Photo by Dave Gillespie

Are there any instrument changes on stage with the extensive instrumentation on this new record?

We actually added a 5th member to the band at this round of touring. And for the foreseeable future I guess. We’ve always been a four-piece and we’ve always performed as a four-piece, so when we started working on rehearsing these songs and learning them for touring we discovered pretty quickly that we weren’t able to get across what we wanted without adding another guy, so that has been the major change in the band in the last little while. It’s really exciting. It brings new musical possibilities. Even though the songs themselves are sparser it still required that extra something.

In terms of who plays what it just happens naturally, really depending on the songwriter and what they say they wrote the song on. If I’m singing the song and I’m playing it on guitar, everyone just sort of fills in around the edges. We have our default positions as musicians anyways. There’s a basic structure that we work around that change just depending on the song.

Who is the fifth member?

His name is Jason Haverman. We met him on tour last, in April of 2013. We were touring with a band called Yukon Blonde, from out west. They are a Vancouver based band and we toured with them and he was playing bass for them at the time. That’s how we became acquainted, and became fast friends. He lives in Toronto so we just started hanging out a lot and jamming and he was the obvious choice when we decided that we needed to add another man.

Are you guys excited about playing any place in particular?

We are kind of excited about all of it to be honest. We’ve lined up a lot of fun tour partners. We are touring with a band called The Elwins in a good part of Canada, and we are also touring with some of our really close friends in our own sort of territory in Southern Ontario. We are touring with a band called the Golden Dogs , and a guy named Taylor Knox, and another band called West Atlantic who are all sort of based out of our studio. We have a studio called Illegal Studios. We are like this little scene amongst our friends. We are all based in that same studio and we all play on each other’s records. It’s a really healthy vibrant scene that we have. I’m excited about touring particularly that stretch of the tour. It will be fun because it’s just going to be a lot of good times with our friends.

You and Carlin have been friends for a while, right?

We’ve been friends since Grade 9.

Is it crazy to think that you are both still together and playing?

It is absolutely crazy to think that! I’m getting married on Friday, so last week we went and had a bachelor party at his house, which is where we use to rehearse when we were kids. He has a back house. It’s a separate structure called the back house where we grew up where we first started playing in our first band. And we were there three four days ago just hanging out having a little party and we were jamming. It’s a total trip to think its 20 years later and we are still doing it.

What’s next for Zeus?

We finish our tour in October, so that’s a stretch that’s ahead of us right now. Beyond that, we are looking at Europe possibilities. We’ve been over quite a few times. We have a label that is based out of London, so that’s sort of our next horizon if you will. We are making plans to go over there and do some touring over that way. Also I think we are all really eager to start working on new music even though we are just releasing our brand new record. Like I said, it took us a year to make it. So, to us its already a little behind us in terms of our creative input. As much as fun as learning and performing these new songs, we are all excited. Especially now that we have a new member in the band. We are all excited to start working on new music with this new version of Zeus.

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