Portland, Maine’s Weakened Friends released one of the best albums of 2025, Feels Like Hell, back in October, and in mid-November, they finally brought their record-release tour to the Sinclair in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, a bit of a triumphant return to their adopted hometown area. The evening was kicked off by the upstart PINKLIDS. If […]
Portland, Maine’s Weakened Friends released one of the best albums of 2025, Feels Like Hell, back in October, and in mid-November, they finally brought their record-release tour to the Sinclair in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, a bit of a triumphant return to their adopted hometown area.
The evening was kicked off by the upstart PINKLIDS. If I’m being honest, I’d not heard or heard of PINKLIDS until seeing the lineup for this show. If I’m still being honest, I’m super glad I’ve now heard of them. Hailing from the Cape Cod gateway town of Wareham, Massachusetts, PINKLIDS are probably the coolest new band that I’ve seen in quite some time. Years, anyway. Boiling PINKLIDS down to one specific sound is a bit of a fool’s errand, but it’s safe to say that the band would have fit in nicely in the post-punk playground that was the Lower East Side decades ago. There are healthy doses of post-punk and surf rock and maybe even Stray Cats-style rockabilly. Like if Fugazi were an art-rock band in a Tarantino movie. Angular riffs and frequent tempo changes abound, and vocalist Amber Lawson commands the whole thing with unbridled camp and confidence.
Occupying the direct support spot on this show were Weakend Friends’ tourmates on this run, Nova One. Nove One are yet another band that I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t previously familiar with and am proud to say that I now am familiar with. The brainchild of Roz Raskin, Nove One is very much a concept band, a feminine-presenting yet genderfluid, retro-futuristic style and sound that evokes a sort-of late-60’s girl group vibe. Think like a group of Ronnie Spector’s with matching pink wigs and vertically-striped black-and-white blouses, in a dream pop/alternative band. “pick my petals” and set-closer “you were right” were personal favorites.
Weakened Friends hit the stage at 9:30pm and instantly launched into the one-two punch of “Not For Nothing” and “NPC” from the wonderful Feels Like Hell. The Portland-based trio – Sonia Sturino on vocals and guitar, Annie Hoffman on bass and backing vocals, Adam Hand on drums – have solidified into a powerful live force over the better part of the last decade. We’ve seen them in a variety of settings over the years – opening slots at the now-defunct Great Scott (R.I.P.), in-store acoustic performances at record stores, etc. – and it’s fun to see them now, having levelled up in every conceivable way while still maintaining the rawness and intensity of the earlier days. The light and video shows and adding layers of pre-recorded instrumentation bring a certain increased gravity to the occasion. Earlier songs like trio of “Main Bitch” and “Waste” and “Common Blah” which were performed in a mini set for the old heards translate immaculately to the bigger stage and the increased production. Given that it was an album-release show of sorts, the band blazed through ten of Feels Like Hell‘s dozen tracks, including the cover of Natalie Imbruglia’s cover of Ednaswap’s “Torn,” which was prefaced by a callout to all of the children of the 90s and to the elders of the 80s which, as a person born in 1979, made me feel some type of way (read as: geriatric).
Hoffman bounces endlessly around the stage for the duration of the set, her smile and infectious energy serving as contrast to Sturino’s growling guitars and full-throated lyrics that deal heavily and self-doubt and apathy and anhedonia. There’s a raw angst and a sense of unbridled aggression in a Weakened Friends set circa 2025 that would have fit right in Seattle (or at least Northampton MA) thirty years ago. It’s no wonder the band caught the attention of Jack White and opened at a few shows earlier this year. And with the added production, there’s the sense that we’ll soon be able to say that we were lucky to catch Weakened Friends headlining in a room as small as the 525-capacity Sinclair.
I felt at the time and still feel a week removed from the event that this particular show was one of the best – if not the very best – that I saw this year. Check out more pictures in the galleries below!
Fete Music Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, was the setting as Bane and Hot Water Music brought their recent co-headlining tour to a close. It’s a no-frills, no barricade venue consisting of mostly black-painted brick and concrete, located in the gritty-even-for-Providence Olneyville section of town, in many ways the perfect setting for a pair of […]
Fete Music Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, was the setting as Bane and Hot Water Music brought their recent co-headlining tour to a close. It’s a no-frills, no barricade venue consisting of mostly black-painted brick and concrete, located in the gritty-even-for-Providence Olneyville section of town, in many ways the perfect setting for a pair of hardcore and melodic hardcore titans to wind down ehat was, by all accounts, an epic two-week run.
Kicking things off on this run as they did on each night of the tour was none other than Spaced. The upstart Buffalo five-piece experienced an obscenely untimely transmission-related meltdown on the tour’s opening night, but managed to scrape things together enough to bring their blistering, two-step heavy brand of hardcore to the masses. I can’t speak to the rest of the tour, but on this particular night, the band’s set was super well-received, as the constant ball of energy that is vocalist Lexi Reyngoudt constantly danced and paced the width of the stage and encouraged the early-arriving crowd to match the band’s intensity.
Hot Water Music occupied the middle slot on the three-band bill, but this was not a typical opening gig, as the band plowed through sixteen songs over the course of an hour. In a weird coincidence, I’m relatively certain that every time I’d seen the iteration of Hot Water Music that includes Chris Cresswell in the lineup, the set has started with either “Remedy” or “Trusty Chords,” so it was nice getting “Drag My Body” in the leadoff spot on this night. The set that followed did an admirable job of spanning the bulk of the genre-defining band’s catalog; recent tracks like “After The Impossible” and “Menace” have worked their way seemlessly into a set that also includes longtime favorites like “Choked And Separated” and “Rooftops” and “Free Radio Gainesville.” “I Was On A Mountain” and “Turn The Dial” were personal favorites, and closing the set with “Remedy” into “Trusty Chords” is a pretty epic way to bring things to a close.
The aforementioned Cresswell has served as a tremendous sparkplug for the longtime road dogs over the last eight years (editor’s note…seriously? It’s been eight years already?!?). I forget who referred to Jason Black and George Rebelo as Hot Water Music’s cheat code – Brian McTernan maybe? – but that remains a perfect way to explain their presence in the band and the scene. They’ve been operating as two sides of the same musical brain for decades at this point and remain as locked in a driving force as ever. And Chuck Ragan at stage right is…well…Chuck Ragan. He’s as inimitable as ever, and seems to have benefited the most from the spark that Cresswell has brought to the band, as he continues to push himself and his voice to what approaches transcendent levels.
Bane’s set was preceded by an unexpectedly long break as the band and venue tag-teamed to work through some frustrating sound and technical difficulties. But when they finally ripped into the opening notes of “Count Me Out,” they more than made up for lost time. There’s a bit of an emotional and musical floodgate that opens up when Bane plays a show. For a generation now, at least in the Northeast, the band have had the sort of label-eschewing crossover success that bands like Militarie Gun and Knocked Loose and obviously Turnstile have enjoyed in recent years. Bane is a force, a unifying staple that only seems to get more important as the years go by. There’s always a blurred line between band and crowd at a Bane show, as demonstrated by the constant barrage of multi-generational stage crashers and head-walkers that did not stop for the duration of the band’s eleven-song set (and sometimes didn’t stop even in the breakdowns between songs). “Can We Start Again” and “Wrong Planet” were particular crowd-pleasers, while “Swan Song” was a personal favorite. It seemed like the crowd could very much have kept going by the time the house lights came up after “Calling Hours.”
Check out a bunch more pictures from the evening’s festivities below!
The punk rock and underground and DIY music worlds are littered with the remains of once-iconic venues. Venues that achieve legendary status because of the scenes that they created and fostered and nurtured. Venues that became iconic to the punk and underground and DIY worlds in the same way that Radio City Music Hall or […]
The punk rock and underground and DIY music worlds are littered with the remains of once-iconic venues. Venues that achieve legendary status because of the scenes that they created and fostered and nurtured. Venues that became iconic to the punk and underground and DIY worlds in the same way that Radio City Music Hall or Madison Square Garden or The Fillmore or the Ryman Auditorium became iconic in different places and times. Venues that grew organically in out-of-the-way, pre-gentrified areas, before the creep of the Live Nations and Ticketmasters and venture capital-backed land developers could figure out a way to strangle every last conceivable dollar from an area before turning it into a high-end clothing store or hotel or upscale casual chain restaurant.
Between the Convention Hall and the Upstage and the Paramount and The Stone Pony – which has somehow managed to hold fast on the ever-changing Boardwalk for more than fifty years, Asbury Park, New Jersey, has been no stranger to those sorts of venues over the years. Asbury-at-large sort of exemplifies that idea itself; a sort of out-of-the-way spot, perpetually down on its collective luck yet somehow persevering in greater-than0the0sum-of-it-parts fashion thanks to a group of dedicated folks who were either too stubborn or too foolish to leave. And perhaps no place better exemplifies what Asbury Park was and what Asbury Park is becoming better than the iconic Asbury Lanes.
For the uninitiated, the Asbury Lanes was – and I suppose still is – exactly what it sounds like. It was a 1960s-era bowling alley that made it trough the decades with surprisingly few updates. In the early 2000s, it also started to double as a music venue catering to local and national touring punk rock bands for about a dozen years. The Revival Tour stopped there and Dave Hause and The Loved Ones and Hot Water Music and The Menzingers and The Flatliners and the Gimme Gimmes and Agnostic Front and Sick Of It All and of course the Souls and Lagwagon and Tim Barry are but a small fraction of the names that passed through. Many of them passed through more than once, largely due to the people who ran the place and went to the shows making it feel like whom. What the nearby Stone Pony was to the traditional rock-and-roll world of the generation before ours, the Lanes became to the punk rock kids. Here…see for yourself…
One of the more regular faces at the Lanes for the bulk of its history was that of Mike McLaughlin. If you went to the Lanes between 2005 and 2015 and you don’t recognize McLaughlin’s face, that’s probably due to the fact that it was behind a camera. Over the course of a decade, McLaughlin became the venue’s unofficial house photographer, shooting upwards of 270 separate bands, many of them more than once. For McLaughlin, it all started as a seemingly run-of-the-mill assignment. “I got a call from the Newark Star-Ledger, which is the biggest daily paper in New Jersey, that there was going to be a car show with some bands at this old bowling alley in Asbury. And I knew Asbury well, I lived next door in Ocean Grove for many years,” he explains. “I knew the bowling alley. I had photographed that strip of old buildings at night, but I didn’t know anything was going on there.” McLaughlin figured it would be a routine outing; snap a couple of pictures of a few vintage hot rods, maybe grab a picture of a band or two, and head back home. Fate, it seems, had other ideas. “I go inside and Sasquatch And The Sick-A-Billys are playing. I walked in and the old Lanes looked like a 1960s bowling alley, but from like out of the Jetsons. So it was this like retro look, but also this futuristic look. And then there’s this rockabilly band with some people dressed up like they were at a sock hop and it was just like, “what the fuck is going on? This is the most amazing thing in the world!”
Little by little, McLaughlin ingrained himself as a fixture at the Lanes. Due to the nature of the venue and the scene – and due to McLaughlin’s own history as a photojournalist – his pictures began to focus less on the traditional elements of a concert photo and more of a documentarian vibe. With the venue’s minimal stage and rudimentary lighting and nary a traditional photo pit barricade in site, there was little to separate artist from crowd, both physically and aesthetically. This lends itself to the utilitarian idea that what inspired so many people to drift to the punk rock world in the first place was the idea that it’s our scene; a scene made up by us and for us and with little pretense or faade or gimmick. In fact, a flip through a decade’s worth of pictures reveals many of the same faces both in the crowd and, at times, on the stage in performances of their own.
The Lanes closed in 2015. It got a massive update and facelift as part of a multi-billion dollar real estate investment in the Asbury Park Boardwalk revitalization, and it has reopened under the same name and same basic idea (part bowling alley, part concert venue) but it’s not the same Lanes. Thankfully, not only was McLaughlin there to cover the bulk of the venue’s iconic heyday, his work is now slated to appear in hardcover, physical format. Entitled Lightning In A Bottle: A Love Letter to Asbury Lanes, McLaughlin has put together a massive collection of shots capturing the history of the Lanes and its people. The 400-page tome is due out next month via Mt Crushmore Records, and it presents less as a traditional photo book and more as an artifact; a venue yearbook, if you will. That is, as you’d imagine, entirely by design.
“I’m a stubborn son of a bitch when I get an idea in my head,” laughs McLaughlin. “It was something that I had from early on was I wanted it to be kind of everybody’s book. When I was arguing that this isn’t a photo book, part of that argument was this isn’t Mike McLaughlin’s photography book, like it wasn’t about me, I wanted to do this for everyone who ever experienced it. And so I wanted them to be a part of it. So having everyone handwrite their memories was hugely important to me. Looking through the photos, I see faces that I haven’t seen or been in touch with since before it closed. And I still would be looking, you know, like looking through a yearbook, like, “oh, man, I love that guy!”
McLaughlin spends much of his time overseas nowadays; he recently finished his Masters and is teaching photography in Florence, Italy. But he’ll be back in Asbury for the official launch of Lightning In A Bottle next month, at a book signing/print sale at the Parlor Gallery on Cookman Avenue. With any luck, it’ll feel like a high school reunion of sorts, with folks who attended any of the hundreds of shows that took place at the Lanes laughing and reminiscing and storytelling. Whether you went to the old Lanes or not (like yours truly), Lightning In A Bottle is a tremendous and worthy addition to anyone’s library. Authentic and non-Disneyfied venues like the old Lanes are increasingly few and far between and works like Lightning In A Bottle are important time capsules of what truly make them – and the collective scene as a whole – not only special but truly necessary. The book is available for pre-order as we speak. Get yours, and check out our fun chat with Mike McLaughlin below. Kindred spirits for sure, we talk all about his photography journey and his history at The Lanes and what’s becoming of Asbury and much more!
*Editor’s Note: The following conversation has been edited and condensed for conent and clarity. Yes, really.*
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): When (mutual friend) Jared (Hart) told me about this book, my first thought was “oh, hell yeah, that’s really cool.” I’m from the greater Boston area. I am not a Jersey guy, but I’ve known Jerry and some of his crew for probably twelve or thirteen years now, something like that, through The Scandals and from him coming up here all the time. And then (my wife and I) started going down to Jersey a couple times a year. Between Asbury and Garwood, where Crossroads is. And it’s sort of become like a second home since we started going down, which was maybe in like 2016. So that means we just missed the old Lanes. And so it was fun to look through this book, because it captures so many people I know and shows I know of, and is such a great look at a unique place.
(Michael McLaughlin): Thanks. That was the hope!
So what I guess is a good place to start, and you do talk about it a little bit in the book, but I like the story of your sort of introduction to the Lanes and how you sort of stumbled upon it and then like fell in love with it, as seemingly everybody who went there did.
Well, for me, I mean, I had been shooting music for a long time; since the mid-90s. Both for myself having just friends in bands, and I was a photojournalist for a bunch of different newspapers and magazines. I would always get gigs to go shoot shows at PNC Arts Center, Madison Square Garden or whatever, and then local club stuff, too. But at that point, I stumbled upon (The Asbury Lanes) in 2005. It had been going since 2004…not really on and off, but like, it wasn’t a regular thing in 2004, like where, you know, every Friday, Saturday or whatever, they had shows. That kind of started in 2005. And I got a call from the Newark Star-Ledger, which is the biggest daily paper in New Jersey, that there was going to be a car show with some bands at this old bowling alley in Asbury. And I knew Asbury well, I lived next door in Ocean Grove for many years. So I knew the bowling alley. I had photographed it at night, like that strip of the old buildings, you know, but I didn’t know anything was going on there. So in my mind, I had shot so many car shows for newspapers…like, they would do a little feature because this town was having a car show. Now, I’m an A to B guy as far as cars go. Like, I need a car to get me from A to B. You know, when I was a teenager, I wanted a ‘70 Chevelle SS, you know? Beyond that, like, I don’t know shit about cars (*both laugh*)
So car shows were just like, “alright, find a cool photo.” And yeah, I rolled up and there’s all these like, you know, chopped up hot rods out, out on the sidewalk and on the street. And I go inside and Sasquatch And The Sick-A-Billys are playing. I don’t know if you know Sasquatch, but I think I said it in the book, they’re like rockabilly or punkabilly or, you know, punk rockabilly or depending on your point of view. But I walked in and the old Lanes looked like a 1960s bowling alley, but from like out of the Jetsons. So it was this like retro look, but also this futuristic look. And then there’s this rockabilly band with some people dressed up like they were at a sock hop and it was just like, “what the fuck is going on? (*both laugh*) This is the most amazing thing in the world,” you know? I met a bunch of the people and that very first day while I was there shooting it for the assignment, I was thinking, “you know, I’ve been to dozens of bowling alleys in my life. I’ve done God knows how many car shows, I’d shot God knows how many music venues at that point. And none of it was this, you know? Literally that first day something inside of me was like, “I’m home,” you know? Yeah. You know, it was like, I found my tribe. That’s kind of how it always felt.
Right. I feel like a lot of the folks from Jersey are sort of kindred spirits with the people from the Boston area. Like it feels like I knew immediately from meeting Jared or the Souls or Dave Hause (editor’s note: yes, I know Dave is from Philly, but he’s also all over this book) like those are our people. Like you’re from five or six hours away or whatever, but like, we’re all talking the same language, walking the same footsteps.
Yeah! So I got to tell you a quick, funny story. So I’m living in Florence, Italy, right now. So I’d been doing photography professionally for years. I always wanted to teach, but didn’t have a master’s degree, so I’d just dismiss it. Like “oh, I’m 56 years old. I’m not going back to school.” So two years ago I decided, “well, fuck it.” I gave up my business, moved here and I just finished my master’s degree. And now I’m a professor. I’m a professor of photography here.
That’s awesome! Congratulations!
Thank you. Thank you. But this relates to the Boston/New Jersey thing, because you’re absolutely right. Boston and New Jersey are definitely kindred. But I was here and I was doing a photo workshop someplace and the place was like a photo studio, you know? And a person who worked at the studio come walking through and I looked at him and it was just, there was nothing particular, but the way that, with the way they were dressed, the, you know, the hair, I literally looked at him and I went, “those look like my people.” The next day, the guy comes walking in and he has a shirt on IT X HC.
Oh, funny!
And I literally was like, “what the fuck?” I start talking to him, and on the back of his shirt is like a big circle that says “Italia hardcore.” And I’m like, “dude, if you remember where you got that shirt from, let me know. I’d love to get one.” He comes back after lunch with a shirt for me. He made the shirt. He does Venezia Hardcore in Venice.
Oh, wow!!
You can always spot your tribe.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s amazing. So are you going to stick in Italy for what? Are you based there now essentially?
Well, right now, yes. Everyone keeps asking me like, “oh, so you’re staying for good?” I’m at a point in my life where I don’t need or want a five-year plan. I’ve got one-year plans. You know, it’s like I’m staying for a year. Towards the end of that, I’ll decide if I stay for another. Towards the end of that, I’ll decide if I stay for another. (*both laugh*) You know, I’m enjoying the hell out of the experience. I feel like school was a great experience here and I love Florence, but I would have been an idiot to pass up the opportunity to teach here and have that experience…
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
…and to like just come home straight when I was done with school. So it’s like, yeah, I figured I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.
Were you doing the photojournalism thing and then shooting like rock shows, punk shows or whatever? Or did you start shooting shows and then like expand from there? Shooting punk rock shows doesn’t pay shit, so clearly.
No, no, no. Yeah, no. I started photography in a really weird way. I started off basically doing documentary photography my senior year in college, but I didn’t take any classes in photography in school. I accidentally stumbled into it, which is, which is a wild story. I don’t know that it fits this whole narrative. But I did have a friend of mine in college who was in a punk band based in Harrisburg PA. I went to school in Baltimore, I used to go up with him on the weekends and I’d shoot his band in Harrisburg and then Lancaster, um, they would do, they would do some shows. So I was doing a bit of that. I mean, it’s funny cause The Bouncing Souls, who are (now) good friends of mine, they were one of the first bands I ever shot. I snuck in. I wasn’t actually a photographer really at that point, but I faked a press pass so I could get into the Descendents show in 1996 at The Stone Pony.
Oh, funny!
You know, it was before cell phones or the internet. So I rolled up and they’re like, “Oh, sorry, you’re not on the list.” And I was like, Oh, “hold on, let me go find a pay phone and I’ll call them and see what went wrong.” And they’re like, “go ahead. Don’t worry about it, just go ahead.” (*both laugh*) I totally bullshitted my way. I didn’t know them at the time, but I took some shots of the opening bands just to check my flash and whatever. And the opening band turned out to be The Bouncing Souls.
That’s awesome. Did you like fall in love with that sort of like documenting the scene? Is that sort of the motivation?
Yeah. I got into photography late in life because when I fell into it, I was around 25 or 26, you know ? I wasn’t one of those people that they’re like, “yeah, my grandfather got my first camera when I was six,” right?
Right. Right.
I had been doing art, you know, painting, sculpture, graphic design stuff since I was a kid, but literally from about three or four years old, music was my passion. You know, I tried playing, I tried, you know, I played guitar when I was younger and drums, and I sucked. I was never good. But music was always my number one passion in my life. And then I picked up a camera and the two of them have been riding side by side ever since.
So this is exactly my story.
Yeah?
Yeah, that is exactly my story.
So shooting music was a no-brainer for me, you know? I don’t know how you got started shooting, but I was shooting for newspapers a lot, and I was bored out of my mind, kind of with my own photos. Because they were, they were very much like the vertical shot of a singer, you know? Or like a vertical shot of a guitar player but this hand is cut off. They always wanted to ship vertical for whatever reason. And I had hit a point where I literally felt like I was in a rut with that stuff, you know, specifically music. And I needed to find a way like I’ve every couple of years, two or three years, I would try to break my own habits. You know, like I would force myself for six months only shoot with a 20 millimeter lens, you know?
Yeah!
I mean, even if I was shooting a football game, like, how do you do that? Just to get out of the habit of zooming all the time or whatever. And so I needed to shake that up. And that was, ironically, when I found the Lanes after that first day for the newspaper, that same month, the Bouncing Souls were playing. Now I had not seen them since 1996 when I shot them, because I moved to Arizona for most of the 90s after college. So here I am back to Bouncing Souls are playing. And that was the first show. The first show that I shot them is in the book. That was, I went in there consciously, like, “I’m going to try to do something different, you know, to shoot it differently.” And the way it came out was that from then on, I’ve shot music the same way I shoot documentary photography, because to me it is. I’m not looking for one photo of the singer, one photo of the guitarist. I’m trying to tell the story of this show.
Right!
You know, so that means the crowd, the crowd interaction with the bands, the bands interaction with each other, the after party, the whatever, you know? If I can get backstage, awesome. But it’s about telling this whole story. And it’s a big part of why I did the book the way I did, because I had a couple of professors that were kind of advising me when I was designing it, and they were like, “no, a photo book should be like this.” I’m like, “but this is not a photo book!”
(*both laugh*) Right! Right! No, it’s definitely not. Like, I mean, it is a book with a lot of photography in it, but it’s not, it’s not a photo book. It’s a story book. There’s a narrative.
Thank you. I spent almost two years designing the book, putting it together. My goal was to make it a photo book, a punk zine, a yearbook – a high school yearbook, and a family album. That’s why there’s so many photos of each band instead of one photo of the band, because for me, it’s a story of that show.
Yeah. And I think that like the way that we have sort of run concert photography with Dying Scene, most of the people that have shot for us regularly over the years sort of have a similar view, right? Like they sort of, you’re not just trying to get the best picture of the guitar player doing a kick or whatever. And like, whatever, that’s cool. But there is something different about, I think, shooting punk rock shows than there is about shooting arena rock shows or shooting singer-songwriter shows. Like it’s a different thing.
100%
Punk shows, hardcore shows, barricade-free shows – which the Lanes were – the audience and the stage are all one thing. It’s not jus the band on the stage and lights flashing, it’s like being in the middle of the ocean shooting pictures of everything around you.
