By Blake Maddux

The Shirts and Shoes will be on at P.A.’s Lounge on Thursday, April 7. ~Photo by Katie Pawlows, the band’s biggest fan.

The Shirts  and Shoes is a rock quartet that consists of college sophomores Tyler Charron (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Emiliano Calvo (lead guitar), Alec Gervais (bass), and Eric Gonnam (drums). Gonnam is a student at Merrimack College, while the other three attend Umass Lowell.

In addition to being full-time students and working part-time jobs, the members of The Shirts and Shoes are nearing completion of the group’s first EP. Although live gigs have been hard to come by given their busy schedules, they will be performing at PA’s Lounge in Union Square on April 7.

Tyler Charron spoke to The Somerville Times by phone in advance of that date and the band’s appearance on WEMF on April 1.

Somerville Times: How long have the members of The Shirts and Shoes known each other?

Tyler Charron: Me and Eric have been playing together in bands since middle school. There’s a music school called The Real School of Music in Burlington and we used to take lessons there. We got thrown into an ensemble together and have just been playing since. Alec and Emiliano were two kids that I met in my dorm building my freshman year, last year, at college.

ST: When did you begin learning how to play music?

TC: I’ve been playing music since I was a little kid. My parents got me started on piano when I was like in kindergarten. Then I moved on to trumpet, which was my main instrument from like third grade until about my sophomore year of high school, when I started really getting into singing. I just picked guitar up along the way.

ST: Is there a story behind the name The Shirts and Shoes?

TC: We’ve gone through a lot of different band names. You name yourself one thing, everybody expects you to be this kind of genre, you know? And we thought it’d be cool to just kind of have a name that couldn’t really put us anywhere in particular. It was just kind of simple, and it sounds nice.

ST:  How often do you play live?

The Shirts and Shoes’ first single, “Fair Warning.”

TC: As of late, not nearly as frequently. We’ve been trying to pick that up, but we’ve only had this one single out, our single Fair Warning, and because of that it’s a lot harder to get clubs and stuff to let you play because we don’t have as much to show off. It’s been kind of challenging to find a place, but we’re almost done recording our EP. We were in the studio last night [Friday, March 25]. We got out about midnight. It wasn’t that bad, though. We had one session last semester that was from about 10 p.m. to about four in the morning. We’re going to be done with that EP, hopefully, by the end of the semester.

ST: Does the group spend much time in the studio?

TC: The studio is definitely a less frequent thing because most of the time it’s relatively expensive and we’re all poor college students. Mainly it will take like two or three sessions to finish a song or a couple of songs. So right now, we just went in last night, we’re going to go in next Friday [April 1], and maybe the Friday after that if we need to. But next Friday, hopefully, we’re going to be finishing up.

ST: Which bands are some mutual favorites of the members of The Shirts and Shoes?

TC: I know me and Eric are both really into Queens of the Stone Age, and Foo Fighters and Them Crooked Vultures. Basically anything with Dave Grohl or Josh Homme is good for us. We kind of all like The Black Keys, The White Stripes, The Rolling Stones. Stuff like that.

ST: You mentioned that you were all poor college students. What do you do for money?

TC: We all actually work at the same Starbucks. Eric first started working there and he got me a job over the summer. And I got Alec a job just this past semester, and Alec just got Emiliano a job. He just had his second shift this past Thursday. Eric’s already there. We got out last night at 12, and he had to be there at 5:30.

The Shirts and Shoes with Threat Level Burgundy, The Angry Tides, and Barefoot Young. Thursday, April 7 at P.A.’s Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave, Union Square. Doors at 7:30 p.m. /21+/$8 at the door, $5 in advance via www.eventbrite.com.