You’ve said that the idea for In Too Deep was sparked when Adam, you were writing an article about the 15th anniversary of Billy Talent II for Exclaim! and Matt, you were editing that. What has it been like to bring this idea to life?

Adam: It’s been great. It’s been probably four years since the genesis of that idea. Matt emailed me about it and we weren’t even really friends at that point. Matt had edited my work before and assigned stuff to me but we didn’t know each other that well. The initial idea was already most of the way there and the title stayed almost the same from Day One until the final layout of the book.

It was great to take this idea of recognizing that there was something special happening in Canada when punk rock went mainstream in a big way in the 2000s and being able to tell the stories of each of the bands and artists we focused on. They were coming from these different corners of Canada in unexpected ways. We’re telling each individual story of each artist in more detail than I think has ever been done before and we’re also telling the larger story of how Canada was really punching above its weight in terms of pop cultural exports of the 2000s.

Matt: As Adam mentioned, the idea has been the same since Day One but things keep happening in the world that makes the book more and more relevant and interesting. Six months after we started doing our research, all of these artists announced albums. Sum 41 and Simple Plan teamed up, Avril came out with her big pop-punk Travis Barker-produced resurgence, and Billy Talent, Alexisonfire, and Fefe Dobson all released new records. All of a sudden all of these artists are around and doing new things. The world is like, “Holy shit, Canadian pop-punk is awesome!”

Then right now, we’re in this moment of new Canadian nationalism where people can be proud and excited to be Canadian and to consume Canadian content and not in a bullshit convoy way. We’ve been saying this the whole time and it’s amazing that the world just keeps giving us these opportunities. We haven’t changed, but the world has changed to make a book like In Too Deep more relevant and interesting as time has gone on which is nuts.

Reading about bands that I loved growing up and being able to say, “I know these places, I’ve been there” is so cool!

Matt: We didn’t realize how rare it was when it was happening. It’s really been in the time after where it’s like, “Oh, Canadians don’t really get famous all that often. What was going on here? Why was this so remarkable?”

Adam: Those origins get written out of the narrative pretty quickly when you become an “overnight success”. A lot of people in Canada, and outside of Canada, maybe don’t know that Sum 41 is Canadian. When I wrote that anniversary piece about Billy Talent, that was when my mom found out that Billy Talent was Canadian. They become big enough that they’re just radio bands or MTV bands and those early years of them struggling and playing Legion halls and dive bars to 5 people a night gets overwritten by the whole, “So-and-so from the major label discovered them and signed them to a million dollar record deal and then all of a sudden they had a big hit on MTV and are huge.”

It was really exciting to talk a little bit about places like the Islands of Montreal, Ajax, Oshawa, Mississauga, Meadowvale, Streetsville, and St. Catharines - all these little places that had things going on in them. There were kids discovering punk rock and pranks and rebellion and acting out in all sorts of ways but also being really laser-focused on becoming great musicians and trying to do something with that. They were breaking out of these small towns where music and goofing off were the only real things they had any real interest in doing. It was really fun and enjoyable from a storyteller’s perspective to tell the origins of these artists before they became the big successes that we know them as.

What was the most surprising thing you found out when you were doing research and interviewing people about the origins?

Matt: Some of the connective tissue between the artists wasn’t as apparent to us originally. For example, people like Mike McCarty, the president of EMI Music Publishing Canada, who signed Billy Talent, Sum 41, and Alexisonfire to publishing deals. Who knew that those bands had a shared benefactor? Same thing with Nettwerk Music, who between their label and their management were super involved with Avril, Sum 41, and Gob. Just learning about those players that didn’t influence the artists honing their sound but certainly helped them market themselves to the music industry and the American music industry. That was really interesting.

Adam: Each chapter is focused entirely on one artist but names from other chapters pop up in them. There’s little mentions or little hints of what’s to come later. Whether it’s Fefe Dobson seeing Avril Lavigne on MTV and being like, “Wow, that’s so great! Maybe I can be that soon” and pretty soon she is occupying that same space, or the fact that the guys who were in town to look at Shane Told of Silverstein’s band don’t sign them but end up signing Billy Talent. It’s just these fun little Easter eggs where paths cross unknowingly. It was interesting to dig that stuff up and see all those converging storylines where so much was happening all at once.