Yeah. Well, it’s funny because I’ve shot the big arena shows and I’ve shot the others and I’ve gotten some good stuff. It depends on the show, but, I mean, essentially you and every other photographer are marched in and you’re all standing in a group with the exact same angle and, and the lighting. I mean, as shitty as lighting is at hardcore shows and stuff,that’s where you get to be creative, because the lighting guy is doing the lighting at a stadium show, so you’re all essentially getting the same shot. It’s three songs and you’re out. At the singer-songwriter shows – and this isn’t a knock, because I love listening to it, but from a photographic perspective, you’ve got someone standing at a guitar singing. It’s like, “okay, there’s one shot. There’s one shot. Let’s do a wide shot. I’m done. What the fuck else can I do with it?” Whereas punk show, dear God, like I could have filled every one of those pages in the book with a hundred photos from the show.
Oh, sure. Yeah.
The hardest part of me was like, which crowd surfing and stage diving shots do I edit out? (*both laugh*)
Yeah. Right. Right. It’s funny, speaking of Jared – and part of me wishes I was in Jersey tonight, because he’s doing the thing at Crossroads – but we usually go down to see him there at least once a year when he plays with Ben Nichols. I think we’ve been six or seven years now, and I tend to stand in the same spot, because I’m 6’1”, so when there’s no barricade, I don’t want to stand right in the middle, because I try not to be an asshole. So I get my spot at stage left, then it fills in. And there are definitely times when I look through pictures and think “I have the same picture of Ben making the same face in the same spot like…seven years in a row.” (*both laugh). And I love it and will continue to do it, but it doesn’t always tell the same story that, like, a Hot Water Music or a Bouncing Souls show does there.
Oh no, you’re totally right!
How quickly did you ingrain yourself into the scene at the Lanes? What was that process? Were you just like, “Hey, I’m here and I’m not leaving. I’m your new photographer guy”?
No, no, no. So, it’s funny. I get a kick out of this, ‘cause most people would know me, if I say this, they’re all like, “what?” I’m very introverted and very shy, and really a social idiot. Like if I have, if I have a camera, I’m good. You know?
1000% I’ve always said, it’s my security blanket.
Yeah. Like, when I have the camera, like that’s my room and that’s my stage. If I don’t have the camera, I’m the guy holding up the back wall, you know? The other thing when I first came into Lanes, there was a bunch of people that would take pictures there, and a few of them I knew, and they were already friends with the people who started the Lanes. And I was a new guy. And the last thing I wanted to do was step on toes, you know? You know how sometimes photographers can be territorial…
…oh sure!
I didn’t want that. I certainly would never go in like gangbusters, you know? And it’s funny cause this is a, you know, ‘old man shouting at clouds’ moment, ‘cause I see a lot of the younger people today do this shit, but like, I would never walk into a venue without asking, like, “is there a house photographer?” And, if so, I would introduce myself and ‘Hey, let me know kind of the etiquette or where I should be and make sure that I’m not in your way.’ Like I always would do that. Because I shot at God knows how many venues. I was never like “I’m press, fuck you.” Like I was always like, “Hey, this is your house, you know? I’m a guest here.” That sort of thing. Um, and so it took a while. I mean, I still shot (at the Lanes), but I shot kind of timidly, I guess. I mean, I don’t know how obvious it is…you’re a photographer, so it might be obvious to you, but if you actually go through the whole book, you can see the evolution of my style…and also skill (*both laugh*) You can also see that. You can also see probably the evolution of how comfortable I was.
Yeah. That sounds right.
Cause early on, I didn’t want to be in anyone’s way and I didn’t want to make assumptions and I didn’t, and I certainly didn’t want to step on the toes of the other photographers that I knew who were there first, you know? It just kind of grew over time. And then, you know, some people stopped hanging out there, you know, whatever. It just kind of grew. And I mean, it depends on who you talk to. I’ve always said that I was the unofficial house photographer.
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
I mean, there was nothing official about the Lanes anyway (*both laugh*). So, you know, but some people say I was the house photographer. I was like “I don’t know, there were lots of other photographers, I was just the one that, you know, could get away with a lot, you know? Also because I knew most of the bands, you know? Like, if it was a Souls show or, I mean, a lot of like the Jersey hardcore bands, you know, I would, I’d be on the side of the stage and I would see a shot in my head, like, “oh, that’d be really cool from that side.” But the crowd is packed. So I would just like, I would just give a look and (*nods*) and I’d run across the stage, you know? Or I’d climb in under the drum kit because I want to get a cool angle. Fortunately I had that kind of relationships and reputation where I could just give the drummer like a look. I have a lot of shots like that where I would literally during a show kind of climb under the drum kit and shoot up through the cymbals sort of.
Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. I’ve never even thought of that.
Yeah. Like I would just see the shot in my head, you know, like as it was happening. I’ve always said that I try to, if it’s a band I’ve never seen before, I would not take a picture for the first two, three songs or so, because I needed to learn. I needed to learn their rhythm, and I don’t mean musically. I mean, how they moved, how they interacted with the crowd, you know? And get used to that. But because of that, like watching that, I would start to see shots in my head, like, “oh, this, he’s going to move over here.”
Yeah. Right. Right.
You know? I mean this wasn’t at the Lanes, but there was one time the Souls were doing Stoked For Summer at the Stone Pony.
I’ve shot that a couple times.
Yeah. So we might have run into each other. I haven’t shot in the last few years because I haven’t been around, but yeah,
I haven’t shot it since before COVID, but yeah.
Okay, yeah. I shot it every year before that, so then we definitely ran into each other. But there was one year I was standing on the stage and I’m shooting crowd surfers and I’m watching as someone comes and all these hands come up to him. I’m like, “oh, that’d be a sick fucking shot.” So I pre-focused the lens for a certain distance. I wrapped the strap around my hand and I ran from the back of the stage and launched out into the crowd. And I was in my fifties, my early fifties.
Jesus…
Yeah! I launched out into the crowd with the camera and I shot the whole way down, all these hands coming up into the lens.
That’s…wow. (*both laugh*) I would not have the confidence to do that. Good grief.
That was the last time. Cause I literally like, they carried me back and the bouncers brought me down. And I think I like bumped my back on the barricade and I was just like, “yeah, I’m too, I’m too fucking old for this. (*both laugh*). Good shot though!
How many shows do you figure you shot at the Lanes? Are you anal like me and keep track of every show that you shoot?
I mean, I have the photos from every show! That’s my memory. As my memory goes, I’m just like “oh, when was that?” and just look up the photos. Some of them I shot multiple times, so I haven’t gone through for an exact number, but I think it was around 270 bands.
Wow!
And it’s funny cause doing the book was the first time I was realizing how many I missed. Because I had a full-time job and I was shooting in New York City, so a lot of times I just couldn’t get home in time. Or, you know, I missed the openers and the openers then blew up. The amount of shows that I missed was insane, but I think I shot around 270 bands.
Wow. That’s amazing.
Yeah. When I started editing for the book, it was roughly around a hundred thousand photos that I had to cull down.
Wow…Yeah. I see why it took a couple of years.
Yeah! (*both laugh*)
As somebody who was there for the duration, essentially, of the Lanes being “The Lanes,” how early and/or late in the process did you realize, like, this is going to go away? Like, this is, like, because of Asbury and changing the way that Asbury itself was changing – and is still changing – like, at what point were you like, oh, this isn’t going to last forever?
Um, I don’t know that I accepted it until very close to the end. But probably around 2013-ish – so like a couple years before (the end) – the talk of eminent domain was becoming more real. I could be wrong on the year when it was taken over, but so from 2004 to let’s call it 2013 – the Lanes was owned by the original family who owned it from back in the 1960s. And it was around then that it got bought by a local real estate guy, who my understanding of it was he bought it…so I don’t know how it works in Boston, but in New Jersey, there’s a limited number of liquor licenses.
Yes. Exactly.
And they cost an absolute fortune. And it’s like, (just because) you build a bar, doesn’t mean shit, you can’t have a liquor license, because only so many exist. So he had gotten another place in town, bought the land so they could transfer the liquor license. But when he took it over, it was like, “oh, okay, I’m gonna update this. And I’m gonna do this.” And it was the first time ever that there were bouncers there. Like, juiced up steroid bouncers, like, you know, with necks like this. Then somebody starts moshing and they go grab the kid. And it was like, like, we were the security before. A bunch of kids grew up in mosh pits, we’re the security. And that just meant looking and laughing and jumping in.
Yeah, right, right. And picking each other up when you fell down.
Right. Yeah, yeah. Taking care of each other. And that’s when they built a new stage, which drove me crazy, because it was like, I had dialed in shooting at the Lanes you know, now you change all my sightlines and all the angles. (*both laugh*) That was, I think, when I realized when he took it over, and it was like new ownership, and a lot of things got changed, that I realized, like, yeah, this is, we’re getting near the end. Even at that point, like, it was still fantastic because of the people, but it wasn’t what it was. And then it got flipped again, or new management again…I never knew the inner workings. I never really wanted to, you know, know how the sausage was made.
Yeah, right.
There was a lot of changes over that time. And I’ve never been the guy…I mean, I hope that I was never perceived as that guy. But I’ve never been the guy that walks in and was like, “don’t you know who I am?” Yeah. But after, you know, almost 10 years of being the house photographer, being the regular, you know, because I’ve always called it my living room, I would walk in, and somebody would stop me at the door and ask for my ID and ask for a cover charge. And I’d literally be like “uh, I’m not, I’m not sure what to do here without going, don’t you know who I am?” (*both laugh*)
Yeah, right.
I’m gonna look like an asshole! Like, “no, no, I’m the house photographer. I’m here to shoot the show.” So yeah, it was weird. There’s just, you know, new people working there, new people running it. There were definitely some changes.
Have you been to the new Lanes? Are you one of the people – which I totally understand – that like, that won’t go on principle?
Um, it’s partly on principle. It’s partly because I think it would probably break my heart. You know, I’m not opposed to whatever it is. I mean, I’ve been to many, many clubs over the years that are what it is now. My biggest gripe was they just should have changed the fucking name. You know? It’s not the Asbury Lanes. But they’ve used that and they’ve glommed on to the history when they had nothing to do with the history. They wiped out the history and then use it to market themselves.
Like I said, I’ve been to the new Lanes, but I never went to a show at the old one. As I went in (to the new Lanes) I stood there trying to put myself in the old place. Trying to envision where the stage was and what the vibe was. And the new one definitely seems…I don’t know if gentrified is the right word…
Disneyfied.
Yeah, yeah, for sure!
That’s what I say.
Yeah, it’s like…”I feel like I should be sticking to the floor here. I feel like there should be a hole in the roof there. I feel like the lighting shouldn’t be this awesome at a bowling alley venue, you know?
Yeah, it’s like going around saying you’ve been to CBGB when you hit the one in Newark Airport. (*both laugh*) But by the same token, and you know, I have my personal thoughts on a new Lanes. I’m not a gatekeeper. So like plenty of my friends have been there. I don’t care. I don’t judge. I don’t even know who’s running it. So like, I don’t have anything against them. I have something against the idea of the gentrification of the place. But I don’t know, good on them that they’re still doing music, you know?
The crew of people that you were friendly with, and essentially became like family from the Lanes…are they all people that have kept in touch, like outside the Lanes?
A lot of them. A lot of them I do still keep in touch with. Fortunately, in the process of the book, I got back in touch with a lot. Because that was one of the fun things. I’m a stubborn son of a bitch when I get an idea in my head. And it was something that I had from early on was I wanted it to be kind of everybody’s book. You know, because when I was arguing that this isn’t a photo book, part of that argument was this isn’t Mike McLaughlin‘s photography book, like it wasn’t about me, I wanted to do this for everyone who ever experienced it. And so I wanted them to be a part of it. So having everyone handwrite their memories was hugely important to me. And I would have some people that would like, type something up, and I’d email them back and I’d be like, “No, fucking write it by hand, take a picture of it and send it back.” You know, I want it to be that. That was a big part of it. And it was great getting back in touch with a lot of people. I mean, looking through the photos, I see faces that I haven’t seen or been in touch with since before it closed. And I still would be looking, you know, like looking through a yearbook, like, “oh, man, I love that guy!” Like, you know? So yeah, I mean, I’m hoping a lot of people come to the opening, the gallery opening for it. So because I would love to see so many people that I haven’t, but a lot of us have kept in touch.
I always tell people, I’m not a photographer. I’m somebody who takes pictures because I don’t like I never quite understood the machinations behind photography. People have tried to teach me f-stops. And what like I don’t like my brain doesn’t compute. It doesn’t work that way. And you might as well be teaching me Greek. But so I’m somebody who takes pictures at shows; There are many people who do it much better than I do. And a bunch of years ago, I saw somebody at a show at a little shithole dive bar that I love in Boston. And I told him I might start dialing back on shooting because I’m getting old and whatever. And he looked at me like I had just kicked his dog. Like, “what do you mean you’re going to not do this anymore? Like who’s going to take who’s going to document this stuff? Who’s going to like who’s going to show like proof that we’re doing this like that there is a scene here?” And like, that is exactly what this book is like. (The Lanes) was such an important place and time and like moment in the scene. There aren’t very many places like that around the country, certainly now. It’s such an important, I think, thing to document and chronicle. And I’m so glad that as somebody who didn’t go to this to the Lanes, but who knows a lot of the people who did, like, I’m so glad that this book exists.
Thank you. Thank you so much. That means the world. And it’s funny, because this is going to be me being curmudgeonly, but when I was doing the book, a bunch of people, you know, were like, “well, yeah, this is okay for all the people that know the place, but like, what are you going to do for a wider audience?” And I was like, “I don’t give a fuck about a wider audience!” (*both laugh*) Like, if someone loves music, like you. You had never been there and you’re from Boston, like Oh my God, thank you. I’m so grateful. But I’m not doing this to make money. I’m not doing this to get famous. I’m doing this so that there is that chronicle for the people who live there, you know? If somebody else loves it, that’s awesome.
Yeah. I mean, like, CBGBs, The Lanes had this sort of hallowed ground status. And so few of those places still exist with the level of importance that I think the Lanes had. I mean, the Stone Pony is pretty awesome too. But the Lanes was such a microcosm of both the scene and of Asbury on a larger scale. So I’m glad that somebody was there to capture it and like, show us all. It’s really cool. You did a great job.
Thank you. Thank you. That really means a lot. I do appreciate that.
If you’ve been reading DS for a while, you’ll know that I count myself amongst those who got into the punk and ska scenes of the Boston area in the mid-1990s. Part of what drew a countless number of us to the scene was the anti-racist, anti-fascist messaging and the way kids from all walks […]
If you’ve been reading DS for a while, you’ll know that I count myself amongst those who got into the punk and ska scenes of the Boston area in the mid-1990s. Part of what drew a countless number of us to the scene was the anti-racist, anti-fascist messaging and the way kids from all walks of life could revel together in the chaos, picking each other up when we fell along the way. It’s a little bit of “old man yells at cloud” to lament that the scene has changed so much over the years, but thanks to the good folks at Riot Squad Media – the same crew who brings you the wonderful Camp Punksylvania every summer – there’s a new throwback game in town. It’s called Circuit Breaker, and it’s basically a series of jam-packed, barn-burner shows in and around the Northeast that feature a fine mix of ska and melodic punk bands that serve to give the DIY community a shot in the arm and light – or relight – the way for punks of all ages to keep coming together.
The – dare I say legendary? – downstairs at the Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts’s Central Square was the setting for the maiden voyage of Circuit Breaker. The Middle East – both downstairs and upstairs – is a venue that it felt like I practically lived at for a time, especially during college. I hadn’t been to the larger, downstairs venue since a few years pre-Covid, but before even hitting the bottom of the stairs, it was evident that very little had changed. The low-ceilinged, dimly-lit, no-frills venue was the site of many dozens of punk and ska shows that essentially molded my formative music-loving brain in the mid-late 90s, and seeing Big D and The Kids’ Table frontman David McWane on stage immediately brought me back to that place and time.
There were seven bands on the bill for Circuit Breaker which, for a show with set times that kicked off at around 7pm (6:55pm if we’re being totally accurate), seems bananas and seemed destined at least in my mind to go way over time. In the interest of full disclosure, life obligations and parking kept yours truly from getting to the venue until the 8 o’clock hour, which sadly meant missing sets from Niagara Falls’ Working Class Stiffs and Reading PA’s The What Nows and catching about half of McWane’s alter ego band, Cuidado.
We were there, however, for Dayton, Ohio’s The Raging Nathans. Much to the chagrin of a handful of DS staffers, yours truly had never seen the Nathans prior to this show. That was clearly a mistake on my part, I freely admit. The Nathans rule. With little time to waste in order to help the mammoth lineup keep a tight schedule, the band got right to work with a tight, high-powered set that featured a healthy dose of tracks from their latest full-length, May’s Room For One More (Rad Girlfriend Records).
Next up were The Doped Up Dollies. The Dollies are another brainchild of Big D’s David McWane, but this one finds McWane in the background, mostly on percussion and backing vocals duties. Instead, DupD are fronted by the ultra-talented trio of Brie McWane, Sirae Richardson (pictured right) and Erin MacKenzie, who combine to bring a fun, high-energy soul to their unique double-dutch reggae sound. Their nine-song set kicked off the PMA-infused anthem “Make Your Own Sunshine,” and had the crowd dancing in the pit from the first notes. The McWane/Richardson/MacKenzi trio might be backed by – at my count – an eight-piece band, but their interplay and doo-wop harmonies are very much the engine that keeps it moving, highlighted as always by their interplay on earworms like “Be Free” and “Black Cat.”
The penultimate spot on the bill belonged to a band that is perhaps my favorite new band of the last couple of years, The Kilograms. The band kicked things off with “No Reaction,” a song that appeared on co-frontman Joe Gittleman’s 2024 solo album, Hold Up. After a quick mid-set guitar change to swap out a finicky Telecaster, KG’s co-frontman Sammy Kay took over lead vocal duties on the danceable “Every Street.” This was followed by early single “I Swear” and then a set that leaned heavily on the band’s debut full-length, Beliefs & Thieves, with a slow-burn cover of the Gittleman-penned classic “Lean On Sheena” thrown in for good measure. Guitarist J Duckworth and keyboardist Craig Gorsline serve as spark plugs, constantly rocking and dancing on stage and encouraging the audience to do the same. Extra-special props to fill-in drummer Alex Brander, who was behind the kit for the third time in four sets after also appearing in Cuidado and the Dollies. The band closed their set with a super fun rendition of another Gittleman-penned solo track, “Glimmer.”
Which brings us to the evening’s headliners, none other than The Pietasters. In a fun and playful moment, the Baltimore ska vets started their set with their own rendition of Gittleman’s “Glimmer,” much as they did on the split 7-inch they released together last year. The very first time I saw the Pietasters – nearly 29 years prior to this show – they shared the stage with Gittleman’s old band, so it was a fun full-circle moment for me to catch them sharing a legendary Boston-area venue again. As an added bonus, Gittleman’s old bandmate, Chris Rhodes, was a trombone-wielding Pietaster for the night! After “Glimmer,” the band made their way through another fun and soulful set that was heavy on tracks from their sophomore album (and my favorite one), 1995’s Oolooloo.
All in all, it was really a brilliant evening filled with connection and positivity, the kind of things that prompted so many of us to gravitate to this scene decades ago. In an increasingly dark and negative world, it’s so important to have evenings like this filled with people shining light in the darkness, standing up for the trans kids and immigrants and the working class who are continually trampled on in newer and more horrifying ways. Have a look at a bunch more pictures from the fun and festive evening down below. And make sure to follow the Riot Squad Media crew on social media to keep an eye on where you can find Circuit Breaker popping up next (like Scranton Skaliday’s throwdown in PA next month)!
Once upon a time, Brian Baker played bass in Minor Threat. He then played guitar in Minor Threat and then went back to bass again and that band broke up but not before completely changing the musical landscape for the next several generations. In the meantime, Baker went on to play guitar for Samhain for […]
Once upon a time, Brian Baker played bass in Minor Threat. He then played guitar in Minor Threat and then went back to bass again and that band broke up but not before completely changing the musical landscape for the next several generations. In the meantime, Baker went on to play guitar for Samhain for like a fortnight and was in Government Issue for a little longer and then started Dag Nasty and he went kinda metal in Junkyard and he almost went college radio with REM but instead he came back to the punk rock world by joining Bad Religion when Brett Gurewitz left. Brett of course came back, but Baker stuck around and has for three-plus decades now. (He’s also shredded for bands like Fake Names and Beach Rats and more that I’m sure I’m forgetting. Foxhall Stacks maybe?) Anyway, it’s Bad Religion that has afforded Baker the opportunity to travel the world a few times over. For the last fifteen or so of those years, Baker – like the majority of us – has been accompanied by his cell phone. In his case, it’s an iPhone. Not a fancy iPhone, mind you, but whatever one gets the job done; the job usually of sending texts and taking pictures to mark various interesting places and locations and images.
Fast-forward to November 4th of this year and we find ourselves at the release of The Road (Akashic Books). The book is a collection of a hundred or so of the iPhone images Baker has captured over the years, mostly presented without context. This creates the effect of encouraging the viewer to tell their own story as to what that particular sign was saying, or where that particular building is, or why that particular doll’s eyes look so blank and creepy. As Baker tells it, the goal was never even remotely to have a physical, tangible display of his cell phone pictures. At first, the goal wasn’t even to share them outside the small circle that was their intended recipients. “Initially, I wasn’t even ‘taking pictures,” he explains. “I was just sending a visual text basically, because it’s easier to sent a picture than a text. Half (of this book) is so completely uncontrived that it’s just pictures I was taking to text to someone to tell them where I am. “Where are you?” “Oh, I’m here at the graveyard.” Twenty years later, you go, “well that was a pretty cool picture,” when I was really just trying to tell (Bad Religion bassist Jay) Bentley where I was.”
Eventually, Baker did start to pepper some of his interesting travel pictures on his Instagram page, sprinkled in amongst the Bad Religion/Fake Names/Beach Rats promo flyers and New York Mets fanposts and his delightful “One Guitar In One Minute” series where he – you guessed it – tells the story of one of his guitars in one minute (give or take). It took the repeated insistence of his wife, Victoria, to get Baker to even consider that people might enjoy and even buy a collection of his pictures in book form. It turns out there are more than a few similarities between the way this book came together and the way the first Minor Threat foray into recorded music came to be. “I know that there would have been no Minor Threat records if we hadn’t run into a guy named Don Zientara, who had built his own studio and knew how to record music…sort of,” states Baker. Minor Threat’s Ian Mackaye and Jeff Turner had also famously already started the now iconic Dischord Records, so they already had a label and distribution in house.
And so sure, Baker’s wife was supportive, sure, but as the co-founder and director of Transformer, a long-running visual arts non-profit in Washington DC, Victoria also knows more than a thing or two about the subject matter. She also knew some people who could help make it happen. Enter Jennifer Sakai, book designer and Board President at Transformer. “My wife had said “Hey, Jennifer, you know, you should check out Brian’s Instagram page.” And Jennifer, on her own, made a mock-up just using pictures from my Instagram page and emailed it to me. And I was like, “whoa!” And this is the early stages. It’s not what you’re holding now. But it was just…I had never even thought about it in that way. And most of those pictures aren’t in the finished product, she was using them as placeholders. And I was like, “Jesus, that’s so cool.”
Photo by the author, Boston MA 2014
When it came time to actually commit to producing a physical book and distributing it to the world, Baker also didn’t have to look very far; his former Washington DC elementary schoolmate and current Fake Names bandmate/bassist Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, etc.) also happens to be the same Johnny Temple who founded Brooklyn-based Akashic Books in the late 1990s. “I showed it to him, and I said, “Do you think this is something you’d want to put out?” And he went, “absolutely. I’d love to put it out,” Baker explains. “And that was it. That’s the contract. It’s very, you know, it’s very punk. Akashic is kind of very Dischord-y. They just do what they feel like. There’s no contract, really. It’s just like, “we’ll split the profits 50/50 if there are any, and most of the time there aren’t.”
