Review Fix chats with Tom Boy’s Nate Daniels and Dante Berardi Jr., who discuss the band’s origin and goals for the future, as well as their creative process.
Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?
Nate: I took a wrong turn down a dark alley and ended up singing in a church choir. Kidding. I guess it was a conscious decision in my early days in Toronto. I wanted to be on stage and I didn’t want to be a stage actor. So this seemed to be the next best thing.
Dante: I was born into it. God Father was Canadian Rock N Roll Legend Bobby Curtola, Father was the first music director of the ECMAs and played 7 instruments, my Grandfather on my mom’s side ran 2 radio stations in Moncton, New Brunswick and Coordinated huge outdoor concerts.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Nate: It usually starts with a night alone. After a drink or two. After a few tokes. But I am always alone at first – It helps me to channel the things I want to say but don’t have the strength to sober. And then everything seems to all just come at once; the chords, the words, the melody. It’s rare that it happens separately. And then I take that initial mess and put it on Dante’s desk.
Dante: It is something like channeling I think. I play around with some notes and it goes where it will, or I play around over something Nate created, or I just try and create the stuff I am constantly hearing in my head. Things just come out of no where. No rhyme or reason. Happens without fail.
Review Fix: What inspires you?
Nate: Simplicity and routine – BORING I know. But everyone does chaos so well. I like to perfect the things that everyone else fails at.
Dante: Anything that makes me feel. Sometimes that is a song, sometimes that is a photo, sometimes it is silence, sometimes it is how the light is coming through a window and landing on the wall.
Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?
Nate: “Regret rock,” “regrettably independent,” “shame-synth”, “ambiguously alternative” “passive-aggressive pop”, shall I go on?
Dante: “Sonic Arctic Death Pop”
Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?
Nate: The studio is meticulously drawn out, edited, and carefully designed. The live show is unhinged, and many elements go unrehearsed. We aren’t interested in predictability.
Dante: The live show is like the best first date in summer, the studio is like a fist fight with someone bigger than you who has brass knuckles on.
Review Fix: What inspired your latest single?
Nate: The demise of a previous project, a break-up of sorts. The need for change. And to be quite honest, a very honest depiction of what life could be like after experiencing soaring success and then epic failure.
Dante: Anger, Regret, Self Loathing, Self Deprecation. Self Medicating.
Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2019?
Nate: Take on more than I can handle.
Dante: I want to speak less and listen more.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Nate: Eventually we’ll need to get this touring train on the road. I’ll just need to get Dante to quit his job…
Dante: Buy a house boat.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Nate: God Bless America and all of its allies.
Dante: Some ships are made of metal, some ships are made of wood, but the best ships……..are FRIENDSHIPS.
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