You’ve been friends with the Tarantula Tapes folks for a really long time and I Don’t Know, I’m High, Let’s Just Hit Record and Hope for the Best is your first album with the label. What has working with them been like?

Jarod: It’s been awesome!

Dale: Flawless, really. [laughs]

Jarod: They made everything very simple. There was a misprint and we were like, “Oh no! What are we gonna do?” and Core was like, “Not an issue. The guy will come by the day before the show with new labels and new tape covers if you need them”. Little things like that can be a hassle but they just made it super smooth.

Dale: It was something we didn’t have to worry about and they took care of all of the processes. All we had to do was give them the audio and that was pretty much it.

Jarod: We went over to Core and Casey’s place - Core was there, Casey wasn’t - and we just put stickers on tapes and had a couple drinks and some pizza and maybe 5 joints. It was great. It was a lot of fun! [laughs]

Dale: There was some labour involved. [laughs] It was pretty seamless.

You recorded this album at We Love Sound Studio with your longtime engineer Dayne Gerous. What was the recording process like?

Dale: Same as always. We’ve used him pretty much since day 1.

Jarod: We did record as James and The Readys with another studio once but ever since Dayne put up this studio, we’ve gone there. It was really close to where a lot of the band members lived at the time and most of the band still lives in Tottenham. ⅗ of the band is right around Tottenham. The studio is a nice close drive from our jam spot and Dayne understood our sound. He was already a friend and he was playing bass in a band called Buddy Black. We've always hit it off with him and he always understood what we were going for sound-wise. We never had to explain too much to him. He’s also really good with playing around with funny little things. We’ll be like, “We want to put a sound effect here” and he’s online finding sound effects and stuff. 9 times out of 10 we don’t end up using the sound clip but it's fun.

Dale: We just have fun with it. He does a lot of sound for our live shows so he knows what our energy is like. He knows how we are when we play live and he put that a lot into the record. Over the years he’s upgraded his equipment and every record just gets better and better so there’s really no point going anywhere else. [laughs]

Jarod: Yeah, every time we go in he’s gotten a lot better and his equipment has gotten better. This time he unpacked a bunch of new microphones for us and he was super excited to be using them with us for the first time too. It’s neat being able to go there and not be caught up in the whole process of it. It’s just another jam space and there’s just another guy there.

Dale: The first time we went there he had this little board and one computer screen and now he has this massive board and two computer screens and fancy mics. We’re like, “Man, you’re getting better and better!” It’s nice to see and help him as well along in his journey too.

Everyone helps each other out.

Dale: Exactly, support local!

You also have a song named after him on the album. How did “A Dayne Gerous Class” come about?

Jarod: So the song is not about Dayne at all. [laughs] It’s about defunding the police and how we put too much money into police and not enough money into things like mental health resources, regular health resources, and education. Those are the things we should be funding over state violence. A label that police have historically used to classify lower-class people who may commit a crime is “dangerous class” and I thought it would be really funny to use Dayne’s name in the song title. Sometimes I come up with titles first, sometimes I come up with the song first, but in this case, I had a bunch of songs with no titles and I wanted them all to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek, a little bit funny.

Dale: There’s a few songs we have where the title doesn’t even go with the song.

Jarod: For most of the songs the titles have nothing to do with them! [laughs]

Dale: I wrote “Tom Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’” and the title has nothing to do with the song. We went through four different song titles.

Jarod: We went through so many! We have setlists on the ground of our jam space and they have all these different song names on them and guys in the band will be like, “What song was that one? What was this one?” [laughs] Even the title of the tape had a bunch of different names. That was another one where everyone kept rejecting my hilarious names. My names are really funny, even the rejects are so funny.

Dale: He thinks so.

[laughter]

Jarod: The song title for the title track was just off the top of my head. I was like, “I Don’t Know, I’m High, Let’s Just Hit Record and Hope for the Best” and that was what stuck for some reason. [laughs] Basically nobody had a very strong argument against it.

Dale: We were also high and drunk as well so it kinda worked in that way. It’s part of the process. You don’t fuck with the process. [laughs]

Do you remember any of the original titles for the songs?

Jarod: One of them had to do with Frankenstein and I believe it was for the song “…Hit Record…”. That one was pretty fitting because that song was a mishmash of a bunch of different styles. Originally when Sean showed it to me, I was like, “We’ll just cut that one. That’s all over the place!” [laughs] I didn’t know how it was going to fit together as one song let alone with the other songs that we’d done for this one.

