Kersey and Gagnon finished the album and then buried it until a new live act could be created. With the addition of guitarist Paul Dickinson (J.R. Flood, Bullrush), The Hunt hit the clubs once more and refined the new material already in the can.
1980's 'Back On The Hunt' album, produced by Steve Vaughan (Dillinger, Klaatu), was the result and it featured their Canadian charting remake of the obscure Beatle classic "It's All Too Much". But even this version of The Hunt failed to elicite interest from the world at large and Gagnon left to eventually join Frank Soda & The Imps.
Kersey was left with nothing but the band's name, a guitarist and a record contract. Carl Calvert was brought in as bassist and helped augment lead vocal duties. And two years later a third album, also produced by Steve Vaughan, was released - called 'The Thrill Of The Kill'. Nevertheless, the world had grown tired of anthemic rock in the face of the burgeoning post-Punk era and The Hunt split up in 1984.
Gagnon formed a band with Andy O'Connor called The Acetones, who released one single, and when the paying gigs dried up the duo went on to form a successful John Mellencamp tribute band called Rumbleseat (and occasionally released original material as Justice) for many years.
By the 1990's he was running his own Sound Dynamix recording studio engineering and producing (Moving Targetz, The Tenants, Shania Twain) and would later re-team with Gerry Mosby at a Toronto jingle house. Gagnon currently works with former ESP Studio technician John Clarke at another Toronto jingle house (Prisma Sound) and is occasionally a live soundman at various clubs in the Greater Toronto Area.
A repackaging of the best of the band's three albums was issued by Pacemaker in 1995 and it contains three previously unavailable bonus tracks: "Fantasy Mansion" and "She Opens Her Eyes" from the 'Back On The Hunt' sessions and "I Want To Be Set Free", a rare 7" single release from Gagnon's pre-Dillinger days with Bullrush; Kersey currently plays and records in St. Catherines, Ontario in The Wheelers.
Singles
1980 It's All Too Much (Daffodil/Capitol)
1980 Standing In The Road/What Good Is Love (Daffodil/Capitol)
1982 You In The Night/Seeing It Through (Daffodil/Capitol)
Albums
1977 The Hunt (Daffodil/GRT)
['bleeding hand' embossed cover with Daffodil label art]
1977 The Hunt [re-issue] (Daffodil/GRT)
[altered graphics without 'bleeding hand' and GRT label art]
1980 Back On The Hunt (Daffodil/Capitol)
1982 The Thrill Of The Kill (Daffodil/Capitol)
1995 Tracked Down (The Best Of) (Pacemaker)
Video
Compilation Tracks
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