"The Pop Spectrum Of Punk" | Under The Radar With Talk Show Host

Toronto based pop punk band, Talk Show Host, are this weeks featured artist on Under The Radar! Check out the interview with their vocalist/ guitarist, Chris, for some new music, talks of trying to stand out in a saturated Toronto music scene, leaning more towards the pop side of punk, their upcoming plans and a lot more!

Enjoy the interview & don’t forget to subscribe to Under The Radar on iTunes.

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Daly: I start every interview like this because I find it gives a good vibe of the band. Tell the me kind of person who would not have a good time at a TSH show and the kind of person who would have a great time at a TSH show.

Chris: The kind of person who would not have fun at at TSH show? Um…So far we’ve been lucky in that it’s not been a lot of people who have been to a TSH show. We play at the Bovine a lot and it’s a 50/50 chance of the crowd there being into us because we’re kind of on the poppier spectrum of the punk rock world.

So depending on the night and who we’re playing with, sometimes when we’re playing in front of a crust punks they just kind of stare at us

Daly: [Laughs] like, “this band’s not hard enough”

Chris: Yeah, and there’s lots of singing, and a little bit of grooving. So sometimes you get the spiked leather jackets with their arms crossed starring at us for a little bit but they’ll usually wander off. But then there’s the people that do have fun at a TSH show are usually the guys in their early thirties. And were going to shows in the 90s, the older guys have the most fun.

Daly: That’s awesome, so tell us a bit about the band; who is in it, who does what and how you got started.

Chris: So there’s three of us. Sean is the drummer, he and I go back about 15 years now. He’s my oldest friend, and plays guitar in another band called The Most Serene Republic, they’re kind of an indie rock band so he’s the real musician in the band. And then Fab and I, Fab’s the bass player, we played together in a band called Hey Mister, kind of a skate punk thing. Then when that ended we decided to start something new and brought in Sean to kind of balance out our punk rock instincts and we’ve been going for about a year and a half.

Daly: Oh, so that’s where the bio on your bandcamp comes from [laughs] “Two recovering punks and an indie rocker walk into a bar”

Chris: Yup, exactly.

Daly: And the band’s based out of Toronto, which is easily the most musical city in Canada. So I’m curious, as a band in Toronto, where ALL the other bands are, what’s it like trying to make some noise for your group?

I mean you can take all the other bands from across Canada and there’s still probably not as much as there in Toronto.

Chris: Yeah it’s real tough actually. We’ve been focused on this band for about a year and a half now. We play at least a show a month, sometimes two shows a month. But there’s so much noise happening, there’s so many bands. And we kind of picked a genre that’s already overpopulated…even if we weren’t in weren’t in the center of Canada’s music industry [In Toronto]. So it’s been kind of slow going.

But we’ve been kind of focusing on our two EPs we’ve put out with having the catchiest songs, having everything sound big and we’ve gotten some recognition that way. But I think until we go on the road, which we have in the works for next year…a bit of Euro tour and hopefully this year a Southern Ontario thing, but it’s definitely not easy.

Daly: No there’s just so much going on right?

Chris: Yeah exactly. You have a lot of bands now coming out of the Toronto area like The Dirty Nil, The Flatliners, PUP and everything who are bringing a spotlight back to that so there is an audience for it. It’s just getting the ears to stuff people haven’t heard about.

People will pay 30 bucks to see PUP sell out the Phoenix or whatever. But getting someone to come to a free show at the Horseshoe on a Tuesday night is much more difficult for some reason.

Daly: They always say you won’t be loved in your hometown until your loved elsewhere.

Chris: [laughs] Exactly.

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As usual. we left A LOT for the podcast. To hear about the cost of album production vs DIY, TSH influences, who they would share with, and more on Toronto’s music scene  listen below or subscribe to Under The Radar on iTunes!  

TALK SHOW HOST

FACEBOOK | BANDCAMP

*If you would like to have you or your band featured on Under The Radar, email Daly @ ryan.daly@timminsradio.rogers.com with the subject “Under The Radar”*

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