Across the Board Interview | Jackie Auguste [2018-10-22]

Across The Board (ATB) is an award-winning Canadian pop rock band of multi-instrumentalist musicians with over 400 Youtube videos.

– Hope your summer is going well, what’s new with Across The Board?

Thank you! It’s crazy this summer and we are having the best time! We are currently touring around our newest album “SONIC BOOM” – released in May—all over Ontario and into Quebec. We have already played in Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario and Peterborough and will be heading out to Niagara Falls this upcoming week.

– What are some challenges you sometimes face as an independent band on the internet or in reality?

Challenges seem to be related to being heard among all the noise—good and bad – on the internet. As an independent band, we don’t have the same kind of access to top tiers of brand sponsorship, advertising, marketing –that prime time Superbowl commercial spot just is not within our reach. So we pound the cyber pavement to be heard above the noise of everything from the hobbyist beatser on SoundCloud to the most amazing and talented independent acts. We have to put out fresh content almost daily, and constantly be looking for collaborations and new ways to get our music to the masses—it’s challenging, but in a positive way. We are learning about branding, marketing, focusing our product, and become better music entrepreneurs as we go.

– Finding your niche sound sometimes can be difficult, what would be Across the Board’s claim on uniqueness?

Our uniqueness is in our wide appeal—we seem to mishmash between genres and we have such a varied group of musicians from different backgrounds, age groups, and nationalities—we are truly “Across The Board”—our niche is our broadness.

– Choosing the right setlist to play live sometimes can be difficult. How do you figure it out?

We have a little formular—we like to start with a new song that’s catchy—something of our most recent album that would be the second most important song for us on the album—for the current album and setlist that would be “It Shouldn’t Be This Hard”.We then end with our most important new song – for this album, the title track “Sonic Boom” – and then we sandwich that with fast, slow, fast, slow, cover, fast, slow fast, slow—we stick a cover in the middle to appeal to the folks who never heard us play before. For this setlist we are covering U2’s “Kite” –which we recorded for our album “Sonic Boom”.

– What would we find interesting in your music collection?

I have some old vinyl from my dad—The Boston Pops, Nana Mouskouri, Abba Gold, The Kingston Trio, Peter Paul & Marry, Baraba Streisand, Neil Diamond, Peter Frampton and John Cougar (minus the Mellencamp).

– For aspiring artists what would you recommend doing to make life a little easier in the world of music?

For aspiring young artists, the first thing that you need to do is put out content. Don’t wait until you have some piece of “perfection” before you upload it to the world—show the journey, document, take people along for the ride and foster the relationships with fans who find you. Respond to comments, honor requests if you can tell your story. CONNECT!

http://www.acrosstheboardmusic.ca

Across the Board Interview from 2017

Across the Board Interview from 2017 Canadian indie pop rock band

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