A little over a month ago and with little in the way of advanced fanfare, New Jersey punk icons The Bouncing Souls released a brand new single, “Battleground.” Included in the information distributed about the song at the time was a note that a portion of the proceeds from the single would be donated to the Indigenous Environmental Network, particularly surrounding that agency’s help in the fight in Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Inspired by the song and the corresponding video (watch it here), we caught up with the band’s frontman, Greg Attonito, for a chat about the unique song’s origin and message.
It’s important to mention rather prominently that “Battleground” was not a leftover track from the recording sessions for the band’s most recent album, last year’s Simplicity. It was, instead, inspired by much more recent events, and came from a source that should be familiar to most fans of the Souls, whether they realize the name Garrett Reppenhagen at first listen or not. “It all came about very quickly,” says Attonito. “It was December (2016), and a good friend of ours (Garrett Reppenhagen), was a sniper in the Iraq war and ended up becoming friends with the band…he was the person who provided lyrics to the song we wrote in 2006, “Letters From Iraq.”
Reppenhagen has remained prominent in the activist community since returning from Iraq, and had launched a Kickstarted campaign to help raise money to buy supplies for a trip to Standing Rock. The band donated money to the cause, but it became apparent in relatively short order that they wanted to — and were able to — do more. “I was just thinking about how it would be cool to let the world know how we feel somehow, and literally the next day the lyrics came to me. I wrote them down and had a little guitar part. I texted to the guys, and right away they were like “this is a great idea.”
From there, things moved quickly. The band were already set to get together to play a few shows in New York late last year, so Attonito and drummer George Rebelo changed their flights and the full Voltron that is the Bouncing Souls convened at guitarist Pete Steinkopf’s Asbury Park studio to flesh out the idea. “We worked the song out in the early afternoon (of the first day back together). We set up the drums and started recording that night, and by the next afternoon, the song was recorded — vocals finished and everything.”
The band enlisted the help of frequent collaborator Matt Gere to put together a video, and Gere decided to delve outside his normal comfort zone, making his first real foray into the process of animation. The result is a video that is unique in the Bouncing Souls canon, and syncs up well with the song’s overall message of standing together in the face of opposition. The finished product was actually ready for release early in January, but the band chose to table it’s release until just after the Presidential inauguration, for reasons that should be obvious. It’s a political song, it is not, for example, “Holiday In Cambodia.” Instead, it’s a quintessential Bouncing Souls, so it’s melodic and uplifting. Says Attonito, “the political songs for us have really been weird territory. Man, I love a good “Holiday In Cambodia” – those kinds of songs are just amazing, but we never could write songs like that. Not many people can.”
Head below to read our full Q&A with Greg. We touch on a lot of material, but particularly focus on the changes in the band that occurred post-Comet, specifically once longtime drummer Michael McDermott parted ways with the band and their resulting — almost instantaneous — decision to recruit Hot Water Music drummer George Rebelo into the fold.
The Souls kick off a ten-day run in the western US alongside with support from Get Dead and The Bombpops next week, and just announced that they’ll be opening half of the upcoming Rancid/Dropkick Murphys co-headlining dates this summer. Check out dates here.
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): As a 20-year fan of the Bouncing Souls I do consider it an honor to get to talk even for a few minutes about everything that’s going on in the Souls camp. I greatly appreciate it. And also, as an aside, it was really fun to see you up here (in Boston) with Frank Turner on the big stage at the Agganis Arena a couple weekends ago. That was a fun night.
Greg Attonito (Bouncing Souls): Yeah, it was a lot of fun!
How did that come about? I must say, I was a little bit caught off guard when I saw that the Bouncing Souls would be opening for Frank Turner at a place like that as a one-off.
Well, the short story is that we have the same booking agent! And we’ve known Frank for a long time, so it was something that fit into his tour, and Nick (Skorch), being our booking agent, was already thinking that it would be great to get the Souls and Frank to play together, so this was a good opportunity.
And this was your first show up here since Simplicity came out. You guys missed us on the East Coast tour.
