Photo: Fat Wreck Chords
How do you keep touring interesting and enjoyable after so long? Does your routine change at all on the road?
It’s interesting every day just from the sense that we’ve been around for so long and we literally know somebody or multiple people in every city that we go to. Every day there are friends or family or people that we’ve known for years, people that we’ve been business acquaintances with or record label people or whoever. We just know people wherever we go, so there’s always a cast of characters hanging out. We not only entertain on stage, but we’re entertaining before and after the shows. That will keep you busy in and of itself. And, you know, you get excited about certain things. Like if you go to this city, there’s your favorite restaurant you want to check out, or your favorite record store – well, not so much anymore the record stores (laughs). But I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s like anything else in life. Some days are just downright fucking boring and you deal with that day and you get to the next one.
So I read an article in a music magazine recently that listed the top ten annoying concert behaviors. It listed things like fans looking at their cell phones and random stuff like that. For you, when you’re on stage playing, what kind of things do you find irritating?
Umm…(pauses). I don’t know man. Obviously we’ve never cared since the beginning days. You can tell by the early YouTube videos of our band going back to the ’90s. We’ve never cared who takes or pictures or video of our band. But sometimes it can get a little disconcerting on stage. You know that the video that they’re getting off their phone is gonna sound like complete shit and you almost wish that they would just live in the moment and enjoy the moment. But at the same time, who am I to dictate what they think is fun? That kind of sucks though when you see some kid just holding his camera the whole time and he’s looking at his little screen to make sure it’s centered on the stage or something. Other than that, I don’t know…that’s a minor thing to me. There are bands out there that like…I’ve heard about Glen Danzig stealing people’s phones and smashing them on the stage and stuff. I’m like, “What’s going on with these people?!” I don’t get that. But you know, there’s not too much that really gets to me. Maybe playing a bar where the security thinks that they have to be WWE wrestlers and they’re beating up little kids and stuff. But most of the shows are really good.
The Offspring recently suggested they’re going to ditch albums in favor of focusing on singles. What do you say to that?
That’s their prerogative. I get it. I mean, you figure people are just downloading – well, not even downloading – they’re STEALING one song at a time and then they have the audacity after they steal your song to go online and bitch about it and talk about how shitty it is and whatever (laughs). So, from an artist standpoint, a band standpoint, a lot of these bands are going and still spending on producer fees to make these records that people are picking apart and stealing and that the bands aren’t making money off of, so they figure “Hey, what the hell. We’ll go in for a couple hundred dollars and record one song every couple of months. We’ll put it out and it’ll generate fan interest.”
You used to put a record out years ago and you could tour behind that album for a year, a year and a half, two years. People’s attentions spans, I mean…just think about your news feed on Facebook when you check in in the morning, or think about when you pull up CNN News or some shit on your computer. We are being bombarded every second with information, from social media to the internet to news, and people forget about you. Their attention spans are shorter today with what’s going on. Maybe for the Offspring that works. For us, we released some EPs the past couple years. We didn’t want to put out a full length. We kind of regrouped and recorded some sets of songs with only five songs at a time and that worked for us during that time period and we finally decided that we wanted to make a full record again to make a statement and that’s kind of where we’re at now.
Going back to your new album for a second, tell me about the title “See the Light.” Is there some sort of deep meaning there?
It’s just, well…it could mean so many things. When I get asked that question I don’t really want to say what it means to me because I don’t want people to think that’s what the record means. But I will tell you, it signifies hope. “See the Light.” There’s light at the end of the tunnel. There’s hope in everything no matter how bad things get. It seems that the past couple years with all the shit going on in the world…it’s a pretty dark world that we live in sometimes and this record offers a ray of hope. BUT it should mean whatever it means to each person. I try not to influence that so much.
After 21 years, where do you still find inspiration to write songs?
From a lyrical standpoint, our drummer writes the lyrics so you’d have to ask him. But from a songwriter standpoint, it’s just basically, without sounding like some pompous douche, it’s just something that’s inside me (laughs). It’s something that I do, something that I feel. It kind of comes out. You pick up the guitar and start playing things. Some things stick and some things don’t. Some of the things that stick end up being songs and hopefully people like them.
I’ve wanted to ask this next question for a long time. First, I think we can agree that Roger is a badass bassist. During your songwriting process, has the idea ever come up of letting him rip a nasty bass solo in one of your songs?
(Laughs) If the song called for it, absolutely. I don’t know if you listened to our last full length that we put out. It was a compilation of our last couple EPs.
“Greetings and Salutations”?
Yeah, yeah. The last song on that album is called “Life Led Out Loud” and he kind of rips a solo in the middle of that song. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a solo, it’s more of a bass breakdown. But if the song calls for it, sure, why not?
