Homegrown noise: On the road with Nick Everett

The guys in Nick Everett and Everybody took their noisy folk on the road this summer. Now that they’ve returned to day jobs, slinging espresso at Coburg Coffee, we’ve had a chance to sit down with them and chat about life on a coast to coast tour, about playing shows and about what’s up next for the band.
Nick Everett, a FYPper of 2009, has become a mainstay of the Halifax music crowd over the past few years. He’s been playing regular shows in the city and across the province, reaching a wide audience with a blend of gorgeous, dramatic folk music and unexpected sounds he finds – the racket of bicycle tire spokes or coins dropping on the ground.
Everett even has a minor hit on his hands with “Liar” on university radio playlists. He had the crowd singing the words back at him in a Bus Stop Theatre show in February and he brought the house down with a rendition of the tune with the King’s College Orchestra last fall.
Despite his success, Everett says he’s always looking for a challenge.
“I think it’s just trying to arrange the songs the best way you can with whatever you have to arrange them with,” says Everett.
“If we had a bunch of synthesizers, we’d be making synth music. We’re a three piece, so we have guitar, bass and drums. The reason it becomes noisy is that we want it to be dynamic and we want it to go from extremely loud to extremely quiet very fast.”
Adam White, the drummer, says the willingness to explore new sounds is precisely what makes this three-piece band exciting.
“When we sit down to record or play, there’s the idea of ‘we’ve got this much stuff that we can make noise with’. What sort of noise do we have to make with this stuff to get our point across?” says White.
On tour, the guys played anywhere and everywhere, from bar shows to house shows, crashing with friends and strangers along the way. They played mid-afternoon park sets for retirees and children and at one point found themselves hanging out at an artists’ commune in Duncan, British Columbia for a festival.
“The whole tour was just this weird balance of incredible spots, living out in fields looking at stars, and also terrible environments – lots of good mixed in with the bad,” says Everett.
The team is working on a special performance for the Halifax Pop Explosion, but Everett didn’t want to divulge the details just yet.
Right after they spoke with The Watch, the band was off to play a songwriting circle in New Glasgow, where Everett had a solo acoustic set planned, followed by a raucous full band show. That willingness to embrace the challenge of bringing the hushed and the chaotic together makes their live shows feel as if anything could happen.
They say they’re glad to be back in Halifax, for the time being. That said, their restless energy could send them anywhere at a moment’s notice. Be sure to check out their shows while they’re still here.
Check out Nick Everett and Everybody’s Facebook page for spontaneous pop-up shows at their house throughout the fall.