Yeah, I think we might have not played in Boston since 2012? 2013? I could be wrong, because I’m not good at remembering this stuff, but it did come up in conversation (amongst the band) and we couldn’t come up with a good answer! (*laughs*)
Yeah, I think there was a date right after Comet came out in late ‘12. (*Editor’s note: The Bouncing Souls played Boston’s House of Blues with the Menzingers in August 2012 and again opening for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones in December 2012*) What’s the deal with that? We need you up here more! (*both laugh*)
Yeah! The story is that we sort of put on the brakes playing live for a little bit, for multiple reasons. We just have other projects going on and we toured so much that essentially, we were like “let’s just do stuff that makes sense and is sort of spread out through the year.” We end up probably doing 40 or 50 shows a year, which is still a pretty good amount. We used to think that we’d put out a record and make sure that we always played everywhere. Now we’re just, like, “this is a cool festival, let’s play that and then we’ll do this city or that city and make it a long weekend, or a week-long tour.” We’re not knocking ourselves out to “make it” now.
Do you miss the days of doing full six- or eight-week US tours or are you…
Not at all! (*both laugh*)
I was going to say…are you glad to be at a point where a ten-day run out on the West Coast like you have coming up is sorta good?
Yeah. We’re not twenty years old anymore. That was a ton of fun in our twenties and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But we shoot for two weeks roughly as our max. We’re kinda having more fun than ever, because in many ways, the pressure is off financially. Everybody’s got other projects that they’re working on, and that just makes it so much more fun. We don’t feel like we HAVE to make a record. We don’t feel like we HAVE to play all the time. It’s not that we don’t want to or like to, but when you put the burden on yourself that you have to do things, you find yourself trying to force things, and sometimes it’s not the best option. Now that we’ve taken the last couple years of doing what we feel like doing, we’re taking opportunities as they arise and working around those opportunities. We do want to cover all the major cities, but we’re doing it slower! (*laughs*) We’re taking our time with it.
Was there a moment…or even a few moments…after Comet and after Michael left the band the following year that things were up in the air about the future, or was the plan always to eventually get back out? Which you’ve probably answered a lot over the years…
I think that probably within an hour. Michael pretty much just presented it to us as a surprise. It wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was still a pretty big surprise. He just decided “okay, guys, I’m gonna leave the band,” and I think within an hour, Bryan and Pete were like “we’re calling George (Rebelo)!”
Really?
Yeah! (*laughs*) This is pretty funny… I remember the moment. We were on tour, and those guys were rooming together, and I ended up walking into their room and they were like “dude, we’re calling George!” (*laughs*) So that was the attitude pretty much from when we realized that it was for real, that Michael was really doing this. We accepted that he’s definitely going to do it…but there was barely anything in between, we accepted Michael’s idea and the next thought was “let’s call George!”
George seems like he got on board pretty quickly then.
He did. He was reluctant, but later on, like a year into being in the band, once he settled in and everything was going well, he opened up and admitted to how apprehensive he was, mostly for stylistic reasons. He loves the band, we’re all super buds, we’ve toured many days together over the years, so that was why George, I think, really wanted to make it work. But the style of Bouncing Souls drumming wasn’t something he was comfortable with. It wasn’t the style that he’s normally used to playing. But I say it all the time, and I say it to George, he just showed his natural ability and his professionalism as well, the way he was able to learn all of our wacky songs and the fast songs that he wasn’t really comfortable with playing, and he played it off really well. He learned so much stuff…all of our ridiculous live stuff that we do that of course the other three of us intuitively make certain decisions just as one brain. He had to figure that stuff out! (*laughs*) We would stop and explain stuff, but it was a lot to handle. (Bryan and Pete and I) have been in a band for thirty years together. There’s stuff that goes back to high school and all that stuff. So I commend George endlessly to how well he’s managed this wacky scenario for a drummer.
You know, I was thinking that obviously, you guys have had George in the loop for a little while now but the Boston show with Frank was the first time that I’ve seen you guys together, and it looked totally natural. It looked like he’s fit there forever.
Yeah, and I guess honestly, it took a year-and-a-half or two years. The first year, he’d play a song well but wouldn’t maybe be owning it. The band wasn’t totally gelling. But after that year, year-and-a-half, we started to grow as a group and it’s been a lot of fun.
Is that when writing really started for Simplicity? After that year-and-a-half or so mark?