Once the idea to create a book had solidified, Baker et al got to work determining which photos would actually make the cut for the project. To make life easier, a couple of guardrails were put in place: they had to be cell phone pictures, and they had to be pictures that Baker himself actually took. You don’t have to extend beyond the very first image in the book to see how sometimes that meant there had to be a little creativity involved. “So the first picture in the book is a picture I took in 1975 with a Kodak camera that I’d have to look up,” (editor’s note: we think it was an Instamatic, which is not unlike yours truly’s own first camera that I snuck into the 1997 Warped Tour) he explains. “And I took that picture of my first guitar (a 1965 Epiphone Olympic if you’re keeping score at home) and amp…and then of course, I took a picture of that picture with my iPhone.”
Photo by the author, Boston MA 2019
Baker and I talked at length about the how the path from becoming a punk rock guitar player first and eventually a bona fide punk rock musician runs parallel to the path that runs between an amateur photo taker and an avid photography enthusiast (if not an actual bona fide photographer). “I have no technical knowledge. And I never really never aspired to any. It’s just, you know, it’s just kind of an accident. I have to say much like it’s punk rock,” says Baker. “It’s very punk. Like, I was accidentally in a punk band. I didn’t play bass until I joined (Minor Threat) as a bass player.” Philosophically, it’s similar to the approach he’s taken with photography.
Lest you expect that there’ll be a “One Camera In One Minute” series to come someday, Baker assures us that he is not, in fact a camera guy. “I aspired to be a camera guy,” he explains. “I remember that (first) camera and I found maybe 50 pictures that I took from ages nine through 12 with that camera, but like everything, it just didn’t stick because it was this whole “I’m going to go bring the camera with me and take pictures” thing, and that’s a whole different thing than what this book is.” This was followed by another attempt twenty-odd years later, around the time of joining Bad Religion. “Greg Graffin has been a photographer, most of his life and and is he’s a great photographer. He does a lot of landscape stuff. And he has really nice cameras. He bought me my first – and only – real camera. He bought me a Pentax of some stripe, you know, a professional or semi professional grade, 35 millimeter camera and a couple of lenses when I joined Bad Religion. I thought it was nice, because it’s the first time I’m gonna have a lot of things to take pictures of, because I’m now in this band that is traveling the world on a level that I had never been on. And again, I made a good effort. But I, you know, after about a year, I just didn’t take any more pictures.”
Something did start to change a few years ago, after Baker had gotten into the habit of taking and posting pictures on social media. A few years before the book idea was generated, Baker began the habit of not walking by things that were calling to be photographed. “Something I did up until about 2022, that I would see something cool, and I wouldn’t bother to stop walking and take my phone out of my pocket and take a picture of it. And then sometimes something would be so good, I’d walk three blocks and go, “you really have to go back and take a picture of that,” of whatever the fuck it was. And I realized that this was a healthy thing to do. And whether it’s a part of dealing with my OCD, or spending time during the day, or whatever, I started to consciously not walk by photographs. Doesn’t mean they were good. It’s just never letting opportunities go away.“
**Editor’s Note: The following transcript was edited and condensed for content and clarity’s sake. Yes, really***
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): So thank you for doing this. I have said many times here and other places and to most people that have asked ever that Bad Religion and Minor Threat were definitely my gateway drugs into the world of punk rock. And Bad Religion’s Gray Race tour was my first punk rock show as a wee little high schooler. And so…this has all been your fault.
Brian Baker: Guilty.
I have said that to you. I’ve said it to Jay (Bentley), I have said it to Greg (Graffin); like anybody that asked that Bad Religion and Minor Threat were my gateway drugs into whatever was punk rock. That is when everything in my head went, “oh, this is different. And this is my thing. This is not my dad’s music. This is not like my generation’s version of my dad’s music. This is like this is my thing. These are my people.” It’s been that way for however many years now. So I genuinely appreciate getting to talk to you guys specifically.
Well thank you! It’s been, god, 30 years now? Something like that? 31?
Yeah. My first punk rock show was the Gray Race tour in Boston. So that was April of ’96.
April ’96.
Okay, so almost 30 years ago, which is bananas. Bananas. And it’s really cool to get to talk to you about something other than guitar playing. Because this is I really enjoyed this book. I will hold it up. Not that anybody’s going to see this. I have all my notes in the book already. Like, I love it. This is really fun. It’s a really fun book.
Great. You know, like so many things, I never really set out like “I’m gonna make a book,” you know? It just kind of happened. And the way it turned out, I’m so pleased with it. I don’t really have a rap for this book, because I’m not a book person. But what I know is that there would have been no Minor Threat records if we hadn’t run into a guy named Don Zientara, who had built his own studio and knew how to record music…sort of. (*both laugh*) He had this expertise that was completely foreign to us. And in much like with this book, Jennifer Sakai, who is the woman who put it made a book out of my pictures. And she established this narrative that goes through the book. And it was her skill. I was like, “well, who would want to see this?” Because a lot of these pictures are just from my phone, or they’re so low resolution, they would never work. And it didn’t occur to me that someone who does this professionally would be like, “Oh, no, no, I can make this stuff look great! And we can do this kind of paper… She just turned it from, you know, kind of a weird file of stuff into something that’s really cool to hold and look through. And it kind of has a story. And I’m just so grateful, and I could not have done it if it were not for her.
You’ve been touring the world essentially for four or five decades. I’ve known you as a gear guy, guitar-wise and amp-wise. Were you ever like the camera guy on the road? Or did this really just start like with the iPhone?
I aspired to be a camera guy. And the first picture in the book, the first picture in the book is my first way to skirt the “I took every picture on my phone” rule. Okay, so the first picture in the book is a picture I took in 1975 with a Kodak camera that I’d have to look up. It’s not a Brownie, but it was maybe called an Instamatic? I think if your parents were getting you like a very cheap starter camera. Like I don’t even think it had a focus. I think it was just a, you know, pinhole, you know, for the for lack of a better term. And I took that picture of my first guitar and amp. And then of course, I took a picture of that picture with my iPhone…
Oh, I wondered about that.
Yeah, yeah. With my iPhone three or whatever it was. So it qualified as right from my phone. So I remember that camera and I found maybe 50 pictures that I took from ages nine through 12 with that camera, but like everything, it just didn’t stick because it was this whole “I’m going to go bring the camera with me and take pictures” thing, and that’s a whole different thing than what this book is. This book, half of it is so completely uncontrived that it’s just pictures I was taking to text to someone to tell them where I am.
Yeah, right.
“Where are you?” “Oh, I’m here at the graveyard.” And then 20 years later, you go, “well, that was a pretty cool picture.” I was just trying to tell Bentley where I was. (*both laugh*)
Right.
So, so and with the camera stuff, I had tried in, in Junkyard, I had a video camera that I thought, okay, “well, if I have a video camera, I’ll use it more” or something. And again, like now I’ve got, you know, three 90-minute cassettes of just nothing really important. Like it just became a chore to use the tool. And Greg Graffin…when I joined Bad Religion, Greg Graffin has been a photographer, most of his life and he’s a great photographer. He does a lot of landscape stuff. And he has really nice cameras. He bought me my first – and only – real camera. He bought me a Pentax of some stripe, you know, a professional or semi professional grade, 35 millimeter camera and a couple of lenses when I joined Bad Religion, and I think it was also nice, because it’s the first time I’m gonna have a lot of things to take pictures of, because I’m now in this band that is traveling the world on a level that I had never been on. And again, I made a good effort. But I, you know, after about a year, I just didn’t take any more pictures. And I think it just never became like musical equipment, where I got passionate about the equipment itself, or kept developing. It just never took. And it was only when I had a camera on me at all times, that with that convenience, I started to take pictures of things. And as I just said, like, and initially, I wasn’t even taking pictures, I was, I was just sending, it was like a, you know, a visual text, basically, because it’s easier to send a picture than a text.
So at some level, it seems like I have wrangled with this myself over the years, as somebody who’s taken 10s of 1000s of pictures at concerts, I always shy away from calling myself a photographer, because I think that a photographer means two things: A)that you know what you’re doing; and B) that it’s almost a professional thing, right? Like, like, like, you’re booking, I don’t know, it may and I’ve had people tell me, “No, you’re a photographer.” But like, I have always viewed it as a hobby. I don’t get paid to be a concert photographer, or whatever. I do it because I love it. And because I’m awkward, so I need to something to do with my hands. (*laughs*)
But the terminology is the same as the difference between saying that you’re a musician or a guitar player.
Yeah, right!
And like, I was a guitar player for a very long time. I’ve only been a musician recently. (*both laugh*) But I understand exactly. I don’t think of myself as a photographer. Pictures are great, I love good photography. It’s fun. Photography is great. But I’m yeah, I don’t know, maybe an enthusiast or practitioner. Not, you know, an actual photographer.
Yeah. And so I wondered if you had ever gotten more into it – I don’t want to say professionally – but like learning photography, learning f-stops.
No!!
I have had people try to teach me that, and I always say “you might as well be speaking Klingon. It does not resonate with me. I don’t understand.”
Yeah, I don’t have any of that. I have no technical knowledge. And I never really never aspired to any. It’s just, you know, it’s just kind of an accident. I have to say much like it’s punk rock.
I was just gonna say it’s punk rock.
Yeah, it’s very punk because it’s the same thing…like, I was accidentally in a punk band. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t play bass before in my life. Until I joined a band as a bass player. I’ve never played one before.
Right!
So, you know, why can’t I be a photographer?
Right, exactly.When did you realize that not only do I have a folder of 20,000 pictures in it, or whatever, but like, how does that morph into becoming an actual tangible thing?
Sure!
Well, it was a couple of things. My wife runs a visual arts nonprofit, and with a gallery space in DC called Transformer. And basically, she has been a curator and on the hunt for emerging artists. She has this great eye. And that’s what she does. She’s an art person. And she had told me for a long time, “you know, I think people would buy your pictures. I think that people that these are you have great photographs.” And I went from “you’re out of your mind” to “Yeah, but who cares, you know? That’s what Instagram is for.” I just never took it very seriously. But she was very encouraging. And then I think the real, the real linchpin here was the combination of things. Jennifer Sakai, who, as I said, was the book designer, she is on the board of directors at my wife’s nonprofit. So my wife, you know, had said, “Hey, Jennifer, you know, you should check out Brian’s Instagram page.” And Jennifer, on her own, made a mock-up just using pictures from my Instagram page and emailed it to me. And I was like, “whoa!” And this is the early stages. It’s not what you’re holding now. But it was just…I had never even thought about it in that way. And most of those pictures aren’t in the finished product, she was using them as placeholders. And I was like, “Jesus, that’s so cool.” At this point, this is maybe two or three years ago, where I’m like, kind of a grown-up now. (*both laugh*) I’m a man in his 50s. It’s like, “why the fuck not? Why not?” And then the convenience and the joy is that the bass player in my band Fake Names is Johnny Temple, and he is the founder of Akashic, the publishing company. And he has put out hundreds of books and he has put out books of photographs.
I showed it to him, and I said, “Do you think this is something you’d want to put out?” And he went, “absolutely. I’d love to put it out.” And that was it. That’s the contract. It’s very, you know, it’s very punk. Akashic is kind of very Dischord-y. They just do what they feel like. There’s no contract, really. It’s just like, “we’ll split the profits 50/50 if there are any, and most of the time there aren’t.” I’ve learned that a lot of times, and John doesn’t give a shit because he loves books. And it was just perfect , it just all happened like that. And I’m like, “okay, well, now I’ve gone in two weeks from not having anything to this potential project.” I just leaned into it. And I was like, “yeah, let’s do it. It’d be fun.”
I will say as a plug for Akashic, they have been wonderful to work with, for this and for a variety of other things. We have a contributor, Forrest, who’s based out in Orange County. And he’s a book guy. And so he does all sorts of book reviews and interviews, and I think he’s lined a few things up with Akashic. They’re wonderful to work with. That’s a good group.
Yeah, they’re awesome. I could I could definitely do worse.
So then does it become overwhelming to narrow down what you actually had in, let’s say, the folder on your iPhones? And like, what makes a good picture? And what makes a picture make the cut for the book?
Well, the first thing I had to do is make sure that everything was something I actually took, and wasn’t a screenshot, or forwarded to me from somebody else. All of this stuff is cell phone, but like, a lot of it didn’t have tracers on it. The older stuff in the book, I can’t just open it up and say, “see, November 2009, iPhone 3.” It doesn’t have any language on it at all, so I had to do enough research to make sure that nothing in the book is something I didn’t actually take myself. So that was the fundamental part. I thought “I have to have some guardrail here. So it has to be from when I first got a camera phone,” which happened to be that iPhone. I wasn’t brand loyal. It just was, that’s the one I had. And so once that was done, I recognized that Jennifer knew what the fuck she was doing. And there were photos in there that I may not have picked. But when I saw the way she was using them to talk, to create a narrative… I did not initially understand the flow of this entire piece, I was still looking at “oh, cool picture of me with Bruce Dickinson! Oh, wait, I didn’t take that.” I mean, all of that stuff. And so, I didn’t just nitpick. I mean, I just made some swaps after I started to really understand her vision. I swapped some things out with that in mind. And I think one of the benefits of this is because it’s stuff I took, it isn’t what what, you know, “hey, it’s the rock book from Brian Baker!”
Totally.
“It’s like, it’s not, you know, “here’s an enormous crowd in Barcelona! Here’s me and Axl Rose! Here’s me and Dave Grohl!” It’s none of that, because I didn’t do any of it. The people who do show up in it with me is because I’m holding the camera.
I was gonna say there are very few selfies, there are a few pictures of you. There’s the one on the bicycle, but there are very few other selfies. So it’s a book by Brian Baker on the road, but it’s not just a book of you.
I do recall cutting down on some of the selfies. I didn’t want them to be too many of them. But I also understood what Jennifer did. The way she used them was cool. And also, I mean, if you have a picture of yourself and Vinny Stigma, that’s as good as the picture that I have of me and Vinny Stigma…(*both laugh*) And by “good” I mean how cool Stigma looks…(*both laugh*) You put it in the book. It’s fucking Stigma!
Right! Right!
I have one of Roger (Miret) too. I can’t wait till book two because I have got a shot from that same day with Roger that’s awesome too, but I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t go full on East Coast. I have to respect the whole country.
I have taken only a handful of selfies with music people over the years because I like to just be in the background or whatever. But one of my favorite pictures …and I printed it out for this occasion, and it would be in my book if I ever did a book… is you and I in Providence, Rhode Island at an outdoor festival in 2019. I say that we were wearing the same shoes and said “oh, can we take a picture?”
Photo by the author, Providence RI 2019
I remember this!
It’s one of my favorite pictures. I love it. And especially because three people know what it is, you, me and my wife (*both laugh*).
Yeah, that’s great. That would have made it into the book for sure.
And like, to me, it tells a story. And it’s a story that three people remember. I love it. Yeah, that will go in the book someday, which…
Well I know a guy with a publishing house… (*both laugh*)
Yeah, it just seems so daunting. Like trying to wrap my head around you going through pictures and figuring out “yes, no, maybe; yes, no, maybe.” It seems overwhelming to me. And to me, that would be enough to be like, “you know, I don’t want to do it.” Did you have those moments, or was it just like, full steam ahead once you did it?
Well, I think I’m not going through this because I hadn’t been taking pictures purposely, really, for a very long time. I really didn’t have to sort through 20,000 images. Let’s face it, I probably had to sort through 2000. And half of them immediately, were not going to be right, because they just weren’t. They didn’t even fit the criteria. So it wasn’t that big a deal. I also just have favorites. I don’t know. I mean, I guess that I’ve been told by people who have gotten the book who are like “Oh, I didn’t know you took pictures; you have a really good eye.” And I was like, “Well, I don’t even know what that means. But thank you.” And I think it just means that I look at a picture and go, I like that one better. And that’s it. And I just say that one’s better. I don’t know why it’s better. I don’t know what makes it better. Again, I’m just a, you know, just a kid with a phone, to oversimplify it a little. It’s just a feeling I get. It’s the same feeling when I’m writing a Dag Nasty song. It’s like you have three riffs…“does this one work? Is this good? No, but this one’s good. Well, that’s gonna be the riff, and that’s just how it is.”
Yeah. And I appreciate that. I do think that you have a good eye. And yet I’ve never necessarily known how to quantify what a good eye is. And I think that when you try to start quantifying what a good eye is, like, you lose some of the magic.
So maybe this all links to playing guitar, and maybe punk guitar specifically, because there’s so little structure involved with it. I’m sure there’s more expressive, ruleless versions of guitar than within the punk genre, because it does tend to have its own guardrails, but nevertheless, being a self-taught or not trained musician, and yet this stuff comes out. I mean, like, you think anyone told Bob Mould how to play guitar? I don’t think so. But how unbelievably beautiful and Bob Mould his guitar playing is, it’s just immediately identifiable. That’s just a thing; an intangible. And I think this is what an eye might be with a photographer. It’s just something. It just happens. You just know.
Are all of these pictures from prior to when you made the decision to put the book out? Or were any of these pictures taken let’s say since two years ago or whatever?
That’s a great question. And should actually prepare because I’m going to do a number of these conversations. The only one I’m aware of – and it’s because I’ve had to talk about it – is there is a picture of a stack of Les Paul Juniors. I know that I took that because I knew that I was doing a book. It’s a picture of Johnny Two Bags and my and Mike Dimkich’s guitars from the Bad Religion/Social Distortion tour from the summer of 2024.
I took a lot of pictures of those guitars on stage.
Right. And so I knew I had this book in in the works. I don’t remember exactly what the status was, but I know that when I when I found out that we were going to tour with Social Distortion, independent of the book, I’m like, “Oh, my God, I finally get to take a picture of all these guitars together.” Because I’m great friends with Johnny, and he has these beautiful instruments. It’s like, this is gonna be so cool. We’re gonna have all these vintage guitars together that are also punk vintage; like fucked up vintage guitars. And I must have taken 30 pictures that wound up being that. I mean, it was like the third day of the tour. And (in the picture) these guitars are all stacked up on a shipping pallet. There was a shipping pallet like by where the trucks were loading. And I’m like, “Oh, that would be really cool.” And I’m just like, “let’s go.” I found Johnny and Mike and was like, “grab your guitars and just go” and I took that picture. The inside of one of the semis was empty, because they loaded all the gear out of it, and so I kind of made it look like the guitars were just sort of thrown down in the semi. I did a lot of different setups, maybe three or four different setups, and that’s the one I wound up keeping. And I just I think it’s my favorite picture in the book. And also, because it’s so cool. It’s Johnny and Mike.
Yeah, it’s awesome. I mean, it makes me nervous as a pretend guitar aficionado, like, “Oh, that makes me nervous. That’s so much so much awesome gear.”
But they’re just tools. And also, it’s not like I threw them there. I gently put them down.
No but it looks like they’re just toothpicks that fell on the floor. But I did wonder that if knowing that there’s a book coming, I’m assuming you have still taken pictures, even though all of these pictures were submitted, but does that change what you take pictures of?
No.
And it hasn’t changed the way your brain works that way?
No, it hasn’t. But because I think that I had made a change, and this is definitely prior…for the purposes of this discussion, let’s just say that I knew that there was going to be a book out in the beginning of 2024. I don’t recall, but let’s just say that that’s when I finally started to talk about doing it. Well, I know that for a couple of years prior to that, I consciously had started making myself not walk by photographs. And this is something I did up until about 2022, that I would see something cool, and I wouldn’t bother to stop walking and take my phone out of my pocket and take a picture of it. And then sometimes something would be so good, I’d walk three blocks and go, “you really have to go back and take a picture of that,” of whatever the fuck it was. And I realized that this was a healthy thing to do. And whether it’s a part of just, you know, dealing with my OCD, or spending time during the day, or whatever, I started to consciously not walk by photographs. Doesn’t mean they were good. It’s just never letting opportunities go away. And so that was definitely happening long before Jennifer made a mock-up of my Instagram page. But it wasn’t for my Instagram page. I’ve never really thought of that as like…I’m not a social media maven. I don’t have a brand. That page has never been like, “this is my ticket out of here, man!” (*both laugh*) Like, “Hey, Graffin, man, I don’t need your fancy words!” (*both laugh*) That was always just sort of like a communication device. Again, I just never really took it seriously. So I wasn’t amassing stuff for public consumption is what I’m saying. I just took pictures anyway. But for a few years prior to deciding to do this book, I was trying to not miss anything for whatever that’s worth.
Maybe that’s where the switch flips from “somebody who takes pictures” to “somebody who’s a photographer,” right?
Possibly.
Maybe that decision is like the circuitry rewiring.
It could be. And that’s true. Maybe it’s when you’re playing guitar and then one day you start to make up your own songs.
Yeah, right.
And you’re like, “oh, I should remember that riff.” I mean, I just see so many parallels in the way I learned to be a guitar player and then a musician with this photography thing. With photography, I’m still in the stage where I’m like in the band after Minor Threat (*both laugh*). Like I’m in like Government Issue as a photographer. Like maybe I’m going to be in Samhain for two weeks right about now, you know, in my personal timeline. (*both laugh*)
This hasn’t made you want to invest in like a fancy Sony mirrorless camera to do another version of this?
I don’t know. You know, I have no desire to get another camera or another phone. And my phone, my current phone, is the iPhone 13 Mini because they’re so easy. And I know now that it’s old enough where it’s starting to like do weird things and you can’t buy them anymore. Again, I’m not a phone person, so I’ve never been like “the next phone’s out!” It’s like I get a new one when the old one, when this technology will no longer let me us it.
You and me both.
Yeah, exactly. So I know the next one I get, the camera is going to be way better. But since I don’t really manipulate, like I don’t know what that means. I’m not going out to look for a film camera or a, you know, a good digital camera. Like I can’t even… I can’t.
It’s too much, as somebody who pretends to be a photographer. It’s too much.
It’s too much. And I’d never use it, you know?
Yeah. And then it becomes a thing, and then you’re conscious about it.
Here’s how little I’m helping myself as a photographer…This is great. I went to a Mets game with Glen E. Friedman, who I’ve known forever, about just before there was a physical copy of the book. And I went to the Mets game with Glen. We watched a baseball game. It takes a long time to watch a baseball game.
Less than it used to. But yes, it does.
Right. And I was going home. I think we blew it out. We were winning and I left in probably like the eighth inning. And on the way home, I realized that not only had I not mentioned to Glen that I had made a photo book, but I had not asked Glenn about taking pictures. I was sitting next to my favorite punk photographer…(*both laugh*)…Who is insanely talented. I didn’t ask him one question. (*both laugh*) I mean, next time I hang out with Glenn, I’m going to pepper him with shit.. But that’s how detached I am from being like a quote photographer is I had this incredible opportunity. It’s like going to dinner with Eddie Van Halen. “And what strings do you use?” Like, I just didn’t. I was so dumb. Not going to miss that again.
I was going to say, I wonder if he appreciates that, because I’m sure everybody talks to him about being a photographer.
Yeah, but he’s cool.
I think if you’re buddies…
Yeah. Yeah. I think he’d be cool. I wish I told him that I had a book. I haven’t even sent him one, actually. I should probably.
So there are a couple of pictures in the book that I wanted to talk about. One of my favorites, because I have almost an identical picture, is Bruce’s ’52 Nocaster or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah.
In Freehold. I love that. And I didn’t know it was there the time that I saw it. And as a person who historically has gone to Asbury Park for music and like whose parents are still dyed-in-the-wool Springsteen fans, I didn’t know that guitar was there. And I was like, oh, my God.
And I didn’t know it was there. And I’d lived here for probably four years. And then I found out that it’s on 10th Avenue.
Yeah.
And it’s like “oh, of course it is. The Freeze Out.”
Right. Yeah.
Because I’m not really very versed in Springsteen. But of course, now that I’ve lived in…well, I live in Neptune, but we just call Asbury Park.
Right, it’s close enough.
It’s kind of like you being in Boston, you know?
Exactly.
So being in Asbury Park for eight years, of course, I feel that I am very remiss in my duties; my Springsteen knowledge. But I just haven’t, you know…saxophones, you know? (*both laugh*) I like punk.
I get it. I get it. To me, it was the synthesizer, the keys, like in the Born In The USA era. I did this podcast recently where they have you pick four records from essentially each quarter of your life. What was the defining record from that quarter? And for me, the first quarter of my life, the first I called it the first 11 years, was Born In The USA, because that album was on all the time in my house. My parents went to Giant Stadium to see Springsteen on that tour. It was huge. And I have tried to listen to it in years since and I don’t really like it at all. I don’t like production on it, I don’t like the keyboard. “Born In The USA” would be such a good song if it didn’t have that ham-fisted (*hums synth line*) in it. Like, it’s so I can’t listen to it.
