Evan Thomas Weiss doesn’t exactly have a lot of name recognition—the 26-year-old emo troubadour, who plays a mix of singer-songwriter ballads and heavy pop-punk tunes, does most of his recording as Into It. Over It., and that can’t be helping. But this year alone he’s released five split seven-inches with five different collaborators for a project he calls Twelve Towns; he’s written and recorded five songs with a new side project called Stay Ahead of the Weather, where he sings and plays guitar; and he’s written and recorded five more songs, specifically about his life in Chicago, for IIOI/KOJI (No Sleep), a brand-new split album with one of his frequent touring buddies, Pennsylvania-based Hawaiian singer-songwriter Koji. If you put out that much music with that many different people in that short a time, it seems, an audience will find you.
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“It’s stressful,” says Weiss. “I’m not doing well for myself, but I’m not doing bad for myself either. I’m making enough to pay my rent, I’m making enough to eat, and I’m making enough to have clothes on my back. So, the fact that I’m doing OK enough to survive is enough for me to want to keep going.”
When Weiss started Into It. Over It. in 2007, it wasn’t a solo vehicle but rather a mammoth side project. He was living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, working full-time as an office manager at Sourpuss Clothing in Gloucester City, and playing in three bands: the Progress, an emo-inflected group he’d cofounded in 2001; Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start, an indie-pop act led by his friend Steve Poponi and named after a Konami cheat code; and It’s a King Thing, the pop-rock group of another friend, Brian Mietz. But in short order he found himself in need of a creative outlet: he left UUDDLRLRBAS, the Progress was headed for a breakup, and with It’s a King Thing he didn’t do any songwriting.
“He wanted a label to do it, and I was more than happy to do it,” Hansen says. “I could play all 52 songs, and just let it play in the background, and I didn’t get tired of it.” No Sleep covered the cost of remixing and mastering the songs, which became a double CD called 52 Weeks, released in June 2009. (Weiss removed the music from his website after he struck the deal.) Since then No Sleep has sold out the first run of 1,000 copies, and Hansen is looking to re-press.
The timing of his ouster actually worked out well for Weiss. In August he’d started working on the next Into It. Over It. project at Andersonville’s Drasik Studios with producer Mark Michalik: Twelve Towns, a series of split seven-inches about his experiences on tour in different American cities.
His love for Chicago notwithstanding, Weiss has spent almost half of 2010 away from the city, touring solo with an acoustic guitar to keep his expenses down and supporting himself mostly on door money. This summer he traveled to Europe for the first time, opening for scrappy local punk band Grown Ups on a 40-day tour that took him to 11 countries. On Halloween, Weiss made his first appearance at the Fest, a punk-centric blowout in Gainesville, Florida.
