Meet New Zealand indie rockers Evermore, creators of the hit Hey Boys and Girls on their third successful album, Truth of the World: Welcome to the Show. Plus scroll down for info on how to win the album.
THE BAND
It’s made up of brothers Jon (25) on guitar and vocals, Peter (23) on keyboards, bass, piano and vocals, and Dann Hume (21) on drums and vocals.
They grew up in the Manawatu-Wanganui region of New Zealand where they were home-schooled and introduced to music as kids by their mother. In their teens they experimented with tunes and dreamt of turning music into a full-time career. Their lucky break came in 2000 when they won a local rock competition and used the prize money to build a home studio for recording. In 2000 they released their first EP, Slipping Away.
NEW CD
Truth of the World: Welcome to the Show is their third studio album, which took 18 months to record. “We knew it was going to be a really different record so it took a long time to develop,” Jon says.
“It’s the album we’ve wanted to make since we started the band. It’s all about trashy media and political propaganda which turns it into a fun, over-the-top rock ’n roll show.”
The guys wrote and produced the album. “There was no one there saying, ‘Hey, that’s probably not a good idea.’ It was just us bouncing ideas off each other - and some of them got pretty crazy by the end,” Jon says.
“It was like, ‘Let’s get 12 people in the room to scream as loud as they can’ or ‘What if we use a sample of Hitler at the Nuremburg rally?’ ” - which is exactly what they did.
THE RIGHT MESSAGE
The Evermore siblings aren’t only about good beats - they’re dead set on being good role models too. “We always aim to get across a positive message. We do these live gigs and realise people are really listening and they’re taking it all very seriously . . . we should say something positive,” Peter says.
WHAT’S NEXT?
A Greatest Hits album later this year.
WIN
Ten readers will each win a copy of Truth of the World: Welcome to the Show, courtesy of EMI Music. SMS the word EVER, your name and address to 34923 by 5 pm on 15 October. Each SMS
costs R2.
