Down With Webster roll out new material at Edmonton’s Capital Ex
It’s funny, the different perspectives you get when age is factored into judging music. The cliche that parents always hate their kids’ music is a cliche because it’s often true.
But there’s also a risk in the wisdom that comes with experience: of jumping to inaccurate conclusions based on a small sampling size, for example. When the Beastie Boys released “Fight For Your Right To Party” back in 1986, did anyone over the age of 18 really think the band had staying power, creative juice, serious funk, and spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25 years later?
And so it goes with Down With Webster, a band that screams “Beasties Lite” but nevertheless shows telling signs of potential greatness – beyond the commercial success of the craptacularly mediocre Hall and Oates remake, Rich Girls. Only two other song off the band’s 2009 debut Time To Win Vol. 1 got big radio time, although the band got Juno nods for both tunes, and all three went platinum in Canada.
It was the highly promising and substantially funkier “Your Man” which highlighted the band members’ arranging skills and set the stage, for those not turned off the the first single, to get into a fun debut disc, (even with the occasional more hardcore turn, ala Back Of My Hand.) The band members have played together since junior high school and it shows: tight, talented, and creatively diverse, up to the occasional inclusion of three-man horns. They reportedly turned down offers from both Gene Simmons and Timbaland to sign development deals, to maintain control over their own music.
“Yes, I (don’t) think that anybody gets as far as they have in their lives without tough decisions, and making some decisions in their own best interest,” bassist and keyboard player Tyler Armes said at the time. “I think that they probably understood that it wasn’t a knock on their character or their skills or (a lack of) respect we had for them. You have to respect other peoples’ visions sometimes.”
Down With Webster plays the Capital Ex stage tonight with opener Midway State, at 8 p.m. It’s a return engagement after a huge show last year that won the band a host of new fans in Edmonton and comes a few days after a show at the Stampede, as the band members tour across Canada. Time to Win Vol. 2’s first single, She’s Dope, came out at the end of May and the rest of the disc is expected by the end of summer.