It was the last one that we wrote. I inadvertently called it “Frankenstein” and I was really down with that title because I was like, “It’s really a mashup of a bunch of different things that would normally not fit together but it does!” It actually came together. I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite song but it’s got a lot of my favourite parts. Dale rips it on the drum part during the bridge part. Sean had been doing this thing while we were writing and practicing and we didn’t really notice it until he recorded it.

Dale:. We were all like, “You’ve been doing that the whole time?” [laughs]

Jarod: We were all sitting in the room like, “How the hell did you do that?? That’s rad!! Can you do it again? Was that a mistake or can you do it again?”

Dale: He was literally on one fret just doing this thing. I think that song mixes the slowest and fastest parts we’ve done.

Jarod: It actually gives a good overview of our style because we do go from more of a skate punk style to maybe a borderline hardcore thing - something definitely on the heavier end.

Dale: I feel like Cancer Bats heavy at least on the slow part.

Jarod: We definitely have one that’s Cancer Bats inspired but this is more Turbonegro heavy.

Dale: Refused we get a lot too. [laughs]

Jarod: Yeah, we rip off Refused quite a bit. We do our best to rip off all of our favourites. This time we did Bouncing Souls.

Dale: Bouncing Souls was my song. We like ripping off. We write what comes into our heads and go with it.

Those influences are always there.

Jarod: We try not to be too much of a cookie cutter of one band particularly. You can definitely hear on the song “Big Girl Panties” that one was totally inspired by skate punk. We didn’t do it on purpose but we all love Millencolin and Core kept saying, “Man, I keep hearing Millencolin in that!” You can hear a bit of Face To Face on that one too. I think we ripped off The Disturbed on this one too and Dropkick Murphys a little bit. [laughs]

Dale: We ripped off ourselves too!

Jarod: Yeah we ripped off ourselves too!! [laughs] Sean wrote a riff that was so similar to a song that he wrote before. We still play that song all the time! I think it’s one of our best songs. It’s called “What Time Changes” and it was on our first full-length, Pints of Jager. This song is pretty different. It’s called “Cruel But Good Word Use” but we were gonna call it “What Time Changes Part 2” or “What Time Changes” with a line through it or something like that. [laughs]

The scene that we play in too is very good for supportive bands. There’s so many really awesome bands to play with and really cool people that have various tastes in music. Having good friends can inform our musical taste and whatnot.

Dale: They show us all the stuff they like to listen to.

Jarod: Show us all the cool stuff! Like, “Hey, there’s this cool band! Let’s rip them off!”

[laughter]

How would you describe your songwriting process overall?

Dale: Sloppy? [laughs]

Jarod: Yeah, a little sloppy.

Dale: For this process, we knew we wanted to start a full-length because Nicolo and Sean - our two guitarists - had a lot of songs written so we’d go into practice and they’d show us a song. Michelle would learn it on bass while I just kind of sat there and heard it out a little bit. Then I put the drums to it and Jarod did the lyrics.

Jarod: Nicolo is really good at demos. He will record it on his computer and sometimes will put a drum track behind it if he’s gotten that far in working out how the song is going to sound. Sometimes it’ll be a full song basically put together and I’ve just gotta write the lyrics and maybe say, “Extend this part, shorten that part” - just little things here and there.

Sean usually films stuff on his phone. While watching the Blue Jays he’ll get an idea and he starts recording it on his phone and five beers later he’s got five more song ideas. [laughs] It’s usually not quite as put together but it’s similar like this is the intro part, this is the verse, this is the chorus. Sometimes there’s a discrepancy and it’s like, “That’s not the verse, that’s the chorus!”

Dale: That’s what I did for my song too. I had a couple ideas and just recorded them individually and then put it together myself and recorded one full thing. I sent the chords and stuff like that to the band and then at practice, they tried it. I already had drums in my mind of what I wanted to do and I did the lyrics for that one.

Jarod: He didn’t give me any melody to sing so I was like, “Ok, I’ll figure out what I’m gonna do” and I made the melody out of that.

Dale: I’m not much of a lyricist so I crammed a lot in just thinking in my head, “This is what I wanna write”. Jarod kinda switched some stuff around.

Jarod: There was a lot of really good stuff in there! There were a lot of really good lines.

Dale: You broke it down so it’s easier to sing live. I just put too many words in one little sentence there so we had to kind of chop it up a bit but it got the same message across that I was looking for.

