Jim Lindberg talks about his reunion with Pennywise

In a recent interview with Pure Volume, Jim Lindberg explained why he decided to come back to Pennywise after three years away from the band. He states:

“I kind of look back on it now really simplistically in the sense that I was really ready for a break, and the other guys weren’t.

The truth is, we toured and put out records pretty much back to back for almost 20 years, whereas a lot of bands will take a break and members will pursue other things.

A lot of our peer groups—bands like Bad Religion, NOFX and Rancid—had a little pressure released for a few years with a lot of members having other projects. For me, it was time for that. For a lot of reasons the band needed to take a hiatus and people needed to re-prioritize going back to our band and going back to the real reason that we were doing it. We’d kind of lost our way somewhat, and that wasn’t what certain people in the band wanted to hear.

I tried to leave amicably but it didn’t really work, and I think after three years passed, the level of acrimony had gotten worse. We live in a small town (in the South Bay area) and it was hard to deal with for all our friends to be in the middle of that ugly divorce. I was tired of it and I know Fletcher was tired of it. So he just kind of called me up out of the blue and said we should have a talk. The last thing on my mind was thinking we should get together as a band again. Afterward we realized that we were the core unit of the band, and if we could navigate a way back to playing again it would probably be a good idea, so here we are.”

Pennywise’s latest album, All or Nothing, was released last May on Epitaph Records and is, so far, their only recording with Zoli Teglas from Ignite. Their last recording with Jim Lindberg on vocals was 2008’s Reason to Believe, released a year before his departure. The band recently discussed the possibility of recording a new album with Lindberg. They may also be releasing a “best-of” album.