Shane Told :
SILVERSTEIN
Front-man of Silverstein (screamo/hardcore) caught up with ALY's Jodie Esakoff during their recent "Boys of Summer" tour to chat about.. food..what else?
ack in 2000, Shane Told was sitting around in a basement with other pre-Silverstein members, singing paragraphs from random magazines and books he found lying about. After coming across a book by author Shel SIlverstein, the band found it's name and Shane found his voice - neither has looked back ever since.
Getting the message
It wasn’t until I was maybe 14 or 15 when I realized I wanted to be vegetarian. I thought it was just kind of weird until I started going to punk rock and hardcore shows and they had tables set up with vegetarian pamphlets and all that. I started meeting people that were vegetarian.
I guess when I was 18 I finally became 100% vegetarian, and like, I just did it! Then I chose to become Vegan a couple of years after that, I was around 22 or 23.
I was vegetarian I always wanted to become vegan, I think it was just that the transition can be pretty difficult. I just started dropping meat and it was pretty easy, then started dropping dairy and it was pretty easy and so on.
"when we go overseas, Australia
is amazing for vegetarian,
I think it’s the best
country in the
world"
Vegan on Tour
From my experience about 5 months ago, the hardest things is when its late at night and your in a foreign country like Europe where nothings open past 5 or 6, you notice your hungry and there’s nothing to eat, you have crap pizza, you eat pizza with no cheese on it, you hope there’s no eggs in the dough, it can be real sketchy like that, that’s the hardest part I think I think.
In terms of like when we go overseas, Australia is amazing for vegetarian, it think it’s the best country in the world, but like when your in South America you get people asking: “What do you mean you don’t eat meat?” It’s really hard so I would have to say the trickiest part is finding food late at night!
Getting Active
When I was 16 or 17 we used to have this fur processing protest every weekend, ahh that was a long time ago, then not really much after that.
We’ve done a lot of work with Peta, Peta2 and Animal Defense League. As well as a few other organizations like that.
Food!
My favorite food is pretty much any kinda fake meat!
I’ve been to enlightened cuisine in Melbourne, our merch guy was in the band and he lives here now, he’s vegan and he knows all the good places.
We went to a hari Krishna place for lunch today, that place is so good, and I love that!
"People have to realise this exists…
it isn’t happening somewhere else
it’s happening on your plate"
Getting real about cruelty
I dunno man; I think people just have to not be ignorant about what’s really going on. You know the worst thing? …people go out and they’ll have burger king and they don’t really think about what they’re eating and the process… and the cruelty. People have to realise that this exists… this isn’t happening somewhere else it’s happening on your plate. I think that’s the biggest issue we have. Otherwise people are really aware, but they’re in denial.
Favorite Quote?
Anything from propaghandi albums!
Food in Canada
Are you going to go to Toronto? There’s a place called “Fressen”, it’s kind of like gourmet it’s really expensive but I always go there for special occasions. It’s like really really really good, and its all vegan. It’s gourmet like, not just burgers and fries.
There’s a place in Canada its in the Toronto area called “Licks”, it’s hamburger place but they have like the most amazing veggie burger, they used to have vegan milkshakes but they don’t anymore.
There’s a place called “Fresh”, it used to be called Juice for life, it’s a pretty good, they have crispy tofu sandwiches!
There’s so many. We have a vegetarian food fair every year in Toronto, I think it’s around September and its amazing!