Jarod: That’s pretty normal for how I do my lyrics too, I’ll write a whole bunch and be like, “Yikes, that’s a lot to sing!” Then I’ll have to cut some out.

Dale: Sometimes you don’t cut any out and then you’re shooting yourself in the foot later. [laughs]

Jarod: For this record, I didn’t cut quite as many lyrics because I really liked them so I didn’t want to cut any out. I just sing more and it’s more difficult.

Dale: That’s pretty much the process. We don’t go into studios and write songs there, we just have everything ready to go.

Jarod: That sounds like a nightmare!

Dale: Going into the studio? Oh, I couldn’t.

Jarod: Our friends are doing that right now. They’re going in with a song idea and then the guy they’re recording with is like, “Ok, try it this way. Try it this way. Try it this other way”.

Dale: No thank you! [laughs]

Jarod: It sounds like a nightmare! The dude’s super respectable and we’re huge fans of the guy they’re recording with but I don’t think I could do it.

Dale: I don’t think it would work with the anxiety in the band.

Jarod: [laughs] Yeah!

Dale: We get nervous and have anxiety just going into stuff we know. Just thinking about doing something like that is like, “Nope!”

Jarod: We have multiple members who get nervous playing a hometown show like, “Do you think anyone is gonna come?” Yes, everyone is going to come and it’s going to be overwhelming.

Dale: We’ll be fine, don’t worry. [laughs] We’ve only practiced this song how many times? We’ll be alright. But they still get nervous.

Jarod: I get nervous. I’m one of them actually, I’m just playing it off like it’s other people.

Dale: I am not, I never get nervous.

What helps you get over the nerves?

Dale: Weed? [turns to Jarod] Is that what you’re going to say? [laughs]

Jarod: Yeah, I like to smoke a little weed. Honestly, the main thing that helps me get over the nerves is once I’m there at the event, at the show, recording with Dayne, or at practice, then I’m with my friends and it just kind of melts away. Even when we do out-of-town shows. The last one we did, granted, was with a lot of friends. We did a record release for the Mad Murdocks at Little Beasts Brewery. We’d never played there and we’d never played at a brewery. I’d been there to pick up beer but I’d never played there. I was like, “Where are we gonna play? Where are we going to set up? How is it going to be?”

Dale: It was so small!

Jarod: Once we got there and saw the smiles of our friends and started chatting everything was ok. The staff at Little Beasts is fantastic. The anxiety just melts away once you’re in that good environment. We do our best to make sure that we’re in good environments for most of our shows. We try to make the atmosphere that we travel around in very personable and friendly too so I think that helps attract good friends no matter where we go.

Do you have a place that you really like to play?

Jarod: We have lots of favourites.

Dale: Newmarket is always a fun place.

Jarod: Any place in Newmarket. Like I said, wherever we go our friends will come and they are the best. Our buddy Capo owns a place that used to be called the Jam Spot and now it’s called The Spot. They put on shows and they’re great.

Dale: They have rehearsal studios there as well. You can rent out a rehearsal space in the back. He’s also the drummer for Hysterics.

Jarod: Our bassist, Michelle, is also in that band.

Dale: She’s the bass player for that band as well. Laura, the singer for Hysterics, did our mastering for our album. So there’s a big tie-in with the Hysterics.

Jarod: We really like them.

Dale: We love the Hysterics. I filled in with the Hysterics for a couple of shows.

Jarod: That’s right! Didn’t you play with Dayglo Abortions with Hysterics?

Dale: Yeah! The Queens in Barrie is another one we love playing.

Jarod: Or any place that our friend Gillian is putting on a show or any place our friend Earl is putting on a show.

Dale: Earl puts on shows at the Rec Room but we haven’t played there yet. I would like to.

Jarod: The Bovine is our favourite place in Toronto. I think everything else we play in Toronto is shut down. Well, we’ve played the Hard Luck a few times.

Dale: That wasn’t my era.

Jarod: No? I’ve definitely played the Hard Luck a few times.

Dale: Beau’s Oktoberfest was one of my favourite shows we’ve played.

Jarod: That was a good show.

Dale: Pre-COVID Beau’s, the beer company, would put on an Oktoberfest every year and they would have a punk / hard rock stage that was a part from the main stage. Josh Gottlieb, who is the singer for Frauds and Letterbomb, was the guy who ran Oktoberfest every year and he would make sure there was a punk stage. It was called the Black Forest Stage.

