Question: What happens when musically-minded students serendipitously find each other at McMaster Univeristy and proceed to form a kickass band? Answer: the Arkells. In 2006 Max Kerman (lead vocals/guitar) found himself a froshman with the desire to be in a band and – whether through the hand of Fortuna or Max’s gift to pick out musicians – he stumbled upon Nick Dika (bass), Mike DeAngelis (guitar/vocals), Tim Oxford (drums) and Dan Griffin (keyboard/guitar/vocals). Since their inception they’ve ridden to success at a rapid rate. Despite the swift route to renown, the boys are still down to earth (and even have day jobs!). While on the Toronto leg of the cross-country tour, which they’re co-headlining with The Waking Eyes, iheartthemusic had a chance to sit and chat with Max at the Horseshoe Tavern.

iheartthemusic: Your first full length album, Jackson Square, was just released in October of last year, have you started to put thought into the next album yet?

Max: We are always writing stuff. We have a great label and management and they’re taking care of the logistics so all we [have to do] is try to write good songs. Naturally our inclination is to write songs, but it’s a long process of how they get put together, but whether we were on a label or not we would still be trying to write music.

iheartthemusic: How have you guys stayed so level headed amidst what seems like instant success?

Max: We’re all friends and we know this is a really great opportunity that other bands don’t have so we always remember that. I remember when we played with Matt Mays at The Commodore in Vancouver. What was great about that place was that they have a really cool backstage room. Most of the places we play at are just dumps, the backstage room is like a closet or something, but The Commodore was great. Before the show we said to each other, “you know, six months ago we would have come to this show and said ‘man that fucking opening band, we should be them’.“ And now we get to do it. But we always try to keep things in perspective because it’s been a really positive [experience] so far.

iheartthemusic: And you guys haven’t been doing this for very long, that’s amazing!

Max: Yah, its great. We all still work day jobs though. Like we played last night in St Catharines and I had to be back at work for 9am in Hamilton. It’s just an office job filing shit, but I definitely hated the fact that I had to work the next day. Lately we’ve been getting a lot of coverage, you know, doing interviews and people mentioning our name in different places and it’s flattering, but we also know that we have to be at work at 9am. But now we are going on tour and get a few weeks off of work and hopefully we won’t get fired when we get back.

iheartthemusic: What’s next on the horizon for you guys?

Max: We’d love to go do shows in the UK or the US. That seems to always be the logical next step for a band and since we’ve been playing in Canada for a while. Its great, you know, because we’re young we don’t really have a jaded perspective on it yet so all these opportunities that come our way we are like, “we get to go see places!” So on top of playing shows we are getting to see the country… I think that the next step is to just keep playing and getting the gospel out of the Arkells.

iheartthemusic: Well that is definitely something that I am sure the rest of Canada would hope for! If you haven’t checked them out yet then get on their MySpace and look out for them in your town!

www.myspace.com/arkellsmusic