Biography

The Hi-Fives were John Denery, Christopher Imlay, Steve Faine, and Gary Gutfeld (and also Jess Hilliard, Julie Rose, Evan Mendel, and Danny Seelig). They were a underground garage-punk band in the late 1990's on Lookout Records. The Ne'er-Do-Wells ended in 1994 when John (Al Sobrante) Kiffmeyer was replaced by Julie Rose. They played a few shows as The Narvel Felts, before Lookout worker Rop Vazquez told them to call themselves the Hi-Fives. Going forward, John and Chris would burn through an army of rhythm sections without changing the name of the band. (Though this marks their initial and naive understanding of "brand," it was prior to the concept of search engine optimization, or Google, for that matter.) The Hi-Fives were, chronologically: John Denery, Chris Imlay, Jess Hilliard, Julie Rose, Evan Mendel, Danny Seelig, [a nice fellow who played at Bimbo's once: who was that?] Steve Faine, and Gary Gutfeld. The band toured the U.S. and Canada often, Japan twice, and Europe once. Apart from a few reunion shows in the early and mid-2000's, effectively ended before they played a show with Dave Davies at Club Cocodrie on April 21, 2000…without John, who had moved to Hawaii.