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Posted September
20th, 2003.
Interview by Grayson McDiarmid
G: With
so many albums and so many songs under your belt how do you
keep writing songs that don't all sound the same and how do
you keep coming up with fresh ideas?
R:
Well, some would say we failed at that but I think that a
lot of influence comes from the bands we play with and just
by branching out and meeting new people in all different kinds
of bands. With me, I'm like the musical savant of the band.
I don't listen to anything current; I don't listen to anything
on the radio. I absolutely refuse to listen to the radio or
watch MTV or read SPIN magazine and I don't know anything
about today's music and I couldn't be happier. I'm stuck in
a period of time that was really precious to me which is the
early to mid 1980's punk rock. I still listen to Black Flag
and the Adolescents all day every day and to me there is nothing
better that has come out since. Sometimes, drawing from that
time period, aesthetically, but maybe not straight up musically,
that can be a fresh idea in today's musical watered down,
co-opted, mass produced, go to the mall and get your tits
pierced and a tattoo while your mom tries on a girdle next
door kinda thing. That can be attributed to a fresh idea.
We're all different [in the band] and we all have different
ideas of what we like about music, so the songs that I write
have to go through a battery of bullshit detectors so if it
ends up on the record that means it's probably pretty good.
G: Does
a song change a lot then from the original version compared
to after all the input?
R:
Some do, some don't. It really depends.
G: You've
been with Fat from when they were a small label to one of
the biggest label in independent music. Aside from the money,
how have things changed from the beginning at Fat Wreck Chords?
R: A lot
more bands and a lot more diversity of bands which is awesome
if you count Honest Don's and Pink and Black there's bands
that run the spectrum of musical styles and even on Fat you've
got Avail, you've got Sick of it All, you've got us, Swingin
Utters, and tons of other bands, Rise Against.
G: So it's
still exciting to be on Fat?
R: It is.
We couldn't be happier. We're really fortunate because we
got in on the ground floor of something and we were able to
go from being a local band to get the opportunity to travel
and play all over the world and have our music touch people's
lives all over the place and on a real personal level that
we might not have had. We were resigned and determined to
work as hard as we could to get some label to notice us back
then. Fat was the first or second label we sent our tape to
when they were still running the label out of Mike's kitchen.
We're really fortunate. Being on Fat has afforded us every
opportunity that we've had, it's amazing. All the while they've
supported us unconditionally. We've never been told 'you can't
have that cover art, you can't do this, you can't do that,
you gotta take this band on tour'. It's always been 'do what
you want and we'll support you'.
G: So you'd
never leave?
R: I don't
see a reason to. I don't think there's a better indie out
there.
G: Distribution
wise, can they support you?
R: Distribution
wise they're one of the best. They've got offices in Europe;
they've got stuff in Japan, Australia. Every place we've gone
it's been easy to find our stuff there.
G: I guess
you've kinda answered this already but as a veteran band in
punk how do you feel about punk's heightened popularity. Do
you think it's something that will last and something that
is good or do you think it's just a trend?
R: History
will show that once it's been exploited and bled dry of anything
that made it at all empowering or worth while in the first
place the music industry will move on to another form of music.
G: Is that
what's happening?
R: That's
what I think is happening. That's what happened to heavy metal,
that's what happened to rap. It then goes back underground.
When I got into punk it wasn't cool. It was character building
to do it. We didn't like the music that was being spoon-fed
to us. We didn't like the culture that was being spoon-fed
to us so we made decisions to find and/or make our own and
that's what was cool about it. When you have a music industry
that just beats you over the head 24 hours a day with bands
and personalities that you just can't escape and then at the
end of the day you don't care if it's a good band or if it
has anything relevant to say, you've just been trained to
adore it and you have no choice. To me that's not any sort
of musical interaction I want to have.
G: What
happens if you are indirectly supporting that? What happens
if kids hear about you from big chain stores or from SPIN
magazine?