Yes. Exactly. As soon as George got comfortable and he knew 40 or 50 songs, and we were able to start mixing songs in and out of the set, we would on a run of gigs on the East Coast and say “hey, maybe we’ll spend a couple days and do some writing with George since he’s gonna be in Jersey.” So we’d stay a couple extra days. We didn’t really make a deadline. We just said we were going to let this grow organically, we’re not going to put pressure on and we’re just going to enjoy the process. I’m really glad we did it. It’s the best way to do things, especially now. We don’t need to kill ourselves. We’ve done so many records, we want to feel really good about whatever we do. It was great. And we got something out of it that we all feel really good about.
And you should. I think that really from the time I first listened to it, I knew Simplicity was going to be on my “favorite albums of the year” list. It was solid from start to finish and just kept getting better. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like Comet, because I did, but Simplicity, from the time I first put it on the record player, just sounded right.
Cool! Yeah, I get it! It’s been fun being in a band that’s made this many records, because you make them different ways. Everyone has a different opinion. And I think it’s really great that some people say “Hopeless Romantic is their best record!” And somebody else is like “No way, … Summer Vacation is their best record!” And so on and so forth. With Comet, that was another example, where we had done records all these other ways, and Bill Stevenson was always wanting to do a record. We finally called him up and he was like “what took you guys so long to call me?” And as a Descendents fan, it was amazing; Bill having that attitude about it. We dove into his process, and just went for it, and that’s what came out. It’s sort of a collaboration in time. And I agree, it has certain good things about it, and then other things about it are different from past records. But I like the process!
Did you write Simplicity all together on those quick tours, or did you trade ideas electronically?
Usually what we do is get in a room together, all four of us, and our process is that we just kind of explode new ideas. So the first hour or two, we’re essentially rocking. I will have some lyrics or Bryan or Pete will have lyrics handy that they’re inspired by, or somebody might have a basic idea of music and melody or lyrics that they’re bringing to that. But usually, we don’t even work on that stuff, we just get in a room and start rocking. We press “record” and then we listen back to things and sit for a minute and say “that’s cool” or “what about this?” We end up with little piles of ideas. You don’t even think, you just come in and do stuff and record it. Usually once that wave ends and it’s like an hour or two into our session, we’ll go back and pick out the coolest things and get a little intellectual about them and maybe try to add a part or add lyrics or really do more of the “writing process.” That’s pretty much how we do it. Then, a month later or a week later when we’re not together, somebody might text message and say “Dudes, I thought of an amazing part for that one idea!” and the thing just keeps going that way. It doesn’t stop when we’re apart, but usually the ideas were born when we were all in the same room together.
And so, even though you’re far apart, it seems like you’ve held on to those trends from the beginning.
Yeah. Well, we used to just be in a room and record into a boom box on a cassette. We were very late to the digital recording game and all that. I think that because of technology, we do trade ideas now more than we ever did, in the last ten years or whenever we started doing it. If Pete and Bryan would do guitar tracks with lyrics, they could send it to me and I’d redo vocals on them and send it back, stuff like that. But even then, the idea was usually born before and now we’re just working on it remotely.
There’s a song in Simplicity, “Up To Us” that I really dig…well, I really dig the whole album, but there’s something about that song and the sentiment behind it, and behind the video — I think they jive up nicely. Like it says in the pre-chorus “…even though our heroes are dying,” was that inspired by anything in particular, or is that more of a nod to your own longevity and how long you’ve been in the game?
I have to give the primary songwriting credit on that one to Pete. Usually that’s how it works; there’s a primary songwriter I think is how I put it. Pete came up with the guitar part and that chorus. He was inspired, pretty much directly after David Bowie died…I guess Prince and David Bowie died right around the same time. I don’t remember when the exact moment was, but he had been inspired, and I think it came without much thought, it was just his feelings about the impact of that. He just sat down and put that into music and lyrics. Then we just added a little more lyrics and fleshed it out into a song. And that’s a good example of our process. And it was…I think it’s cool when you’re inspired by an event in life like that, but right away, as soon as we started working on it, we thought we didn’t have to make it direct and obvious; it’s not “about” David Bowie, but it’s inspired by the spirit he brought to the world and how it made us feel and how we feel as music contributors to the world. I think we did pretty well capturing those feelings in that song.
