The Shindigs — Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, spelling, and readability. Music excerpts are noted where they appear in the episode.

Cold open

The Shindigs: I had an exchange student living at my house when I was in Grade 4. He was really good friends with Jacob and Matt, and Matt was in drum lessons, and Jacob was in guitar lessons. So they were looking for a singer, and then Stefan said that he heard me singing in the shower a lot, and then introduced us. And yeah, dude, we started playing Green Day covers and Blink-182 covers in Matt’s parents’ basement.

[Music excerpt plays.]

Eric Chan: I’m Eric Chan, and you’re listening to Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists. In this episode, I’ve got Shea and Alex from The Shindigs, a five-piece indie rock band from Nanaimo. We talk about how a childhood basement band slowly became something more serious, and how friendship still sits at the centre of it.

The Shindigs: We’ve been jamming now for a few years, but most of us go way back. Me and our drummer and guitar player started our first band when we were 10 and 11 in elementary school. And then Peabody here, I met him in high school. And our bass player, Tev, went to our high school as well. So yeah, we go way back.

But as The Shindigs, we’ve been playing for only a couple years now. It’s just about three years now, which is wild, because it feels like it’s been forever. Like I said, we’ve been playing music together for a really long time, but actually formally playing as The Shindigs, doing shows, selling merch, making songs, and all that stuff, yeah, about three years, I guess.

Eric Chan: The story of The Shindigs goes way back. And funny enough, it all started because of an exchange student.

The Shindigs: I had an exchange student living at my house when I was in Grade 4. Stefan Kim. He was this Korean kid. He was fucking hilarious, man. He was one of the funniest dudes I’ve ever met.

He was really good friends with Jacob and Matt. And I guess they wanted to start a band because they were playing Rock Band. Matt was in drum lessons and Jacob was in guitar lessons. They were looking for a singer, and then Stefan said that he heard me singing in the shower a lot. And then introduced us. And yeah, dude, we started playing Green Day covers and Blink-182 covers in Matt’s parents’ basement.

So fucking God bless them for putting up with us for years, because it took a long time for us to be half decent. But yeah, we’ve been buddies since we were little kids. It makes all this way more fun when you’re doing it with your best buddies, you know what I mean?

[Music excerpt plays.]

Eric Chan: Before The Shindigs became a real band, that friendship was already there. And it still shapes how they think about the band now.

The Shindigs: Well, I can speak from my perspective. I think that we’ve always kind of kept at the forefront that you have to enjoy doing it. We really try to make fun be the driving motivator for why we’re making music.

But I also think that as we’ve evolved, and as our music has gotten a little better, we’ve gotten tighter as a band and a little bit more refined in all aspects of being a band. There’s an air of more seriousness to it, but it’s all rooted in friendship. When people ask me about the band, I always say that we’re friends first and then bandmates second. I think that really is a big driving force in our creative process. I think it’s a really valuable thing.

Eric Chan: That friendship also changed the way the songs started coming together.

The Shindigs: Yeah, well, me and Alex started hanging out when we were probably 16 or 17, and he was just picking up the guitar at that point. I was over playing in bands, and me and him were hanging out, and he was like, “Hey, I’ve written these few riffs and shit. Do you want to try and write a song?”

Then that was actually one of the first songs on our first record. “Fight or Flight” was on there. “Second Hand Chapstick” was another one of the first ones that we wrote together. And that’s kind of what our first EP is. It is pretty much seven songs that me and Alex wrote before we had the idea of The Shindigs. We were like, “Well, if we don’t release them now, they’re never getting released.”

Shout out to Jacob, though. He did write “Broken Hands” for the record.

Absolutely. And I think as we’ve evolved, the writing process has become more of a five-way collaboration. We’ve just kind of built off what we’ve built from the start. It’s gotten better and better. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s good, man. We’re stoked.

Eric Chan: As more of the band started shaping the songs, the sound opened up too.

The Shindigs: We all pull influences from different sounds. We all grew up on different tastes, and that’s the beautiful thing about writing as a five-piece. What my ear might jump to right away is not what our bassist Tev’s would, or Jacob’s. And the fact that we’re quite good with communication and just being able to try things out, like, “Okay, well, let’s give it a spin. If we don’t like it, then we don’t have to use it, but let’s at least give it 100 percent of a go,” makes it a lot better.

We’ve kind of allowed that to make us more of a fusion between all of our styles, rather than being like, “We’re this kind of band,” or this sort of thing. You can listen to four of our songs and they don’t really sound the same, but they sound like The Shindigs, if you know what I mean. And that’s something I’m really proud of, because it allows you to not get bored.

