Joe Pernice is a funny guy. You wouldn’t know it by the melancholy songs he writes for Pernice Brothers, the venerable American indie rock band with which he’s made five albums.

In fact, AOL Music once voted Pernice’s Chicken Wire the number-one most exquisitely sad song in the whole world.

Humour, though, comes through loud and clear in his second book of fiction, It Feels So Good When I Stop (Riverhead).

In conversation, too.

“I wish I could wear leisure suits – track suits – every day,” the 42-year-old author/musician tells me over the phone. “I also want some nurse-grade Reeboks with Velcro. I want to wear sunglasses over sunglasses.

“I proposed it once but my wife absolutely refused.”

The book, which he launches at the Dakota tonight along with a companion CD (Ashmont) of cover songs, follows a young hipster protagonist who, after a single day of marriage, flees his wife and New York for a floundering existence in Cape Cod.

“People who are fans of my music and have also read the book will say to me, ‘Are you sure you’re the same guy?’ says Pernice, who relocated from New York to Toronto with his Canadian wife and young son a few years ago.

“Music, for me, uses a darker voice. But in reality I joke around a lot. I like jokes more than anything.”

music@nowtoronto.com