Despite two albums, several singles and a 2010 Juno nomination, Down With Webster vocalist Bucky Seja said he hasn’t really changed since middle school.
“I still dress the same, I still listen to the same music, I’m still rapping,” he said.
The Toronto band came together for a middle school talent show and have stuck together since.
Down with Webster played the Capital Music Hall Sept. 18 as part of their North American tour to promote their new album Time to Win, Pt. 2.
“It’s crazy. It’s what we’ve always dreamed of having happen,” vocalist and rapper Cam Hunter said of the band’s success at a sound check before the show.
However, they don’t want people to think the success happened instantly, or that they can’t go further.
“It’s one of those things where it’s awesome but we don’t want people to forget that we’ve been doing this for such a long time. We didn’t just blow up overnight,” said Bucky Seja, another of the band’s vocalists.
“I feel like it’s still happening. Like every day, still doing stuff we didn’t do last year. It’s still moving, and we’ve yet to reach that point where it’s like, ‘Wow,’” Hunter added.
The group said they don’t consider themselves as any different now than when they started.
“It’s not really a change,” Seja said. “I mean, people that work at the bank that used to be in my Grade 9 class, that’s more of a change.”
“If anything I feel like I changed the least,” Seja said, adding with a laugh, “It’s like I’m stuck.”
The band’s unique blend of rap, nerd-rock and pop point to many different influences, with comparisons to Weezer, Linkin Park, LMFAO and 3OH!3. The bandmates said they consider themselves as each having unique influences.
“Everyone in the band would probably give you a different answer,” Seja said. “The stuff that influenced me, the stuff I listened to, was like Rage Against the Machine, Wu Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, all the kind of rap I grew up listening to.”
Hunter, on the other hand, said he grew up listening to everything, and that being surrounded by different genres helped shape him as a musician.
With the upcoming release of Time to Win, Pt. 2, the band said they feel as if they are getting better at figuring out what they’re good at.
“I feel like as we continue down this path and we continue writing we keep getting better at it, and we understand more of what it is that we do, and it sort of gets more focused,” Seja said.
“A lot of the earlier stuff that we did, before [our previous album], was all over the place,” Seja said. “Now we know more of what our strengths are and we feel like it’s getting better and more refined and stronger.”
With a successful Ottawa show, the group said they are now looking forward to completing the rest of their North American tour.
If nothing else, the group has shown that Canadian music is still very much alive, and jumping.