Ten Second Epic
An interview
October 17, 2006
Sam Elkjar
Meet Dan, Craig, Pat, Sandy, and Andrew. Alone, they are just five teenagers. Throw them together in a room with some instruments and they become the musical powerhouse that is Ten Second Epic. Get used to the name, because it’s one you’ll be sure to hear a lot of before the end of the year. With a Canadian tour that just kicked off and a new CD entitled Count Yourself In that hit shelves on October 10, and a new single, “Suck it up Princess,” blowing up on MuchMusic, TSE is set to explode. Their sound will infest your head, and you’ll like it. Mars’ Hill recently caught up with front man Andrew Usenik for an interview.
MH: Give MH some background on you guys. How did you guys meet?
AU: We are all from Edmonton and we basically came together through friends of friends. Pat and Craig were childhood buddies who had been jamming together since grade six… Pat propositioned me in high school to come sing for them and Craig did the same with Sandy. Then, Sandy suggested bringing his friend Dan to complete the line-up. It was a pretty organic process, which was important for us. If you are not friends first, I think it’d be very difficult to coexist on the road.
MH: From what I’ve heard of your the new album, there is a very evident maturity. Tell me about the process of reaching this level.
AU: Time is the biggest thing. When we wrote the last album, One More for the Road, our average age was 17. In many ways we were just a bunch of kids playing our instruments, [and were] not a band. Since then we have been on several tours ranging from Warped Tour, Taste of Chaos, and have headlined our own shows in Thunder Bay. We have only been a band for 4 years; it takes more than a few years to feel comfortable as a band.
I should also add that it doesn’t hurt having Garth Richardson produce your album, as he has literally produced some of the best and biggest selling albums in the history of music.
MH: Your music video for “Suck it up Princess” can be viewed on MuchMusic. This must have been an incredible experience for you guys. Tell me about the video.
AU: [The video was] a lot of work. Performing the same song for 12 hours is not a treat. The first take of the shoot, I was jumping around the ferry, and I managed to bust right through one of the planks. Luckily, I managed to catch myself… but I was very close to falling into some very disgusting, oil saturated water, which added a nice element of fear for the remaining 12 hours of work.
The song itself is more or less about being in a relationship with someone who you have a lot of [feelings] for, but you know its time to part ways. The music video is more of a performance based video, but has a storyline. There is a young lady who seems to be caught up in the emotion of a relationship, but in the end finds the strength to cut off the relationship and leave him high and not so dry (as he ends up in the water).
MH: You guys are going on a cross Canada tour, with a few stops around B.C. What should we expect from this tour?
AU: Energy, crowd interaction, and a lot of good music. Even if [TSE] isn’t your cup of tea, you will enjoy our set.
MH: Anything you think our readers would be interested in hearing?
AU: As post-secondary students, they might find it humorous that I have been registered in Engineering at the University of Alberta for the past few years. I missed six consecutive weeks of classes while recording, flew home for my finals, only to return to tour. The best advice I can [give] based on that is, “D’s and C’s equal Degrees.”
Now you go...
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