Good lyrics.
Sure.
You know, I mean, I just look at it that way. Like, I can’t really listen to it either. But I get why it’s good. And I’m glad it’s out there. It’s like Dylan for me, or probably Geddy Lee for people, except for, you know, maybe I wouldn’t relate. (*both laugh*)
I love Geddy Lee myself.
Yeah, you know what I mean? But (Bruce) is a very nice man, and he does great stuff for the community. And, you know, he’s not taking any shit. I like that, too.
I love it. Yeah, I love it. There are a lot of pictures in here of busts of…
Right! I collect busts.
Oh, really?
I collect busts, but I didn’t realize I collected busts until I just happened to have a lot of them. And now I know I collect them. And that means that, you know, with like the cutoff is like 100 bucks. I just think they’re cool. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of DC, growing up in DC, that kind of, you know, retro Greco thing. I mean, looking at right now talking to you, I have a bust of Teddy Roosevelt.
Oh, funny.
Sitting right next to my computer. And I mean, you could do worse for presidents.
Yeah, absolutely.
He had something going on, but he’s like many of them, a product of their time. (*both laugh*) But yeah, and so there are a lot of pictures of graveyards and busts and stuff. I just my eyes just love it. I just love them.
Yeah, there’s something compelling about a lot of them. And there’s one, I didn’t put a sticky on that one, but it almost looks like somebody’s death mask, right? That had been painted some and I forget, I feel like it’s towards the beginning. So I’ll flip and talk and stall…but I don’t think it was a death mask, but it’s sort of like that. I’ve always been sort of drawn to that sort of imagery myself.
That mask that you’re talking about is made of plaster. I have had that piece, probably 30 or 40 years. I bought it at a thrift store or yard sale. And I don’t know what its purpose was, you know, like theater kids practice or something. It was just some… I don’t know what it was. Obviously amateur. I don’t think it’s supposed to be artwork. I think it might have been from some kind of production.
It’s like vaguely John Waters looking.
Yeah! I just found it and I’ve just kind of carted around, you know? It used to be in like my room at the group house and eventually made it all the way to my grown-up house in the garage. Does it have glasses on it? Because …
I don’t feel like it does. No, it is not wearing glasses.
Okay, in real life it does, because the glasses that are on it are my old glasses from Minor Threat.
Oh, funny! So the glasses aren’t supposed to go with it.
No.
That’s funny. Yeah, I like that. I like, I like your eye. And I like that all these pictures were taken just as a means of capturing images that were cool to you without the point of a book behind it. Because it really seems like authentic and punk rock that way. This is it’s really fun to go back and look at. Yeah, I don’t always say that about photography books.
Yeah, well, great. I’m really glad. And I kind of agree with you. It’s like, I just don’t. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it. But it is authentic in punk rock. Because it’s just completely not contrived. And it was for no purpose other than to exist. Yeah it’s just cool, and I’m so grateful that I had some friends who could help me and make it into something because, again, there’d be none of these early punk records if there weren’t people who were like, “hey, I’m interested in recording music.” You know, where would people be?
Right! Thank you for doing this.
My pleasure. My pleasure.
I have seen the list of people that you’re chatting with. Walt and Ian and Damian and Brett Gurewitz, and to pretend I’m even tangentially in that class is good for my ego.
So you’re not just tangentially in that class, you’re in that class!
Baltimore indie rockers Underlined Passages are back with a brand new, eight song album. It’s called The Accelerationists, and the band hooked up with the iconic J Robbins to do the honors. Here’s what the band had to say about the album: The record’s influences include the failed futurism of The Long Boom and the stark realism of […]
Baltimore indie rockers Underlined Passages are back with a brand new, eight song album. It’s called The Accelerationists, and the band hooked up with the iconic J Robbins to do the honors. Here’s what the band had to say about the album:
The record’s influences include the failed futurism of The Long Boom and the stark realism of Adam Curtis’ HyperNormalisation. These references shape the tone, but the songs remain deeply personal. Tracks like “Endsong,” “Heywood Floyd,” and “Remainder” reflect both societal pressure and the private cost of acceleration. The cover of “La Dolly Vita (Cresyl Mix)” offers a link to the 1990s underground that shaped the band’s identity, while new originals like “Flaxxon” and “Somelin” expand their range with restraint and defiance.
The Accelerationists is due out October 17th on Mint 400 Records. To whet your appetite, we’re stoked to bring you the video for lead single – the aforementioned “Heywood Floyd” – down below! Check it!
Back at the close of the 1990s, recent Epitaph Records signees Bouncing Souls and H2O teamed up for a run of dates that the former affectionately referred to as the East Coast Fuck U! tour. More than a quarter-century later both bands have changed record labels and drummers (Souls’ Shal Khichi was replaced by Mike […]
Back at the close of the 1990s, recent Epitaph Records signees Bouncing Souls and H2O teamed up for a run of dates that the former affectionately referred to as the East Coast Fuck U! tour. More than a quarter-century later both bands have changed record labels and drummers (Souls’ Shal Khichi was replaced by Mike McDermott in 2000 and then by Hot Water Music’s George Rebelo in 2013; H2O frontman Toby Morse’s son Max took over drum duties for his pops’s band from Todd Friend a couple years back) – the two powerhouse punk and hardcore stalwarts teamed up for another go at it. The 2025 version of the East Coast! Fuck You! tour was broken into four legs spread out over the bulk of the year, with the Northeast run setting things off in Boston on 9/18/25. Along for the ride on this leg of the tour were Chicago icons Smoking Popes and the comparative upstart, high-energy ska-punk machine that is JER. The result was a celebration that even though the bands in the collective lineup have been plying their punk rock wares for over a combined century, they can still unite to pull off one of the most fun and intense nights of the show-going year.
JER – the band – kicked the evening off at Boston’s 1000-capacity Royale nightclub at 7pm sharp. JER – the band’s leader, perhaps best known for their trombone duties in We Are The Union or, more likely, for Skatune Network – commented early in the set that this marked the first time that the current JER touring lineup (which includes Emily Williams and Ricky Weber and Esteban Flores and Elwood Bond) had played together, though you’d never know it given how tightly they wove through a setlist that included bangers like “Bothered” and “Silence Is Violence” and personal favorite “Tryin, I Really Am.”
Speaking of bands with fairly new lineups, Smoking Popes were next out of the chute. Longtime bandleader Josh Caterer was joined on this run by Ruben Baird on bass and Jack Sibilski on guitar as he has been for the last several years since his brothers Matt and Eli opted out of large-scale touring. Longtime Popes drummer Mike Felumlee also sat out this run of shows, meaning that some time Josh Caterer collaborator John Perrin was manning the kit for the time being. I suppose it says something about the strength of the lineup when a band as esteemed as the Popes are allotted a thirty-minute, second-of-four spot on the bill, so they wasted no time in making their mark on the evening. The new-look quartet ripped into “Golden Moment” from this year’s Lovely Stuff to set the tone for their set, and never really let off the accelerator for the duration of their eight-song set. “Welcome To Janesville” from 2008’s Stay Down was a pleasant surprise, as was what I think was the live debut of my personal favorite Lovely Stuff track, “Never Gonna Break.”
Everyone’s favorite purveyors of hardcore PMA, H2O, occupied the direct support slot. I’ve said a bunch of times on this site that I’ve never been much of “a hardcore kid,” but I’ve always had a soft spot for H2O’s sense of melody and, of course, PMA. The band kicked things off with an Ozzyfied rendition of their anthemic “5 Yr Plan” that brought the first of many crowd surfers to the front of the barricade-less pit. Now in that situation, one’s only real choice is to get up on stage, rock out for a second or two, and stage dive back into the abyss. It’s worth mentioning I suppose that a good number of attendees at a Bouncing Souls/H2O/Smoking Popes show circa 2025 – myself very much included – are well above what would have been their prime fighting weights had the same tour occurred in 1997, so this made for more than a handful of awkward half-leaps into a portion of the crowd that didn’t seem overly willing andor able to catch their plus-sized show-going brethren. Perhaps many of us should start taking fitness lessons from longtime H2O bassist Adam Blake. Anyway, the band stayed pretty much to the hits, plowing through a dozen songs that came mostly from their early self-titled-Thicker Than Water – F.T.T.W. run of records. This was very much a set for the old heads to revel in the camaraderie and the community that come with the territory in an H2O set, especially in their old northeast stomping grounds.
Which brings us to the band of the hour, the incomparable Bouncing Souls. I know I’ve said it a ton on these pages over the last decade, but I genuinely feel like the Souls continue to get not only better and better, but more and more important in the annals of punk rock history. They continue to set an example not only to the younger generations but to their peers about how you can continue to grow as a band and navigate the tumultuous waters of the 21st-century music industry while still staying vital and not losing so much as a mile per hour off your musical fastball (ankle injuries be damned). “Hopeless Romantic” kicked things off in epic fashion, instantly building off the frenzy that H2O really got started with their set. The barrage continued with “E.C.F.U.” and “Manthem,” the latter of which prompted frontman Greg Attonito to give the crowd a reminder that when jumping from the stage into the crowd, it’s best to do so to an area of the crowd in which there’s a crowd to actually catch you.
Souls’s guitarist Pete Steinkopf played most of the set propped against a chair, his right leg in a walking boot after a recent injury – not unlike Attonito’s own soccer injury that had him similarly booted up late last year, through and including the Souls’ epic Home For The Holidays run. The rhythm section of Bryan Keinlen and George Rebelo remain as locked in as ever, keeping the engine pinned full-steam-ahead without careening things out of control. The twenty-five-song set included a great mix from across the band’s three-plus decade career, including new tracks “United” and “Power,” the latter of which wouldn’t be officially released for streaming purposes until the following day. (Also, fun fact, I think yours truly appears ever-so-briefly in the “United” video…see if you can spot me!) What I guess we’d call the main set closed with “The Freaks, Nerds and Romantics,” but instead of taking an encore, Attonito grabbed the acoustic guitar for a rendition of “Ghosts On The Boardwalk” before being rejoined by the rest of the crew midway through “Ship In A Bottle.” The crowd-favorite anthems “True Believers” and “Gone” brought the evening to a close in singalong fashion, once again proving the point that with a little love and unity, we can collectively find some light in the ever-increasing darkness.
Ian Robinson – the artist better known as Black Guy Fawkes – is back with a brand new record, The Misery Suite. Due out next Friday (September 19th) on Asbestos Records, The Misery Suite marks Robinson’s latest full-length under the Black Guy Fawkes moniker. It’s chock-full of guest appearances by heavy hitting familiar names like […]
Ian Robinson – the artist better known as Black Guy Fawkes – is back with a brand new record, The Misery Suite. Due out next Friday (September 19th) on Asbestos Records, The Misery Suitemarks Robinson’s latest full-length under the Black Guy Fawkes moniker. It’s chock-full of guest appearances by heavy hitting familiar names like Angelo Moore and Dave Hause and Linh Le and Kayleigh Goldsworthy and Ian “The Punk Cellist” Legge and many more. Most importantly, however, the album finds Robinson sharpening his claws to finer points than ever before, bringing his songwriting to new heights.
To hear Robinson tell it in the literature that accompanied early announcements of the album, The Misery Suite draws its name from the room that Robinson used as a space for both “brooding” and for engaging in therapy sessions. Engaging in therapy was a new endeavor for Robinson in early 2023, and it very much informs both the process that crafted the record, and the outcome of the record itself in ways that are hugely beneficial to both the art and the artist.
The Misery Suite begins with the tick-tocking of an analog clock. It’s a fitting introduction to album-opener “Beginning Of The End.” Based on the listener’s headspace, the clock plays as either warning that we’re running out of time, or as the predecessor to an alarm, a pending wake-up call that’s about to jolt you into action. Set over a simple four/four alternating chord pattern, the verses and the first of many anthemic choruses on “Beginning Of The End” have us wondering; has a lifestyle of bad choices and mistakes and missteps and transgressions has doomed us to oblivion? Or, perhaps, is there a point to all of this; a way to pull ourselves out of a tailspin with sights set on a redemptive arc. Therein lies the journey we’re about to embark on over the course of the next nine tracks.
This existential struggle is at the core of the album’s recurring theme. “Cause For Alarm” is full of the type of fear, doubt and insecurity that lead many people to a breaking point, or at least to a decision point. “I think I’m breaking down/Cuz I don’t know fucking how to make this lifestyle work” is the type of reflection that can push one to find help, or to make perhaps a more nefarious jump into the abyss of their choosing. “Fear Of Faith,” featuring the incomparable human dynamo that is Linh Le (Bad Cop Bad Cop), is the first big car-crash of a punk rock song. Set over a shuffling tempo, it finds Robinson – and Le – and really, all of us, asking the difficult questions about where exactly we’re supposed to turn for guidance and hope if there is no sign that traditional measures have worked in the past. “The rosary and all its beads// won’t help me get my wants and needs…there’s no sign that this cross will help me get back all I’ve lost” is a sign that maybe we’re not necessarily in this struggle alone, but that we’re going to have to search a little farther and wider for strength. It’s also chock-full of the kinds of brilliant and layered harmonies that have been one of Bad Cop’s calling cards for a decade now.
“Little Black Storm Clout” is a mid-tempo story of alienation and abandonment with a gigantic sing-along, where we all, sweaty arms linked in basement punk show camaraderie, shout along at the top of our collective lungs, wondering what we’ll have to do to be accepted for who – and how – we are. “Disposable” brings Side A of The Misery Suite to a close in tender, acoustic-driven fashion, and features our first of two back-to-back Punk Cellist appearances. It’s a somber track with an almost hypnotic recurring guitar melody, and it once again laments feeling like a castoff, like an outcast who’s been left behind by friends or family or society or all of the above.
“Water & Wine” starts off Side B with a bit of hope. It’s the first real moment of change; the first real moment that the reflection and negative self-talk we might have engaged in in Side A has a counter-balance. “You’re not alone, you’re just misplaced…don’t forget, you’re unforgettable.” It’s got another big singalong outro, which creates the realization that those moments that we’ve spent together in those sweaty punk rock rooms are the thread, the something bigger that unites us, the collective that can help us realize we’re not alone. “Racial Battle Fatigue” is another car crash of a song with a giant, wailing guitar woven in and out, though it’s also the first track that probably qualifies as traditional “folk punk” in the truest sense of the term. It’s a razor-sharp dart aimed directly at the forces in this country that continue to treat minorities as other, as second-class citizens, and as needing to act or think or perform in a certain type of deferential way in order to be something close to accepted. “Glass Houses” might be the album’s high-water mark. Featuring writing – and soaring vocals – from Lauren Kashan (ex-Sharptooth) it’s a massive, stadium-filling rock track with super tight percussion, a slow, chunky breakdown, and Ian’s blood-curdling wail in the bridge. It makes this semi-reformed ex-nu-metal kid’s heart happy. “This Radio” is more of a traditional pop-inspired rock song, the perfect place to feature guest vocals by the great Dave Hause. Dedicated to “the punks, the freaks, the in-betweens,” it continues the redemptive arc in a manner that is so familiar to many a listener; finding solace in music. Finding inspiration to just keep going, to maybe not be perfect but to at least make progress in a way that buys you some time.
“Spotlight” brings the album to a close in a manner that…well, if “Glass Houses” isn’t the high-water mark it’s only because “Spotlight” is. It starts out solo and acoustic before kicking in a massive, Midwest emo riff-inspired verse. Lyrically, it’s a bit of a tale of the struggle that is therapy. “It’s so hard to hold a spotlight on things that keep you up at night.” The album and the process and the journey are not for the faint of heart. The work is hard and it’s messy but it’s cathartic and ultimately freeing. The kind of narrative that only comes when we’re razor sharp in our focus and not afraid to call out bullshit, even when that bullshit comes from elsewhere in the scene or, as is especially the case on The Misery Suite, from the reflections when we look in the mirror.
Dave Hause has had a good summer. Since he’s been off the road for the bulk of the calendar’s warmest quarter, one could argue that by some metrics, it’s been a comparatively quiet summer given his normal line of work. That said, the California transplant has been busy at home with his twin boys – […]
Since he’s been off the road for the bulk of the calendar’s warmest quarter, one could argue that by some metrics, it’s been a comparatively quiet summer given his normal line of work. That said, the California transplant has been busy at home with his twin boys – Harrison and Smith – doing all of the things that you do as a dad of kids who are about to enter first grade. Days filled with music and superheroes and lamenting the pending fall of democracy (in an age-appropriate way, naturally) and, if you’re a punk rock dad of a certain age, teaching them skateboarding. There are a lot of lessons to be taught – and learned – when trying to tutor the younger generation on the fine art of dropping in on a v-bowl or how to pull off your first ollie. This is particularly true when your audience is too young to know better or to be scared of the dangers inherent in barreling full-speed down a concrete ramp. Lessons about learning when to kick and when to push and when to coast; lessons in patience and resilience and balance and how to stay fearless and how to dodge obstacles and how to be determined and how to adapt to new and undulating terrain and especially how to fall in a way that minimizes disaster and keeps you motivated to not only not quit but to do better the next time and the time after that and the tome after that and so on.
As the boys will no doubt begin to understand as they grow up, those lessons that dad imparted through endless summer days down at the skate park are no doubt translatable to life that exists off of four polyurethane wheels. Those lessons are especially poignant when you’re a dad who is on the other side of forty and who has spent more than two decades making a living as a musician to the left of the dial; hauling gear, changing strings, living out of vans and suitcases, trying to continually write songs that are thoughtful and poignant and still catchy enough to be able to continue putting coins in the dual college fund tip jars.
On September 26th – the first Friday of fall – Hause will release his latest studio full-length. Entitled …And The Mermaid, the record marks the seventh of his solo career (we’re not counting the Hearses/Versus/Curses trio obviously – more on that later). But just as being the father to soon-to-be seven-year-old boys has found Hause returning to the skateboard-heavy roots of a past life, soon-to-be-released album seven follows a similar path. Rather than rest on the laurels that his last few Americana-tinged, singer/songwriter-heavy albums have provided, …And The Mermaid finds Hause more charged up and leaning back into an old familiar role: front man of a punk-rock-infused rock and roll band. “(This album) is the first one in a while that’s unabashedly rock and roll,” Hause explains. “I’m excited to play it live. I’m excited to put the band back out on the road.”
The idea of leaning into the high-energy, full-band rock and roll thing again stems from a few different places. One was falling in love with the band IDLES in recent years, and all of the passion and intensity that they bring. Two was introducing his boys to the world of punk rock through what I guess we’d call “classic” bands at this point like Green Day and Rancid and Bouncing Souls. And three, perhaps most poignantly, was from a conversation with friend and fellow punk rock songwriter Dan Andriano. The conversation came after Hause nudged Andriano into going to see a singer/songwriter who was coming to town. While Andriano enjoyed the show, his positive feedback came with a caveat to Hause: “If I see you make a show like that, I’m going to be bummed,” stated the Alkaline Trio bassist. As Hause tells it, Andriano elaborated: “You have a certain energy and a punk rock edge, even when you’re fingerpicking and playing quietly. That is so unique to you. Don’t lose that. Whatever you do, don’t lose that. Don’t have like a mild, chill show. That’s just not what I’m here for when it comes to you.”
The Mermaid (L-R): Kevin Conroy, Tim Hause, Dave Hause, Luke Preston, Mark Masefield. Photo by Jesse DeFlorio
The aforementioned band that Hause will be firing up and putting back out on the road again, obviously, is better known as The Mermaid. When Hause started playing shows with a backing band years ago, the idea was effectively to compile a lineup of musician friends based on their need and availability; a rotating project that might produce a different show every time they came through your town. “I think that’s why it’s always been called the Mermaid,” he states. “It feels like an oasis; a mirage; something you see and you can almost touch and then it swims away.” That concept has changed a little bit in recent years. With few exceptions, the core of The Mermaid has calcified around Hause’s brother and longtime songwriting partner Tim on guitar, increasingtly frequent collaborators Mark Masefield on keys and Luke Preston on bass, and the incredibly versatile and always rock steady Kevin Conroy on drums. It’s a group that came together in the live format and developed a high-energy chemistry on the road. While Hause is no doubt aware of the positive chemistry the band has together on his own, some of that was solidified during a run of shows last year with the iconic Bouncing Souls. Hause was taken under the wing of the Souls crew decades ago at this point, and while he might be the elder statesman of the Mermaid crew, the tables turn when the Souls are around. The Souls – to Hause and his crew and the rest of us true believers – have been guiding lights for thirty years, in the way they write music and the way they operate both in the scene and in the world. “It’s sort of like they’re my big brothers, and here I was bringing my little brothers around. To see this band click with the Souls was cool,” he explains. “It was a great moment of the two worlds not just colliding, but coalescing. I think you can feel that on stage and you can feel that in the songs. There’s something really special about that.”
So when it came time to really bear down and write and ultimately record LP #7, who better to turn to than the band that he’d found himself fronting night in and night out in enjoyable and powerful fashion than his very own band. …And The Mermaid marks the first time that the quintet has recorded together, as Hause eschewed his more recent trend of recording in Nashville with talented studio musicians. Instead, the band made its way to Vancouver earlier this year for an epic recording session with Jesse Gander (Japandroids, Fire In The Radio, etc). “There’s some special alchemy that happens when you put a bunch of people in a room with a really adept engineer,” Hause reports. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s just try to get as much good work done as we can.” And it opened up this channel that felt really good.” So good, in fact, that starting with the blistering, Clash-style rocker “Enough Hope,” the band ripped through four songs in the first day of recording. Not a bad way to start. “I just thought, ‘let’s go in there and cut as much material as we can,’ because I really believed in the band’s ability. We were a little unsure what it would be like because we’ve never done it, but man, did we just hit the ground running?” Save for a few odd vocal harmonies and overdubs here and there, most of the material was cut live on the floor in the studio together. Five guys in a room writing and recording up-tempo tracks fueled by an increasingly bright punk rock intensity.
The band took full advantage of their time together, building on the relationship they’d long-since been creating in the live show format and translating that into an energy and work ethic in the studio. All told, close to two dozen songs were tracked, well more than the ten that appear on …And The Mermaid. “There’s a little bit of a goal that started to come in because we were like, “well, we are pretty old. We’re all between thirty-one and forty-seven. We’ve been doing this a lont time, we should be able to rise to the occasion,” laughs Hause. Rise to the occasion they certainly did. The album kicks off with “Knife In The Mud,” an anthemic, horn-infused barn-burner of a song centered on a bombastic Conroy drum pattern and a singalong chorus that is somehow both triumphant battle cry and ominously bleak warning. The track was co-written by Preston, and Hause reports that the two of them had differing opinions on the track’s ultimate point of view. Regarding the cathartic chants of “We’re never gonna die!” that appear throughout the song, Preston was of the opinion that the line was a challenge. “He was like “I want it to be defiant!” And I was like, “well, I think of we’re never going to die as a threat. It’s a threat to the planet. It’s a threat to ourselves,” Hause explains. “He and I have totally different views on what the song even means, and I think the tension in those two ideas is what makes it pretty cool.”
From there, the album finds the band continuing to do what it does best as a unit and the Hause’s do best what they do as songwriters; pointed, sharp commentary and witty turns of phrase that point their swords both outward and inward. There are lead singles “Enough Hope” and “Look Alive” which are pointed looks at the world around us falling to shit in the wake of the billionaire oligarch class. There’s the four-on-the-floor singalong celebration of the trials and tribulations that bond a long-term group of compatriots for life that is “Cellmates.” The chaotic “Mockingbird Blues” and similarly themed “Revisionist History,” the tongue-in-cheek Boomer-ific ode to days gone by. There’s the Tom Thumb-meets-Dropkick Murphy-ish “Rumspringa,” which is a bit of a high-water mark in regards to strictly fun songs in the Hause oeuvre. “Those were sort of placeholder lyrics. They were sort of silly. They were sort of fun. And then I just was like, “why don’t we just sing that? Yeah, this is fun!” It doesn’t have to always be about, you know, the existential dread or these intense feelings,” he explains. There is the more mid-tempo “Yer Outta My Hair,” which tells of the need to finally end a relationship after years spent hoping the other person would get their life in order.
