Back when he was a different punk — a skate punk. Photo Courtesy of Ezra Kire
Who is one high profile person – like a celebrity or someone in the media – that you would be proud to watch you perform live?
That’s a good question. For me, personally, from a strictly musician-songwriter point of view, I’d like to have Noel Gallagher [from Oasis] at one of our shows. I think he’s the best songwriter of our generation. He’s an amazing, prolific songwriter and someone that I relate to because he had a similar upbringing to me. I feel there are a ton of parallels between his life and mine, though of course I’ve never met him and I only know what I’ve read. Nobody that I ever ran with or hung in social circles with ever liked Oasis or him or any of his stuff, but that never bothered me. I would love to have him at one of our shows. In the past we played at these old clubs in Europe and I’d see Oasis graffiti on the walls and be like “Oh man, we’re playing in the same room as these guys did back in the day!” and nobody would give a fuck but it would be a big deal to me [laughs].
Since we’re on Oasis, what are you top three favorite Oasis songs?
I would say off the top of my head… I mean they have so much music. The last track on their first record, Definitely Maybe, is an acoustic sort of track. It’s called “Married With Children.” That’s a great tune. We didn’t steal that song, but we stole the idea of ending War Psalms with an acoustic type song, “Home Free”, which is sort of similar to “Married With Children.” It’s a simple melody, an acoustic guitar, its like [proceeds to sing the opening verse of “Married With Children”]. “Slide Away” was always one of my favorite songs. “Acquiesce” is a great tune. They’ve put out a lot of records – and not all their stuff was great – but they usually had one or two great songs on each record.
Besides music, what makes you tick?
I’m really into exercising. I like things that make me sort of meditate – or put me in that meditative state. I like to go running. That really puts me in a zone where I don’t have to deal with anything else in the world. More and more I’ve been getting into film and television and that medium. For a long time, we came up in the MTV era of music and it really sucked. Music videos were something that we all looked down upon and thought were total garbage, but nowadays we’re not like that. We have this ability now to make film and video into something that’s a real art and a formidable medium that has some realness to it. I’ve been embracing that a little bit and been enjoying it. We actually just shot two videos for songs on War Psalms and it was an awesome experience.
For those reading this that might not understand the economics of the music industry, can you talk a little bit about how the funding for those types of projects works? Did Fat Wreck Chords provide backing for those videos?
[Fat Wreck Chords] helped, but what they ended up contributing turned out to be less than an eighth of the total cost. That’s not the always the case with all record labels, but it’s the case with Fat. They don’t believe in the video format. They came up in… well, NOFX was part of the music world during the MTV years and I think they got hassled a lot by MTV to do videos and interviews and stuff like that. MTV being what it was, [NOFX] was like “Fuck you guys, we’re not going to do that stuff” and they still hold that view of music videos. They don’t really believe in them; they think they’re kind of useless. So when it comes to funding, they’re like “You’re on your own if you want to do videos.” Me being a big believer in the promotion that a video brings, and the overall fun factor of it, I take the approach of doing whatever we need to get them out.
You’ve been on Fat now since 2012. I would speculate that a lot of folks may be discovering your band for the first time given the exposure that might come from being on that label. What is the first impression that you would want new listeners to have of your band?
You know, I couldn’t even say. We don’t really fit in with any genre of music and I feel like we have a hard time finding other bands to play and tour with. I don’t really care that much about the labels people put on our music. As long as they hear it, that’s great. I’d like to think that the music I write doesn’t sound like other people’s music. I think we have a hard time fitting in with a lot of the Fat bands. We’re definitely not as “punk” as some of the more straightforward stuff. That’s fine with me. I don’t really care. It can be a bit of a problem when you’re trying to find bands to tour with or shows to play on, but other than that I try to let people make up their own minds about what they think of us. I let them take it for what it is. It’s just another type of music. I call it “revolution rock.” There is no other term I can find to categorize it.
You strike me as a thoughtful guy. Do you do a lot of reading? What are you reading these days?
I do read a lot. Right now I’m actually re-reading Little Big Man by Thomas Berger which is a book I read as a kid and stumbled upon again recently. It’s a fiction book about a guy who grows up in the Wild West as both a white man and a Native American. I usually have three or four books going at the same time. I’ve got this other book I’m reading now called Sri Lanka: What Went Wrong by a guy named Vitacchi. I’m sort of reading that because I grew up there. I also really like comic books. Are you into comics?
Not really, but I’d love to hear your take on them. Are you the type that goes to Comic-Con?
No, totally not at all [laughs]. We played a show recently and we were on our way to the gig and it was like 2 or 3 in the morning and there were all these people out dressed as Batman and wearing weirdo costumes and stuff. We were like, “Are these people on the way to our gig or is there a Comic-Con going on?” Sometimes you can’t tell with our crowd.