Jarod: If we’re gonna talk about our favourite shows, my favourite show was the one at Pouzza where we played at Cafe Cleopatra. A lot of our friends were like, “Man, I’m lucky I made it up here!” because it was a strip club below. [laughs] We were the only band that night with two amps. Wherever the one amp was plugged in kept blowing the power and we blew the power twice during the set. When it happened my heart sank like, “What’s going to happen?”

Dale: Everybody cheered. [laughs]

Jarod: And then the power came back on, we checked that we had sound, and then we were like, “Ok, we’re going to come in right where we left off!” Somehow we did it!

[laughter]

Dale: It’s something that’s talked about quite a bit. It’s a great memory.

Jarod: Yeah, a lot of people bring it up. We were talking about it with the Mad Murdocks the other day because their singer was doing a song with us when the power blew. [laughs]

Dale: Maybe it was him. He was up on stage as the power blew and we got cheered like, [clapping] “You guys rocked so hard you blew the power!”

Jarod: That was probably the cleanest stage we’ve ever played. That thing was like a basketball court, it was so shiny. [laughs]

Dale: Newmarket and Barrie are the main places we play. We don’t really travel much.

Jarod: We don’t travel too much but if there’s a reason to head out east we’d go.

Dale: I’d love to do Quebec again.

Jarod: We sometimes go west but not too often. I’d like to play the Niagara Region. We have a bunch of friends down there.

Dale: Niagara would be cool. I’d like to go back to London.

Jarod: We have a bunch of friends down there too and haven’t done that in a long time.

Dale: I think the Black Shire was the last time we played there and that place has shut down. [laughs]

Jarod: We’ve got a long list of places we love playing that are shut down now.

Dale: It wasn’t us!

Jarod: We didn’t do anything, I swear!

[laughter]

You have guest spots from friends on this album including Jonny Eyeball, Casey of Tarantula Tapes and Heavy Petter, Randylin of Aawks, and Josh and Alisha of Jerkoff Diary. How did you decide who to record with?

Jarod: I’m a big hip-hop fan and a big thing on rap albums is having features. Sometimes when I’m writing a song I’ll be like, “This would be really good for this person’s voice”. When we wrote “Big Girl Panties” I thought to myself, “This sounds like something Jonny would write so I’m going to get Jonny to sing the chorus with me”. He had a terrible cold that day and still did really good.

Dale: He did a great job! Maybe that was Dayne doing a great job fixing his voice. [laughs]

Jarod: Josh and Alisha from Jerkoff Diary do backups on all the Readys albums. There have been other people as well but on every single Readys album, Josh and Alisha are in the gang vocal team. Basically, when we’re recording we let them know like, “We’ll be recording around this time, keep stuff open”. They have been able to make it every time and we love them. They come from Hamilton and they come out to our shows too! We fucking love Josh and Alisha. They are the raddest! Alisha does all the writing for Jerkoff Diary. A lot of people are surprised by that, I was surprised by that! Even when they play she’s kind of in the background and keeps her head down but she’s the main writer in the band.

Dale: She’s the brains behind the band for sure.

Jarod: For Casey, we were supposed to have Casey and Core from Tarantula Tapes on that track but Core was recording another band that day. Casey was like, “I can come but I’m at the spa with Randy so can Randy come too?” We were like, “Yeah! Randy’s gotta sing backups and gang vocals. Just so you know if she’s coming that’s what’s happening”.

Dale: She killed it!

Jarod: Casey and Randy come and they’re like, “What do you want with this?” Casey was like, “Do you want me to sing it? Do you want me to scream it?” And Randy was like, “No, this is a rap!” [laughs] I was like, “Yes, it’s a fucking rap! I want you to rap it”. Randy was like, “This is so much fun! My band doesn’t let me sing”.

Dale: She’s a drummer so I get it. [laughs]

Jarod: It’s difficult for drummers to sing and play live so one the record 9 times out of 10 the drummer doesn’t sing. She did so good! And Casey too! It wasn’t written for her but when I was starting to come up with ideas for who I was going to get to sing on these songs, one of my first ideas was, “Casey’s gonna sound sick on this song!” And she does!

Dale: It was a raspy rap and it was pretty cool and unique and her style. It just turned out amazing.

Jarod: My partner Sarah and my son Jack sing on the record too. It’s on a gang vocal part that I forgot to get the rest of the gang vocal team to sing on. We’d layered it a bunch of times and then we forgot to get the rest of the team to do it. It sounds awesome! You can kind of hear my son’s voice and it’s neat having just the three of us doing that little part there.

