Sporting skinny red jeans, a plain white T and a loosely knotted brown tie, Christopher Pappas looks around the table littered with crumpled napkins and beers. “Basically, it’s a 12-step program,” Pappas says, half-full glass in hand. “We’re on the third step. First, we’ve admitted that we’re in a band. Then, we went to past relations and told them we’re in a band. And the third… the third is getting drunk.”
As a round of IPAs make their way to the table, the boys of Boston-based The Everyday Visuals (TEV) relive their past tour experiences before a Saturday night show at the Middle East.
“So we were in the middle of the desert,” guitarist/pianist Eli Scheer says later, detailing a Vegas trip gone awry. “And then our transmission went. So we’re rushing around, trying to find a mechanic in Nevada. We didn’t even make it to our show on time.”
“But we got a great deal on the transmission,” guitarist/pianist Kyle Frederickson chimes in. “I was wearing a Red Sox shirt. [Luckily] the mechanic was from Boston.”
But beer and bad travel experiences aside, TEV always bring something different back to the Boston music scene. Start off with Pappas’ crooning a la Ben Folds. Add a poppy surf rock sound reminiscent of the Beach Boys. And throw in some Counting Crows for good measure.
As TEV took the stage at the jam-packed Upstairs of the Middle East, the boys mixed guitar-heavy melodies with heartfelt lyrics that recognize the difficulty of bringing something new to the table of love. (“I’m too old to believe this stuff/ I don’t need to write another cliché line about love/ but her breathing is music”, they sing).
According to bassist Chris Zembower, the Boston music scene is “tightly knit, almost incestual. Everybody is in five bands. Everyone plays the same circuit. You have to win the respect of your peers. It’s much more difficult than in New York where there are more scenes.”
Although TEV loves playing Boston clubs (the Paradise and T.T. The Bear’s Place are their favorites), the guys want to break out into other markets.
“I want to do world domination, followed by a show at the Orpheum,” Zembower says.