Matt: That is a very Canadian thing where it just so happens that the two Canadians you know from very different worlds actually happen to know each other. We’re a small town masquerading as a country.

[laughter]

Matt: That’s one of the weird paradoxes of the book and of these artists. All nine of them did something very different compared to the others. It’s not like nine carbon copies of Blink-182 and Green Day showing up and being the biggest band in their area. They’re all so diverse. They all challenged the notions of what punk could be and sound like. It was interesting to look into how Canada fostered such a diverse cohort. I think that Canadianness impacted these artists and the way that they influenced punk globally.

Adam: There’s several underlying themes at play, like the challenges of being a Canadian artist and breaking out internationally while still trying to remain beloved in your own country. The whole attitude of the punk rock scene during its mainstream era of the 2000s was that signing to a major label and becoming big on MTV were the biggest crimes you could commit. To be a sellout, to be a band on a big label that’s getting dragged on the message boards because they’re a big band. It was fun to explore those ideas throughout 300-something pages while also telling these individual stories in rich detail and the personal stories that they involve.

In the Silverstein chapter there’s a part that mentions a bad review on Punknews. [laughs]

Adam: [laughs] Yeah! It wasn’t unique to Punknews but message boards in general. Any punk rock-related message board or even metal, like Lambgoat and those types of websites, were brutal. They did not hold anything back when it came to criticizing a band that they didn’t like. That was across the board. It affected bands like the ones in this book but also bands like Blink, Green Day, and Against Me! that got branded sellouts. It was tough for bands during that time.

Matt: The germ of the idea for this book came after Adam and I were reading Exclaim!’s Billy Talent reviews from the early 2000s and seeing that they were all negative. This book is our response to the negative criticism saying, “Well, we’re critics and we think differently. You’ve had your time and here’s ours.”

Adam: That was another underlying theme, the critical reappraisal of these artists that didn’t really get their critical praise at the time but have obviously stood the test of time. We, the people who were 10, 11, 12 years old when these bands were breaking out, are now old enough to be the critics and the music journalists to tell these stories in a much more positive light than a lot of them got when they were breaking out.

Do you think it was because of the sellout lens that they were reviewed so harshly or do you think being Canadian played a role in that?

Matt: I think there was a generational element to it. With the exception of Billy Talent, all of these artists in the book were the first Millennials to get famous but the writers doing the Sum 41 cover story or the Avril Lavigne cover story were the Gen Xers who were maybe too young to interview Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins so they just want the next big grunge band, they don’t want what the kids are listening to. I say this because in 2019 I interviewed Billie Eilish for an Exclaim! cover story and it was because all of our Gen Z writers weren’t experienced enough at the time. Even though I’m Millennial, I did it because my younger brother liked Billie Eilish and I saw that generational divide where the writers haven’t caught up to the artists in terms of being able to write about them. I think that’s what really influenced it. You have teenagers making music for teenagers and the critics were all in their 20s and 30s and they don’t get it because why would they?

Adam: Yeah, those tastes are very different. Matt and I went through it too. Our tastes shifted completely from when we were in our early teens to our early 20s. A lot of people turn their backs on the stuff they liked when they were kids because they’re like, “Oh, that was stuff for kids and I am now more mature and my taste is more refined than to bother with what the kids are listening to.” There’s stuff that’s cool at a certain age and there’s stuff that’s not cool at a certain age. I think that a lot of the people who were assigned to write about these groups just thought that it was kids’ stuff and it was not for them.

Matt: Adam and I weren’t writing about Sum 41 and Billy Talent in Exclaim! until we were a decade into our careers and started doing it from a reappraisal perspective. We weren’t carrying that torch throughout the 2010s.

Was there anything that really stood out when you reappraised the music itself?

Matt: The coolest thing that stood out for me was just how relevant it still was from a political perspective. I think Simple Plan gets a ton of hate because of how sanitized their music is. I think that they have a different approach that makes them less punk-friendly than Sum 41. But when they were teenagers, they were in Reset and they were writing songs about Israel/Palestine, police brutality, and the need for Indigenous reconciliation. I think that stuff aged really well and the idea that these punk causes are still so relevant in today’s society. Billy Talent have been very political in their music as well, partially because they were in their late 20s when they got signed to a major. That stuff aged really well because the punk causes are the same.