There’s also the first cover on a Dave Hause solo record. At first listen, the blood harmonies on “Bible Passages” seem like they were written not only by Hauses, but specifically for the Hauses to play in all as a duo in a haunted, centuries-old European church. In fact, the song wasn’t written by them at all, but by Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath. While he’s no-doubt known for writing stadium sized anthemic modern rock bangers, McIlrath, like Hause, is first and foremost a songwriter at heart. Hause explains: “I would always ask him, “what are you gonna do with that song?” “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.” And somewhere in there, he either said like, “you should cut it.” Or I said like, “well, what if I cut it?” He’s like, “go for it.” I can’t remember exactly how it went down, but you know, we admire one another. And I just think like that side of him is so special and sweet. And so it’s an honor to have that song on the record.“
And what Dave Hause album circa the 2020s would be complete without an ode to his growing boys. …And The Mermaid closes with “May Every Last Fever Break,” a tendersong about guiding the next generation through the early, developing years as best you can, holding on when you need to and knowing that you’re doing their best for the day the training wheels come off. “I can see (the world) through their eyes,” Hause explains. “I can try to make that my main job. Like, “hey, let’s show them the world, show them what’s great about it, show them what’s wrong about it, show them their own agency in changing it and molding it.” Though it’s a bit of a stylistic departure from the bulk of the rest of the album, all were in agreement that “May Every Last Fever Break” not only works on its own, but shines as a closer. “Tim cried when I played it for him, so I knew I was onto something. It’s really tender. Alex, our manager, said “It’s my favorite song on the record,” which I thought was so awesome to have a manager that’s not looking at the catchiest song as his favorite because obviously, his job is to monetize the project. I love that song, and I feel so lucky to be able to make it.”
To return to the skateboarding metaphor, there’ll be no time for coasting for the remainder of the year for Harrison and Smith’s dad. It’ll be all kicking and pushing as Hause gears up for a loud fall and winter and beyond. Full-band shows in his home state of Pennsylvania kick off album release month before Dave and Tim head to Canada for a run of shows with Joey Cape. Then a few shows down the West Coast before a run in continental Europe and the UK. Then it’s back to the East Coast in November, followed by a run opening for the almighty Bouncing Souls out west again to close out the year. Most of those shows are more of the stripped-down variety, which means it’ll be 2026 before most of us get to see The Mermaid performing …And The Mermaid. There’ll also be more new music to follow in what seems to be short order. “My goal is to have made 10 studio solo records by the time I’m 50. And I’m 47,” says Hause. “And by this I mean made and put out. I’m not counting those three Loved Ones things – Versus, Nurses and Hearses. So that means I got work to do! I think, you know, because my mom died at 49, if I make it that far, I feel like I can reassess and who knows… I better get rhyming!”You can find all of Dave’s tour dates here. You can also still pre-order …And The Mermaidstraight from the Hause brothers themselves via Blood Harmony Records. And you can listen to the first couple of singles below while you check out our full, extensive chat!
***Editor’s Note: The conversation below has been edited and condensed for content and clarity. Yes, really.***
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): So, my friend, I really love this record. Not that I’m ever nervous about a Dave Hause record because the bar is only going to go so low (*both laugh*). I have done it a couple times where I don’t know I feel like I get a feeling the first time I listened to something, even from the first couple of notes of the first song on the record, like, I was like, “Oh, I get it. I love it already.” I know that there are 9.75 songs left to go, but even from the start of “A Knife In The Mud” I was like “Yup…this is the album I need right now.”
Dave Hause: That’s great. I’m really excited about it. I’m excited to get back on that kind of horse, which is like, if we’re using that weird metaphor I just walked into, this is like a conquering horse, you know? It’s the first one in a while that’s like, unabashedly rock and roll it, and I’m excited to play it live. I’m excited to put the band back out on the road. I mean, it’s interesting, because what we’re doing is releasing the album, doing some touring as a trio, and as a duo, to kind of get the word out and let people kind of get used to the record. And then next year, we’ll tour as a full band, kind of all over, where we’re used to going. I’m super excited to do that. I’m also looking at the budgets and going like, “Whoa, it’s hard, it’s hard to move a lot of people around day after day.” But every time I do an interview or listen to any part of the record, just for reference, I’m reminded about our mission statement, which is “let’s take this thing out and do it in rock clubs,” which we haven’t done in a while.
When did the album sort of calcify around that, like, rock and roll sound? Was it a conscious decision from the writing process to make a more rock record, or did you realize that’s how it was turning out as you went?
There were a couple of things; a couple of pivotal things. There’s a songwriter that I really love, who I had been pushing on Dan Andriano. It’s like, “man, you got to listen to these records. You got to go see him.” This is a couple of years ago. And he went and he went to the show. I checked in with him, and he’s like, “I liked it. But if I see you make a show like that, I’m going to be bummed.” I was like, “what do you mean?” And he said “you have a certain energy and a punk rock edge, even when you’re fingerpicking and playing quietly. That is so unique to you. Don’t lose that. Whatever you do, don’t lose that. Don’t have like a mild, chill show. That’s just not what I’m here for when it comes to you.” And I said, “OK, cool.” I kind of filed that away. And as my kids have come more and more online, they gravitated naturally towards Green Day. My wife and I are big fans, so I’ve been playing Green Day for them, especially in anticipation of that tour coming through. We took the boys to see Green Day, and it just I was just as into it as they were. I was like, “wow, this is spectacular.” That’s one of my favorite bands. Rancid as well. And the boys were just so into it, so it’s been a rediscovery of that and playing a lot of Bouncing Souls for them. We had the Souls at our festival, so there was just a lot of gearing up in that direction. And then I really fell in love with IDLES a couple of years ago. A lot of people had been bothering me like, “hey, dude, this is going to be your band.” And I sort of actively avoided it because I thought if “I love this as much as everyone thinks I’m going to, I’m going to really want to do something more in that realm, and I don’t have that’s not within my purview right now.” At that point, we had been working hard on the festival. We had done a bunch of stuff that was more listening-roomy and singer/songwriter stuff. But it was those three things – getting the boys into a lot of punk rock, falling in love with IDLES and then also Dan’s sort of planting that seed a couple of years ago. Also, I just think at some point, doing a bunch of stuff in Nashville and playing with a lot of singer-songwriters that are outside of like the punk thing, I kind of proved to myself that I could do it and feel comfortable. Blood Harmony and Drive It Like It’s Stolen were accepted enough that I didn’t feel like I had as much to prove, in terms of like, “well, I’m going to actively avoid playing like super loud or fast or whatever.” And so in this, it was just like, “let me just be open to whatever the band and I want to do in the moment. We’ll record a ton of stuff and then we’ll just see what we have.” I think that was kind of the way it all coalesced.
Sort of like Dan said, you have always been, I think, even when doing solo stuff, you’re always a “front man.” Like you’re a singer, a brilliant songwriter, but you’re very much still a frontman. You have that ability, I think, whether it’s just you solo, or you and Tim in a stripped-down acoustic setting, you still have a way of commanding a crowd, getting out in front of the microphone, pulling people in towards you – it’s that sort of frontman magnetism that is so natural in a punk or rock band setting.
Yeah! And I think I appreciate that. And I think instead of being shy about it, I’m just more comfortable with that idea. As I go on, you know, I was a fan of Bryan Adams. I think even you go see Flogging Molly, Dave King has this thing about him, or David Lee Roth. There’s all these people that I can kind of reference that I truly am inspired by. And I do think like on some level, you’re always putting on a show. Someone paid to come see a show, and I think, you know, as much as you hew to sort of this punk rock or purity kind of way of delivering the material, you also want something transcendent. I think sometimes that’s like taking some weird quality in yourself that maybe isn’t always on display and amping it up in order to have everybody feel like we’re doing something a little bit more special than just gathering in a room. So I think that’s kind of what it is. But I’ve just been more willing to embrace and feel more comfortable with that. I also think that the further I go, the more you want to just be you. If you have the opportunity to share your own artistry with an audience, make it as close to being what you think is great and not, “well, maybe I should pull this other thing and try this.” You know, it’s always good to follow the muse, but for now, for this record, it was more just like, “let’s not overthink it.”
Did you have everything written before you went up to Vancouver – which is another thing I want to talk about after, the Vancouver thing. Did you have everything written or like skeletons of ideas…
We recorded like twenty-one or so songs in two weeks so…
Wasn’t there talk of a double record? Am I making that up? Maybe that was a conversation I had with Tim and he was hinting about it, but was there talk of a double record at some point?
I mean, there always is, right? And then you realize you’re living in 2025. (*both laugh*) I mean, for all intents and purposes, that’s what we did. We recorded a double record. And no, it wasn’t all done. It’s still not all done. And again, I think like on some level, the further I get, the more you go like, “well, let’s leave a little room for like Quincy Jones used to say in the recording process, like leave enough room for the Holy Spirit.” And obviously that’s got some strange, you know, Christian overtones. But I think that there’s something to it. In the modern age, you can essentially make a demo and have it sound almost exactly like it would sound, you know, if you went into a studio. There’s just so many tools at your disposal. And so having that power almost neutralizes that ability because you’re like, “Well, I could just do this at home. I can get these stems from Josh Freese’s drums.” And, you know, I think in that realm, knowing that there’s some special alchemy that happens when you put a bunch of people in a room with a really adept engineer, we were more open to the process. I was like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s just try to get as much good work done as we can.” And it opened up this channel that felt really good. And so, yeah, you said you wanted to talk a bit about the Vancouver thing. That was amazing. I mean, Jesse Gander, I love his work. I love the sounds he gets. I like those Japandroids sounds quite a bit. The other stuff he’s done, I’ve always loved.
He did the last Fire In The Radio record, right?
Yes, yes, exactly. And that’s the link. So Jon Miller, who’s the songwriter for that band, has been friends with Jesse for a long time, and we’ve been friends here in Santa Barbara for 10 years now. He’s a wonderful guy. And he’s been saying, like, “You guys should work together. When you have a rock batch, you’ve got to work with Jesse.” And Jesse and I talked about it, and at first, it seemed cost-prohibitive because, you know, you can go to Nashville and it’s all kind of set up. You can have session guys come in and cut all day long and get a lot of work done in an efficient way. And this was more like, “well, we have to get everybody to Canada. We have to stay somewhere. We have to pay for the studio time. Like, it’s going to be a mountain when it comes to cost.” And Jesse was like, “Well, there’s a grant that the Canadian government or the British Colombian province offers that you would be perfect for because they want somebody who’s got an international fan base and will actually go out and play the record and the record will be heard, and they’ll subsidize it because it’s made here in Vancouver.” And that was true for like all these records back in the 80s and 90s. I think even like Aerosmith’s Pump was done there. And, you know, like there’s been a link to the Vancouver recording scene for a long time. So we ended up applying and we got the grant, and that defrayed a ton of the costs that would have prohibited our ability to go there and do it.
That’s amazing. Imagine when you actually pay attention to the arts and support the arts, right?
Yeah. You get hopefully inspiring work and you put people to work in your province. And yeah, I mean, we could digress on that.
Yeah, really.
But it was wonderful. And so now we have this link to Jesse and we’re able to see how it works and we were able to live out the dream of what a band does. But rather than do what a lot of bands do, which is like, “OK, let’s hone in on the nine most catchy songs or whatever,” it was “let’s go in there and cut as much material as we can,” because I really believed in the band’s ability. We were a little unsure what it would be like because we’ve never done it, but man, did we just hit the ground running? We cut “Enough Hope” first and we were done it in under two hours. It was like “OK, here’s how the song might go. Let’s mess with it a little. OK, try this. Try this.” And it was done. And so rather than take our foot off the gas, we applied pressure. We’re like, “let’s try to get two today.” And I think we got four that day or something crazy. (*both laugh*) And Jesse was pumped. He was game to work that way. He wasn’t super precious with like, “OK, well, let’s get it exactly whatever you would think of is perfect” because there is no perfect. We just kept working and working and working, and then closer to the end, when guys had to start going home, it became clear what the record was probably going to be, and we were able to hone in on stuff and then put some stuff that’s like, you know, either joke songs or stuff that was like less fleshed out or weirder. We were able to prioritize.
How live in the studio did you record? Because not that it sounds like a live record, and I don’t mean it that way, but there are times where like it sounds like you’re all in the room playing together. And there’s sort of mostly that like that Holy Spirit thing, I guess, that Quincy Jones was talking about, right? Like that sort of magic between the five of you?
That’s most of the record. I mean, even stuff you would think are obvious overdubs, like the beginning of “Cellmates,” where you hear that synthesizer come in, that was live in the room. Mark got that sound and arpeggiated it or whatever he did to get that, and we played right to that, and so we’re responding to that loop in real time. I don’t think we went back in and relayed in any overdub. There’s some obvious overdubs on the record. Obviously, you know, Tim didn’t sing the background vocals live. He probably could have actually, but we just didn’t set up for that. We just thought like, “oh, let’s try to get the basic tracks.” Most of what you hear is that band playing the songs, which is so fun. And I think there’s this like fantasy that all the Beatles would go in and they learn a song at nine a.m. and by noon they’d have it recorded. There’s a little bit of that goal that started to come in because we were like, “well, we are pretty old. We’re between like thirty-one and forty-seven. We’ve been doing this a long time, we should be able to kind of rise to the occasion.” And the confidence that builds when you get one down and they get another one down and you’re like, “oh, wait, maybe I’m not able to do all the stuff that like a Nashville guitar player could do, but maybe it sounds like me.” I can play like me in time and in tune. And so there was like a real confidence to start to build with the band as we took off in those first couple of days.
This iteration of the Mermaid is like the iteration of the Mermaid sort of going forward, yeah? Obviously we’ve talked before that the idea was sort of that there would be maybe moving parts, and people have rotated in and out at times, but like seems like once you had this five together, like it’s kind of changed from maybe that initial idea into ‘a band.’
That’s the hope and that’s also the fear, right? So you hope that that’s true. You hope that we can keep this together for as long as we possibly can, maybe till our older days. But the fear is like every other band, bands are really hard to maintain. It’s really hard for people to be able to commit, given the limits of financial security and so forth. I think that’s why it’s always been called the Mermaid, you know? It feels like an oasis, a mirage, something you see and you can almost touch and then it swims away. And I think now more than ever, I would love for this to be the group of people we make music with until we’re good and old. I have much less interest in going in with hired guns now that I see what this band is capable of. But I’m also a realist and unfortunately – to use the skateboard analogy – like I’ve taken slams when it comes to that.
Right.
And so, you know, hey, don’t hold it too tight and don’t be so loose that you that you don’t tell people how much you appreciate them. So it’s a balance.
Yeah. You can hear that the band really gels on this record. We could talk at length about the whole record but there are a few moments that highlight that, like in “Mockingbird Blues,” there’s that line about “…out here in the wilderness, it’s hard to find a friend like that.” The first time I listened to the record was in the car with driving to my wife’s dad’s house in Connecticut and she pointed out that there are times where you say “it’s hard to find a friend” and then you can hear Mark twinkling on the keys, or then there’s like a cool little bass run. You can sort of hear everyone in the band separately. It’s sort of this unifying thing, like “out here in the wilderness, it’s hard to find a friend, but I’ve got four of them right here.” I feel like that feeling really translated.
Yeah, I mean, that’s really true. It was fun to be out with the Bouncing Souls together on tour because that is one of those magic bands that I got to spend a lot of time with that really is fun to be around, and what you see on stage is the distillation of that relationship backstage. They get along and there’s a shorthand and it’s just a beautiful group of people. It’s sort of like they’re my big brothers and here I was bringing my little brothers around, and to see this band click with the Souls was cool. They kind of know Mark from doing sessions in Asbury Park and he lives down there in Bradley Beach. They obviously know Tim. Kevin worked for them, but Luke was the wildcard, and Luke got in there and became buds with them. And within a couple of days, the Souls are like, “Well, we’re having a pizza party with The Mermaid on the bus!” Or after the show they’d be like “come on, come hang out!” It was really fun to see that gel. There was a really funny moment where the Souls wanted us to sing sort of like a backup to Greg’s version of “Ghosts on the Boardwalk,” and we’re standing there in the wings ready to go on. And I had a denim jacket on, and it was dark, dark lighting, and Bryan Kienlen is like “you’re kind of looking like Bruce Springsteen right now.” And I was like,”oh, thanks, man!” Bruce is a handsome guy, and I kind of like, you know, feeling myself. And he goes, “current Bruce Springsteen, of course.” (*both laugh*)
Seventy-whatever-year old Bruce.
Yeah! And I was like, “oh, you had to do it, didn’t you?” And he starts cracking up. The band all falls out laughing. And he turns to the band and he goes, “you’re the little brothers, but the big brothers are here now.” (*both laugh*) And it was a great moment of like, you know, the two worlds kind of not just colliding, but coalescing. And so just to your point, it’s like having that friendship, having those bonds. I think you can you can feel that on stage and you can feel that in the songs. And there’s something really special about that.
Let’s get into subject matter on the record.
OK!
You know this. I’m a one-trick pony when it comes to Dave Hause records, because you know the esteem with which I hold Devour in. So this like this is very much an amalgamation of the guy who wrote Devour and the guy who wrote Kick. There are some interesting like grown-up, but overlapping themes from those records.
I think I might be the one-trick pony, man. (*both laugh*)
No! That will forever be my frame of reference for a lot of music, not just for yours. Like, that’s the album I’ve listened to most for the last 12 years, I think.
Amazing.
But there are times on this record where I will find myself singing along to it and getting goosebumps the way that I did to Devour the first couple of times I heard it. First time I heard “Autism Vaccine Blues” was at that Flogging Molly show in Boston 12 or 13 years ago now, which I think is the first time we met in person. I remember my brother and I looking at each other and just going “whoa…” That song gave me goosebumps and still tends to. And there are moments on this record that do the same thing. That’s happened, obviously, at other times in your catalog before. But even from the trumpet at the beginning of “Knife in the Mud”…I feel like we could talk for a while just about that trumpet line in a “Knife in the Mud” that comes back at the last song, because it sounds very much like a battle charge, but it also sounds very much like “Taps”…like a funeral procession. Which creates this feeling of “we’re either marching into battle…or we’re already dead. We’re already fucked.”
That’s the weird thing about that song. We’re making a documentary about this record, and we just got the cut about that song. So everybody was interviewed about the record, and Luke had a demo of that, you know, basically the guitar part and the trumpet, and he called it Olympics. As we were kicking around ideas for the lyric, he didn’t have a melody or a lyric and we were building it. He was like, “I want it to be defiant!” The line “we’re never going to die!” came out of that idea. And I was like, “well, I think of we’re never going to die as a threat.”
Right!
It’s a threat to the planet. It’s a threat to ourselves. So when you see this cut in the documentary, if it stays this way, he and I have totally different views on what the song even means. And I think the tension in those two ideas is what makes it pretty cool, because I don’t think that that’s necessarily the best thing, that we’re never gonna die. But also you’re left with this feeling like, well, what else is there? There’s a Father John Misty song that he put out some years ago where it was like, well, “all we have is this.” So there’s some, he comes to some conclusion like that, where it’s like, “this is how fucked up it all is, but this is what it is.”
Right, what’s the alternative?
Yeah. And I think that there’s a certain defiance in that, and there’s a certain amount of succumbing where you’re like, all right, it may not get better. And so I think the tension in that song is what makes it special. But I could tell, like Luke saw the cut and texted me, he’s like, “how do we have two totally different perspectives on a song we wrote together?”
I don’t know if you saw that Storytellers show or whatever it was, the VH1 show, but before Pearl Jam played “Alive,” Ed told a story about how he thought the “I’m still alive” line was meant as a curse. Like, “all this shit has collapsed around me, why do I still have to be alive to bear all of this” but then the crowd singing it for years turned that into a cathartic thing and lifted that curse.
Part of growing up is there is that tough couple decades of, “do I wanna be here? Why would I stay?” And then if you can get over a certain hump, you’re like, “Well, this is all there is and I’m lucky to get to see it. And I wanna stick around for as much of the pain as I can.” I mean, I just did an interview with Craig Finn for his podcast and he and I were talking about like, you got two options…you can either push the boulder up the hill or you get flattened by it. And those are your options.” And I would rather at least push, you know? Especially as you get older, because like the weddings and the firsts are all in the rearview, you know? Your first kiss and all that other, like that’s all so far behind. All those exciting things you’ve done. And so you’re left with like, well, “how do I derive meaning and purpose?” And that takes work.
That math has changed since the boys were born I’m assuming…
Totally, yeah.
I mean, it should, right?
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s part of it. Now I can see it through their eyes. I can try to make that my main job. Like, “hey, let’s show them the world, show them what’s great about it, show them what’s wrong about it, show them their own agency in changing it and molding it.” Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely, that purpose is a major shift for me.
Is the “waiting on vultures” line at the beginning of “Knife In The Mud” a callback to the vulture theme at the end of the last record? It’s fun that the first line of this record is an immediate callback to the last song on the last record.
I love it that you saw that.
Yeah, oh, right away. Well, to be fair, I knew it was a callback to the last record and I was pretty sure “The Vulture” was the last song on the last record but I did have to look to confirm that because I do have it on “shuffle” sometimes…
That’s right. Well, we also put out all those Loved Ones things too, so it’s confusing. You know, we need to relegate those to something other than full albums that we put out. But like on Spotify, it looks like we put out two or three records since Drive It Like It’s Stolen, which we haven’t. I mean, we have in theory, but you know, for those of us having this conversation, that is like the people who are most out into the work as it progresses, that’s old shit.
Yeah, right, right. Although it’s interesting to me, there are a lot of people now, I think, who have discovered The Loved Ones through Dave Hause and not the other way around. I think that that has shifted over the last, I don’t know, well, probably 10 years at this point, but like there are people who stumbled into The Loved Ones because of your solo career and worked backwards.
Well, The Loved Ones headlined the last day of Sing Us Home 2024, and it was a smaller crowd than The Mermaid. So it was-
That’s interesting.
Yeah, it’s just, it’s what happened. It was a goal to not get eaten by the earlier work. And it was a goal that I have achieved, which is not easy in punk rock. I mean, I’m sure Rancid still has to talk about Operation Ivy, you know? And they’re one of the greatest bands of all time. I think like to have that freedom is wonderful. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted it to feel free. I didn’t want to have to play old stuff just to keep people engaged. Now I feel like I’ve added that material to what the band or I can do whenever we want to rather than feeling like we have to. So it’s a wonderful treat to have had that sort of progress in that way.
My brother was not as into the depth of punk rock when as early as I was, but he’s a big fan of your solo work. So when I told him that we were talking again, he was like, “didn’t he just put out a new record? Like Nurses?” I was like, or Versus or Hearses, I forget which, whichever one came up on Spotify last. I was like, oh, hold up…you’re gonna have a little history lesson now.
Yeah, yeah. You know what’s interesting is we live in these bubbles in music. You write about music, you’re very attuned to what’s happening and what artists are doing. I’m making this stuff, so I’m very precious about it and so forth. But there’s something leveling about having to go to school functions with people who have kids your age and go, “I’m a musician.” And they go like, “anything I’ve ever heard?” And you go, “probably not.” (*both laugh*) And then they sort of inevitably wanna know more. They wanna follow. And then you get into this funny thing where you’re like, they’re like, what’s your latest record? And I’m like, well, it’s this thing called Versus, but it’s not a real record. And you’re like, oh my God, this is like so inside baseball. These people are just trying to get the kids dropped off on time and get to work. They’re not looking for a David Lynch style deep dive into all the meaning behind your work. They wanna know if that shit slaps and they can put it on after Benson Boone and go, hey, this is Smith and Harrison’s dad’s music. It’s a good reminder of like, fuck man, people in America specifically are very, very inundated with information. Don’t get so precious with the delivery system. So in a weird way, I’m trying to play to you or to like our two people who run the fan club, Susan and Manuela. I’m trying to play to you and those two, right? That’s the bullseye. But I’m also very aware of the other rings of people who are like, “look, I got about 20 minutes here. What do you got? Play me the catchiest shit.”
