With 2020 finally behind us, it’s time to start 2021 on a positive note and a brand new season of The Zone @ 91-3’s Band of the Month program.
Kicking off the year is chaotically fun indie rockers, The This. The trio consists of bassist Jimbo Rai, guitarist Reid Blakley, and Evan Matthiesen on double duty as drummer and vocalist.
Tyson Elder caught up with the band for a socially distanced interview full of laughs. Sadly, we couldn’t fit the entire hour-long interview filled with stories about Heineken bottles, the fancy urinals in Amsterdam, Simpsons references, and a million hilarious digressions, but these are the highlights.
Tyson Elder: Congratulations on being the first Zone Band of the Month for 2021!
Evan Matthiesen: It’s very exciting!
[A strange sound comes from guitarist, Reid Blakley from across the table as he chokes on some soda water. The band bursts out laughing.]
Evan: Did you just try drinking with your mask on?
Reid: No, I lowered my mask, but I just miss my mouth. I’m glad this isn’t one of those filmed interviews. [Laughs] The frequency with which I spill like coffee and drinks on myself is disconcerting.
Evan: I’m always choking on liquids. That’s probably how I’m going to die.
TE: I’ve definitely been guilty of drinking coffee through my mask at least once a day.
Reid: I was saying to the guys we should create masks with straw holes and normalized drinking beer with a straw.
Evan: You actually get really drunk that way.
Jimbo Rai: It’s probably because you don’t know how much you are drinking.
Evan: When we can have parties again I’m gonna definitely going to rock a curly straw and one of those big bottles of Carlo Rossi wine.
Reid: You’ll be wearing a smoking jacket and and speaking in an affected accent.
Jimbo: [Laughing] Dude, you’d get fucked if you drank 1 1/2 litres of Carlo Rossi with a curly straw.
Evan: That’s how I’m going to go out. [Laughs]
TE: Well, speaking of parties… your Band of the Month single is After Party. I heard there was a last minute swap of the song you originally wanted to be the single.
Evan: We weren’t quite ready to release something from our new album yet. We would have had to kind of get a bunch of other things into gear and we figured After Party is a good tune to introduce ourselves.
Reid: After Party will be re-released on the new album too, but a faster version that I play on.
Evan: Yeah, we new version is going to be on the album, but we aren’t quite ready to release the new stuff yet.
TE: Does this mean that The This is putting out some new music in 2021?
Evan: We’re actually we’re really close; like, I’m still laying some new vocal tracks soon.
Reid: Oh, I thought we were breaking up after this interview. [Band laughs]
Evan: I’d say we’re about 70% done. I think we will be ready to put the album out in the spring.
TE: That’s awesome. I can’t wait to hear the new tunes. How many songs are you re-recording now that Reid has joined the band?
Evan: We re-recorded After Party and another single we put out last year called My “Help Me Ronda.” We actually had most of the album recorded with our old lineup, but our sound shifted and we thought it was better to start re-recording to better reflect who we are now. When The This started I was originally playing guitar and we had Seth on drums. When we changed things up Jimbo was the only person playing their original instrument.
TE: Oh, I thought Jimbo picked up trumpet. [Laughs]
Reid: That was my instrument back in junior high.
Jimbo: Me too.
Evan: Me too! We all played trumpet? I didn’t know that. We should start a mariachi side project like Mariachi El Bronx.
Jimbo: To this day I can’t play trumpet. I just pretended to play trumpet. [Laughs]
Reid: Didn’t Mariachi El Bronx break-up? We could fill that void.
TE: The world needs more fun punk rock mariachi bands. You could call yourselves El This, I guess?
Reid: The This in Spanish is is El Esta. If we ever play in Tijuana…
Jimbo: It sounds like an operating system for a Mac. Updating to El Esta.
TE: Sounds like you guys have your next batch of t-shirts planned.
TE: So… not many after parties this year?
Reid: No before parties and no during parties either.
Evan: It’s not the most relatable song right now…
TE: I think it speaks to a feeling we’re going to have coming back from COVID. In general there is going to be some hesitations about going to parties.
Evan: That’s true. Part of us really wants to go to parties again, but when it comes down to it… that might take a while.
Reid: We will have some form of agoraphobia for a couple years.
Evan: I definitely think parties will freak people out.
TE: You were supposed to play Sled Island this year but like everything else it was cancelled. I heard you’d played the festival before. How was that?
Evan: This would have been our second year playing the festival as The This. Reid and I have played it a few times with our other band, The Plodes. It’s a good time and we really enjoy going there to play. We were really bummed that it couldn’t happen this year but understand why. [Gestures wildly into the sky] We expected the cancellation to happen with all the news about what’s going on, so it was sort of a soft landing.
Reid: We don’t expect it’ll happen this year or, if it does, not on the scale it normally runs.
Evan: I have this thought about Covid that if I’d found out about everything at once including the restrictions I would have fainted or something. With it being this incremental you are kind of numb to how overwhelming it can be.
Reid: We are an entire world of boiled frogs.
TE: Have you done much out-of-country touring?