Our friend Ian was going to do a bunch of silly stuff. You know how old Sublime songs have that party bit where it sounds like people are just in the room drinking? Ian is the ringer that we bring in for that sort of stuff. He was supposed to be on it but he didn’t end up making it so we had to kinda goof around and make up the rowdiness that would usually just be done by him or him egging us on. [laughs]

Dale: I think the only other one was me singing that one line in the song I wrote.

Jarod: Dale has a guest spot! I let him sing on the song he wrote.

Dale: You were like, “It’s your song, at least sing one line!” So I was like, “Fine, I’ll sing one line!” I’m in there somewhere so if people can find it, let me know.

Jarod: We have pretty similar voices so it might be hard to pick out.

Is there a hint for people to help them find it?

Jarod: Tattoos in the kitchen.

Dale: That just gives it all away, that’s the line! “Tattoos in the kitchen, drunk off our faces”, that’s exactly what I say. So there’s the line and now you know.

[laughter]

On “The Ballad of James and The Readys” you celebrate your friendship as well as 15 years as a band. How do you feel you’ve grown as a band and as people during that time?

Dale: [turns to Jarod] You’ve gotten a bit taller. [laughs] I think our bellies have grown. Well, not yours, you've been the same size since high school.

Jarod: Sean lost a bunch of weight. Sean grew in his arms. [laughs] We’ve grown a much deeper friendship with the music community around us. It felt like songwriting was a bit of a task before whereas with this one I was a bit afraid like, “How are we gonna write 10 songs?? We told Core we were gonna do 10 songs so now we have to do 10 songs”. But the songs just came out. I was like, “What am I going to write this about?” and then the lyrics just came out.

Dale: When you’re in a band with someone for that long, you just know what’s going to happen in a way. You can kind of feel each other out, especially with Michelle and I being the rhythm section. She knows how I play, I know how she plays, and we feed off that energy. We’re not afraid to say “yes” or “no” to each other.

Jarod: It’s a lot easier to tell someone, “I don’t really like that idea”.

Dale: “That sounds like shit!” [laughs]

Jarod: Although I did say I didn’t like a few things, they ended up being done, and ended up being good.

Dale: So we just proved you wrong.

Jarod: Basically.

[laughter]

Dale: Musically, we’ve definitely grown. I think with any band the first few times you play together are gonna be rough because you’re not used to how they play and you’re used to playing with other people. But over the years you figure it out and know how they play and it blends together.

Jarod: I guess this has to do with songwriting too but lyrically I’ve found it a lot easier to get across what I want to say without making it sound clunky. Having a message without making it sound like you have a message or writing a song and then realizing, “OH, this is about something else” then switching gears within the writing process so it’s not a rewrite. I felt like the music side, the lyric side, everything just came together.

We had two songs that weren’t even done when we did the first block of recording. “…Hit Record…” was written after we recorded the first half of the album. There were parts in that where I was like, “Fuck that part! I don’t think it sounds good” but also in the back of my mind I was like, “This song is gonna get scrapped”. [laughs] Even my lyrics I was like, “I don’t know”. That was probably the most difficult one to come together. I ended up just trying to write a song that was uplifting rather than defeating which is how I felt at the time.

Dale: Band member-wise two of us have become families. Jarod has a kid, Sean has two kids. There’s been a bunch of moving which has made things difficult. Jarod and I are up in Barrie now. It’s not overly difficult. Gas prices could go down though. [laughs]

Jarod: I moved away from Tottenham and then back to Tottenham. Dale and I are 17 minutes apart from each other, apparently.

Dale: We’re pretty close to each other. I lived in Toronto for a few years so that made things difficult. I think Michelle has stayed in the same spot this whole time.

Jarod: As a band, we have a good understanding of where we want to go. The minor amount of success we’ve gotten has been astounding to us. We’re super happy with the place we hold in the hearts of our friends and fans. We might’ve said a little while ago we’d like to really pursue this and push it to the next level but I think right now we’re happy.

Dale: I could care less. [laughs]

Jarod: We can call up Earl and be like, “Hey, we want to play! Give us a show!” And they’ll just work something out for us or Gillian will be like, “Hey, when are you guys coming and playing a show for me?” Our friends in Newmarket go absolutely crazy for the songs we’ve been playing for 15 years - well 10 years, we haven’t been playing anything for 15 years. We have 10 year old songs that we’ll start playing and everybody just lights up. [laughs]

What song has that reaction?

