Toronto’s Everything All The Time will be playing the Horseshoe Tavern on January 30th, as part of the No Shame-curated lineup, joining Halifax’s Rich Aucoin and fellow Torontonians Lioness. Joseph Shabason, who plays keyboards, saxophone and sings in the band, was kind enough to recently answer some questions via email. Read on to find out what Shabason recommends as a warmup for a EATT show, the challenges of having a band with six members, and more. I also embarrassed myself when it came to a classic song by an iconic Canadian band. Enjoy!
The SingingLamb: Is this your first time playing a No Shame show? Have you ever played with Lioness or Rich?
Joseph Shabason: This is actually our third No Shame show. The first one was with The Magic at Wrongbar and the second was for our EP release at The Drake with Mike Dugay and Whale Tooth. Lauren’s always been such a huge supporter/helper/friend of EATT, so hopefully there will be many more No Shames together. We played with Lioness before at CMW last year and they are fantastic. I actually went to high school with Jeff and Vanessa. The first show I every played was with a punk band called Martini in Jeff’s ex-girlfriend’s garage in Brampton in 1995. We opened for a band called Perfectly Normal which eventually became Moneen. Wild! We’ve never played with Rich before but we’re definitely excited to hear his set.
Joseph, the last time we interviewed you, you said that you started writing rock songs because you hated playing jazz. I noticed that many of your songs incorporate elements of snyth-pop and disco, and I was curious as to where the more “dancier” influences in your music come from?
Joseph: I think that everyone in Everything All The Time is a huge pop music fan, and a lot of our favorite pop songs are also pretty danceable. I mean a lot of the Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Hall and Oates and Madonna songs that we grew up listening to on the radio are also monster dance jams. I think that if your goal is to write good pop music, you’ll inevitably end up writing music that you can dance to.
With Alanna also singing in Bonjay, and the rest of you involved in various other music projects, how difficult is it for you guys to find the time to record and get together to play shows?
Joseph: VERY!!!!!!! The biggest struggle with this band is keeping things moving forward. Everyone has so many commitments/bands/kids/jobs/mortgages that to even lock down one day a week that we can all get together is pretty difficult. What ends up happening is that in the times that we all can’t meet together, different people who are available meet to write and record demos. That way when we all are able to be in the same place at the same time we always have new songs that we can work on.
With six members in the band, do you ever find yourselves without enough room on-stage? Do you guys have a regular stage set-up or do change it up for every show?
Joseph: It’s never been a huge problem, but we’ve definitely had problems/band discussions about what the best stage configuration for us is. Recently we’ve been trying out a “V” configuration with the drums at the back of the stage/”V” and Alanna right in the middle of the “V”. So far it’s been working pretty well. Alanna gets to be the focal point (which she should be) and we can all see each other which is important.
How would you suggest the crowd best warm-up for an Everything All The Time show?
Joseph: Two shots of tequila and some deep lunges.
Who from the band is the most likely to go out to a club and start an epic danceoff?
Joseph: I’m not sure. Back when we were younger I know that Kieran and I used to go dancing at The Dance Cave and have some dance-offs…but that was over five years ago…and we were total losers. I think that I might have even had a studded belt and some ironic belt buckle at the time. I wouldn’t put it past Mary to win a danceoff. …I feel like out of all of us she has the most tricks up her sleeve. These days I think most of us are just content to dance non-competitively. I know that when I used to throw the party “Loving In The Name Of” a lot of the members of EATT would show up and dance together. I think it was more of a positive friend jam than an epic dance-off thing.
You guys have a song called “Those Eyes”. Did you name it that because “These Guys” was already taken by The Guess Who?
Joseph: Do you mean “These Eyes” by the Guess Who? (Note: I did) I think you must, although “these guys” would be a pretty funny title change. The lyrics could be:
“These guys are cryin’
These guys have seen a lot of love
But they’re never gonna see another one like I had with you”
Everyone would be thinking “who the fuck are these sensitive guys who’ve seen so much love and why are they cryin’?”
Tell us about some of your other upcoming shows. Which show(s) are you guys most excited for?
Joseph: We are playing:
Late Night In The Bedroom on the 27th
Peterborough on the 28th w/ The Magic
Toronto @ The Horseshoe on the 30th w/ Lioness (Facebook event)
Brantford on the 5th of Feb
The Steam Whistle Brewry on the 5th of Feb w/ Dinosaur Bones
And an (as of right now) secret CMW showcase on the 11th of March
We’re excited for all the shows, but right now the show on the 30th at The Horseshoe we’re most pumped for. We haven’t played Toronto in a little while and we’ve been working on a bunch of new songs so it’ll be nice to play them to a hometown crowd.
What’s next for you guys?
Joseph: Recording a new album in the spring and fingers crossed doing a big tour come summer/fall. In the meantime we’re just gonna keep writing and playing and hopefully we’ll be able to do our music thang all-the-live-long-day. It’s just a matter of time before everyone realizes that we’re as good as we know we are.
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For more Everything All The Time,
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/everythingallthetimeband