Evan: A year or so ago we went to the Netherlands. I had this grand idea of doing a little European tour because I knew a few people there and made a few contacts. They are really easygoing over there and there wasn’t any visas needed to do it. Originally we were hoping to play in Germany but we ended up only booking a couple shows in the Netherlands. We shared instruments with the other bands we played with and we met some great people. We’re being generous to ourselves by calling it a European tour. It was like a vacation where we played a couple gigs.
TE: Sounds like a win/win. Play a couple shows to pay for your vacation to be a little bit longer.
Evan: Totally, and they pay well for gigs over there. Plus they feed you well and give you accommodations.
Reid: Musicians aren’t monkeys to these people.
Evan: We thought we were going to be basing ourselves out of Berlin because one of my best buddies lives there. He and I used to be in a band together but he is in a different music scene there so it just didn’t click.
TE: When I was chatting with Aidan Knight last year we chatted a lot about touring in Europe because of the time he spent living in Germany with his wife. He was telling me that almost every town has some kind of almost subsidized venue that touring acts can perform at.
Reid: Fucking Commies. [Laughs]
TE: Right? We were talking about how nice it would be to have a system like that in Canada. Even if it was just on the West Coast.
Evan: It wouldn’t even cost that much. I always think back to that stupid chandelier they put up on Granville Island under the bridge. How many millions of dollars was that?
Reid: In Seattle they’ve got the VERA Project which does awesome work. I used to be involved with the Safe Amp Society in Vancouver which for years was trying to establish something like that over there but could never get something permanent.
Jimbo: The main frustrating thing about that in Europe the idea of touring is so easy. You can drive for five hours and go through four countries and it’s similar in the States too. Whereas here when your first stop is Edmonton that’s over 16-hour drive.
Evan: As Canadians we are used to these massive drives to get between destinations. Even in our own provinces.
Reid: Last fall Evan and I toured Western Canada as The Plodes. It was just the two of us, a mini-van and you better leave early.
Evan: It’s a big country.
TE: How far did the tour take you?
Reid: We went to Regina and back. Originally it was Winnipeg but then Evan pointed out he would be doing all the driving because I don’t have a license and a 14-hour roundtrip for one show might not be worth it.
Evan: It’s funny that you mention Aidan Knight’s time in Europe. I saw he was playing in Amsterdam while I was there and kind of surprised to see him there.
Evan: Aidan Knight is a big influence on us wanting to play music in general. Jimbo and I grew up in Port Alberni. Aidan and a lot of other Victoria bands used to come play there when we were in high school. We were massive Counting Heartbeats fans we had those Dancefloor Bandits hoodies and bandanas. They had that whole gang colours thing. [Laughs]
Reid: I grew up in Calgary and had a similar experience seeing local bands like Foonyap and The Roar. By the same token that was what inspired me to want to be in a band but I didn’t know how to do it. I went to this church gymnasium downtown that some weirdo kids are renting and realized that I could do this too.
Evan: We usually get asked what kind of influences us and we’re always listening to different kinds of music but more than the music it’s the act of it, the shows and the culture that inspires us more than anything. Jimbo listens mostly to hip-hop/R&B and I listen to a lot of reggae.
Reid: It’s all you play in the car.
Evan: We are always listening to different music and it’s different from what we play.
Reid: In general that’s a thing with life. People oftentimes don’t realize that they can do something until they see other people doing it. Which kind of sucks in a city where it’s hard to get a venue off the ground or keep a venue in business or get people to come to your shows. Everyone is working so goddamn much.
TE: Evan, I know you are a sound-engineer does that mean you are recording all the new material yourselves?
Evan: Yeah, we did it all ourselves. We’ve been grilling over it for a long time. Like I mentioned earlier we kind of had it all mostly recorded but we started over with the new line-up. We wanted to catch-up so I called my parents and asked if we could take over their house in Port Alberni for a few days.
Jimbo: It was great to actually. It was kind of like a vacation for us. For me and Evan in Port Alberni we don’t get back there often.
Reid: It’s like those studios in the Alps.
Jimbo: Not as bougie unfortunately.
Reid: We were like Rush at Le Studio but instead it was the rec room that Evan learned to play drums in.
Evan: My parents sold that house after that. It’s gone. I didn’t think that would come up in the interview. [Awkwardly laughs]
Evan: Our album is being put out by this awesome label Kingfisher Bluez. They’ve put out a lot of cool stuff from Bridal Party and Peach Pit’s first few albums to name a few. They’ve put out a million records and we are really excited to be working with them.
TE: This was a lot of fun guys. Thanks for chatting with me and enjoy your time as The Zone’s Band of the Month.
Evan: Thanks! This is so nice to have something to share and promote.
Reid: I can tell my mom I’m not wasting my life.
Evan: Yeah! We are on the radio!
Jimbo: I can finally prove to my parents I’m not a disappointment.
The This’s single, After Party, will be featured for the entirety of January 2021 on The Zone @ 91-3. You can find it and two more of the band’s songs for your listening pleasure on their Band of the Month page.
Rocktographers is a proud supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.