Ottawa, Ontario’s Steve Adamyk talks his namesake band and punk

Interview by Jason Schreurs

Steve Adamyk Band. It’s a name that’s easy to pass by on the record store shelves or gig poster poles, because it’s just, like, a dude’s name, man. Turns out that dude is a great punk rock songwriter from Ottawa, Ontario who has previously played in bands such as The Sedatives and Million Dollar Marxists, but was tired of his bands breaking up and him having to start over from scratch. We recently talked to Adamyk about the benefits (and drawbacks) of naming a band after yourself, the state of punk rock today and keeping your ego in check.

You guys have a very specific sound that you go for in the studio. Can you tell me about that?
It’s a real line to straddle between being a cheesy, pop-punk, overproduced, slick band and being a supremely lo-fi, psych, garage band, and it’s so easy to sway too much in one direction by accident. So it’s been my goal personally, and our goal as a band as well, to do our best to incorporate both sides. We like to consider ourselves more of a power-pop band, as opposed to a traditional pop-punk band. Or at least that’s what we’re shooting for; it doesn’t always come out that way [laughs]. But our influences are equal parts modern and classic garage punk, and either ’70s and ’80s power pop, and the classic pop-punk stuff from the early ’90s that a lot of us grew up on. So it’s just a matter of trying to find a studio or someone who knows how to record that properly, or who knows the ideology and we feel a bit in synch with them. And hopefully we write songs that suit it [laughs].

A friend of mine asked me the other day if there are even any new punk bands still coming out these days. And I explained to him that there are just as many now as there were back then. Why do you think it is that some people assume that punk is a thing of the past, or even that it died in the ’90s?
I think it’s largely because there was a trend in the ’90s of the whole skate-punk thing, and the Epitaph/Fat Wreck Chords skate-punk explosion of the mid-’90s spearheaded that. So it’s a combination of people getting older and forgetting about it, like in the mid-2000s a lot of people abandoned what they were listening to for what we now know as modern indie rock, which just started gaining steam at that point, so only within the last five years have we seen a resurgence in classic punk. A lot of the modern pop-punk bands from the ’90s are getting really good attendance at their shows again, and there’s a throwback to it happening. But I don’t really know why some people think that. It’s just the changing of the times. The internet has done positive and negative things to the punk scene, and unfortunately everybody has access to everything in the world and it’s just so much, and it’s oversaturated with material. It’s so difficult to weed through what’s there. And the last 10 years have really been focused on trends, so a label like Epitaph has signed almost exclusively Auto-Tuned hardcore bands or your screamo bands. They’re still pretty much focused on that, but it’s starting to swing back, because even, again, for example, Epitaph, you see bands like Propagandhi still doing it really, really well, and Off With Their Heads, and bands like that are still picking up steam. So, yeah, there is this perception that maybe people forgot about punk, but it’s still there; sometimes you just have to dig a little harder.

Why did you guys choose to use your name for the band name?
It’s kind of weird, and I actually really like this question, and I’ve had to answer it a lot over the years. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse to have the band name just my name. In hindsight, I’m not sure I would have kept it like that, but people see the band name sometimes and overlook it because they assume it’s not going to be what it sounds like, which is fine, but originally it was crafted so I could keep this project going forever, essentially. I was in a bunch of bands that were really productive for years and then they broke up and I was left empty-handed, and I was 29 thinking, “I don’t want to start over this late,” and it was annoying to me. So I just started asking friends for help laying down songs in the studio, and it was more just for fun so I could see if I could use it later for a band. So I did five songs originally and some people said we should make a band around it, and I did, but I ended up just using my name because I was so fed up with having to start over again that I didn’t want to have a project that could dissolve on me. So no matter who quit the band, I could keep it going and no one would ever question who’s involved because it was always going to be my name. So that’s why it was done. I’m sure throughout my life there will be points where I’m more musically active than others, but I don’t see it ever stopping, and that was the crux of the reason behind that.

You guys seem to be getting more and more attention. Are you surprised at the reaction at some of your shows outside of Ottawa, or even outside Canada?
A little bit. It’s odd, and I’m extremely grateful. A few years ago, when I first started gathering some steam I was pretty blown away because I was getting emails from people I looked up to telling me how much they loved my band, and it was really bizarre. And now that years have past, all of these bands from like 15 years ago that people may have forgotten about, but that I still listen to, are still active and at the same level as we are. And that’s mind-blowing to me, that some of these people I grew up listening to are on the same playing field that I’m on. It’s a different world now; it’s really easy to connect people, but it’s also really difficult to break out and have people really care, so I’m extremely grateful to have any audience at all. Especially in Canada, because here it’s a really difficult country to break into because people don’t really buy a lot of records, but it’s a lot easier in other countries, I find. But, still, to this day, I’m the furthest thing from egotistical, and I have to be, because a lot of people think about my band as my name, and maybe they think I’m a hothead or something, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m grateful for every waking moment that this band is even a possibility of being a musical project at all.

Steve Adamyk Band‘s Third is out now on Dirtnap Records.