Yeah, I definitely agree, and I think like I said that the video, too, is simple but it jives up pretty nicely with the theme in the song.
Yeah, and it’s not easy. We wanted to just capture us being ourselves, which is also not easy to do. I’ve got to give credit to Matt Gere who made the video and helped us with the concept and I think he did a really good job.
Who did the video for “Battleground”? That song is sort of what prompted this whole interview process, because I think that’s a really great song and a really great idea? But who did the video for that, and then we’ll work backwards…
Matt Gere. Same guy who made the “Up To Us” video. He’s been working with us for a long time and he’s a great artist in general. He’s a musician, and he’s been working with us selling merch and tour managing, and he’s a great video artist. He did a lot of our live projection. We haven’t done them recently, but on the Comet tour and around that time he was doing that for us, and he made a handful of our videos. I think “Battleground” was his first foray into animation, which I thought was great.
Yeah, and that’s part of why I asked, because it’s a different feel from “Up To Us” or “Coin Toss Girl,” so I assumed it was somebody entirely different.
Yeah, it looks like it, because he was like “alright, I’m just going to try this.” And I’m glad he did, because it has a fresh feel for us.
How did that song itself come about? Because that’s not a Simplicity-era song, right? That was written much more recently?
Yeah, it all came about very quickly. It was December, and a good friend of ours whose name is Garrett Reppenhagen, he was a sniper in the Iraq war and ended up becoming friends with the band. He was a Souls fan and we became friends, and he was the person who provided lyrics to the song we wrote in 2006, “Letters From Iraq.”
Yeah, yeah yeah. That’s a great song.
He’s been an activist since his time coming back from the Iraq war. I had noticed…we all had, all the band guys…had noticed that he was making a trip up to Standing Rock and he had a Kickstarter page where he was raising money for buy supplies. The band kicked in some money, and I talked to the band about it, we talked to him about it, and it sort of spurred on after we had been following what had been going on in Standing Rock. It was something where it was like, you know, what can we do here to help out? I was just thinking about how it would be cool to let the world know how we feel somehow, and literally the next day the lyrics came to me. I wrote them down and had a little guitar part. I texted to the guys, and right away they were like “this is a great idea.” It snowballed. Within a week, we had plans to do shows in New York — sorry if I’m making this a really long story — and we got John Seymour on board. He said “I love this idea, let’s record!”
So me and George changed our flights, we flew in to Jersey a couple days early, we went to the studio — Pete’s place in Asbury Park — we worked the song out in the early afternoon, and already hashed out the rest of the tune. We set up the drums and started recording that night, and by the next afternoon, the song was recorded — vocals finished and everything — by late afternoon. We all felt great about it, because I think it’s a really hard situation that we’re all in right now. We want to let the world know that being divided is going to be our downfall. Regardless of your politics, or what the best thing to do for the economy or any of those things — and I can’t say that I know what’s best. But I do know that being divided and dividing people for all the reasons that people try to do that — sex and race and religion — is not going to be good. This was sort of a good opportunity to focus in on a certain thing, a certain event that was going on, and make our statement with it. The song tells it pretty well. Regardless of how it turns out or how successful it is wasn’t really the point. The whole point of it is that all of us really felt proactive in doing what we do and expressing how we felt about it in a way that we know how. We write songs and record songs, you know? I don’t know if that all came out fluently, but that’s the gist of how “Battleground” came to be. It felt great saying what we wanted to say and also mobilizing so quickly and getting it all done. Everyone got behind the idea and thought it was a great idea and we all just made it happen. It felt great for everybody.
So basically, the song was written and recorded and the video was done and it was all put out there to the public within a month of each other, at most?
Yeah. A month. Absolutely. And we had it ready to come out in early January but we decided we wanted to wait until after the inauguration. But yeah, it was satisfying to come up with a single and record it and mix it, and then Matt busted out the video. And I really appreciate that you want to give it a little bump — thank you so much!
Yeah, I think it’s really important, and I think that, even watching you guys and Frank (Turner) and Arkells the other night, that was sort of the prevailing theme of everybody that was playing. Even Will Varley, the opener. It was four very different musical styles really, but the prevailing theme was that we’ve all got to be in this together in doing this, because we’re fucked otherwise…pardon my French.
