T Shirts 4 Tomorrow: The Brighton punk-rock band talks breaking up, their new EP and why they are OK with not being cool

      “I have more fun with these guys completely sober than I’ve had with so many drunk people,” says T Shirts 4 Tomorrow bassist Joe Fox. “I think one of the other things that makes this so much better is we hang out so much outside the band. My girlfriend texts Brandon (T Shirts drummer Brandon Preece) more than she texts me. It’s really kind of disturbing.”
     Now as the band eagerly awaits the release of their three-track EP, “The Outside Looking In,” and a Jan. 7 EP release show at Moe’s Original BBQ in Denver, they sit down around a poker table in the basement of lead singer and Brighton High School graduate Ethan’s Gilbert’s parents’ home to chat on how their sound has changed and what’s ahead for the band.
     “The thing we’re all mainly driving for is to go on tour this summer,” Preece said. “We just want to get our music out to other states and the whole living on the road is what we dream about.”

Photo by Kevin Denke

T Shirts 4 Tomorrow band members, from left, Ethan Gilbert, Erik Sherbenske, Brandon Preece and Joe Fox

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     Tell me what’s happened in the past three years?

     Gilbert: A lot of stuff. We’ve had members come and go. We’ve had members come and stay. We’ve upgraded as far as equipment goes. Our writing status is a lot better. We’ve been writing like …

      Preece: Way different music.

      Gilbert: Songs that are a lot better than anything we’ve written before.

      Erik Sherbenske: So, basically, nothing’s changed.

      Now, members have gone (original member Levi Blakeslee and bassist Adam Hayes). Were those amicable splits?

      Preece: We gigged with them for about a year. And then they both wanted to go a different route in music. And, at first, we were kind of scared because we thought, ‘Shoot, we’re not going to find anyone else … ever.’ And then, thanks to Craigslist ...

      Gilbert: Erik came about and blew us away with his shredding skills.

      Preece: We wanted to stick to piano. We had some keyboard players come in and they just … they were kind of weird. Finally, Ethan was like just try electric guitar, get a lead in here. (Erik was our first person). (Joe Fox) was in another band (Left Lane Ends) that we toured with a summer ago and right when (a second bass player) left, their band unfortunately (wink, wink) broke up. We were looking for a bass player quick because we got to play Broomstock but it was a week away. He was familiar with our music so we threw him in there and he adds a lot of spice.

       Gilbert: It was funny at the time because we had a bassist that was already lined up. We told him he was in the band and everything because we auditioned him. He didn’t show up for practice and then he was like, ‘Hey, guys, I can’t play Broomstock.’ So we were like, ‘Well, Joe, let’s do it.’ It was fate that Joe had to be here.

      That had to be a leap of faith for you guys. Because it changed the sound a lot, right?

      Preece: The Fray is what we thought we would be like because we had piano. It was hard to break into the harder rock scene. Losing that, we lost our pretty melodies but our energy was just waiting to burst out.

     Gilbert: Sometimes before, with Levi, we were outside of the box where it was easy to be different. With everything that we were writing and the way Levi played, things just kind of flowed together and it was easy to stand out from the pack because not a lot of people had that kind of style, that kind of flow. Once we got Erik in, it gets a little harder to write things that stand out a little more. We have to put a little more attention in to it. It’s awesome having Erik in because Erik knows the guitar frets like the back of his hand.
    
      Was that a big departure for you? Because you two (Ethan and Brandon) and Levi were Brighton High School buds just kind of chillin,’ making music together. But, courting outside musicians to join your band, that must have been different?

       Preece: It definitely was and that’s what fueled our heartbreak when the band broke up. In our minds, a band could only be good friends and best friends. We didn’t want to invite strangers over. To us, we were thinking, ‘We don’t know anyone who plays our kind of music?’ Are we going to have to give up?

       Gilbert: A lot of our fan base is from right here in Brighton, a lot of the kids we went to high school with. When Levi and Adam left, it was kind of a shock to (fans) being around us as much as they did, we kind of got the reputation as “the band kids.” We were the dudes that were in the band. As soon as they left, it wasn’t the Brighton boys anymore. I think some of the people kind of steered away from it because it’s not just the same old thing. But, instead of trying to get people back with our personalities, I think we’ve let the music do the work of bringing people back that kind of lost interest once we changed a little bit.

