Eve 6 front man/ bassist Max Collins is looking forward to taking a break from his new band Fitness to play Lethbridge with Blind Melon at Average Joes, June 22.
The Los Angeles based pop/punk trio Eve 6, recently parted ways with drummer Tony Fagenson, but fortunately they picked up Fitness drummer beautiful Ben (Big Steve) Hillzinger to play with Eve 6.
“ I’m not 100 per cent sure why Tony left. He had other projects he wanted to focus on. But he‘s happy, so we’re happy,” Collins said, adding Hillzinger was the first choice to replace him.
“He’s already playing with me (and AWOL Nations’ Kenny Carkeet who is also in Fitness), so it worked out perfectly. Because I’m doing a lot of work with Fitness and there are a lot of one off dates with Eve 6 and he’s already here. Plus he’s a great drummer. We’ve played about 12 shows with him. We had one rehearsal before them and he nailed them,” Collins continued.
He can’t recall having played Lethbridge before.
”Remind me where that is. It doesn’t ring any bells, but we did a lot of dead of winter touring in Canada where the only thing you’re thinking about is not freezing,“ he said.
“ We do love touring Canada. When we’re there, we always ask ourselves why we don’t live there. We have that kind of love affair with Canada,” he said, adding fans should expect to hear a fun show.
“We‘re playing all of our favourites from all of the albums so it‘s a little selfish. But fortunately, most of them are also the fans’ favourites,” he said, noting ‘Amphetamines’ from the second album ‘Horrorscope,” “Open Road” from their first Cd, ‘Think Twice’ from their third album ‘All in your Head’ and ‘Curtain’ from their most recent, 2012 album Speak in Code” are among his favourites to play.
‘Curtain’ is the lone song from that (new) album that we’ll be playing,” he said.
“We’re a three piece rock and roll band so it will be a high energy, low IQ rock and roll show,” he said.
“Some of our earlier stuff was literate, but adolescent literate,” he said.
He noted though Fitness’s drummer, they won’t be playing any of their more, laid back indie rock.
“Eve 6 has a completely different aesthetic,’ he said, adding not to rule out new music from Eve 6.
“Most of my creativity is going towards Fitness,” he said.
“But there will probably be some new Eve 6 material. We’re just not sure of the format,” he said.
He is looking forward to playing a handful of shows with ’90s stars Blind Melon, whose best known hit was “No Rain.”
“ We’re playing four or five shows with them. We played in Japan with them. They’re great guys. We didn’t play any shows with them in our early days because there was no thought of them continuing without Shannon Hoon, their frontman who died of drug overdose in 1995 while the band was on tour),” he said.
“Hopefully we‘ll see some fine people at this show,” he said.
Tickets for the June 22 show are $45 in advance $50 on the day of the show. The show begins at 8:30 p.m.