Right, right. Can I put this on my Peloton playlist or?
Yes. Well, with this record, the answer is yes. (*both laugh*)
Yeah, I think so. Especially the anthemic stuff. “Look Alive,” absolutely. There’s a sense too, it may be this is just me storytelling, but even the big anthemic rock and roll songs on this record have that like Jersey punk rock, like the Souls thing, right? Like the “yas” and the “woahs.” I forget if it was you or Fallon or somebody else I have seen live talk about that it’s such a Jersey thing…Jersey, Philly, whatever…that like there’s always gotta be “yas” and “woahs” in a song. Maybe it was Sammy Kay, I don’t know. But to me, that’s like pulling the audience – like pulling us – into The Mermaid in a sense, right? Like The Mermaid isn’t just four plus you, it’s like us, Susan, Manuela, the Rankers…that pulls us into part of it.
I think it’s important that songs get sung. And I also am well aware that I’m unpacking lots of stuff in the lyric, in the verses and in the bridges and often in the chorus. But I was raised in the church and I think you can get to it in the sermon but you gotta have spots where the “amens” are there. And I think it does make for a communal experience if you add that. I feel like that song “Cellmates” – there’s a lot of information coming at you and there is this reprieve in the “whoas” where we can all just sing and whatever that song might mean to you, you have an opportunity there, or in “Damn Personal” to like just sing along. It’s pretty simple. And so there’s something special and useful about that to me. They’re songs, you’re supposed to sing them.
That “Cellmates” song…it’s hard to find a favorite on the record because every time I put the record on I’m like, “oh yeah, this is my favorite song.” “Cellmates” comes on and I’m like, oh wait, no, this might be my favorite song on the record. And then “Look Alive” comes on and then “Mockingbird…” comes on. It’s like, we just keep going, hit after hit after hit. But that one especially, like I’d love the nod to the Hold Steady in there. “Pills and powders, baby, powders and pills.”
Yeah, yeah, we’ve been able to play together a bunch, whether it was with The Loved Ones, and then just in recent years, I’ve opened for them at various spots. Craig came and played our festival. There’s some overlap. And I think the cool thing about that community is they know when artists are huge fans of the Hold Steady. Like they know that like Frank Turner or me or whoever is like our Hold Steady boosters. We’re in the Unified Scene. And so they go like, oh, check it out. So I think that to me, it just really fit what I was singing about. We did lots of pills and took lots of powders. And so why not, if somebody has said it better and he’s a pal and he’s not gonna sue me, why not? He was pumped. He asked me about it when we did the interview and he was fired up.
Yeah I could see that!
It was interesting in that song because I think we had a better lyric than the one we used. It went, “you should have seen us at 22 like a stick and poke jail tattoo.” We were way out of line, crooked and wild, we were loose.” And we were making the song and I was pretty convinced on that line. And then Luke was like, “yeah, but look at those tattoos you have. They’re so bad on your leg.” And I was like, “well, those were Kienlen’s first tries at tattoos.” “Oh really?” “Oh yeah.” And he was like, “why don’t we do that like a prank?” And I was like, “well, I don’t think he’s gonna go for that. He’s a successful tattooer now. He’s really good. He owns a shop.” And so he was like, “well, ask him.” And I was like, “ah, it’s a weird thing to ask him via text.” So I played with the Souls in Anaheim or somewhere. And Bryan is one of these like genius artistic types where he’s so busy taking in his surroundings and he’s kind of like a wild card, but if you ask him a question about creativity, he locks in. And he was getting ready to go on stage. I think he had taken his tequila shot and he was like, “all right, I’m ready.” And I was like, “I don’t know if I’m gonna be here when you guys get off stage.” You know, he’s kind of annoyed. And I was like, “I just gotta run this by you.” And I gave him the two options. And I was like, “it’s not meant as a diss. It’s meant as like, I know you’re a successful tattooer with this wonderful shop that’s always booked. What do you think?” He goes, “I wanna be in that song, of course! And he was like, “I don’t have an ego about it. My first tattoos, they were first tattoos.” And so it was cool. I got his buy-in and then we went with that. I still like the other lines better, but I want my friend in there. Like, I love Bryan. Bryan Kienlen’s one of my favorite people on the planet, so.
Absolutely, yeah, same.
Yeah, so it was cool that he was down for it. He was like, oh, sure, put it in.
Yeah, the sentiment isn’t that he’s a sketchy tattoo artist. The sentiment is like, at 22, that’s what we were. We were all sketchy. We were learning as we went, right?
Right, right. And right, we were taking our skateboard slams. And he landed it. I mean, his shop is never not busy. So it worked out.
He did my True Believer tattoo at his little shop.
I love it, I love it. He’s such a beacon of light for how to live. He’s taught me more about like how to conduct myself as a person than most people. He’s just “go for it, figure it out. You’re gonna get punched in the mouth, keep going.” I just love that guy.
Yeah, that whole group, but he’s one of a kind. They really all are though, aren’t they?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they’ve been a beacon of light for me for… man…30 years. Yeah, they’re all wonderful. I mean, Pete, obviously I’ve made so much music with him. He was a cellmate, man. We go deep. We’ve been through a lot together. And then Greg too, like this is a very gracious person. The Souls did the festival and then Greg gave me a report on what he thought was the best parts of it, stuff that could have used work, whatever like that, which he didn’t have to do that. He could have just taken the money and ran. But he believed in it enough to keep doing more stuff like this. And maybe this thing didn’t work as well. I just love those guys so much.
I feel like my admiration and appreciation for them, like every year just sort of deepens. Like, I might get further from some of the early punk rock music that I listened to and kind of left behind. But that band, especially, my admiration and appreciation for them just keeps like every year just keeps getting stronger and stronger.
Luke, you know, he’s in Nashville. He’s a Nashville songwriter. And he also plays in Reliant K. And he gets hired to do gigs where country guys that are on the radio, like they ask him to play bass for a weekend. And so he sees a lot of pockets of the music industry. And we did that Souls tour. And he just was like, “This is the best. This is the best. This is the way you want your life to feel.” And it was good! It was like, it was affirming. Cause you never know, right? You think the grass might be greener in these pockets where it’s more successful or whatever. And Luke was like, “dude, the room is full. The room’s been full for them for 30 years. They have the best attitude. They have friends everywhere. It feels like a family reunion. Like this is the best it gets.” And that was such a cool thing to see to a newcomer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he’s a newcomer who’s been around a little bit.
That’s right. Yeah. A newcomer to their world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
“Bible Passages,” the Tim McIlrath song. That song sounds like it should have been written by and for you and Tim in like one of the haunted churches. Like that, that song sounds like I would imagine those shows sound. It seems like a perfect you and Tim song.
Yeah. Yeah, I’m excited about that one. I just feel like that was a song that should be in the world. And it’s so cool that he’s excited that we made it. It was funny. Even his manager emailed Alex (Fang, the Hause brothers’ manager). It was like, “This turned out great. Like we’re excited about this.” He’s just a wonderful songwriter. And I think a lot of times when you’re in punk bands and really big rock bands, it becomes about that. And you sometimes forget how great a songwriter, you know, Rage Against the Machine is, or, you know, you don’t think as much in those terms because it’s just not the way it’s delivered, but they’re great at writing songs. That’s really what they’re truly great at. They’re also great performers and they have a whole aesthetic and all that is true. But, you know, you hear that song “Violence” off of Wolves and it’s like just masterful songwriting. And so, yeah, I would always ask him, “What are you gonna do with that song?” “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.” And somewhere in there, he either said like, “you should cut it.” Or I said like, “well, what if I cut it?” He’s like, “go for it.” I can’t remember exactly how it went down, but you know, we admire one another. And I just think like that side of him is so special and sweet. And so it’s an honor to have that song on the record.
Is that a thing that you consciously think about or worry about when writing a rock record versus a more Americana songwriter record? You talk about that you kind of forget sometimes how good a songwriter Tim is because they make these big rock and roll songs and it’s about the theatrics of it. Is that a thing that you consciously think about when switching back to like the sort of punk rock part of your brain?
I didn’t, I just thought like, “let’s just go full energy.” I’m not as worried. I mean, I guess in some way, the construction of it, I’m still worried. Like we’re still going around and going, “what’s the best lyric? What’s the thing we want to say?” We did that, that kind of work, Tim and Luke and I, especially. I used to be more worried and now I’m just like, “I want this to be fun.” And I feel like, I mean, as fun as the Dave Hause record can be. (*both laugh*) Like, we’re still dealing with existential dread and the erosion of everything we thought we held dear. You know, we’re still in the deep end, but like, let’s splash a little. (*both laugh*)
Well, “Rumspringa” is a pretty fun song. That’s such a uniquely Pennsylvanian song too, by the way.
Yeah, well, with a German nod. That’s a Southern German word that means “to jump around.” So I knew about that. And obviously, you know about the Amish word for like when they’re allowed to go sow their wild oats. And I had that riff. It was a friend of mine, Mitchell, who helped me make Devour. That was his riff. And I had it sitting around, “oh, I gotta do something with Mitchell’s riff.” And those were sort of placeholder lyrics. They were sort of silly. They were sort of fun. And then I just was like, “why don’t we just sing that? Yeah, this is fun!” It doesn’t have to always be about, you know, the existential dread or these intense feelings. And it’s fun, you know? I mean, I love the Dropkick Murphys. I love to see them play. And some of their songs are just fun. And everybody’s having a great time. I mean, you know better than anyone. You’re a Massachusetts man. And so-
Talk about another band that I appreciate a lot more now than I did. And I’ve seen that band more times than I can count. I don’t wanna I have a weird relationship with the band, but there’s like that whole weird part of their fandom sometimes. Maybe that’s specific to up here, but like there’s a really weird portion of their fan base, which I think they’ve tried to eliminate. There was a weird section of their fanbase at shows that turned me off for a while, but I’ve enjoyed the hell out of the last half dozen years of Dropkick Murphys shows that I’ve gone to. And I’ve really developed more of an appreciation for that band, especially now with how public they’re being about like where they stand on everything.
Yeah, Ken is a treasure. He’s a punk rock treasure. He’s a born leader. And he’s leading the band and that fan base. In the right direction in terms of history and that is commendable.
And I think that it’s a conscious decision for him. Like, I really appreciate that because he could have not done that, right? Like-
I had a visceral reaction to a quote I saw. I saw him say, “you’re being conned by the most successful con man in history.” And I went, I’m not, I know he’s not. Cause I didn’t want to give that much credit to Trump, you know?
Yeah, right.
But then I sat and thought about it. I was like, why am I having this reaction? And I thought, wait a minute, he’s right. He’s leading the American people. You don’t really get much more influential than that.
Right.
And he is a con man. And so when it comes to cons, this is the biggest one in at least modern history. And I thought, “wow, Ken really nailed it on that one.” And yeah, he’s been incredible in terms of like what he’s willing to say, putting his ass out there on the line with fans that might, you know, if there’s a band that is walking that line with having fans on both sides of the political spectrum, it’s them. To their credit, you know? I think he speaks his heart. I think he’s just working class. He understands that most police officers and firefighters are working-class people. And, you know, I think he’s willing to say some things that a lot of people that are much more radically motivated would turn their noses up to. But then he’s also willing to go whole hog at the leader of the free world, which is these days not, it can be fairly terrifying to do so.
Yeah, that’s not necessarily a business decision.
No, Stephen Colbert and-
Yeah, and I think that he doesn’t get enough credit sometimes as a songwriter too.
I agree.
I think especially on the new record. The new record I enjoy more than any Dropkick record in years. Like, I really liked the Woody Guthrie records because they’re different. But in terms of an actual Dropkick Murphy’s record, I really liked this one more than I have that last probably half dozen. There’s some real emotional depth to it. And you don’t necessarily go into a Dropkick record thinking emotional depth because you’re used to “Shipping Up To Boston” and “Tessie” and “Mick Jones Nicked Me Pudding” or whatever the fuck, like that sort of fun thing, right?
Yeah, and good on them for having fun! Yeah, they don’t get enough credit in the songwriter world, but they do, but they are like a huge band. It’s great to see them pushing everything forward and not resting on their laurels. I love that whenever a band keeps taking chances, you got my vote.
Right! What other songs did I wanna pick your brain about? Oh, so without getting too in the weeds, a song like “You’re Out of My Hair,” clearly written about a specific person or whatever, but do you write knowing that the person that this is about is going to hear it? I’ve always wondered about that. If there’s a song that sounds like, and it’s not just with yours, but that sounds like there’s clearly a person in mind, do you write with the intention that the person’s going to hear it or do you not worry about that?
The rest of our band worried about that. (*both laugh*) And at different points encouraged me to pull a punch or two, knowing that the person would hear it and I didn’t (pull those punches).
Or is that like a Carly Simon, like you’re so vain, you think this song’s about you. Like, do you think that there are a dozen people out there that will think, “oh, this song’s about me?” Or do you think that the person who it’s about is gonna know?
I think the person will know. And I think a couple of people will think it’s about them, or will assume it’s about them. I think that’s a weird thing to straddle because you don’t ever want to hurt anyone intentionally…
Right.
…but also like pulling a punch seems weird because like, what’s the best thing for the song? The best thing for the song is to say what I said, I think.
The authenticity, right.
Yeah. And there’s references in that song that no one will get but that person and the guys in the room. I think that the verdict’s still out. I mean, I think as you get older and further into life, the tendency is to not be as sharp with some of those kinds of things, knowing that it could bring pain. But it’s not like publicly anyone’s gonna know that it’s about this specific person and then therefore that person would feel pain in that sort of public way, that like doxxing sort of way or whatever. I think they’ll be all right.
I think the authenticity of it, I think is what makes the song good.
I think in the end, to say you’re out of my hair, everybody knows what that means. Like, I don’t have to deal with you anymore, right? Everybody can relate to that. I’m like, I gotta get this person out of my hair. And then it’s just qualified right away. Like, I’m pretending I don’t care. I do care. It hurts. I miss this person. I love this person. I wish they could change. I wish I could make room for them in my life. And, you know, I’m a victim of somebody who believes way too long in the promise of somebody and what they’re capable of. And I hold out for people who I see the shine in. I see it and I go like, “well, if they just do this, they’re going to achieve some level of self-actualization.” And sometimes I just hang on too long. So I think in that sense, if the person hears it and is bummed, they’ll at least know I love them because I’m pretending I don’t care. I do care.
Right. That’s part of the recovery thing, right? Like knowing that maybe they fucked up ninety-nine times – to go back to the skateboarding thing again – maybe they fucked up ninety-nine times, but it’s the hundredth time of hearing the message, that is the time that it’s going to actually land.
I also think that, you know, the older I get, one of the things for me is like, I believe this person will get it together. But I also am OK if I’m not there to see it. I guess I’ve got to be done. I can wish you well, I can send my love, but we don’t have to interact all the time. I think that’s a hard lesson to learn. A hard thing to kind of go with. But I think it’s necessary sometimes. I mean, I got other things I got to do.
Switching gears a little. “Enough Hope.” What a great, great song. Is that the one that you said you wrote first?
No, that was what we cut first. That was the first one in that process. No, I had it pretty early on, but (originally) it was “enough rope,” and I was like, “I can’t sing that, that’s a Clash lyric.” And then Tim was like,”what about enough hope? They’ll hang themselves.” And I was like, “oh, that’s good. I wish I wrote that.”
Nice of him to donate it to you.
Oh, yeah. He’s very, very giving. No, the first song I wrote for the record was “Mockingbird.” At the time, I thought I was going to make like a Tom Waits-esque bash when I had that one. “Enough Hope” was a weird thing to put out first. I was sort of hedging the bet knowing we had “Look Alive” to follow it up with because it is bleak. It doesn’t sound bleak, but it is a bleak thing. Like “give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves…” What do you do with that other than sit in it? I do think that was the cynical nature with which we were treated by the American political machinations. I mean, even the Kamala / Joe Biden thing, it was like, you know, Joe Biden drops out of the race or whatever, and he’s like, “oh, now you have to vote for this lady.”
Yeah, right.
Which I was fine to do, you know, because I know what the alternative was. But it did seem cynical.
Push the boulder or let it crush you.
Right. Right. Sure. So I can make that adjustment in my head. But I also knew…I don’t know if this is going to work and this isn’t really what you promised. It’s not really what we want. Whether you like her or not or like him or not, it seems cynical. It was like, “dude, you are not up for this. And you said you were going to be a one-term president. And now the cynicism and hubris with which you approach this…and we’re supposed to hang on this? Yeah, we hung. We hung, alright. Yeah, we fucked up! And then I mean, but that’s not to say anything of what it must feel like to be Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg and have the immense power of the billions and then to want more. “I want to influence public policy.” It’s like, man, fuck you. And so with that, you know, I just think like we can all agree on “fuck billionaires.” What’s there for you that we like? We like Taylor Swift. We like Bruce Springsteen and we like Jay-Z, I guess. But like. Other than that, fuck ‘em! (*both laugh*)
Is it tough writing a song like that from that perspective? Not that you necessarily put yourself in the shoes of a billionaire or whatever, but like you sort of write from the other perspective in that sort of “Stockholm Syndrome” way…to go back to my one-trick pony thing.
Yeah, you go to what it feels like to bully. You know, like, it’s gross, but we can all access that. We’re human, you know? Like, what would it feel like to have ultimate power and completely divorce yourself from your humanity and empathy? You’d laugh at people who can’t make the rent checks.
Yeah, right.
It’s disgusting, but if you put yourself into that monstrous headspace, you can see that complete distance between your reality and someone else’s.
The record ends on maybe the sweetest song – or at least one of the top five sweetest songs in the Dave Hause catalog – “May Every Last Fever Break.” What a gorgeous little tune.
Thank you. I had an old friend say it was so sad they almost had to turn it off. And I said, “it’s a love letter to my sons.” This is an old friend who’s a hardcore guy. And he wasn’t paying attention to the lyric, it just sounded sad. And I was like, “all right, well, thanks for nothing.” (both laugh*) But Tim cried when I played it for him. so I knew I was onto something. Yeah, it’s really tender. Alex, our manager, said “it’s my favorite song on the record,” which I thought was so awesome to have a manager that’s not looking at the catchiest song as his favorite because obviously, his job is to monetize the project. I love that song, and I feel so lucky to be able to make it. And we played it the second day of Sing Us Home and my father-in-law was there. He’s the boys’ grandpa on my wife’s side. He was like, “Hey, that last song, people around me were crying.” It really felt that he was like, “I could feel all the feels” and I was like, “Whoa!” He’s like a retired firefighter, California guy. Works the land. He’s a wonderful dude, but he’s not necessarily gonna cry at a movie or whatever. And so to have him engaged in that way was really touching. I love how that turned out. And hopefully the fans love it enough that we could like end the show with it. It’d be really fun.
Oh, absolutely. I think it’s a good end to that record. Like it’s very much a rock and roll record, obviously. But that’s such like a like a, I don’t know if like a soft landing for the record is such like, like a like a perfect little way to end the record.
Thanks, man.
Like, “I’m still a songwriter, damn it! (*both laugh*) I’m not just a punk rock frontman! I’m also like I can write that.”
Well, it’s really more I’m just the dad who’s well aware of my own limitations. And hopefully I’m writing something that people can relate to if they’re parents. Or even if they’re not like, we are wishing against all odds that there’ll be a California out there or a utopia of some kind that isn’t going to get waterlogged by climate change or set on fire. And I think increasingly, it doesn’t feel like there will be, but we are hoping for that. There were two instances that inform that song. One was the second year of Sing Us Home. It rained for 48 straight hours. We were losing money. And it was scary. The Mermaid played and I had to drive my wife and kids back to the Airbnb because they were kind of coming unglued. And my son Smith is really empathic. He was like, “Dad, I’m proud of you.” And it was little kid, you know, five years old or whatever..and he’s holding my hand as I was driving. And I was like, “I gotta let go but only so I can steer buddy!” And so I go “Shit, I gotta put that down.” And so there was that “hold your hand, but I gotta get us into the clear” kind of thing came after that. But then also my son Harrison…with twins, you got to at least come up with two songs or two ideas…(*both laugh*) And Harrison later got sick. He had one of those fevers that freaks you out, and you can do nothing but hold them. You know that feeling, man! Your kid gets a fever and the world starts to just completely cave in. So those two things were what drove me, you know, through most of the song and then “may every last fever break.” I guess I just got that in a clutch moment as I finished up. I needed a postscript or a final thing to say and I don’t know, it just kind of blew in. It felt like I was kind of channeling, which is always a good feeling.
Yeah, just like the instrumentation sort of pulling out and it just ending on that note, and then circling back to the trumpet from the first song…what a perfect way to link the whole thing together.
Yeah, that was an accident.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I had it sequenced, and was listening in that sequence. And the song ended with “may every last fever break” and then this record started over. And the trumpet hit and I was like, “Oh, wait, it’s gotta do that.” I called Jesse and was like, “Hey, this just happened as I was listening to make sure that the spacing was right and all that stuff. Can we add that?” And he was like, “Oh, great idea.” It bookends it and brings back that idea that you said where it’s like, it’s a little bit of the Olympics, and it’s a little bit of Taps with that trumpet line. And then in the end there, you feel like it’s a slightly preemptive, sad way to wrap things up.
Yeah. And then when it immediately starts over again, it sort of informs the whole record that way. Listening to it the second time is very different than listening to it the first time. And I don’t know if it would have been as noticeable that way if there wasn’t just that little bit of the trumpet fade at the end to add an interesting context to listening the second time.
Thanks, man. I thought so. I’m always glad when those things connect with anybody because a lot of times you’re in the business of promoting the record and you’re like, “Hey, I have this song, Enough Hope” or “I have this song Look Alive, please stream it.” And that part is necessary. It’s part of the process of like, making people aware of what you’re doing. But the real goal and passion and all this is that more nuanced and subtle story you’re trying to tell.
You’re always going to be a guy that writes a record, right? Like, l know the trend has been to write singles and whatever, but like, you’re going to be a guy who writes records, which I love and appreciate.
I think so. I mean, my goal, which I don’t think I’ve said out loud, but better to say it here than anywhere. My goal is to have made 10 studio solo records by the time I’m 50. And I’m 47. And by this I mean made and put out. I’m not counting those three Loved Ones things, Versus, Nurses and Hearses. So 10 full-length studio albums at the time I’m 50. So that means I got work to do! *both laugh*) I think, you know, because my mom died at 49, if I make it that far, I feel like I can reassess and who knows, I might just make singles after that. But I feel like that is a mountain I’m trying to climb. And I’m afraid because now I just said it out loud.
Now it’s in the universe, so you have to materialize, right?
I hope so. Yeah, I better get rhyming. (*both laugh*)
This is what you would is number seven, but you said eight is kind of mostly in the bag, right? Or at least you have a bunch of songs written.
I don’t know, I got a wild hair to do something else. I have those songs recorded and in the vault. But now I’ve got this other plan that just developed.
Now you’re gonna do the Tom Waits-esque record?
No, I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty punk.
Good!
So maybe even further. (*both laugh*) At least that’s what’s compelling me right now. I called Luke the other day and I was like, “let’s go full bore.” And he was like, “Okay, I’m game.” You know, we’ll see what Tim says. Tim usually will be the guy going like, “it needs a chorus.” And he’s right.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should start with a bit of a confession. It could be due in large part to the fact that I am a multi-multi-generational New Englander (fourteen generations on one particular branch of the Stone family tree), I think I only have half an understanding of what Southern Gothic […]
In the interest of full disclosure, I should start with a bit of a confession. It could be due in large part to the fact that I am a multi-multi-generational New Englander (fourteen generations on one particular branch of the Stone family tree), I think I only have half an understanding of what Southern Gothic literature is or what the term even means. Aside from maybe Their Eyes Were Watching God and I guess To Kill A Mockingbird, I don’t think I really dipped my toe into the worlds of Faulkner and McCarthy and Flannery O’Conner until I was on this side of 30. But I sort of have an idea.
