The last song on Acoustic Vol. 2 is a catchy tune called “Liver Let Die.” How did that song come about?
That was an original song written for the album in the studio. I was talking to one of my friends and I just thought the album needed to end with a happy song because I had heard Joey’s songs and I thought they were all downers and some of my songs were downers too, so I really wanted to end the album on a positive note. You know how most albums end with something really dramatic, like a strong fade out? There are too many albums that end that way and I wanted this album to end with a singalong.
Who is another musician – living or dead – that you would choose to record an album with or play a live show with if given the chance?
It would be John Lennon. I’d like to pick his mind and annoy the hell out of him. It would be really interesting.
What would you consider your “best album” and “worst album”? Is there anything you would change about any past releases?
I think the best No Use [For A Name] record is Hard Rock Bottom because we play the most songs off of it and people all over the place know most of the songs off that album. It’s pretty relentless the songs off that album that people know. And then there’s Leche Con Carne which is sort of the old version of [Hard Rock Bottom]. Making Friends is kind of the dark album that everybody likes. More Betterness! is my favorite album in terms of the songwriting – I think the songwriting is really “out there” for a punk band. And I like our newest one (The Feel Good Record of the Year) a lot. But our worst album is Keep Them Confused which was a 2005 release. I think the band was just in a weird state then. We weren’t really friends and everybody was just being dragged into the studio to make the record.
What’s the story behind the “fuck you” quote from the film “Glengarry Glen Ross” in the introduction to the song “The Answer is Still No”?
It’s kind of funny because NOFX used a “Glengarry Glen Ross” intro on their Coaster record. I wonder if they listened to us first (laughs). But yeah, that movie is great. We were all big fans of the movie and people were always asking us about our band name and stuff. To us it was like our band name didn’t really mean anything. Really, it meant absolutely nothing. So the intro was sort of a way of saying to everybody, “Fuck you, that’s my name.” When we heard that line in the movie it was like “Oh, that’s perfect!”
What artists or genres do you listen to that you think your fans would be surprised to know about?
I think people would be surprised to know that I listen to jazz. I like jazz and jazz guitar stuff. I don’t know, sometimes people will completely dismiss certain genres – like I’ll hear people say “I hate country music.” I think that’s stupid. I mean, I’m not a big fan of country music, but there are some country songs that I’ll hear that I like, you know? It’s so dumb when people take a broad brush and wipe it over the canvas and say “I don’t like ‘this’ or ‘that.’” I hate when people do that. Miles Davis said “There are two kinds of music: good music and bad music.” That’s a true statement.
What are a few “must haves” on your tour rider?
I hate having food on the rider. The problem with food is you get off stage and you’re sweating and you’ve been drinking a lot and its one in the morning and you see a bunch of sandwiches sitting there and you’re like “Oh, I think I’m going to eat like 14 sandwiches now.” I don’t like to waste food. To me, one of the biggest problems with tour riders is wasting food. So I think one of my favorite rider items is probably cereal because you can take it with you.
What about rider requests that are specific to your band? Is there anything unique you can think of?
We don’t do this anymore, but we used to put socks on our rider. Fresh white socks. The reason we don’t do it now is because we don’t do two month tours anymore. We used to do those long tours, and when you’re in Europe you can’t find a lot of laundromats, so we would request socks. We don’t request those anymore though because it’s kind of going overboard. It’s probably not a request that [venue managers] get every day, so I think a lot of them would probably be like “What a bunch of assholes!”
You’ve been in this industry now for over 20 years. What are some of the biggest issues you see facing the music industry today and what would you change if you could?
Technology is an issue, but you can’t really say “Oh, I wish the internet was never invented.” The internet has been a vehicle for us to promote ourselves. In a lot of ways the internet has been both good and bad. It’s opened up the floodgates, so to speak. We can advertise ourselves a lot more, but so can the band in the garage next door that plays shitty music. When I was young, we had to work our asses off. I used to have to put my music on a cassette tape, drive up to fucking Gilman Street and try to get people to listen to our tape. Or we would get our tape, pay a bunch of cash to mail it to the labels, and never hear back. We used to flyer our own shows too. Those are the kind of things that I used to have to do. There wasn’t a vehicle for me to just put my music on a website and be like “Hey, I have a band too!” Everything has changed drastically. The way things are done now, it’s like it has made people lazy.
