The demise of Fanny's and the dissolution of the Dukes, coupled with the birth of Chloe and Mahalia, prompted the Lepages to return to Manitoba, back to Morden, in fact.

It was, again, an uncertain time. The Manitoba music scene was, to say the least, considerably less promising than Ontario's, and even the possibility of a day job seemed unclear. Nonetheless, J.P. and Glenda decided that, now that they had the girls, they wanted to be closer to their own families as well. And there were some old friends back home that they looked forward to seeing, too.

"It was funny how I got my first gig back in Winnipeg," Lepage laughs. "Yeah, the first place I played after leaving Windsor was...the Windsor [Hotel]. I was over at Mike's place [Mike Chubey, the drummer in J.P.'s first band, Mother Groove], and the phone rang. At the time, Mike was living with Dwayne Dueck, and they had just started up the Shuffleheads. Anyway, the guy on the phone was Dave Mowat, and he was calling to see if Dwayne could do a gig with him. As it turned out, the Shuffleheads had a gig that weekend so Dwayne was busy. So, I was sitting there as Mike was talking to Dave on the phone and I was thinking it was Big Dave McLean, so I piped and said 'Mike, tell him I'll do it.' And that was how I hooked up with Mowat."

Lepage and Mowat immediately discovered a strong affinity for each other's playing, they became good friends and began gigging together regularly. It was a great opportunity for J.P., as it brought him back into the Winnipeg fold as part of an established outfit, Mowat's band, the Curbside Shuffle. Not only did it provide him with an easy and natural introduction to the local clubowners, it also connected him with the players as well. And, a year later, when Mowat himself moved out to Ontario, Lepage was already fronting his own band backed up by musicians that he'd worked with in the Curbside Shuffle.

"I met Harri Vallittu the first night with Mowat and I knew right then that he was the guy I wanted to play with. That was my plan for my next project: a four piece band with a keyboard player. I wanted a real versatile situation, like with the Dukes, but this time I wanted to try it with a piano. And, you know, all the sudden here was this real experienced guy, who'd been playing a lot longer than I had, and he wanted to work with me. So that was exciting."

J.P.'s first band back in Winnipeg, then, consisted of Harri Vallittu on keyboards, Gary Stefaniuk on bass and Mark Routley on drums. It was a lineup that Lepage would continue to perform with for roughly a year and a half, until Stefaniuk's day job was switched to nightshift and Routley moved to the west coast. Musically, things slowed down at that point. Glenda was pregnant again and J.P. was spending more time at home in Morden, working a day job at a music store in Winkler. It seemed as though maybe the time was right to consider getting out of the performing end of the music business altogether. Then, something happened.

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