Yeah! It’s just common sense to me. I think the tension in the States and around the world is higher than it has been, and to take it to a deeper level, in a spiritual way, I believe everything does happen for a reason, so I’m not going to say things are wrong or should be different, really. But it does seem that things are going in a way where they’re getting worse before they get better and that’s a thing that’s not awesome to look forward to, but evolution or creation has a process that all makes sense. I believe that as well, but I think it’s important to remember the basic things about why we’re here. We’re here to really love and care for each other, and kindness and respect are the most important things to learn and live. I stand by that. It’s what all the religions say. That’s what I will stand by no matter what.
Do you feel, particularly with what’s gone on since the election really, that there’s an obligation as an artist, whether through painting or through your other music projects or with the Souls, to do more things like this? To rally people together and reinforce those points?
I think it reared its head naturally. I have an obligation to listen to myself and what the timing of that is. I overwhelmingly felt inspired, and that’s what I know makes sense to me. Having written music and recorded music and performed music for thirty years now, I know the difference between forcing something to happen and following, for lack of a better word, a sort of divine inspiration. Whether it comes out amazing or not, I know in my heart when I’m like “I need to help propel this into motion.” 99% of the time, if it’s meant to be, it just happens. Just like that. Along the way I questioned it, but as soon as I got that response from the guys and they said “yeah, we’re going to make this happen,” that was the intuitiveness that I follow.
Honestly right now, in a certain sense, yes, I think artists need to do that. But essentially, they have to follow what’s correct for them. If it’s not right, you shouldn’t do it. And you can complain and think that we all need to be doing more, but I don’t really feel that way; I think people are, within their power, saying things and doing what feels like is possible for them. It’s cool to see that and I think it’s healthy for everyone. We have to get up and express our feelings about world events, and as our situation as Americans and as human beings is evolving in the World, it keeps changing. We have to stay on top of it and express ourselves as best we can. So I don’t know if obligation is really a good word for it, but it’s important to, if you have as an artist — or even as anyone — if you feel strongly about something, you should express it in a way that makes sense to you.
You really do that with “Battleground.” For a political song — for lack of a better word — actually, I think on the site where the video officially got premiered, the quote behind it was something like “it’s a heavy, important message, but it’s a Bouncing Souls song, so it’s fun and melodic and upbeat and positive.” You did it in a way that doesn’t sound forced. You didn’t try to write “Holiday In Cambodia” or something like that, you know what I mean?
Yeah! It’s a small miracle to be able to achieve those things in a two minute song. That’s why the political songs for us have really been weird territory. Man, I love a good “Holiday In Cambodia” – those kinds of songs are just amazing, but we never could write songs like that. Not many people can. But like I said, if you can follow that intuitiveness, you manage to achieve things that are beyond your ability. That’s what’s cool about the Bouncing Souls. We’re sort of like a think tank that way (*laughs*). Each person has strengths and that’s the recipe to our success. Nobody is amazing at what they do, but what they bring to the pot makes for something that’s pretty cool as we get the finished project.
So the sum is greater than the parts.
Yeah, that’s truly, exactly what I was looking for.
So the West Coast run is coming up in a couple weeks. This is your first West Coast run since Simplicity came out, right?
Yeah, we’ve done a couple of one-offs – we’ve played San Francisco, we played southern California, but yeah, this will be our first proper run. It should be fun. There’s that festival in Phoenix which I’m curious about.
Oh yeah. And there’s the festival in Idaho too, yeah?
Yeah, the Treefort Festival, which I played with my kids’ music project.
With Play Date, yeah.
Yeah, I played there a couple times, and the festival is great.
In looking at the details behind it, it doesn’t look like a thing we have in these parts. There’s yoga and art projects and stuff…that is not a Boston sort of festival! (*both laugh*)
It’s great. It’s cool how that festival has grown, because it kinda reflects what’s cool about Boise. It’s a really friendly town and that festival is about five or six year old now. It’s gotten so good, and it’s grown so fast. They treat the bands so well, and the city is supporting it, which makes festivals great and which doesn’t happen in America the way that it does elsewhere. Usually it’s a battle with these festivals just trying to make things work. All they get is hassle from the city. So it’s really, really cool to see.
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