- MuzicNotez: First off, it’s an honor to be doing this interview with you, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us.
- Across The Board: It’s ALWAYS an honor for us to be interviewed by MuzicNotez – thank you!
- MuzicNotez: Introduce yourselves, what are your names and rolls in the band?
- Across The Board: I’m Jackie Auguste-lead singer/songwriter and rhythm guitar player. This is my co-founder of the band Andy who plays bass guitar. The other band members are Martin Heller on keys, Ryan Sousa on drums, Ben Healey on lead guitar, Tasha Lorayne on vocals and Shezelle Weekes on vocals.
- MuzicNotez: How did you meet and form up? How long have you been together?
Website: www.AcrossTheBoardband.ca/
Facebook: Facebook.com/AcrossTheBoardproductions
Twitter: @ATBmusicCanada- Across The Board: Andy and I (Jackie) are married and co-founded the band back in 2013 from garage jams and backyard campfire sessions. We started as a Youtube band, making music videos of covers and then gradually started writing our own music, releasing our first album JANE ON FIRE in 2016, followed by an album a year since then – AMENDS in 2017, SONIC BOOM and LIVE IN STUDIO both came out in 2018, and finally WILD ONES in 2019. We started playing live in real life, jumping out of the internet box in June of 2016 at the release of our first album and haven’t looked back for a moment. We continue to make online content, now with over 600 videos on Youtube in playlists ranging from “Caravan Karaoke”, “Acoustic Jams” and “ATB LIVE” to a musical cooking show and our original cover series “Pick Up & Play”.
- MuzicNotez: How did you come up with the name Across The Board?
- Across The Board: When we were trying to name the band, we looked around at the musicians who were jamming with us at that particular moment and we had a 12-year-old on cello, a 60 year old on keys and every skin color and nationality you could imagine in between! I put the word “diversity” in the thesaurus.com search box, and one of the phrases was ACROSS THE BOARD—which also refers to the sound board in a recording studio and is a common phrase everyone seems to say! It seemed fitting. And we are the only ACROSS THE BOARD band on Spotify, AppleMusic, Google Play, Amazon-etc, so it was a blessing.
- MuzicNotez: Who were your musical influences, idols, or bands growing up that have helped mold you into the band you are today? Or helped mold the music that you create?
- Across The Board: We have many, but I would have to say the main ones for us are BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, FLEETWOOD MAC, PARAMOUR, PINK FLOYD, JOAN JETT, COLD PLAY, U2. Yes, I know it’s diverse-but that’s us!
- MuzicNotez: What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been to or performed?
- Across The Board: Jackie- greatest concert I have ever been to was probably the recent Taylor Swift concert this past winter in Toronto-the effects, the dancing, the sound, the performances were off-the-charts amazing. The greatest concert I ever played was to 400 people at THE OPERA HOUSE in Toronto when we released our latest album WILD ONES-I was post-operative from mastectomy for breast cancer and in the middle of chemotherapy and still managed have an amazing show. I honestly don’t know how we pulled that one off, but we did and our band came together around me and we became stronger as a team!
- MuzicNotez: What’s the ultimate goal you want your music to achieve, or for you to achieve in your career as a musician? Any particular message you wish to send?
- Across The Board: Ultimately we want people to hear our message—as a band-we are a diverse group of musicians who work hard and continue to push ourselves on the independent music scene-creatively and collectively. We want to inspire other musicians to follow our lead in innovating independent music marketing and we want to gather fans and friends around the world who dig our music and messages-the moments when our fans sing the lyrics back to us on stage are those moments that make it all worthwhile!
- MuzicNotez: Your latest album ‘Wild Ones’ dropped March 22nd, what makes this release unique?
- Across The Board: WILD ONES was produced by our usual team at MC2 Music Media whom we have come to love collaborating with. We took this album wider in collaboration and opened it up musically to the larger group. I was typically the principle writer on most music previous to this album. This time we had major contributions from Darnell Toth and Matt Makarenko-our producers, as well as from Marty Heller, our keyboardist, who wrote lyrics and music on the tracks. We are taking the same collaborative approach with our 2020 album – working title LOVE POTION-and opening up the writing to the larger band.
- MuzicNotez: You have won, and are nominated for a number of awards. How does it feel to have your hard work rewarded like that?
- Across The Board: Oh my goodness, this is the best feeling-to be recognized by peers or by fans for your music—to know that it “touched” someone or made a mark that was deep enough to warrant a nomination or an award-is a validation of sorts. We don’t write music for awards, we write from the heart, but to be rewarded for touching someone else’s heart is incredible.
- MuzicNotez: What else are you working on? What can we expect to see and hear from you in the future?
- Across The Board: This upcoming weekend we have a writing retreat out at Andy and my cottage, to start writing LOVE POTION— which will have the love them this time-the good, the bad, the magic, the heartbreaks—-who knows. I am so excited to see what comes up! We are also working on a cancer benefit for October which is breast cancer month—we are hoping to finalize that show and announce it soon.
- MuzicNotez: Anything else you wish to say about yourself or your music? Any message for your fans?
- Across The Board: Thank you for following us and interacting with us live and on social media. We would love to encourage everyone to follow our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts as we do tons of new content regularly, including live streams, and polls about classic rock news and history they might enjoy~
Instagram is @acrosstheboardband
Twitter is @atbmusiccanada
And Facebook is: http://facebook.com/acrosstheboardproductionsYou can also find everything ATB at http://acrosstheboardmusic.ca
THANK YOU!!!
- Across The Board: Thank you for following us and interacting with us live and on social media. We would love to encourage everyone to follow our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts as we do tons of new content regularly, including live streams, and polls about classic rock news and history they might enjoy~