If you’re just like, “We’re a surf rock band,” and all you do is surf rock, or “We’re an indie pop band,” and all you do is that sort of thing, I feel like you can get stale. But the fact that we can write one song that is kind of heavy punk influenced, and then another one that is more like beach, soft rock, allows it to stay interesting.

We’ve been growing more comfortable in our sound and feeling like we’re really coming into our own with the newest music that we’ve been writing. So I’m really excited for the opportunity to share that stuff.

[Music excerpt plays.]

Eric Chan: One song that shows that process is “Snowball.” It did not come together all at once.

The Shindigs: Like for instance, “Snowball,” which is a song that we have released, was one that we chipped away at for a while. It just wasn’t feeling right, and we kept trying new things and new things. But we kept circling back to it. And then eventually, one of the minor changes unlocked something, and then we finished it within a couple practices. It was like, “Oh, there we go. That’s it.”

[Music excerpt plays.]

Eric Chan: Another song came from something less technical, and more about the feeling in the room.

The Shindigs: It was called “Feeling the Love,” like how much love we felt at our first show at The Queens. We saw so many people that I hadn’t seen since high school. There was a friend’s mom in the crowd, and I was like, “Whoa, I haven’t seen you since I was 11.”

We had so many people come through and show us a lot of love that night. And when we were sitting at the next practice talking about how amazing that all felt, we ended up writing that song during that session. So yeah, it’s one that definitely means a lot to us.

[Music excerpt plays.]

Eric Chan: That feeling did not just stay in the songs. It also changed once the band started playing bigger rooms, opening for Cameron Whitcomb on a run of sold-out shows, including the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver.

The Shindigs: I think it made us relook at our performance on stage, certainly how we handle ourselves. You just get so charged up by the amount of people in a room like that.

It’s definitely worth noting that we were incredibly fortunate to be playing sold-out venues, every single one of those venues we went into. It was a completely rare experience, I think, to have that. But to have the amount of energy that the fans and the crowds were giving us, again, not our fans, Cam’s fans, was incredible. And I think for me, it definitely made me change how I thought I could perform.

Eric Chan: And those shows gave them something they could carry back into smaller, harder rooms too.

The Shindigs: I think what it really did for us was prove to each other and ourselves that we can do it in front of a room that size. And that allowed us to move with confidence into these smaller shows, where sometimes they don’t go your way.

Sometimes you’re playing and there’s a big window, and it’s still light outside, and people haven’t had their drinks yet, and the room is kind of a weird vibe or whatever. As long as you can back yourself going, “No, I believe in what we’re doing, because I saw it work in that sort of circumstance,” it at least gives you confidence in your own art. When it gets a little harder in these smaller rooms, you can kind of control it a little bit better.

At least control the emotion around what it feels like to play in a room that might not be the best show you’ve ever played. Those are going to happen. And having the ability to play for each other, I think, is something we talk about a lot.

[Music excerpt plays.]

Eric Chan: That also changed how they think about the live set itself.

The Shindigs: A live show isn’t just about how cool your songs are. It’s also about how you keep a room engaged the entire time, transition from song to song, and where to place a song in a set.

So it’s more of a performance rather than a presentation of songs. You’re putting on a show, rather than like, “Here’s a song, thank you. And here’s another song.” That’s been something that I definitely have thought more about in our set. I can echo the same sentiment from the other guys. We’re really trying to evolve our live set to make it more of a show, rather than a performance of the songs.

Eric Chan: For all the ways The Shindigs are learning to take the band more seriously, the thing holding it together still sounds pretty simple.

The Shindigs: Touring is, for real, just a bunch of man-child fucking dudes.

The Shindigs: It’s a week-long sleepover with your friends.

The Shindigs: It is. It’s so sick. We’re obviously not living lavish enough for us to all have our own hotel room. A lot of the time we’re staying in a hotel room with two queens, and then we’re pulling straws to see who gets the camping mat on the floor.

So we’ve gotten pretty used to being in tight quarters with each other. It’s just shits and giggles, good times. Like I said, we’re all fucking buddies, so we’re just ragging on each other the whole time.

Obviously, we’re trying to be serious with what we’re doing here. We want to make this work. We’re putting in the hard yards to try and make that happen. But we’re also just five idiot friends that like to shit on each other and like to laugh, so it allows it to take a little bit of that pressure off.

Eric Chan: And that’s The Shindigs. You can find the music and all the links you need in the show notes, or at inletwire.com. I’m Eric Chan, and you’ve been listening to Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists.