Silverstein - Positive Reinforcement

The Dwarf caught up with Shane from Silverstein to discuss literature, touring and Australian girls.

Silverstein have been touring fairly extensively for the past three years, included in this has been two trips to Australia with the third underway now – the boys are headlining the Boys of Summer tour. Shane is honest about the touring lifestyle, “it’s tough, and it’s really tough in places like Europe. It’s hard to explain but, being in Europe, it’s kinda uncomfortable, you don’t speak the language, and we have a bus over there that’s different and not as good, and even for little things like plugging in your phone you need an adapter”.

I’m not sure how I’d feel stuck in a van with 6 guys in a place where no one understands me, for Silverstein “it’s really taxing, and I think we all just about lost it our last month over there, so it was nice to have some time off [before coming to Australia]”. Don’t get the guys wrong though they “wouldn’t trade it for anything. This is my life and this is what I’ve signed up for and I love it! If it wasn’t fun and I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t do it”.

So when it gets a little bit hard on the road “we deal with it, we’ve done it so many times now that we know there is an end to the tour and we will get there and it’ll be okay”.

The advantage of touring so consistently is “being able to travel to different places and watching our popularity grow around the world. And just seeing our goals and being able to keep moving up to the next level, it’s been such a constant slow growth the whole time and I think that’s been really really cool, to experience so many different things”.

Slow growth can be difficult for a band, especially when it comes to managing your expectations. “We’ve always been a band where we’ve had really low expectations, we used to play shows and we’d be like yeah if there are 50 kids there, we’ll be happy. You know, setting our expectations low so that when 300 kids showed up – you’re stoked. That’s kinda the way we’ve done it, and I think that that’s what’s kept us going and kept us positive.”

Yep, you heard it here. These guys are a optimistic bunch! “Positivity [sic] really is the key to growth, and I think that people see that positivity [sic] and kinda latch on to it, and that’s helped us.” Having said that Shane admits, “I definitely do see negative things every day. I see shit I don’t like, I see things that are unfair, and unfair things happen to me and our band often. But you’ve just got to be real with it, you know, take every positive thing that happens to you and think about those things more than every negative thing that happens to you. You know, dwell on the positive, not the negative, and when something is going wrong, try to fix it, rather than just being pissed off and being upset about it”.

On that note, what do you think the guys love most about Australia?

“The beautiful girls! I love the country, it’s beautiful. It’s kinda like the best of everything all rolled into one country and the music scene is fantastic. People are just really excited about music, I think it’s because you don’t get a lot of bands and people are just really hungry for it and really appreciative that you’re there and that you’re playing for them, we just have a great time.”

Last time Silverstein were in town they played to a sold out Manning Bar in Sydney (June 2006) and Shane remembers it as “my favourite show that we’ve ever played. I don’t really know why it was my favourite, but it was just something about it, the vibe, I mean the kids were just so great and it just sounded good and I thought we really communicated with the hearts and souls of the people there, which I’ve felt a few times, but that was the most intense”.

Apart from shows, the last tour saw a lot of “hanging out with some of our close friends in Melbourne and some of the crazy nights and fun times we’ve had, and doing the touristy things like holding koalas and feeding kangaroos, we just had a blast”.

Silverstein are a very literary band, their name comes from renowned children’s author and songwriter Shel Silverstein, whose credits include The Missing Piece, The Giving Tree, The Light in the Attic and the lyrics for Johnny Cash’s A Boy Named Sue. So it seems fitting that Shane’s favourite book is “The Giving Tree, it’s an illustrated book that’s about 20 pages long, it’s got about a sentence per page and it’s a story about a tree and a boy who grows up and keeps coming back to this tree, and it keeps giving him things”. The book shows “the struggles within a person’s life”. It’s been his favourite for a little while now, “I’ve read it about ever year of my life, it always tells me a new story. I can always relate to something in it you know and it’s really cool how it’s such a timeless story and it’s meant for kids but it really is something that tells a good story”.

Silverstein hail from Burlington, Ontario a town of about 170,000 people. But the music scene there is thriving, “it’s amazing. Punk rock, hardcore scene, all that genre of music, independent music is fantastic”. The support of the scene has meant that there “have been so many bands from my little small town that have gone on to do some pretty amazing things”. You could say that, this area produced Grade and Boys Night Out! “We’ve just had a great scene, I think it’s because kids support music and they allow bands to take it to the next level, which is touring nationally and touring internationally.”

The lessons from this all? Support your local scene, stay positive, and enjoy the best country on earth!

Silverstein are currently playing the Boys of Summer tour

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