Jarod: “Pints of Jager”. It’s our hit single.

Dale: Our hit single from the past 10 years.

Jarod: I tried taking it out of the set.

Dale: People got mad.

Jarod: I wanted to play it first at our last show in Newmarket and we ended up putting it last, like we always do, and that’s the right spot for it. Everybody really likes that song, I don’t know what my problem is. [laughs]

Dale: The crazy thing about that song is the guy who wrote it isn’t even in the band anymore. He was an old guitar player we had. He wanted to do more stuff with his family. Then we brought in Nicolo, our Italian Stallion, who was a super fan before he became part of the band.

Jarod: Nicolo was at all of the shows. He was always at the parties and was a great guy to party with. He’s a fun guy and we knew he slayed on guitar. He fit our vibe so well and when we asked him he was like, “Man, I was so hoping you would ask!!”

[laughter]

Dale: At that time that’s when the band name change happened. We switched from James and The Readys to The Readys because there were a few lineup changes. I wasn’t even the original drummer either. Everyone just called us The Readys anyway so we dropped the “James”. We didn’t drink James Ready after that anymore.

Jarod: There’d been a few lineup changes before that and there was a definite sound change. Dale pulled us into the more skatepunk-y type thing.

Dale: I put us into 10th gear.

Jarod: He has really good punk sensibilities when it comes to drumming. He’s just really good at picking drum beats out. Nicolo is really into heavy music. He loves metal and he loves a variety of metal too so it’s not just thrash, it’s not just power metal, it’s not just prog - he likes everything. That fit really well with the kinds of bands that we like. A lot of them are metal-influenced. Sum 41 was probably one of the first bands that got me into hair metal. I wouldn’t be listening to Judas Priest right now if it wasn’t for Sum 41. Nicolo totally gets that. A lot of metalheads aren’t really into pop-punk and stuff like that. They’re usually averse to it, one might say. [laughs] Nicolo just loves it all.

Dale: He brought a little bit more of a heavier side to our sound.

Jarod: He pulled it all together.

Earlier you mentioned that you’ll write a song and won’t know what it’s about until later on. Did you have any songs on this record where that happened?

Jarod: “Dad Bod”, the second song on the album, was originally called “I’m Not Trying To Make Friends Here”. It was supposed to be a goofy song, just a total joke. Sean and I were talking about how his wife would be like, “Don’t you want to come out and meet the neighbours?” and Sean’s like, “No. I have enough friends, I don’t want to meet the neighbours”. “Don’t you want to talk to the other parents at the soccer game?” “No, I don’t. I just wanna be by myself right now. I don’t even have time for my own friends. I’m not trying to make friends here, I’m just here for this!” That was supposed to be the gist of the song but it ended up being a song about selling your body as labour and how that coincides with other ways of selling your body. It was one of those ones where halfway through I was like, “OH, this is about something else! Alright, we’re switching gears here”. [laughs] It worked out really good. That’s one of the ones where I really like the lyrics and they came together really naturally.

Dale: I like that one too.

“Rock Out With Your Guac Out” is one the best song titles on the record and you’re talking about making food for potlucks on the track. What’s your go-to luncheon dish?

Jarod: I really enjoy making chili. It’s my favourite thing to make and it’s really good for dipping. I make a really good vegan chili. A lot of times for a potluck-type thing I’ll make a chickpea salad and Dale loves my chickpea salad.

Dale: [shakes head vehemently] I don’t.

Jarod: He’s not into the healthy kind of stuff.

Dale: I’m meatatarian.

Jarod: So for something for the meat side of it, my wife will make broccoli salad.

Dale: I do like that!

Jarod: It’s not how it sounds. It’s broccoli, bacon, cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, red onion, and I think you just dump some sugar in there too. You mix it all together and it’s so good! She brings it to every function. It’s like, “Gotta bring the broccoli salad!”

Dale: It’s really good! Broccoli is a vegetable I do like.

Jarod: The bacon and the cheese and mayonnaise really evens it out for a guy like Dale. He’s the opposite of what the message of “Rock Out With Your Guac Out” is about. [laughs]

Dale: I like the saucy meatballs in the crockpot with those little toothpicks. Those are my favourite things at a potluck.

Jarod: The toothpicks are fun. [laughs] What would you bring to a potluck?

Dale: I usually bring the pumpernickel with the spinach dip because I know it’s a big hit and it goes quick.

