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Faber Drive Couldn’t Wait for 20: Inside the 19¼ Anniversary Tour
Backstage at The Concert Hall in Toronto, Dave Faber Seamus O’Neil, and Nate Cavalli talk about the pop-punk resurgence, hearing fans sing the new single back, and what’s coming next on Faber Drive.
Interview by Syhann Moyo for Side Stage with Sy, presented in partnership with SoundCheck Mag.
Article contributed by LJ Portnoy, Editor-in-Chief. Edited for length and clarity.
Celebrating Seven Second Surgery, a Little Early
Most bands mark a milestone on the round number. Faber Drive is calling this run the 19¼ Anniversary Tour, because, as frontman Dave Faber puts it, 20 is next year.
The tour celebrates Seven Second Surgery, the 2007 debut that put the Mission, B.C. pop-punk band on Canadian radio with “Second Chance,” “Tongue Tied,” “When I’m With You,” and “Sleepless Nights.” This year the album came back as a remaster, and the band has been playing nearly all of it live.
Before their October 4 show at The Concert Hall in Toronto, Dave Faber, Nate Cavalli, and drummer Seamus O’Neill sat down with Syhann Moyo of Side Stage with Sy. They talked about the scene’s revival, what it feels like when a crowd knows the new songs as well as the old ones, and their next release.
Who Is Faber Drive?
Faber Drive formed in 2004 in Mission, British Columbia, east of Vancouver. Dave Faber was teaching guitar and drum lessons when he started the band, recruiting one of his first drum students, Ray “Red” Bull, then guitarist David Hinsley and bassist Jeremy “Krikkit” Liddle. They first played as Faber and added “Drive” after a naming conflict with a large company.
A win in Vancouver radio station CFOX’s Seeds competition in 2005, plus a demo that reached Nickelback producer Joey Moi and songwriter Brian Howes, got the band noticed. Chad Kroeger signed them to his 604 Records label in May 2006, and they spent that year opening for Hedley and for Nickelback’s Canadian dates.
Seven Second Surgery arrived on May 1, 2007. “Tongue Tied” and “When I’m With You” both cracked the top 20 of the Canadian Hot 100 and went gold, and “Second Chance” won Best New Hot AC Group at the 2008 Canadian Radio Music Awards. That same year the band was nominated for New Group of the Year at the Juno Awards and toured Canada with Simple Plan, Metro Station, and Marianas Trench.
The band leaned into electropop on 2009’s Can’t Keep a Secret. Its singles “G-Get Up and Dance” and “Give Him Up” both went platinum, and the record earned a Juno nomination for Pop Album of the Year. Lost in Paradise followed in 2012, and O’Neill joined on drums ahead of that tour, which ran across Canada and as far as Singapore.
By 2014, new releases had slowed as members took on other projects. A 2016 reunion show in Vancouver brought them back, and Faber Drive has released music independently ever since, including the four-song Lifeline EP in April 2025. Today the lineup is Faber on vocals and guitar, O’Neill on drums, Nate Cavalli on lead guitar, and Bailey Jacobsen on bass.
Faber Drive on Their Second Shot at the Limelight
When Moyo asked why the band didn’t just wait a year for the 20th, Faber had the answer ready: “Because 20’s next year!” O’Neill put it more plainly. “We didn’t want to wait. We’re impatient.”
The bigger question was what the band means to them now. Faber passed it to O’Neill, whom he calls Shay, and the drummer described a band that nearly became a memory. “We thought we were kaput, you know what I mean?” he said. He watched plenty of bands get big and then fade away, until a wave of groups from that era came back and got another chance at the limelight. Faber Drive is riding that same wave.
For O’Neill, new music is how the band pays that second chance back. “Making new music is our chance to give back to the fans,” he said. The latest single, “The Beat of My Heart Goes,” has landed better than he hoped, and he has watched crowds on this tour sing it back night after night. He knows how rare that is. Many of his own favorite bands release new songs only to have fans wait for the hits. “It means a lot that it’s being so well received,” he said.
Faber said the old songs hit just as hard. The band is playing almost all of Seven Second Surgery each night, including “Tongue Tied,” “When I’m With You,” “Second Chance,” and “Sleepless Nights.” Hearing fans sing those back “means the world to us,” he said. “We’re very thankful and grateful. We don’t take it for granted, that’s for sure.”
Back on the Road, With a New EP Coming
Between the remaster and a run of new singles, fans have been asking whether a full project is on the way. Faber confirmed the band is planning another EP for early 2027, its first since Lifeline. The timing puts it right on schedule for the anniversary that actually ends in a zero.
Until then, Faber Drive is still on the road with Seven Second Surgery, and the crowds are still singing every word.
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