Adam: Sum 41 really got into it by their second album. They’re probably in their early 20s at most and they’re writing very strongly anti-Bush, anti-war in Iraq protest music with Does This Look Infected? and then onward to Chuck as they get into humanitarian work in the Congo. To Matt’s point, every artist embodied punk rock in a different way. It was there early on for all of them, just in a different way.

Alexisonfire and Silverstein come at their music in a different way than Fefe Dobson or Marianas Trench do later in the book. They’re getting into punk rock bands a little bit later and from a little bit more of a mainstream entry point while also incorporating all sorts of different influences. I think when we look at this maybe 25 years later there’s a very recognizable punk rock spirit that all of these artists embody in one way or another.

Matt: I think that the Fueled by Ramen scene from 2005-2006 really infused the theatricality to punk that acts like Fefe Dobson and Marianas Trench embraced. That has made an indelible mark on the punk rock of today that the first seven chapters of the book didn’t incorporate because it hadn’t happened yet, but it’s definitely just as punk in hindsight.

Maybe not trampolines on stage, just a different way.

Adam: A different type of theatrical. [laughs]

Matt: I think that’s a great connection, Em. I think that really does speak to the fact that that strain has always been there, just maybe a little less makeup.

Along with the core nine bands you also have sidebars where you talk about bands like Propagandhi, Fucked Up, and D.O.A. How did you decide which bands got sidebars?

Matt: We looked at the sidebars as the type of bands and artists that were on MuchMusic in equal measure to the nine featured bands but that no one outside of Canada would know. The one-hit wonders or the national successes that didn’t sign to the right labels and didn’t break out. We wanted to really capture what it was like watching MuchMusic at this time. These are the artists that we grew up on and in our non-globalized version of the book, there’s no distinction between the two. We couldn’t sell a book on Fucked Up and IllScarlett, so that was the main differentiator in criteria.

Adam: The nine main chapters were artists that went mainstream and got popular outside of Canada but we also wanted to recognize all the talent that Canada produced at that time. Some of them got big outside of Canada but within the punk rock scene like Propagandhi, Comeback Kid, and Fucked Up. Those are big names within the punk rock scene but they didn’t go mainstream.

There are others that could have gone mainstream and were maybe on the cusp or had a bit of a break but didn’t quite get there and are known more so in Canada. It came from a place of wanting to recognize everything else that was happening. All those artists deserve to be mentioned as part of this scene and the moment that was happening at the time. It just didn’t get to that level on the world stage where they were part of that mainstream moment.

Matt: They’re still just as important to us and these bands shaped us just as much. I remember listening to “Nothing Special” by IllScarlett just as I was getting into ska. That was massive for me. That one single was on higher rotation than most of the artists that we gave full chapters to, to me in 2005 but we’re not going to give IllScarlett a chapter because what else have they done since? They haven’t had a bigger hit, they haven’t broken out, and that’s fine. We still wanted to give them their kudos because “Nothing Special” is a sick song and they’re a really interesting band.

Adam: This whole book came from a place of love for the music and there was a lot of love to go around.

Did you have a band that you talk about in the book, either in one of the nine chapters or in the sidebars, that had the largest impact on you?

Matt: Billy Talent was the first band I ever truly loved and devoured every piece of media on. From the moment I saw them at the Junos for the first time in 2004 on the TV in my friend’s family home, I just knew they were special and I still believe that with every fiber of my being.

Adam: Simple Plan was the second CD I ever owned. I got Linkin Park Meteora as a birthday gift in July and I had only that CD in my Walkman until I got my second CD that Christmas which was Simple Plan’s No Pads, No Helmets. They were in heavy rotation. Sum 41 was a big band and as they broke out on MTV so many kids like me were into them and going down the punk rock rabbit hole that way.

It was when I heard Alexisonfire that everything really opened up. That was my first introduction to so many different styles of punk rock that I hadn’t heard yet. They were incorporating hardcore and screamo and emo and post-rock, all these underground forms of music. It was the first time I’d heard real-deal screaming music. The first time I heard it, I think it rewired me because I had no idea what I was listening to and I couldn’t comprehend it. Then as I got into it, that opened up a whole new world and I was getting into hardcore, emo-screamo, metal, and offshoots. They were a huge gateway band. They were my first favourite band and maybe my all-time favourite band.

Speaking of Alexisonfire, in the acknowledgments, Matt, you thank an ER doctor for taking an earplug out of your ear before you both interviewed the band. What happened there?

