Down With Webster: Taking Every Kind of Music and Making Something New.

The six-member pop/rock/hip hop crew from Toronto, Down With Webster, will swing through Philly next week. They’ll bring their raucous live-set to the North Star Bar on Monday for an all-ages show.

Our Antonio Boone spoke to Tyler Armes, who founded Down With Webster when he was only 12-years old.

So you guys are just starting off your tour, WINTOUR III right?

Yeah. Right now we’re out in the middle of nowhere and its snowing like a bitch out here. It’s not really the smartest thing to do – tour in the winter – but we figured no one else wants to do it. We may as well do it.

I know Down With Webster started as a group in junior high school. What’s kept you guys together for so long?

I think the bottom line was to perform for a talent show and we ended up winning. That gave us a little bit of hope to make it as a band and not make it a one-time thing.

Our close friends and family would come out to our  tiny little club gigs when we were like 16 and 17. Our friends liked the music we were making – not to make us feel good. People actually wanted us to burn CD’s for them. It was very gradual. All of us more or less made the decision after high school to not go to college, build a little studio and bunker down and learn how to write and record our own music.

Now, it’s not really a choice anymore. We’ve all spent the last 12-13 years of our lives together. This is it. This is what we do.

What was it like when you first got signed to Universal Motown?

It was obviously really exciting. Around the same time, Timbaland had a deal on the table for us and Gene Simmons from Kiss tried to sign us. It was a cool time for us but at the same time, there’s a lot of scary stuff about signing a record deal and the music business right now.

We felt nervous about handing over our baby that we had been working on for 10 years and signing someone on to our team who would have to make decisions with us. We did our due diligence and spent six or seven months before we signed the deal, making sure that they would be really good teammates. And they are really good teammates. It was a cool experience. For a band from Canada to sign a US deal … it’s a big deal. Growing up, not a lot of bands got signed. And now you’ve got Drake and Bieber. But before that it was kind of unheard of.

So do you think that the Canadian sound is going to start taking over the US?

I don’t think that there is much of a difference between the sounds in Canada and America. The people are exactly the same. To be a band from Toronto right now, you’re probably in better shape than you were five years ago because of the talent that’s come out recently. It may be a little bit easier to say you’re from Toronto and be a little bit more proud of that fact.

When is the US going to see more of DWW?

We’ve been rebuilding our team the last couple of months with people who can get the band to work in America. We’ve done very, very well in Canada. But the same hasn’t happened in the States because we haven’t been there as much. We got a new agent, new people booking shows for us. We definitely want to get down there full time.

Describe the Down With Webster Sound and how it has evolved since your first album, Time To Win, Vol. I.

That’s a hard question for us because our sound comes from a shitload of different influences. It’s a combination of classic rock songs. Most of our songs have big loud guitars and all of us love hip-hop, so there’s some sampling going on – 808 drums layered with big Zeppelin rock runs. All of us dig electro music so we’ve got all sorts of keyboards that we rock live now as well. Everything’s just big. On the last album, we used a lot of live instrumentation because all of us grew up playing jazz and R&B. We went back to playing parts of our records live.

One of your most popular songs, “Rich Girl$,” uses a sample from Philly legends Hall & Oates. What’s your take on the Philly music scene?

Man, growing up, my favorite band of all time was The Roots. We actually got to open up for them a few times.  I remember the first time we opened for them and it was their new bass player, Owen, his first gig. After the show, I went on the Okayplayer message boards and people were rippin’ on him. So I stood up for him in the forum and he sent me an e-mail back. Over the last five or six years, I got to hang out with them. Philly’s dope man. I don’t know about the music scene as much but I was down there for the Rangers-Flyers outdoor hockey game and that shit was wild.

So do we have something look forward to in the future with Down With Webster and The Roots?

You know, I wouldn’t write it off. They’re an enormous talent and I wouldn’t be surprised if, maybe at a festival or something, that we wound up playing with them again somewhere in the world. They’re definitely one of my top three bands in the world. I think it’s such a cool thing when people are that good with their instruments. I don’t think its many people who play hip hop with live instruments as well as those guys do.

So aside from The Roots and Hall & Oates, what major American bands influence you guys the most?

It’s everything from Led Zeppelin to Lil’ Wayne to Michael Jackson to Justice. We listen to everything, depending on whose iPod were playing on the bus or in the studio. We’re always listening to different shit. That’s the cool thing about the band. Its like iPod shuffle. Every song sounds like a different style of music.

Do you think artists need to have a myriad of different sounds to hold on to audiences?

I think as long as whatever you’re doing, you’re being true to it, and it’s the music that you would genuinely be making. Like, we never said we wanted to make this music. What we do now is the same shit we’ve always done. I think bands run into a problem when they form and then decide what they have to sound like. That just doesn’t seem right to me. What excites me about our music is that its taking every kind of music that was here before us and making something new with it.

If you were to hit play on your iPod right now what’s going to come out?

Meek Mill’s “House Party.” That’s a nod to Philly. I’ve been rocking that shit so hard. There’s a band on tour with us, OCD, from Philly. I put that song on and they lost it. They had no idea people in Toronto were listening to Meek Mill.

So what can we expect from Down With Webster in the future? A Time To Win Vol. III or more touring?

Umm … I don’t know what we’re going to call this third album. We’ve been laughing about that. I have no idea to be honest. We’ll probably do another year of touring and put out all kinds of mixtape tracks and new music online that we’ll give away to people. Were definitely not going to wait too long to put out a new release. Right now were just ready to get back to touring. We toured for two years off of a six-song EP and now we get to tour off a full album. We’re pumped to show people where we’re at in 2012.

In 20 years, where does Down With Webster want to be?

I want to be old as fuck, playing music. I want to have the choice to be on the stage with the band, playing the music that we want to play. I’m sure all of us will be doing something in the music business but I don’t know. That’s a long-ass time from now.

Okay. Well, what about just five years from now?

In five years? Grammy Nom. That’s definitely a goal.