Parts of the American South, and especially the small towns of the rural American South, look familiar to my Yankee eyeballs. A quick Google Street View search of places like one of Ben Nichols’ familial stomping grounds of a place like Altheimer, Arkansas, reveals a small town the likes of which may have one time hustled or bustled but have, in more recent years all-too-commonly collapsed in upon themselves. Change out the kudzu for northern pine and you could very realistically be in a own like one of my own familial stomping grounds of Swanzey, New Hampshire. But there’s a different sort of darkness in the south. While places up north were busy fighting things like devastating winters and, I suppose, the American Revolutionary War, the rural south was very much still the wilderness, at least to the white man. It would be generations before the Louisiana Purchase would annex much of the region to a growing United States and even more time before the cotton gin and, with it, slavery would cast a pall over the region that, frankly, still lives on in vast stretches of society. It is in this darkness and struggle that Southern Gothic literature and imagery was born, a macabre, sometimes grotesque and and certainly haunting way of looking at death and class and poverty that were – and still are – unique to the American South.
It’s this world that much of Lucero frontman Ben Nichols’ new solo record, In The Heart Of The Mountain (July 25, Liberty & Lament), exists in. The record – which is Nichols’ first solo effort since 2009’s The Last Pale Light In The West (and in many ways is his first original solo full-length given that Last Pale Light… was a seven-song record centered on the characters in Cormac MacCarthy’s anti-Western classic Blood Meridian) – is not the first time that Nichols has dallied in Southern Gothic storytelling. Lucero’s 2021 record When You Found Me is rife with songs like “Coffin Nails” and “Have You Lost Your Way” and its predecessor is literally called Among The Ghosts and has cover art that features a tintype photo of an abandoned Baptist church in Rodney, Mississippi. But to hear Nichols tell it, the idea of incorporating some version – his version – of Southern Gothic storytelling stretches back unexpectedly further, as he started to flex his songwriting muscles nearly decade-and-a-half ago for Women And Work, specifically with tracks like “Sometimes.” “There’s these stories, possibly imagined from my youth in a rural Arkansas environment populated with these kinds of ghosts and maybe myths and folktales and things that I’ve absorbed over the years,” Nichols explains. “I’ve got this kind of made-up family history where I’ve incorporated all of that into my grandparents’ story and my father’s story and where they were from. It’s all kind of that graphic novel I’ve always talked about writing one day. I’ve never done it, but it’s all in my brain and then that comes out in the songs.”
Lucero’s 2017 Southern Gothic masterpiece, “Among The Ghosts”
The idea for a second solo record is one that Nichols had been toying with – publicly and privately – for a long time. “(It) had been in the back of my mind for a while. I started stumbling across these guitar parts that might actually work for that idea,” he says. “I just kind of set them aside and I kept tinker with with them. Then I had a few lyrics – just a couple of lines here and there.” The creative process for the album started to pick up steam in a bit of an unlikely way, specifically when it came to trying to nail down names for a couple of ideas, like the song that would eventually become “From A Western Or A War Movie.” “That song could have easily become overtly cheesy…and it was at first!” Nichols laughs. “That one involved some wrangling. I didn’t have a good title that I liked for it. The chorus didn’t make a good title.But then one time just randomly doing chores around the house it popped into my brain and I was like, “ah, that song’s, it’s kind of like it would be a scene from a western or a war movie.” And I just ran through my head and I was like, “ooh, From A Western Or A War Movie, that’s it! That’s a good title!”
When added to the list of songs like “The Darkness Sings” and “In The Heart Of The Mountain” that were already named and completed, Nichols started to notice that the potential tracklist could be poetic in its own right. “I’d already kind of been thinking that “The Darkness Sings” and “In The Heart Of The Mountain” kind of go together as a sentence. And then I was like, “the darkness is singing a song from a western or a war movie…” I’m like, “ooh, I can make all four song titles go together kind of like a phrase or a sentence.” And then that got me thinking about what if I did all 10 song titles that actually made up almost a poem. And so once I got the title “From A Western Or A War Movie,” then I was like, “okay, these are all gonna be one big project.” And so then I actually kind of started writing different titles that could fit into my poem. And some of the songs were written specifically because I needed a song with this title.” One of the songs that followed was “While The Stars Disappear,” another track that plays on the album’s recurring themes of darkness and light constantly being present, pushing and pulling in spite of – or perhaps because of – one another. “I just had that phrase, because it fit in between the two songs on either side of it. Then the lyrics for it, I wrote specifically to fit that little spot that I needed in the poem. It was kind of a long hit-and-miss process, but it all fell together in the end.” The song title poem, while admittedly a little loosely defined, was the sort of spark needed to turn the solo record idea into a tangible project. With the exception of the aforementioned Last Pale Light In The West EP in early 2009, “every lyric, every guitar part, everything I do has pretty much 100% gone into Lucero for the last 27 years, so to get my brain wrapped around doing something other than Lucero, I kind of had to have it clearly defined.”
The album closes with a triplet of songs – “The Prayer,” “The Swamper’s Lament” and “The Devil Takes His Leave” – that work together not only in terms of the tracklist poem, but as an interesting look into the contrast between good and evil in the strictly Biblical sense. The first of those tracks should be recognizable to Lucero fans, as it is also featured on the acoustic record that Nichols and longtime Lucero keyboard player Rick Steff collaborated on earlier this year. Its origin actually dates back several decades, however, to a time when Nichols’ younger brother Jeff was still in film school in North Carolina. The younger Nichols was working on a short film that centered on an 1806 duel in which Andrew Jackson shot and killed Nashville attorney Charles Dickinson over an argument that started over horse betting. “I kind of wrote that from Andrew Jackson’s perspective,” states Nichols. “Andrew Jackson’s definitely not a well-liked historical figure, especially today. It almost makes me a little uncomfortable to sing…because it’s about making your will God’s will; it’s co-opting God and calling on the power of God to fulfill your wishes.”
“The Prayer” is followed by “The Swamper’s Lament,” a tale that finds our protagonist sitting on death row for taking the life of Big Jim Stone (no relation) in order to win a prospective lover’s affections. Nichols explains that the song was written fairly quickly with the intention of it being included on a soundtrack to another film that never got made, and while the story told is purely fictional, the setting was at least inspired by a bit of family history. “There’s a little bit of my granddad on my mom’s side in there,” Nichols explains. “He was a little bit older. I think he was born in 1911. And so when he was 14 in the 20s, he was working, doing some logging and working in some lumber yards or with some lumber companies in southeastern Arkansas, like driving mules and hauling logs as a kid. And so that was kind of the original idea. I was like, “ah, I’ll do something like where Pawpaw was as a kid.”
The trilogy – and the album – are brought to a close by “The Devil Takes His Leave,” perhaps yours truly’s favorite song on the record. “The Devil Takes His Leave” is another one that I kind of had to figure out,” he states. “That one really started with the lines, “I don’t mind the company, but we don’t have to talk,” and then “You’ve got all the answers. And all I ever knew was I’m not like you.” Taken on their own, the two lines could be about myriad situations, like picking up a hitchhiker, for example. But Nichols also used the line “I don’t know if God has a plan, but I’m sure the Devil does” on the synth-rock record he did with his stepdaughter Joslyn during Covid, and he was taken enough with that line that he new he wanted to reuse it, essentially to plagiarize himself. “I had that God and Devil line and I was like…what if I stick those together? And then I was like “oooh, then you’ve got a whole song about the Devil calling God out for being a hypocrite…can I write a whole song about the problem of evil in a monotheistic religion?” And that became one of my favorite ones on the record.”
From a songwriting perspective, In The Heart Of The Mountain became an interesting and thoughtful way for Nichols to exercise some muscles that he doesn’t normally. “A lot of Lucero songs are like ‘oh, I’m heartbroken’ or ‘oh, I’m too drunk’,” Nichols jokes. “It was fun to write (songs) that were a little more…different, out of my paygrade. “Swamper’s Lament” and “The Prayer” and “The Devil Takes His Leave” in particular are definitely not, you know, from last Saturday night in Ben Nichols’ real life.” From a sonic perspective, the emphasis was also placed on making it not sound like a Lucero record. “It’s not that they wouldn’t have worked as Lucero songs, but they would have sounded different in the end,” he explains. “I wanted a more acoustic-based record with some instrumentation that Lucero just doesn’t have at the moment, with the pedal steel and the violin.”
Much like the last few Lucero records, including the Unplugged record earlier this year, In The Heart Of The Mountain was recorded in Memphis at Matt Ross-Spang’s Southern Groove Studio. And while Ross-Spang engineered the record and collaborated with Nichols in the recording process, Nichols very much produced the record and crafted its unique sonic direction on his own. Fairly early on in the process, Nichols had identified the ideal lineup to provide the perfect Southern Gothic soundscape for his stories to exist in. “Ever since Todd Beene left Lucero to play with Chuck Ragan and just go his own way, I was hoping that one day I’d get to play some songs with him again. He’s just such a great guy. He’s such a friendly guy and a really good musician.” Beene has a way of approaching the pedal steel that lift it from being a throw-in, pop country-by-numbers instrument to an atmospheric, spooky-yet-melancholy-yet haunting texture that provides emotional depth to a record. He also plays electric guitar on the record, as does the inimitable Cory Branan. Branan has long been thick-as-thieves with Nichols, and has served as sideman at a handful of Nichols’ solo shows over the years. “There’s always a certain ‘it could go off the rails at any moment’ edge to Cory Branan, which I love. It’s part of what makes him so special,” Nichols explains. Branan and Beene at times trade lead electric guitar duties on the record, though most moderately-trained listeners will be able to identify each’s unique style and how it fits into the overall mix. (Branan has semi-jokingly acknowledged that he enjoyed adding his “Mark Knopfler falling down stairs” thing to the record, and if you have ever heard a Dire Straits song, you get it.)
Rounding out the mix was MorganEve Swain, perhaps best known in these pages from her role in The Huntress And Holder Of Hands, the string-heavy post-metal Americana band that joined Lucero in opening for Flogging Molly on a full US tour back before Covid. She’s also more recently been featured in The Devil Makes Three, the folk/bluegrass project that has occupied much of her time recently. “MorganEve could only come in for a couple of days…really just one night. She landed at the airport and came straight to the studio,” explains Nichols. What happened next was, essentially, magic. “We just started playing the songs for her and she would lay down a violin part and she was like, “okay, let me do it one more time.” And then she played a different violin part. She’s like, “okay, one more time.” And she would play a third violin part. And she wasn’t trying different things because she’d messed up the time before, she was building a three-part violin section. And she’d be like, “all right, play them all back at the same time.” And it was just gorgeous. It was like a your own little orchestra.”
Nichols kicks off a few weeks of solo album release shows this Thursday and Friday in his old hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. He’ll have Swain, Beene and Branan in tow for the first week of shows (full schedule here), while Swain will have to duck out of the second week, meaning the live band will be a trio. Some semblance of that may be the way things work going forward from a solo, in-between-Lucero-tour perspective. I would love to do more of it, but getting all three of them together is really tricky,” Nichols explains “One of the thoughts I had when I was making the record is like, “well, if I get all three of them, then whatever tour I do, I can probably get at least one of them, and then if one of them’s not available, I could get another one of them and I could just switch them out.” So even though they’re not all three available at the same time, I’ll take whoever I can get. It’ll be really cool.”
And don’t worry, Lucero fans…the band itself isn’t going anywhere. If anything, crafting the solo record has gotten the creative juices flowing for the next Lucero record too. “I want to do Lucero songs.I want to do Lucero songs for Lucero, and I know exactly what those sound like in my brain now, at least for me. I know the next version of Lucero that I want to do.” What will that sound like, you ask? “It‘s not necessarily this spooky Southern Gothic stuff that is all over this In The Heart Of The Mountain solo record,” he reports. “I want to get back and do a rock and roll record, but not necessarily like the last two, And not necessarily like Among the Ghosts either. I want to kind of find a new path with Lucero. And I’m actually excited to get back into that, which was kind of a residual effect of the solo record that I didn’t really plan on, but I’m really excited about. And I’m glad it kind of reinvigorated me.”
Check out the videos from In The Heart Of The Mountain, and keep on scrolling to get our full Q&A. Lots more details about the writing process and the recording process and the concepts of good and evil in a monotheistic religion and about Southern Gothic storytelling and family history and why he thought it necessary to have my uncle Jim tossed into a band saw!
(*Editor’s Note: The following text has been edited and condensed for content and clarity’s sake. Yes, really.)
Jay Stone: I was trying to figure out the best place to start because it’s sort of a unique situation where somebody that’s been in a band for 27 years does like their first real all original solo record while still being in the band. This is a thing you were talking about for a while, but when did it go from something you were thinking about to like, all right, now’s the time to actually do like the next Ben Nichols solo record?
Ben Nichols: I started working on these songs about three years ago. And like with everything else, it’s kind of insane how long it takes to go from writing the first few chords and getting excited about a new song to actually having the record in people’s hands. And for me, yeah, it’s probably about a three-year process. But you know, that first year was figuring out if I had enough songs to actually make an album and enough songs that I liked that I thought fit together well enough to make doing an album make sense. I was still doing plenty of Lucero stuff. And I mean, I guess really three years ago, it was either during or right after the last Lucero album kind of cycle, Should’ve Learned By Now. So the beginning was right on the heels of that last Lucero record. I started, you know, stumbling across a few more little guitar lines that I liked. And I was playing a lot of acoustic guitar. Like you said, a solo record had been in the back of my mind for a while. And so I started stumbling across these guitar parts that I thought might actually work for that idea. I just kind of set them aside and I kept tinkering with them. And then I had a few (lyrics). I had just a couple of lines here and there. Lyrics always come last for me. That’s always kind of the last stage of the songwriting. But I had one of the older songs ended up being “From A Western Or A War Movie.”
I love that song. And we’ll talk about that later, but I love that song.
That one was, it was kind of a puzzle for me. I liked the idea of the song. It took me a while to edit the lyrics to where I got them to a point that I actually did like them and they weren’t too cheesy. That song could easily become overtly cheesy. And it was (at first). That one involved some wrangling, and the title of it was actually a big part of it. I didn’t have a good title that I liked for it. The chorus didn’t make a good title. But then one time just randomly doing chores around the house it popped into my brain and I was like, “ah, that song’s, it’s kind of like it would be a scene from a western or a war movie.” And I just ran through my head and I was like, “ooh, From A Western Or A War Movie, that’s it! That’s a good title!” And I’d already kind of been thinking that “The Darkness Sings” and “In The Heart Of The Mountain” kind of go together as a sentence. And then I was like, “the darkness is singing a song from a western or a war movie…” I’m like, “ooh, I can make all four song titles go together kind of like a phrase or a sentence.” And then that got me thinking about what if I did all 10 song titles that actually made up almost a poem. And so once I got the title “From A Western Or A War Movie,” then I was like, “okay, these are all gonna be one big project.” And so then I actually kind of started writing different titles that could fit into my poem. And some of the songs were written specifically because I needed a song with this title.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. What an interesting way to work. That’s a very different way to work.
It’s definitely different than what I’ve done in the past. And “While the Stars Disappear,” that one I just had that phrase, because it fit in between the two songs on either side of it. And then the lyrics for it, I wrote specifically to fit that little spot that I needed in the poem. But so yeah, it was a different way of working. And it was kind of a long kind of hit-and-miss process, but it all fell together in the end. And yeah, I’m glad I finally got to do this. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.
Is that really when you sort of pressed on the gas pedal? Once you realized that like you could have the song titles make up the poem, does that get the sort of creative juices flowing as to what this whole thing is actually gonna be? So it’s not just like this theory of a Ben Nichols record?
Right. Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like I need an excuse to make them something other than Lucero songs. Like the only other project I’ve done close to this would be The Last Pale Light in the West, which was 2008, 2009. And that was easy to compartmentalize because I was writing songs with Cormac McCarthy lines from Blood Meridian, or I was writing songs around the Cormac McCarthy lines. So all those songs were very specific to that piece of work. So that was easy to separate in my brain from Lucero, because for the most part, everything…every lyric, every guitar part, everything I do has pretty much 100% gone into Lucero for the last 27 years, except Last Pale Light in the West. So I guess, for me personally, to get my brain wrapped around doing something other than Lucero, I kind of have to have it clearly defined. And so, even though it’s not necessarily that big a part of the record, the fact that the song titles kind of combine into a poem, it allowed me to separate it from my day job and focus on it and feel comfortable working on it outside of the band. Yeah, and it sort of does paint a theme for the record.
There’s a lot of songs that are push and pull. There’s light and darkness and that sort of conflict. There’s a lot of good and evil. I feel like some of those things sort of have leaked into Lucero, maybe since Among the Ghosts. But this seems a lot more like, I don’t know if cinematic is the right word, but it seems like that’s sort of a bigger concept. And not because one song is called “From A Western or a War Movie,” but in my mind while I was thinking about it, I was like, this seems like a cinematic record. I feel like I can picture myself in some of those scenes.
Yeah, I love those kind of records. And I felt like Among the Ghosts, the Lucero record, was an embodiment of that idea. And that’s still one of my favorite Lucero records as a whole. I thought it flowed really well and kind of carried that theme throughout the whole album. Some Lucero records are just kind of a group of mutts that are all kind of strays that are all stacked together just because that’s the songs we had at the time. In fact, putting a full album together that has a unity of vision and that kind of cinematic feel is, yeah, I like that on Among the Ghosts and I’ve been trying to pursue that more since then. That was definitely part of my thinking going into In the Heart of the Mountain.
These songs were written specifically for this record versus a Lucero record, but does that change how you physically write a song? Like, are there things that you know you can write for yourself that you couldn’t write for Lucero or vice versa?
Not necessarily. I think it’s just more what this album and what this idea called for. I just wanted to make sure the things, especially the lyrics, but also the chord choices and the instrumentation choices and just the mood of the music, I wanted to make sure that it all fit together in a cohesive way. And so it’s not that they wouldn’t have worked as Lucero songs, they would have sounded different in the end, a lot different, I think. I wanted a more acoustic-based record with some instrumentation that Lucero just doesn’t have at the moment, with the pedal steel and the violin. And so I really wanted to focus on that cohesiveness and that, whatever it is, that kind of Southern Gothic.
I was just gonna say, yeah, yeah. I wrote that a few times in my notes. I’m from up here, obviously, so I don’t know Southern Gothic, but this feels like a Southern Gothic record.
I’m not sure if I really know really what Southern Gothic is, but I know what I think it is in my brain. (*both laugh*) Now, whether that would pass a literary professor’s definition of what Southern Gothic is, I’m not sure. But that’s the idea that I was working in. And yeah, like you said, it’s popped up over the last few Lucero records here and there with songs like “Coffin Nails” from When You Found Me. And even way back, I re-sang a song called “Sometimes” from Women and Work, I think, where there’s these stories, I don’t know, possibly imagined from my youth, rural Arkansas environment populated with these kind of ghosts and maybe myths and folktales and just things that I’ve absorbed over the years. And nobody really knows this necessarily, but I’ve got this kind of made-up family history where I’ve incorporated all that into my grandparents’ story and my father’s story and where they were from. And this is all kind of that graphic novel that I’ve always talked about writing one day. And I’ve never done it, but it’s all in my brain. And then that kind of comes out in the songs. I’m not getting a graphic novel done, but it’s still in there and I want to use it for something. And so it comes out in bits and pieces in these lyrics. So yeah, I guess that’s my version of Southern Gothic.
So just, because I feel like I have the idea, right? But like these characters sort of exist in a fictionalized version that your dad, granddad, great-grandparents, whoever, grew up with. Like these are songs in their world, but not of them specifically.
Exactly. Yeah.
That’s real cool.
That’s definitely how I think of “Coffin Nails,” which is a similar song. I’d read an Irish folktale somewhere about someone, a person in the village dying and you hear the banshee howling. But there was something about, something flew out of the sky and landed on the window sill, and they couldn’t tell what it looked like it was howling all night long. And I took that and I took my grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s names and imagined my great-grandfather’s passing in rural Arkansas and put this kind of weird banshee creature into the story. Just melding classic folklore from all over the place with my personal family history. That’s really fun for me. And so it’s not overt. This isn’t like a concept record. It doesn’t necessarily tell a story, but all of these songs would be appropriate within that environment, I think.
So they’ll be the soundtrack to the graphic novel someday.
Exactly. Exactly. It’s actually, yes, that synth record that I did with my stepdaughter, Joslyn…that and this combined to make a double album soundtrack for the graphic novel. Coming soon. (*both laugh*)
Without knowing that that was the idea, I have written down that there are some themes that you sort of borrow from yourself and revisit. And I think from the record you did with your stepdaughter too, that like some of those ideas and concepts and even lines from this record might be directly from that one…
Totally, yeah, yeah. There was one that was just too good not to use. Cause not a lot of people listened to that synth record. Some did, and I appreciate it. And you know, I still might, if I can scrape the money together one day, I might put it on vinyl just so it exists. A few copies of it at least. But I knew those songs weren’t going to be heard by a whole lot of folks. And so, yeah, there was one line, that line about and the devil takes his leave, and I don’t know if God has a plan, but I’m sure the devil does. I was like, “that’s too good for more people not to hear,” so, yeah, I just blatantly plagiarized myself. That line is in a song on the synth record, and it’s the chorus to “The Devil Takes His Leave.” And yeah, that song is another one that I kind of had to figure out. It wasn’t originally about the devil, you know, talking to God or bitching out God. That one really started with the line, “I don’t mind the company, but we don’t have to talk,” and then “You’ve got all the answers. And all I ever knew was I’m not like you.” I had those lines, but those could have been in anybody’s story. I wasn’t sure who it was about at first. I had a guy hitchhiking and talking to the guy that picked him up. And I had a few different scenarios where those lines could be said. But then I had that God and devil line, and I was like, “that’s really good…what if I stick those together?” And then I was like, “ooh, then you’ve got a whole song about the devil calling God out for being a hypocrite. I’m like, “can I write a whole song about the problem of evil in a monotheistic religion?” And that became one of my favorite ones on the record. I wasn’t planning on writing a song about that but once I combined that line with some others that I had, that’s what it became. And that’s songwriting at its most fun , when you accidentally kind of piece things together and it actually works, and then you can build on that. I think that’s what’s attracted me to songwriting since I was a kid, like those little accidents, seeing what happens. I got lucky with that.
Yeah, that line in “Devil Takes His Leave” – “my brightness dims with the rising sun.” That’s such a cool visual. And it’s like the perfect sort of embodiment of that battle between the two of them, of good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, the whole thing. That’s such a perfect phrase.
There’s all those little bits and pieces of stuff that wasn’t necessarily in the Bible, but then it’s like the whole Lucifer being the morning star, maybe, I don’t know. And it’s pieces that, it kind of doesn’t matter if I remember it correctly, it’s just whatever I remember goes into this song. So it’s not gonna pass muster in a theology course, but it works in my songs. And I was thinking possibly the rising son, maybe there’s a Jesus reference in there.
Yeah, absolutely.
It’s kind of like, it’s almost like the Old Testament. Oh, I can’t remember what it was, because there’s no real devil in the Old Testament. It was like the Malach or something or other that was doing God’s bidding, like killing the firstborn sons of the Egyptians and bringing plagues and testing Job. It wasn’t necessarily Satan, but it was just, it was an angel doing God’s bidding, basically. And I guess-
You paid a lot more attention in Sunday school than I did.
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. (*both laugh*) I’ve never thought I’d be so into Bible study in the last couple of years of my life, but it’s mainly more…saying “devil study” sounds really bad. I’m interested in the folklore and the mythology around the Bible, just the history of the Bible. That’s really intriguing to me, more in that way than a religious way. It’s kind of fascinating. But yeah, I’ve been listening to a lot of Bible studies. Maybe this is going from that Old Testament Bible devil to the New Testament Bible Devil. And this song is kind of about that transition from the Old Testament God to the New Testament God and what that means for the Old Testament devil to the New Testament Devil. Whereas in the Old Testament, they’re almost one and the same. And then in the New Testament, they want this hard split between an all good God and an all bad Devil to take the heat off of God. God has to answer a lot fewer questions. God’s life is a lot easier if he doesn’t have to answer that whole evil question. And so, in my song at least, the devil’s taking umbrage with the fact that it’s getting all laid on in his lap. I don’t know. A lot of Lucero’s songs are like, “oh, I’m heartbroken or I’m too drunk.” (*both laugh*) It was fun to write a song that was a little more, I don’t know, just different, out of my pay grade, just a whole different type of thing.