Jarod: I don’t do this but I love a person who will make the three-layer nacho dip.

Dale: The sour cream, the salsa, the cheese.

Jarod: Sometimes there’s a layer of beans. That’s when you get the extra little nod.

[laughter]

If The Readys were a dish, what would it be?

Dale: We probably would be a 5-layer bean dip.

Jarod: Who is what layer?

Dale: I’m definitely the sour cream. [laughs]

Jarod: You are the sour cream for sure. Sean is the cheese.

Dale: Nicolo must be the beans.

Jarod: I wanted to be the beans.

Dale: Nicolo would be the salsa.

Jarod: Nicolo is a total salsa guy. Can we put guac on this? We’ve gotta put the guac at the bottom though so it doesn’t do bad in the open air.

Dale: That’s true.

Jarod and Dale: Michelle would be the guacamole!

Jarod: Can Michelle be beans and I be guacamole?

Dale: Sure, if you wanna be guac, you can be guac.

Jarod: Ok, that’s it.

Dale: We’re all very different people. Even with Jarod and I being related, we are very different in many ways but when we get together we just make something awesome.

Jarod: When you mix your chip in the 5-layer dip and it makes that gross, nasty mess, that’s a perfect metaphor for us!

[laughter]

Jarod: We stopped playing for a little while and the reason we got back together is because we hung out a few times. It was one of those yearly obligations because we’re friends. We all got together and after 2 or 3 times we were like, “Hey do you guys maybe wanna do one of these and have music happen too?”

Dale: Things got so busy. There were kids and I was away.

Jarod: My kid was young and Sean had a young kid and another one on the way.

Dale: It wasn’t an announced break, adulting happened.

Jarod: People asked us to play shows and we were like, “We can’t do it”.

Dale: Now that the kids are a bit older, it’s a little easier.

What helps keep your friendship strong?

Dale: Honesty is a big one.

Jarod: Yeah, we’re pretty honest with each other. I think we just mesh together really well and it doesn’t take a lot of effort. Sometimes if I haven’t spoken to a certain member in a while, I’ll message them and say, “What’s up?” or I’ll send them a meme. I like sending music too. Sending albums that people will never listen to is my love language. I’ll be like, “Hey, I heard this today and I thought of you”. [laughs]

Dale: That’s true. If you ever want any playlists, this is the man to send you playlists! [laughs]

Jarod: Man, I make such good playlists. The playlist names are just as bad as the song title names too. We have one-on-one friendships that we all have together. Nicolo will actually listen to the music that I sent him. [laughs] We’re always like, “Hey, this show’s in town! Oops, we’re going to this one! Looks like we’re spending lots of money on that!” Me and Sean have a close bond because we’re both parents.

Dale: I think you and I have something too.

Jarod: Yeah, we have a little something. We do get along one-on-one with each other very naturally and as a group. We kind of gravitate towards picking on Dale which works very well for group dynamics.

Dale: Not just a drummer but a ginger as well. [laughs]

Jarod: It’s a double whammy so we actually have to rag on him.

Dale: Michelle’s a redhead too! Why doesn’t she get it?

Jarod: I think it’s because she’s a bassist and that cancels each other out. It’s a double negative.

[laughter]

Jarod: We have a lot of really good mutual friends. We have the Readys Gang / Readys Crew and it’s a bunch of fantastic people that we like and hang around with.

Dale: They just show up. [laughs]

Jarod: It’s kinda nice that we have a really big crew of people where everyone is really friendly and there to have a good time. No one’s trying to have an ego.

Dale: No one’s a party pooper.

Jarod: Well, sometimes.

Dale: If I get a headache. [laughs]

Which part of I Don’t Know, I’m High, Let’s Just Hit Record and Hope for the Best are you proudest of?

Jarod: I’m super proud of my lyrics. I really like writing lyrics. I like it when I have an idea for a song concept that comes together really well and that happened on every song. I really like being funny as well as trying to make a bit of a point and I think I did that really well on pretty much every song. Every song has some sort of joke layered in there in some way. I’m a big hip-hop fan so I love wordplay and I did a lot of that too. I quoted a Jurassic Park movie. I’ve always wanted to do that. That’s what I’m most proud of.

Dale: I think for me there’s a few things. I think my drumming has come a long way since the last full-length. I don’t have a drum set at home so I only really get to practice when we jam. I live in an apartment with people above and below me.

Jarod: Dale’s fills on this record were top-notch. Probably some of your best.

