Things were looking good for Staten Island pop-punks Everything Ever earlier this year: The band had their 2014 debut, Solid Ground, reissued by Secret Audio Club in March. However, tragedy struck in August: just a few days before we caught up with them to talk shop, their van got broken into, resulting in a loss of approximately $6,000 worth of gear.
“We’re working with the cops on trying to track down who did it,” says bassist/vocalist John Trotta. “Part of me was like, ‘It will never happen to us,’ and part of me was waiting for it to happen at any second. So many bands get ripped off these days. It’s sad to say this but it’s sort of like a rite of passage. Bands are getting ripped off left and right.”
The tunes on Solid Ground are so filled with good energy and a feeling of positivity that it just doesn’t feel right that this band should suffer such misfortune. But guitarist/vocalist Andrew Paladino admits that even though it was very difficult for him at first, he’s keeping a positive spin on things.
“We do try to project positivity and have a good perspective about things,” says Paladino. “The reality is we had a van to get broken into and had a bunch of stuff that we were able to get so much amazing use out of. There’s so much more positive there; that’s why it’s sad, because there was so much positive that was taken away. So if you want to shift your perspective and look at that way, it could help.”
Just days after the break-in, the band was already on their feet, scheduling benefit shows and looking toward the future. And what that future holds is good news for those who enjoy the sounds on the band’s debut (which finds the unlikely middle ground between Cap’n Jazz and Smoke Or Fire): The guys are working on an EP which should have five or six songs on it, they say. Although no release date is set yet, it’s something to look forward to, and for the band, the writing process has been therapeutic.
“As soon as [the break-in] happened, I was working on a song for the EP about my local deli on Staten Island, called ‘My Local Deli,'” says Paladino. “It recently got robbed twice in one week or something like that, and all of a sudden after I got robbed, a verse for that song totally wrote itself. It made the EP make even more sense for me and made that song more profound. So it had a very tangible benefit of songwriting, which is usually the case for traumatic things.” S
A version of this piece was published in Substream #48.