Matt: So it was a Friday night in January, I went to a concert at the Monarch Tavern in Toronto, and I had these earplugs in. As I pulled the hard plastic piece out of my ear, the earplug cup stayed in. I quickly left the venue and went to my apartment and couldn’t get it out. My friend who was at the show bought tweezers for me at Shopper’s, ran to my place, took one look, and was like, “Fuck no, I’m not getting in there, dude! I’m not gonna rupture your eardrum.”

She took me to the ER and, because this is Doug Ford’s Ontario, there was one doctor on call that night. She left and I stayed on a hospital bed for the night then at 6am the morning doctor came. It took him five minutes. He got it out of my ear easy breezy then I got to sleep for two hours before Adam very graciously carried our interview with George Pettit while I just sat there catatonic. Shoutout to the medical practitioners in Ontario. We see you, we’re fighting with you, and thanks for your service.

You’ll be holding your book launch party at the Rivoli in Toronto, where a bunch of bands you cover in the book have played. What does this venue mean to you?

Matt: The Rivoli is a pretty unsung space in the history of Toronto music. I think just because the Horseshoe Tavern is a block down the street it really does get overlooked. The Rivoli will take chances on small acts and small bookers before basically anyone else in the city. It’s really cool to hold the space there. There are great people who work there and it’s a great location. It’s a fun, homey space for the Toronto music scene and we’re honoured to continue the legacy of these artists in that space.

What song are you going to sing at karaoke?

Matt: My biggest issue is I’m a classically trained bass choral singer and so nothing is in my range. I really struggle with picking a good karaoke song. I might try to do “Misery Business” by Paramore because it’s such a banger of a tune and I can infuse enough emotion without having to go into my upper register. Karaoke songs provide me disproportionate amount of stress. Adam, you’re the actual punk singer among us.

Adam: I have similar struggles because I don’t know exactly what I am, but at the very least I’m a little bit lower than a Deryck Whibley or a Dallas Green. I feel like I’m going to catch a vibe on the night. You and I haven’t discussed what we’re doing, but do we have to sing “In Too Deep” at the end of the night? Is that too obvious?

Matt: I mean, I think it’s fitting. It’s the same reason we picked it for the title of the book; it just represented so much. It would be disingenuous for us to avoid it out of it looking too obvious. It’s like the hatred against wearing a band’s own merch to their show, you gotta own it. You wouldn’t go to a Leafs game not wearing a Leafs sweater if you had one. We gotta do “In Too Deep” and the In Too Deep book launch.

Adam: Who knows what the night will hold? I’m sure there’ll be lots of fun surprises and we’ll see what happens.

Possibly “In Too Deep” will close out the night.

Adam: Gotta stick around to find out. You gotta be there!

Which part of In Too Deep are you proudest of?

Matt: The cop-out answer is the whole thing but being a proud parent of this book, it does feel like a miracle that we put it together the way that we did. I feel like our artistic integrity is mega intact. I can’t help but be proud of the fact that we actually pulled it off. If there is a specific part, I think the part about Billy Talent being big in Germany. It’s one of those little threads of a story that wasn’t out there on the internet in a coherent form. We knew Billy Talent was big in Germany - this is evident in one’s research - but finding the people and learning about this new treasure trove of German rock bands and where Billy Talent fits in was great. I’m really proud of the research that Adam and I did to get to that point to tell that story. I think it’s a super interesting part of Canadian musical history and I’m glad we were able to share it.

Adam: Yeah, that felt very new in terms of the research that we were telling a story that hadn’t really been told before. There’s a lot of that. As I mentioned before, those origin stories were so enjoyable to write. It’s the story of how Peter Parker becomes Spiderman. It’s always interesting to see someone go from humble beginnings to start to resemble the people we know them as now. I don’t know if proud is the right word, but I really enjoyed telling those stories. I think the pride in our work as a whole will show in the writing, the love of the craft, and the stories we were telling.

Matt: There are little moments of original research and things we learned in our interviews or little artifacts hidden in the Wayback Archive that we managed to weave to tell this very comprehensive story that isn’t on the Wikipedia page or isn’t in the press bio. It hasn’t been regurgitated by journalist after journalist for 20-25 years. I think that our book tells stories that people don’t know. I’m really proud of how many stones we were able to turn over for seemingly the first time, particularly with the independence and lack of access we had inherently. We fought for everything that we found out and I’m really proud of how thorough we were in that regard.

