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20 Feet worked the Alberta club circuit through the middle of the 1980s, playing other people’s songs while Ian Menzies, who later called it “my Edmonton cover band,” wrote songs of its own. Between 1985 and 1988 those songs reached vinyl on a four-song EP cut at Zone 5 Studios in Edmonton and two singles, the second of them produced in Toronto by Parachute Club co-founder Bill Bryans.

The lineup credited on the 1985 EP was Ian Menzies, Mitch Millan, Derek Nyberg and Don Pardell. Menzies wrote ‘Place for Two’ and ‘Institutions’ alone and shared the other two songs, with Don Pardell contributing lyrics to ‘Lions Share’ and Rob Menzies to ‘She’s a Hunter’. Rob Hewes, an engineer at Zone 5 Studios in Edmonton, produced and arranged the record there and mixed it with Ric Ericson and John Law before it went to L.R.C. in Los Angeles for mastering. 20 Feet came out on Criminal Records & Tapes (TF-001), published through the band’s own Feetoons Music, with Mark Ireland as manager. Ric Fedyna’s cover set a stylized woman against an oversized record, the band name cut in angular lettering.

K-97, Edmonton’s album rock station, chose ‘A Place For Two’ for Homegrown ’85, its compilation of local acts. 20 Feet shared the album with Thieves, NEO A4, Wilfred N and the Grown Men, Screamin’ Roosters, This Fear and China White.

On the road, 20 Feet opened twice for the Powder Blues. Both times keyboardist Willie MacCalder, an Edmonton musician whose ‘(Alone) In My Room’ with Willie and the Walkers had topped RPM’s Canadian chart in January 1968, made a point of welcoming the young openers. The second show was in Fort McMurray, where the two bands stayed in the same hotel and Menzies spent a couple of hours in MacCalder’s room talking shop. When MacCalder died in April 2023, Menzies remembered him as a gentleman who could make a Wurlitzer rock.

‘Nextime’ backed with ‘Place 4/2’ followed in 1986, manufactured by World Records (WRC3-4903). Menzies wrote both sides and co-produced ‘Nextime’ with Hewes, who produced the flip on his own. ‘Place 4/2’ reprised ‘Place for Two’ from the EP. The band took the arranging credit, ‘Nextime’ carried a new publisher, Powerzongs, and the picture sleeve paired a group photograph with Mission Control Management in Edmonton as the contact.

For the next single, Feetoons Music Records and Tapes gave its address as 105 Portland Street in Toronto, and Todd Cutler recorded ‘Problems’ at Wellesley Sound, the Toronto studio run by Jeff McCulloch. Menzies and Bill Bryans produced, and Bryans mixed the track with McCulloch. Mark Ireland stayed on as executive producer. The sleeve now credited six musicians: Bruce Conley, Rick Lazar, Ian Menzies, Mitch Millan, Nikku Nayar and Don Pardell. Derek Nyberg, credited on the 1985 EP, was not among them.

Bryans, born in Montreal, had played with M.G. & the Escorts, produced the Downchild Blues Band’s ‘Flip, Flop and Fly’ and drummed for the Government before co-founding the Parachute Club with Lorraine Segato in 1982. The band won four Juno Awards, and while with it he also produced Lillian Allen’s reggae albums Revolutionary Tea Party and Conditions Critical, Juno winners in 1986 and 1989.

‘Problems’ came backed with an extended mix. Its black sleeve showed a white shoe beside a sparking electrical cable, with the name spelled out as Twenty Feet in yellow. The sleeve carries a 1987 copyright and the label 1988.

How long 20 Feet carried on after ‘Problems’ is not known. Menzies stayed in music for good. He worked as a musician and journalist in Toronto, writing for Canadian Musician, and in the late 1990s directed A&R for Wicklow Records/BMG, steering projects with The Chieftains and Bill Laswell. After moving to Calgary in 2006 he managed artists including Juno winners The McDades and Kiran Ahluwalia and sat on the founding board of Music Calgary.

-Robert Williston