       Preece: It’s funny because our old fans that loved our sound with keyboard, they came to the first show and half of them were, (we told them ‘just be honest with us’) ‘I don’t like it.’ And we’re like, ‘Son of a gun’ because we really enjoy it and we’re going to lose some fans. But, now you talk to them, and we write a song that’s slower than most of them and they’re like, ‘What the hell are you guys doing? Where are the jams?’ It was a transition for us and for our true fans.

        Fox: Just from the old stuff I heard of T Shirts before I was in the band, Brandon and Ethan still bring a lot of that to the table. You can still hear a lot of that in the way we write, which does make us a little bit different. They didn’t go from piano rock and then go light years away to something else. It’s still relevant.

       Is it hard to keep it from becoming stressful because you guys are trying to turn this into a business and not just playing for fun?

       Sherbenske: We try to be serious and have fun at the same time. And that’s not always easy. We fight about our music every now and then, mostly because of me.

 
       Gilbert: It’s not so much a fight, just a difference in opinions. That’s the cool thing. Before we would all just play something and we’d be like, ‘Yeah, cool.’ And now Erik really challenges us to say, ‘No, I don’t really like that part.’
 
       Sherbenske: It’s like Lennon and McCartney to a lesser extent.

       Preece: It’s nice because Ethan doesn’t come to us with lyrics and say, ‘I wrote this. You do this. You do this. You do that. You do that.’ And we say, ‘Yes, sir.’ We work together as a band. On the stress part? That’s our promise to ourselves as a band. This band is never going to turn into about money or business. I know it needs to be a business once you get signed (to a record label) but we’re hoping that we can have a crew that works with us, not for us, with us that kind of handles the bills, the booking. We want to keep it, ‘Why are we doing this? You (Ethan) write good lyrics. You (Joe) put sick bass to it.’

       Gilbert: We all have things that are stressful in our life. This is our chance to escape that and do something we truly enjoy. There’s definitely a large separation between our personal business lives and what we do as a band. Hopefully some day the band will be our personal business lives. It’s doing it because we love making music. We love sharing what we believe in with people.

    Tell me about the CD process and putting that together.

     Gilbert: That by far has been the funnest, most amazing experience. We got to go up there (Blasting Room Studios in Fort Collins) and we got to work with one of our other local heroes, Joey Barba (guitarist for former band, The Brotherhood of Dae Han and now Tickle Me Pink) who was in a band that we absolutely loved and followed before they finished up. Just the excitement of being somewhere that’s so well known and how we’re all like little kids. Working with Joey and working with Andrew Berlin, who has a crazy resume…

      Preece: Our ultimate hero …

      Gilbert: He’s worked with Rise Against, the Flobots, just these crazy bands that are huge now. The experience to go up there and have somebody that actually knows what we want. All these other places we’ve recorded they really don’t understand where we want to be. Going up there, it’s like a punk factory. (Blasting Room owner Bill Stevenson founded The Descendants” and was the drummer for punk band Black Flag).

      Preece: We got to stay the night. The last studio, we’d get in the zone and we’re jamming, and they’d be like, ‘OK, session’s up.’ We’d have to pack up, we’d stay at (Joe’s) house, get a late-night’s sleep, get up way early, go back in for a 12-hour day.
And I’m not dogging on other studios, we just love how the Blasting Room works. At the Blasting Room, it was, ‘OK, guys, I’ve got to call it a night,’ toss us the keys and the whole place is ours. They have a kitchen, they have bedrooms, they have a couch. As a band, our chemistry got even stronger because here we are, hanging out, saying, ‘Dude, good job today. Good job tonight.’

      Gilbert: The whole reason we’re so proud of this CD and the way it sounds it they pushed us to our limits as musicians. We end up tracking something four or five times. Me, as a vocalist, that’s my favorite thing is singing. Me, personally, I’m not a terrible singer. But I go in there and they’d be like, ‘Hit this note again, hit this note again, sing this part again.’

       Sherbenske: It made us so much better.