Dale: Thank you. Being able to write a full song myself on an album was something I always wanted to do. I always wanted to write a song and have it recorded. No one ever really knew that I played guitar, I just dabbled on one. I brought my song to the guys and was like, “Hey, would it be cool if I do this?” and they wanted to hear it first to make sure it was ok. [laughs] Then Sean said to me, “That’s a good song”.

Jarod: It’s the most Readys-sounding song on the album too. We didn’t really write a real sing-a-long type thing with lots of “woahs”.

Dale: “Ballad of James and the Readys” has “woahs”.

Jarod: Yeah but there’s a lot of words there. It’s gonna take people a long time to pick up on that. With this one, the whole chorus is “woah, woah, woah”. It’s all about us partying and our history together and just having a good time.

Dale: We have a couple sentimental songs this time. That’s the thing, you’re getting older - I turned 40 this year - and you think back like, “These people have been with me for the past 15+ years. They are family. They are friends”. It’s something that I wanted to put into a song and I made it happen.

Jarod: Our songwriting process I think is what I’m most proud of. We had a lot of material to go through and figure out what we liked best and what was going to work out best as a song. Thinking about it beforehand was more nerve-racking than when we actually did it. Once we started writing it was like, “Ok, we can do this! No biggie”.

Dale: Setting that time and that date like, “We’re releasing this then. That’s only this many months away and we only have three songs written”. I’m proud of what we did and that we got it done. I think giving ourselves a timeline to do it definitely helped.

Jarod: Giving ourselves a timeline probably helped. I think just the fact that we’ve come far enough that we can buckle down and write a song if we want to without it being a big hassle.

Dale: Or a big pile of poop.

[laughter]

Dale: I mean that does happen.

Jarod: Oh yeah. It used to be that we’d scrap as many songs as we wrote. We’d write two songs and out of those two one would survive. That’s the way we wrote for a long time. I think it’s pretty common for a lot of bands too. You just stop playing songs you don’t like and some of them don’t make it to the recording process.

Dale: Now it’s hard to cut songs out. [laughs]

Jarod: Now it’s like, “Oh shit! Nicolo and I were talking about this one song. I remember that riff! We’ve gotta write that, that’s a good song! That’s gonna rip!” It's nice that we have too much material to work with rather than not enough.

It’s nice to get to that place.

Dale: It took 15 years but we got there. [laughs]

What does the future hold for The Readys?

Dale: More shows.

Jarod: We’re planning on making a bunch of our friends’ bands from Newmarket reunite. We already did it once with our buddies Letterbomb at our tape release show. We’re planning a big reunion of every old Newmarket band to play with us. [laughs]

Dale: It might take another 15 years to do. I think the main thing is to keep playing together and having fun.

Jarod: I’m excited to play these songs for more audiences and show everybody what we’ve been working on. Odds are we’re gonna write more but right now we’re not specifically planning that but there are more songs that we’re working on.

Dale: Hopefully less than 10 years this time before another full-length. Just keep writing, having fun, and being friends - that’s all we care about. We don’t need any of that platinum album on the wall, that’s overrated. [laughs]

Is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?

Jarod: Big thanks to Laura for doing our mastering, Dayne for doing our recording, and Dale’s wife, Jackie Bird, for doing the album cover. Michelle did the layout.

Dale: [Borat voice] My wife.

Jarod: She did a fantastic job. She’s not a graphic designer or anything.

Dale: She’s very artistic.

Jarod: She was like, “That’s what you want? I can do that!” and we were like, “Really? We’re not paying you!” [laughs] We gave her a t-shirt.

Dale: No we didn’t, I paid for that T-shirt!

Jarod: Well, she didn’t even get a T-shirt.

[laughter]

Dale: Thanks to Tarantula Tapes for finally getting together with us. I know Core was saying that he’s been wanting to do it for a while so it’s nice that we could finally do it.

Jarod: I didn’t realize that they were interested in working with us! We had songs to write and we were like, “Let’s do a tape! Let’s ask Core and Casey”.

Dale: No one buys CDs anymore. They were 100% down and we’re really grateful for it.

Jarod: Core was like, “We are extremely interested in having you guys do a tape with us!” and we were like, “Oh, it’s like that, eh? Now there’s pressure!” [laughs] We’d also like to extend our love to the Barrie and Newmarket scenes.

Dale: And everyone who’s listened to the album.

Jarod: Thanks to everyone for listening and continuing to support us.