Q: When is Sixty Stories Anthem Red?
A: When the old band gets asked to tour Europe again
Jen Zoratti

They’re about to embark on a promo tour for their new band and a reunion tour for their old one.

Its sounds strange, but that’s the reality of Sixty Stories-cum-Anthem Red founders Jo Snyder and Sarah Sangster.

Anthem Red will soon be heading to Germany for 12 dates to promote the quartet’s debut album Dancing on the Dishwasher. Then three-quarters of that band will shift gears and reunite as Sixty Stories for 12 dates after that.

Got that?

Following the 2004 implosion of their scrappy punk outfit, Sixty Stories, Snyder (vocals, guitar) and Sangster (bass, vocals) decided they weren’t about to give up so easily. They stole their new band name from a Sixty Stories’ album title, then snagged Andrew Filyk (guitar) and later Mike Lewis (drums, since replaced by Dustin Karsin), quickly re-emerged and picked up where Sixty Stories left off: as an unmistakably new, slightly more sober entity.

Still, the name Sixty Stories had some pull, especially when it came time to book a German tour.

“The old band did really well there,” Snyder explains over some pre-practice beers. “There’s a pretty good precedent for people coming to shows. Our record label (The Company with the Golden Arm) is based out of Hamburg, and we’ve had a relationship with them since 2001.

“The only reason we’re doing a reunion tour is because there was a demand for it,” he continues. “Paul (Fugale) was the one who quit the band. He was just done. He’d been touring with bands for 10 years and he really wanted to finish his degree. But shows booked up really fast for Sixty Stories. It booked up faster than the Anthem Red tour.”

That will likely change, thanks to the fiery Dancing on the Dishwasher. The quartet holed themselves up in the studio for a seven-week recording session with The Waking Eyes’ Matt Peters in the spring, and the band is more than pleased with the end result.

“We’re really glad,” Filyk says. “It was a big relief for it to finally come out.”

“I think it met and exceeded our expectations,” Sangster says.

Filyk laughs. “It was really gruelling but it was really comfortable.”

The quartet’s debut signifies the beginning of many things. The record marks a renewed songwriting partnership between Snyder, 29, and Sangster, 25, and it also marks an evolution in how the pair write music. Where Sixty Stories was nitty-gritty pop-punk, Anthem Red is a more streamlined rock-influenced take on punk. Dancing on the Dishwasher is still spunky and beer-soaked, but it exchanges bratty and stripped-down for sophisticated and textured.

“We’ve gotten a lot more articulate in our songwriting, in that there’s more,” Snyder says. “Sixty Stories was very pared down. Instruments would drop out as opposed to kick in. Anthem Red is a lot fuller. We work more on adding parts, paying more attention to accents and riffs, and filling the space.”

The music may have become more complex, but the science behind it is quite simple. As Filyk, 27, puts it, “fun is paramount.” “We went into this project very consciously,” Sangster says. "In whatever sense that means. Playing shows we want to play, doing things we want to do.”

“As soon as it’s not fun, we fix it,” Snyder adds.

Anthem Red began on the premise of fun. After exhausting tours and recording sessions with Sixty Stories, the founding femmes thought they would re-band for the sole purpose of doing what they love — on their terms.

“When we started, we were like, ‘Whatever. Let’s play basement shows and let’s have fun,’” Snyder says.

“I think we were just saying that we love music,” Sangster adds. “When we were saying ‘whatever’ we knew that the ‘whatever’ would change.”

The ‘whatever’ has certainly changed. With a solidified sound and a new record, the quartet is happily trading in those beer-can-littered basements for bigger venues. But both Snyder and Sangster agree the touring schedule of Anthem Red will be far less rigorous than that of Sixty Stories.

“It’s not that we’re not willing to put the work in,” Snyder says. "But the last year of Sixty Stories was really hard. And there’s other things you want to do. It’s like, ‘Well, I’d like to read more, but I’m exhausted and hung-over.’”

“We know that bands do those kind of tours all the time,” Snyder continues. “But when you see bands that you know that look like they’ve died inside when they come home... I think it’s brutal to associate that with music.”

Still, a few trips down the Trans-Canada are in Anthem Red’s future.

“I think we’re going to concentrate in promoting the record in places we’ve never been,” Filyk says. "Which is everywhere."

“Except Brandon and Saskatoon,” Snyder laughs. “We fucking own Brandon and Saskatoon.”