Adam: It was really interesting interviewing people who are maybe mentioned once on a Wikipedia page or in an official biography and taking that one sentence and discovering a whole lifetime behind it. You get that person’s life story and where they came from and where they ended up in order to cross paths with the artists.

You're learning so much about the little things that needed to happen for people to cross paths with one another. For example, there’s a story of Deryck Whibley and Mark Costanzo of Len - the “Steal My Sunshine” guy - crossing paths and therefore setting Deryck and Sum 41 on a path to getting a publishing deal and then getting a record deal. Or when Ken Krongard, a junior A&R rep at Arista Records, is trying to land a big signing finally and come into his own in the music industry. He is looking at markets that people aren’t looking at very much because he keeps getting scooped on bands like Rage Against the Machine or finding the next Blink-182.

Matt: Even Sum 41.

Adam: He’s looking at Canada in general because not a lot of American record people are looking there. Through a series of coincidences, he discovers Avril Lavigne and says to his boss, “You’ve gotta check this out." We're telling that story in a way that doesn’t say, “Oh, Avril Lavigne only became who she was because so-and-so discovered her" because that is not the case. As we tell these stories, I think it’s very obvious that there was something special with all of them and everyone in their orbit would say something to that effect.

All these stories involve these fun coincidences and butterfly effects that show up by doing the research and going deep and interviewing these people that show up as a sentence on a Wikipedia page. I think that is the source of pride in this book. Telling those stories in more detail than ever before and all in one place for the first time.

Matt: That’s just a natural pitfall of news journalism; if Avril Lavigne mentions Ken Krongard in an interview, you’re not going to find him because you as a journalist don’t have time. We made the time and we wanted to take the time. That was what this book was all about. I’m super proud that we were able to do that and talk with most of the people that we wanted to. Shoutout to Sook-Yin Lee who the timing never worked out for us to reach out to. She was a former MuchMusic VJ who was really instrumental in getting Gob on MuchMusic.

Adam: That happens when you have a book to work with instead of a magazine feature. We’ve got 300-something pages here so we can go deep and tell those stories really richly.

Do you have any words of encouragement or advice for all the Canadian underdogs out there?

Adam: I think any of the artists would say just to do what you’re doing and go all out. It’s a very different world now than it was 20 or 25 years ago when these artists were breaking out. Be passionate, be driven, but also be humble. I think those were the three biggest traits of all of the main characters in this book. Everyone speaks of their passion and of their drive and their work ethic. They also speak about how good they were to work with and their politeness, kindness, and humility. I think that lends itself well to a career that lasts because people are happy to work with you and go out on a limb for you. Talent is one thing but working hard and being a pleasant person to work with is a huge part of being able to do what you wanna do.

Matt: I think every artist we featured was so true to themselves. They evolved. They didn’t do the same thing for 30 years but everything they put out was infused with that authentic sense of self and they weren’t going to compromise themselves for an industry that wasn’t gonna make time for them. They demanded attention and they did it just by making the art they wanted to make.

Take someone like Fefe Dobson, who was, in my opinion, treated unfairly by the music industry who refused to see her beyond her race and gender. She made the music she wanted to make and is now being appreciated for it but I don’t think she’ll ever be appreciated as much as she should be. It takes so much courage to do it. That’s the type of chutzpah that got her signed in the first place.

I think that my message to young Canadian creatives is be true to yourself. Make the type of art you want to consume and be honest with yourself about that. Don’t worry about being cool, don’t make compromises that you think other people might like. If it resonates with you, it will resonate with other people. That’s what the artists did but that’s what Adam and I did too. We wrote the book that we wanted to read and so many of our friends and peers and acquaintances and strangers seem to be resonating with that impulse. I think that is what art is all about, connecting with other people.

That’s what I want all young Canadians to do because now is our time. We need to create more Canadian art and I really hope the government gets on board and invests like a trillion bucks into CanCon and ups the quota to 75%. We need this. We’re one of the few countries that mostly imports other media. We’re not generating our own because it’s so easy for us to import from the States. We wanna be undeniable and say, “No, we can sustain an industry on this.”

Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?

Adam: Buy In Too Deep: When Canadian Punks Took Over the World at your local bookstore or wherever you prefer to buy books. Shoutout to local bookstores!