When did the instrumentation come along? You sort of mentioned the wanting different sounds that Lucero just doesn’t have in the fold right now. But when specifically did you think of, “I should call Cory, I should call Todd Beene, I should call MorganEve Swain”? Did you write with them specifically in mind or just the idea of their instruments?
I think pretty early on, once I had three or four songs and maybe the idea of the song titles, I was like, “okay, yeah, I’m gonna call these folks.” Cory Branan had sat in with me on some Bike Rider shows, just kind of improvising on electric guitar, and when it sounded good, it sounded really good. And even when it wasn’t perfect, it still sounded pretty good. And that was just him playing on the fly, just doing what Cory does. And I was like, “man, that would be really fun to get in the studio and really kind of nail some of that down.” And then ever since Todd Beene left Lucero to play with Chuck Ragan and just go his own way, I was hoping that one day I’d get to play some songs with him again. He’s just such a great guy. He’s such a friendly guy and a really good musician and a really good electric guitar player. I was always a big fan of his electric guitar in Glossary. And it’s a totally different type of electric guitar than what Cory does on electric guitar. And that’s part of what I love about this album is even when they’re both playing electric guitar, you can tell who’s Cory and who’s Todd. You can tell their parts apart just with their style of playing. So that was fun too. And then MorganEve from The Huntress… I just think I’m such a big fan of Huntress and The Holder of Hands from when we toured with them and Flogging Molly a few years back. Just because they’re so good and kind of classy and just, MorganEve is just musician’s musician. She’s just can do anything. And so the fact, like one night on tour, when I first met them, she’s like, “you should play ‘Long Way Back Home.’ I’m a fan of that song.” That just kind of blew me away. I didn’t think she’d actually even pay attention to us or listen to us at all. And the fact that she had said that, I was taken aback. And then we kind of became friends and kept in touch. And she always joked about, “we should play songs together sometime.” And so when I got into writing these, I let her know. I was like, “okay, I’ve got something in the works. I’m gonna fly you to Memphis sometime and you’re gonna record some violins for me.” And so, yeah, she was kind enough to actually do it.
Yeah, that’s a really great trio. Separately and together, that’s a really great trio. And I’ve been fans of all of theirs for a long time, but it’s cool to have them behind you.
Yeah, it’s huge. It gives me goosebumps right now, just thinking about it.
Did you have to give them much direction or do you just go “here’s the song, do whatever you’re gonna do on it?”
Half and half, really. With MorganEve, I just let her go and she was amazing. The way the studio worked is that I went in for a couple of days and laid down kind of the basic guitar and vocals. And then Cory came in and started laying down some guitar and Todd came in pretty much at the same time. And those two were working. And that was a little trickier, figuring out who goes where, kind of, because they both didn’t play the whole thing, and so piecing those together took a little bit of work. I had written some guitar parts, some lead electric stuff and Cory was really good at just like, “oh, you want that part like that on the demo? Yeah?” and he just would play it. And that was amazing. But then MorganEve came in. She was so busy with The Devil Makes Three, she could only come in for like a couple of days. Really just kind of one night. She landed at the airport and then came straight to the studio. We just started playing the songs for her and she would lay down a violin part and she was like, “okay, let me do it one more time.” And then she played a different violin part. She’s like, “okay, one more time.” And she would play a third violin part. And she wasn’t trying different things because she’d messed up the time before, she was building a three-part violin section. And she’d be like, “all right, play them all back at the same time.” And it was just gorgeous. It was like a your own little orchestra.
I can’t imagine having that kind of talent, like just in your brain.
Right? It’s insane. And she would do the same thing with the backing vocals. She’d kind of layer the backing vocals and just do three takes, but they’re all different. “You can put them all together and then just use what you want.” It was a really fun recording process.
Yeah, I like the times where you let Cory do the sort of thing I think he jokingly calls “like Mark Knopfler falling downstairs” – that super clean, spanky sound that is such a Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler tone.
Yeah that became a big part of “The Darkness Sings.”
Yeah, it’s a little bit on “When The Stars Disappear” too. That twangy thing. I mean, I love Cory anyway, but I like when he does that.
Yeah, I love that style, but he’s one of those you can dial in different sounds with. There’s always an insane edge to whatever he’s doing. (*both laugh*) There’s always a certain ‘it could go off the rails at any moment’ edge to Cory Branan, which I love. It’s part of what makes him so special. But yeah, the fact that he could do that and then an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. And you can probably pick which Van Halen record you want. “Do you want more 1984? Right. Or do you want more…” you know? And he can dial in. He’s got a great knowledge of music, rock and roll history and he’s pretty good at dialng any of those sounds in that you want. And then yeah, Todd Beene as well. Todd Beene’s very professional. He’s like, super on top of it. And Todd’s really good at knowing what I would want. He’s like, “I can just tell from the way this chorus goes into this bridge. I know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing.” And then he just does it. And yeah, you always know what you’re getting with Todd and it’s always gonna be good. It’s really cool.
Yeah obviously he’s been out with Chuck a lot and Chuck actually came out for a while earlier this year and played shows up here and it was supposed to be the two of them…
And then I think that’s when he broke his arm!
Yeah!
He felt terrible. I remember he called me and told me what had happened and he felt awful for having to miss those shows. I feel for him. That kind of injury… if you’re a pedal steel player, you need all your limbs working in conjunction. It’s like flying a helicopter. You’ve got to use all your feet and toes and hands and arms. (*both laugh*)
Yeah, I felt bad for him. I was actually at a Hot Water show, I think the day that Chuck found out. So I’ve been friendly with some of those guys for a long time, and Michael, their merch guy, knew I was going to a couple of the solo shows and was like, “Chuck’s freaking out. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Because he’s got no Todd now. And is he going to even do it?”
Yeah, Todd is so good. I understand the feeling of like, wait, I can’t do this without Todd.
And he’s all over Chuck’s new record, too.
100%
It’s a Chuck record, but it’s a Todd Beene record, too.
100%. Yeah, 100%. And yeah, I was glad that I could steal Todd away and borrow some of that Todd magic for this record. But at the same time, I think we did a pretty good job of blending it all in. It’s a MorganEve record and a Cory Branan record and a Ben solo record.
Yeah, they did an amazing job.
And then I’ve got to credit Matt Ross-Spang, too, for taking all those people…like any one of them individually could have carried the whole record and taking all three of those and editing the stuff to make it all make sense and really making the record work. Me and Matt spent a lot of time on that, and Matt Ross-Spang did a great job, too.
And to make it ‘not a Lucero record.’ I mean, because they’re not Lucero songs. There’s obviously some that, like you said, could pass, but he’s worked with the band for so long that he knows kind of how the band works. So to make this definitely not a Lucero record, too, was important.
Right. And he also helped me mix that Last Wolf in the Woods synthesizer record. So he’s seen Ben in full Lucero mode, Ben in exactly opposite Lucero mode with the synthesizers. And then this was somewhere in between, which is actually that’s a perfectly fine way of looking at it. This kind of crosses…this is the bridge between the synth record and the traditional Lucero stuff. This record exists somewhere in between. And Matt knew exactly how to capture that.
So I was sort of curious about this. Knowing that there’s a lot of guys in the scene, like whether it’s Fallon or whether it’s Chuck or Craig Finn or whatever, that have sort of balanced both doing their own thing and doing the band thing…do you ever toss this idea around with those guys? Like, “how do you make it work? How do you make it land OK with the band that I’m going to do my own thing and still do the band thing?” Like, is that a thing you talk about?
I probably should have. (*both laugh) I probably should have asked people, in hindsight, how to make that work? Yeah. All those guys would probably have some wisdom and some insight. No, I didn’t really talk to them about it. Yeah, maybe I should have. With Lucero, I just kind of assume Lucero is always going to be there. Maybe for better or for worse, I take it for granted. Lucero is, yeah, it’s just my life and it’s Brian and John and Roy and Rick’s life right now, too. And in my head, I just don’t see it changing. If I stopped and thought about it and thought about reality, we’re all getting older and time passes and things change, I should maybe start, you know, thinking about how Lucero progresses into the future and what that actually looks like. But to be honest, I’ve avoided that.
That’s what management is for. That’s what I assume.
Yeah, exactly. I don’t know. In my brain, yeah, just from the outside, you see all those guys like Craig Finnn or Brian Fallon, and I was like, “they make it work.” And so I didn’t even think twice. I was just like, “yeah, I can make this work.” But yeah, the logistics and the reality of it do get a little tricky, especially just the fact that Lucero makes all of our money pretty much playing live shows. And so routing is important. And yeah, things are still tight. Lucero’s never bounced back completely from the pandemic. I felt like we were really going pretty strong in 2018, 2019, and the pandemic stopped us in our tracks, just like everybody else. But coming back, that climb has been pretty steep. Ticket sales have been tough. We super appreciate our hardcore fans that have been with us for so long and are still there. They’re great. But bringing new people on board and getting those, you know, kind of casual listeners out to the shows has been a lot tougher for Lucero in recent years. And so now with me booking solo shows, and I’m not booking a lot, but even a few that I’m trying to book, like, it’s like I’m my own competition all of a sudden between Ben Nichols and Lucero. And promoters, like if Lucero’s played that town that year, they don’t want to do a Ben Nichols show. Or if they do a Ben Nichols show, they’re not going to do a Lucero show next year. It shouldn’t be this complicated. But it’s tricky.
So we’re navigating that. They’re all aware of it. And I hope they’re not worried. One of the upsides to the solo record, which I didn’t really think about when I started it, because I was just so happy with the way these songs were coming out. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is exactly what I want to be doing right now. These musicians are fun.’ These songs are fun for me. But now that the process has kind of come, well, not to a close, but the record’s actually being released. And so the creative process of it is at an end, and now it’s releasing the record process. But now I’m like, ‘Ooh, I want to get back to writing. I want to do Lucero songs. I want to do Lucero songs for Lucero.’ And I know exactly what those sound like in my brain now, at least for me. I know the next version of Lucero that I want to do. And it’s not necessarily this spooky Southern Gothic stuff that is all over this In The Heart Of The Mountain solo record. And it’s more of a… I want to get back and do a rock and roll record. But not necessarily like the last two. And not necessarily like Among the Ghosts either. I’ve got, I don’t know, I want to kind of find a new path with Lucero. And I’m actually excited to get back into that, which was kind of a residual effect of the solo record that I didn’t really plan on, but I’m really excited about. And I’m glad it kind of reinvigorated me and got me excited about writing some new Lucero songs too.
You sort of hinted at that, actually, when we talked six months ago about the unplugged record, that knowing that the solo record was almost done and almost going to be out, you were already sort of amped up about the next Lucero record too. So it’s good that six months later that’s still the case.
Yeah, I am. I’m really looking forward to getting into it. I got my baggage out of the way now. And I just want to focus on doing Lucero songs with the Lucero guys. Just, I want to get in there and just do what Lucero does best is kind of what I’ve decided now. Instead of trying to make Lucero everything that I want to do and Lucero having to carry the weight of all of my whims and notions…Instead of forcing all of that into Lucero, now I’ve had a chance to kind of get some of that out of my system, all in a good way. I can just really enjoy letting Lucero do what Lucero does well. So yeah I don’t have a lot yet, but I’ve got a couple of pieces. I’ve got the start of a new record. And so yeah, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
Before we get all the way through your afternoon, I have to ask about “Swampers’ Lament.” So I have like three, maybe four favorite songs on the record, and that’s one, but as I’m listening to “Swampers’ Lament,” my first thought was, “wait, what did my Uncle Jim ever do to Ben?” (*laughs*) Because have an uncle Jim Stone.
That’s funny!
And so I was like, oh, wait, what did Uncle Jim ever do to Ben to get thrown in a bandsaw.
I know! Ouch! That one had been floating around for a little while. And I think there’s a Lucero version of that recorded somewhere. But a guy, John Michael McCarthy, a Memphis filmmaker, who’s made kind of low-budget, raw drop films since forever ago. He’s always been around making these kind of crazy indie films. And he called and was like, “I’m going to try to make a new movie.” This was right before the pandemic. And when the pandemic hit, I don’t know what happened to it. I haven’t really heard about it since then. But he’s like, “I want the whole soundtrack to be murder ballads.” I was like, “ooh, yeah, I could try a murder ballad or two or three.” And I only ended up writing one. But it was “Swampers’ Lament.” And so I’d kind of been sitting on it for a while. Not sure if it was going to be used in this movie or not. And it never came to fruition. So I was like, “all right, this is actually mine.” And I kind of grew to like it. I kind of wrote it really fast. And I didn’t think much of it at first. But I’ve really grown to love it.
Yeah, it’s different thematically. It’s different musically.
For sure. And yeah, because that was supposed to be not necessarily a Lucero song. Not necessarily a Ben Nichols song at all. It was just supposed to sound like a… I wanted it to sound like it could be a traditional or an old school kind of murder ballad. But it tells a whole lot of story in just two verses. And when I went back and looked at it, I was like, “oh, man, there’s actually a lot in there.” And yeah, I don’t know where I got Big Jim Stone. You’re just kind of singing it as you go along, making up words as you go along, and that just kind of flowed. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, but Big Jim Stone is just what happened to come out. I’m sure like with everything I do, I had to have stolen it from somewhere. There’s probably another song with a Big Jim Stone or a movie.
Well, so I actually thought about that. I was like, “oh, I wonder if this is a character in something I’m not familiar with.” I Googled it and I quite legitimately couldn’t find anything. There was like a Canadian soldier or something like that. But it wasn’t from anything.
Oh, that’s funny. Well, good! Usually, whether you know it or not, you’re usually stealing it. Even if you’ve never heard of it before. There’s so much out there that’s already been written, so that’s nice to hear that it’s not easy to Google Big Jim Stone. But there’s a little bit of my granddad on my mom’s side in there. He was a little bit older. I think he was born in 1911. And so when he was 14 in the 20s, he was working, doing some logging and working in some lumber yards or with some lumber companies in southeastern Arkansas, like driving mules and hauling logs as a kid. And so that was kind of the original idea. I was like, “ah, I’ll do something like where Pawpaw was as a kid.” And so that was the idea for the setting, I guess, originally for that one.
Are those stories talked about a lot in your family? Because I mean, obviously whether on purpose or on accident, you weave a lot of family history into the songs. But are those stories like that get passed down and talked about and like, “so-and-so did this as a job and so-and-so was here in the war” and so on? Is that a regular thing?
I wish it was more regular. Yeah, I wish it was more regular. I think it’s just a little bit. I guess maybe it was a pretty regular topic of conversation (years ago) and I’ve been able to hold on to a few bits and pieces that end up in the songs. And there’s probably a lot more that I wish I could remember and that I wish maybe had been talked about more. But yeah, I eat that up. Everybody does, you know? That’s why Ancestry.com is so popular. Everybody’s super fascinated by their own family history and where everybody comes from, of course, that fascinates each person. And it’s the same for me. And so, yeah, I don’t know, I haven’t thought about this in a while…and I don’t know, this is a silly way to frame it, but if I could make some wishes, being able to go back and kind of watch some of my family history, different scenes from the past, if I could have that superpower or be granted that wish, that would be something I would be really interested in. Even just, you know, my dad working in the drugstore as an 8-year-old kid in 1950s, if he was 8, it’d be 1956 in Altheimer, Arkansas, when all the cotton field workers would come in on a Saturday night. And my dad’s, you know, selling comic books and cigarettes and soda pop at the drugstore. And he said it was like Mardi Gras. Like the street, it’s just this one row of buildings. And he’s like, between those and the train tracks on the other side of the street, it was just like Mardi Gras every Saturday night. And I would just love to see that. And then, of course, my granddad in the war and and when he comes home from the war. There’s just so many different things I would love to actually be able to go back and witness. So yeah, I’m holding on to a few little stories. Yeah, it makes me want to call my mom and dad and talk more.
Yeah, right! When you travel, because you obviously travel a lot more than I do, but if you are places where you know that you’ve had some family history or connection to, or that you know of historical things that have happened, do you ever just stop and put yourself there? Because I do that. Especially in and around Boston. Just to even stop and be like…to try to put yourself in what it was like at the time, but like how your ancestors kind of navigated in there. I haven’t been to Gettysburg yet, which is a bad thing for me, but I have a family member who was killed there. John Stone from New Hampshire.
Oh wow!
Yeah, and my dad actually has his knife, like his field knife.
No way!
Yeah, it’s really cool. And I haven’t been there, although my kid has…but just to like, put yourself there and know what that battle was like, and where like, they died in the peach orchard or whatever, like.
Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s intense. Yeah, I do that in a much more mundane way too. A lot of times I’ll be driving from Memphis to Little Rock. And instead of taking I-40 straight across, I’ll take little highways and go through some of those small Delta towns. And sometimes I’ve even gone all the way down to Altheimer, which is a little out of the way, but yeah, passing through those towns, which are pretty much obliterated now, like literally just caved in on themselves, wiped away, and now there’s maybe a brand new little post office, and that’s all there is, where there used to be, you know, a main street. There’s like a water tower next to the post office, and the post office was built in 2002, so it doesn’t look anything like it did in the old days. There might be some houses still and a couple of buildings and a church or two, but trying to picture it…like I remember when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, and that was completely different. There was a lot left then, and then trying to piece it together from old family photos and stuff. I love that. I love trying to, yeah, put myself into their shoes and into their place. And that was, that’s where that old Lucero song “The War” came from. That was just me trying to put myself in my granddad’s shoes as a 20-year-old kid in Europe in World War II. Yeah, that’s important to me for sure.
Isn’t it asinine to think that like, those kids were 20, 18, 17 in some cases? Like…
Insane! Insane!
Like your stepdaughters are older than that now. My kid is 17 and a half. Can you imagine them being on the front lines?
Yeah, it absolutely boggles my mind. And it’s such a, just such a momentous time and a momentous piece of history that, you know, he was a part of. Just like your, just like your ancestor in Gettysburg, such a pivotal moment in American history. And the fact that, yeah, yeah, people have family members that were actually, they were real people. And they were real kids at 20 years old, doing this stuff and changing the world. It’s fascinating and inspiring and yeah, yeah, a little intimidating.
Yeah, we always think about like veterans as older people, right? Because when you’re growing up, it doesn’t matter how old you are, the veterans you see are always older than you so you just equate them with old people sometimes. And then you realize like, for example, my grandmother had a half brother who she never met, but he was killed at Iwo Jima and he was like 19, 19-and-a-half, something like that. And I’m like, what the hell?
I remember, I remember being 18 and I might as well have been 12.
Absolutely. I still think that and I’m 46. (*both laugh*)
Yeah. Yeah. Mentally, I’m pretty slow. Like at 18, I was still functioning pretty much as a 12-year-old in an 18-year-old’s body.
Right!
And now I’m a 50-year-old functioning as an 18-year-old in a 50-year-old’s body. (*both laugh*) So yeah, I can’t imagine what was going through their minds and how they saw the world. And trying to figure out, what am I missing? Am I missing something? Did they see it the same as me or were they completely mature?
It’s funny to say that you can’t imagine because at some level, you have. Like that has been part of your job.
Trying to, yeah. I guess I try to imagine is a better way of saying it than I can’t, because I mean, obviously I can’t know exactly what’s going through their head, but I do try. I do try. I try to get as close as I can sometimes.
“The War” sounds probably pretty accurate, at least to me.
I think so.
“The Prayer,” too. It isn’t about war, but if you pull back a little it could be about a lot of different situations, about what somebody’s thinking when they are about to go to battle…that was for your brother’s old student movie, right?
Right. Yeah. I’d actually heard a story in a history class – in my American History college course that I had taking and Jeff needed a story for his student film that year. He was still in the North Carolina School of the Arts, in the director’s program. And it was the story about Andrew Jackson getting into a duel. And so I kind of wrote that from Andrew Jackson’s perspective. Um, and Andrew Jackson’s definitely not a well liked historical figure (*both laugh) especially today. But it was a cool story and it made a great little short student film and I had this song left over. And it almost makes me a little uncomfortable to sing it because as much as “The Devil Takes His Leave” is calling out God, “The Prayer” is making your will God’s will. It’s kind of co-opting God. “The Devil Takes His Leave” is calling him out, where “The Prayer” is co-opting him and calling on the power of God to fulfill your wishes.
And your wish is to kill this guy.
Exactly, You’re saying you’re doing this in His name, but really it’s just, you want to kill this guy. And so, yeah, it sounds like a heavily Christian song, but in reality it’s, uh, I’m very skeptical of that narrator’s intentions. Um, and so, yeah, I was glad I could go to some of these places with some of these songs, like the, the murder ballad, “Swampers Lament,” and “The Prayer” and “The Devil Takes His Leave,” those last three songs in particular are definitely not, you know, that’s not from last Saturday night in Ben Nichols’ real life (*both laugh*) like a lot of other Lucero songs. It was really fun to step into other characters. But I gotta say “The Prayer,” that’s another kind of rediscovered one that I wrote… 20 years ago? I kind of switched up the arrangement just a little bit and tidied it up, but I kind of rediscovered that one and I was like “ Ooh, um, I don’t want that one to disappear.” And so it’s nice that it exists out in the world now too, even though the narrator’s not necessarily the most reliable.
Well, no, but unfortunately, thematically, that’s a thing that’s still pretty prevalent now, right? Co-opting, uh, your will onto God’s will for nefarious purposes…
Yeah, right! And so I’m glad that it’s quickly followed up by a murder ballad and then “The Devil Takes His Leave.” I’m glad that all three of those work almost in conjunction, like one alone would be maybe too heavy, but with all three, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know what Ben actually believes in.” And that’s just fine with me.
Yeah, yeah, right. Sometimes it’s better that way.
Exactly. Exactly. Just confuse them. And, uh, yeah, just put it all in there. But I think… I’m proud of the songwriting and all three of them.
The album’s out officially, what, next Friday? The 25th?
Yes, the 25th.
Is it a different sort of like anticipation or even vulnerability knowing that it’s just Ben Nichols on the front and not Lucero? Like, even if you might be the principal songwriter in Lucero and whatever, does it feel different when it’s just your name and picture on the cover?
Yeah, it’s funny…Lucero is just…for better or for worse, we’ve been going for so long. Lucero has a certain momentum even still. And so I know this release won’t be as big. It’ll be a more limited release, and I’m okay with that. I understand that. Any bad reviews I would probably take even more personally.
Yeah, right. For sure.
But, so far the little bit of press that it’s had has been pretty encouraging and pretty positive. But no, it’s kind of the same, just a slightly smaller scale, which is fine. I would love to do more touring, especially with Cory and MorganEve and Todd. I’ve got them all for one week and then MorganEve has to drop off and I’ve got Todd and Cory for a second week. And then we’ll see in the future. I would love to do more of it, but getting all three of them together is really tricky. So yeah, we’ll see what kind of touring I can do, but I’m actually hoping…one of the thoughts I had when I was making the record is like, “well, if I get all three of them, then whatever tour I do, I can probably get at least one of them, and then if one of them’s not available, I could get another one of them and I could just switch them out.” So even though they’re not all three available at the same time, I’ll take whoever I can get. It’ll be really cool. So that’s kind of my plan for solo tours for the near future is just to get whichever one of them’s available, they’re coming with me, and they’re all going to be great no matter what.
It’s almost like four different shows. Like you could see Ben Nichols four different times in the same year with four entirely different projects.
Yeah!
And it’ll all be good.
I feel like it’ll do the song’s justice, no matter who’s with me. So yeah, that’s the plan now that the record’s coming out. I’ll try to squeeze in as much solo touring as I can in between Lucero’s stuff, and hopefully take those folks out with me whenever I can.
I look forward to it coming up here someday. Uh, I think I looked at the routing. I was like, “well, at least we had Ben and Rick earlier this year, because Cleveland is the closest thing now.”
Yeah. So my plan is maybe I could get to the West Coast at the end of this year with some version of this solo tour, and then I’m hoping early next year to do a version of the solo tour and on the, on the East Coast. So don’t, don’t hold your breath, but don’t forget about me either, and I’m not going to forget about y’all.
