It’s a common image — a pop-punk band’s MySpace populated with images of them standing in a field, with their hands firmly stuck in their pockets, serious grimaces painted across their faces.
For the Weekend’s MySpace is slightly different. It features the band members in swimming suits in a bathtub, surrounded by rubber duckies. Next you stumble across the videos of them crab walking while playing guitar and bass and it becomes obvious that this isn’t your regular pop-punk outfit.
The band — Myles Rivoire, Dennis Hann, Cody Teather, Colton Peters and Jay McDonald — are intent on sharing their quirky sense of humour and music with the world. This goal will certainly be furthered by their recent addition to the line-up for the next season of Much Music’s Disband, but the band have also embraced a litany of other techniques.
“We’ve done the obvious, like hitting up the malls and using our dashing good looks,” laughs guitarist Hann. “Girls are about 99.9 per cent of our fan base and hitting up malls is an excellent way to meet them. We’ve also done a show at a Starbucks, we’ve done busking and we do competitions and contests on our websites.”
The band focuses on connecting with their fans through the Internet. Their Facebook group boasts over 1,800 members and they have over 1,100 friends on MySpace. Though these numbers aren’t always a guarantee of success or a measure of talent, they demonstrate that the unsigned band, formed just this year, are doing something right.
“MySpace and Facebook are amazing networking tools,” says Hann. “We just put all our songs on our website and we posted them everywhere on MySpace and Facebook. We get so many adds and so many comments every single day. We try and get back to every single one and make sure everyone feels the love and everyone wants to get involved with us.”
It’s a sentiment that lead singer Rivoire shares.
“You don’t really see a lot of bands connect with their fans,” he says. “For [our next] show, we’ve been driving around every single night delivering tickets and promotion is the biggest part. We really focus on connecting with our fans and I think that’s something that a lot of bands forget to do but it’s the most important part.”
The band intends on expanding their efforts with the trip to Toronto to film the aforementioned show. While they are extremely conscious of the efforts other bands make to control their image it’s something For the Weekend aren’t really concerned with.
“We’ve seen so many bands that have a good thing going on right now,” says Hann. “Their MySpace’s and their mannerism on and off camera — they seem so serious and they are trying to be pretty. Half the people that are buying this music or paying attention to this music are people of our age and our level of humour, and if people from all around can relate to our quirkiness and how to down-to-earth we are, then that’s something fresh.”
The band has high hopes for their time on the Disband during which the band will receive advice and mentorship from a panel of industry experts. At the very least they will get to show their true colours on camera.
“We just want our image to be as real as it gets and we just want people to enjoy our music and laugh with us — and sometimes at us,” laughs Hann.