It started with a single song.

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Jess Milton, producer for The Vinyl Café on CBC Radio, saw The PepTides perform and wanted that sound — the big-band energy, the theatrics, the five voices — for a cover of the Vinyl Café theme. One song.

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Claude MarQuis had a different idea. If they were doing this, they should do all of it. He proposed writing not just the title song, but an original composition for every one of the 18 stories in Stuart McLean’s book of the same name. Jess said yes.

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What followed was Revenge of the Vinyl Café (2013), 21 songs — each one inspired by a McLean story and shaped through The PepTides’ collective sensibility: MarQuis' contributions included the pop-burst and dark humour of "Attack of the Treadmill", the melancholy folk of "Le Morte D’Arthur", the boyhood wonder of "Fish Head" — a song that found its story not in the King Cod itself, but in the smoke that lingers after: little moments rise and fly / not the fire but the smoke in your eyes.

Critics recognized the project’s ambition. The Fulcrum rated the album 4 / 5 and called it “an unusual album” that “isn’t really an album; it’s a soundtrack… written and recorded to coincide with each short story in Stuart McLean’s book of the same name.” The review noted that the diversity of styles means the band “definitely succeeded in their attempt to make an effective and unique soundtrack,” and that “each song is able to evoke a specific mood.” "Le Morte D’Arthur" was singled out as “a particularly beautiful track,” described as “a lovely send‑off for the canine companion.”

When the album was finished, the band had one more idea: asking Stuart McLean to host the album launch. McLean said yes.

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The band rehearsed with him. They built a show together — McLean’s storytelling woven through The PepTides’ heavily propped, choreographed theatrical production — and performed it one night at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Québec. There was nothing else quite like it.

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The collaboration extended beyond the album. The PepTides were invited to perform for the 20th anniversary of The Vinyl Café on CBC, bringing their theatrical interpretation of McLean’s world to a national audience — a rare convergence of Canadian radio storytelling and live musical spectacle.

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Stuart McLean passed away in February 2017. He was a Canadian icon — a familiar voice on the radio who created that rare thing: a sense of family that stretched from coast to coast. The Vinyl Café was where Canadians went to feel at home. Getting to make music inside that world, and to share a stage with the man who built it, remains something The PepTides will never forget.