       Preece: We used to come to practice and there would be nothing to practice. We’d just play our songs. Now, we come to practice and we say, ‘Make sure you hit that. You know how good in studio that sounded. The outcome of it all is we became better musicians. We became better friends.

      Gilbert: Anytime people would log on to hear our stuff (before) it always came with an asterisk or a disclaimer like, ‘Hey, go listen to our music but I was sick and we recorded it in a basement and it wasn’t good. This is finally a product where we hand it to people and there’s no disclaimer. It ‘s just like, ‘this is our music. This is us.’ It’s something we’re extremely proud of.

      Is this EP a make-or-break point for the band?

     Preece: This is our first EP and we’re already getting good comments and it’s not even released. We’re hoping it’s a good thing. I think our rule is if we hit 25-years-old (all are in their early 20s) and not one label has even contacted us, not even to tell us that we suck and we’re still playing just local gigs, we might be, ‘Hey, best friends, lets barbecue, let’s go get a beer but I’m not serious about the band anymore. If this EP’s a bust and people are like, ‘Cool’ and nothing happens? Guess what? We’re booking our tour. We’re going to go elsewhere. Nothing’s going to really stop us.
Gilbert: I don’t think there’s ever a make-or-break point. I think, in this industry, you have to accept the fact that people are going to say, ‘No.’ That’s something we’ve kind of tried to have instilled in ourselves. Nobody has been told ‘Yes’ every single time. It’s one of those things where we don’t get discouraged because someone out there doesn’t like your music. That just means 10 people do like your music.

     Fox: We’ve always said too that if we’re playing to one person or 1,000 people, it’s going to be the same show.

     Preece: A lot of bands say that and it’s cliché but we …

      Fox: We’ve actually played to one person.

      Preece: We played a venue a couple weeks ago, killer venue and we did great. I think there were six people. And this venue was huge. So, seeing six people …

      Fox: We’d finish a song and they’d be like (imitates some sporadic clapping)

      Preece: We’re like, ‘Thank you’ and they’re like, ‘Shut up, I’m talking to the waiter to get a
drink.’

      Gilbert: And we get off the stage and we’re all sweaty and we’re like, ‘Ah, yes, I love this show.’ It’s just one of those things where we just keeping going. Even Lady Gaga, she got dropped off two record labels before she is where she’s at. Justin Bieber got turned down by Justin Timberlake and three other record companies before Usher picked him up. It’s one of those things where you let people telling you, ‘No,’ get you down, you’re not going to make it.

      Sherbenske: It kind of makes it more fun to try and prove them wrong.

      Fox: As long you feel like you’re making progress, that’s what’s important and matters.

      Any groupies yet?

      Sherbenske: I wish.

      Gilbert: It’s funny because we always have some people that are like, ‘Can I be your groupie?”

      Fox: They don’t fully understand what that means.

      Gilbert: I don’t think they fully understand what it means to be our groupie. We have a thorough audition process. We’re like Miss America, there’s a nightgown thing, there’s a talent portion. Then, they have to sing.

       Fox: It’s very extensive.

       Gilbert: I think they think we’re way cooler than we are.

       Sherbenske: Definitely.

       Gilbert: They talk to us and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, we’re so excited.’ And I’ll talk to a girl after show or we’ll walk around and I’ll say something and the four of us will laugh we’ll think it’s a riot. And everyone else is like, ‘Are you really this lame?’ People think we’re like rock-n-roll, partying and we’re like, ‘Alright, I got to get home and catch the “Friends” marathon.’

       Preece: I think it is a stereotype that if you are in a band you just do drugs and do girls. I think we’re not in it for that. We want guy fans and girl fans. And I’m not trying to be Mr. Soft but we do all have girlfriends. We don’t want drama in our band, so we stray away from that. If they want to talk about the band and say that, ‘We’re sexy to them,’ We’re like, ‘Thank you so much, I’m glad you like the band.’ But the second they’re like, ‘What are you doing tomorrow night? Do you want to come over?’

        Gilbert: It’s like, ‘Sorry, we’re playing Wii “Just Dance.”

        Preece: We have a man date tomorrow. The four of us are going to the movies and bowling. Sorry.

Find T Shirts 4 Tomorrow at http://www.tshirts4tomorrow.com and on Facebook.