R: There's
nothing I can do about that. We've never done a feature in
SPIN or Rolling Stone. We have to scrape and beg to get a
centimeter big thing in AP [Alternative Press]. Part of the
deal with the devil so to speak is if you're on a big independent
label then you're going to be in a chain store and that's
just the way it goes. If we could convince Fat that we can
sell enough records to make it worth their while to put us
out without being in a chain store then we'd do that but we
can't do that. We're not at a level where we're going to sell
X amount of records just because of who we are. We've achieved
a pretty cool level of success from where we came from and
we've far exceeded any expectations we had when we started
the band but we're not big time, we're kinda nobody's.
G: You've
gone through a lot of member changes in the past. Do you audition
people political views as well as their musicianship before
they join the band? Do they have to agree with you?
R: No because
even in the band we don't agree. I would like to. In a perfect
world I would. That doesn't always work though. We had a member
who joined the band and we had a big discussion trying to
convince me that his political views were such and such along
the lines of mine because of bands he played in before but
as it turns out that wasn't the case at all. He had a different
agenda, which isn't right or wrong but who knows if someone's
going to be truthful. Someone may be truthful at the time
and then change their mind, which is everybody's right. I
would love to have a band as a first and foremost political
machine but that's not practical because of my bandmates.
To say that my band isn't politically aware wouldn't be correct
but I think that I'm the one kicking and screaming about a
lot of this stuff and I'm fortunate enough that they give
me the space lyrically to say what I want to say.
G: Does
that ever cause problems then?
R: Occasionally.
It's in places where I've mistepped and mis-spoken in interviews.
Like one time I said we're all against the death penalty and
then I find out later that two guys in my band are for the
death penalty which I didn't know and never would have thought.
I could have asked but I made an assumption. I'm so ensconced
in my political views that I think everyone around me should
feel the same way and that's just not right on my part.
G: What
have you been reading lately politically?
R: Politically?
I'm halfway through a book called "Killing Hope" and I'm halfway
through a book called "Body of Secrets". "Killing Hope" is
by William Blum and "Body of Secrets" is by James Bamford
who uses to be in the NSA and that's a really interesting
book because I've read a lot about the CIA but I've never
really read a lot about the NSA which is our National Security
Agency which is even more secret. They've done a lot more
not so much blood and guts but just straight up morally wrong
things throughout the world. They've done a lot of sneaky
shit. I've been reading those. I've been reading a lot of
bullshit as well. I love courtroom drama stuff so when there's
not a new John Grisham treat I read the secondary legal thrillers.
G: What's
your favourite Good Riddance song to play live?
R: Probably
Mother Superior. People really really like it. There are things
that I'd like to do to it live to make it more crowd friendly
but the guys like to stick to a pretty regimented musical
approach.
G: You still
love the song?
R: Yeah.
It's off our first album so it's pretty early on in my song
writing career. I really like the way the lyrics flow and
I like the way I completed the thought. I like to write political
songs that don't have anybody's name, or a year or an event
because it's so easy to date a song and then it's not relevant
and then what you really find out is a lot of these things
are cyclical. Ideas and political agendas go in cycles and
so the thing that I wanted to address, in that song it was
Bill Clinton's invasion of Haiti, that song can be applied
to other places around the globe. It's still relevant because
I didn't say Haiti, I learned from other band's mistakes that
I really liked but I was like "the song doesn't mean anything
now" because they have a name and a date all through it and
it's cool and all but if you play that ten years later well..
We have a song called "October" which was our blunder but
we tried to learn from that.
G: Your
new album seems to be more personal reflection lyrically.
R: The other
interview I did today said it was more political. Are you
guys listening to the same album? It's an angry record and
it's a personal catharsis. I had really gnarly breakup and
I had to get some stuff off my chest and it was really helpful.
The guys gave me the space to do it and we also wrote the
record to the build up of our president's invasion of Iraq
so it's kinda both.
G: What's
in your near future? You guys don't seem to be touring as
much?
R: We have
two guys that have full time salary jobs, they're married,
they're homeowners, one guy's expecting a kid. Another guy
when September rolls around has a really gnarly schedule for
college. We can't do what we used to do. We have to adapt
and pick our spots. We have other things musically going on.
No one wants to stop playing. We're just going to have to
go about things differently then we have and it's one of those
things where you can't deny that people get old and people's
lives move on.
G: Thanks
a lot for your time.
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