(*all photo credits: Nick Hebditch. Cover Art: Timmy Tanker*)
When Boston-area punk rock singer/songwriting legend Lenny Lashley releases his fourth solo studio record in the not-so-distant future, he’ll be doing it so in a manner that is both new to him and is, in the grand scheme of things a bit peculiar and revolutionary. Although, given the trajectory of Lashley’s career to date, perhaps “peculiar” and “revolutionary” are exactly what we should expect. Barring any unforeseen technical glitches, Lashley – who not-so-coincidentally turns 60 this weekend – plans to make his new record, Pray For Death, available digitally for as close to free as is allowed. Physical copies will also, hopefully, be available for pre-order from Lashley himself in a manner that helps ensure that he makes no profit from the record; pre-order costs will be transparently capped at whatever the cost of production and shipping for the individual record was. Short of driving to your house and hand-delivering a burned CD to your mailbox, it’s about the closest thing you can get to a DIY release in the modern era, and Lashley wouldn’t have it any other way. That all is the “who” and the “what” and the “when” and the “how” of the story. The “why” takes a little explaining, so let’s back up.
Lashley initially rose to musical prominence in the Boston scene during his time fronting iconic, rabble-rousing punk rock band Darkbuster, and later, his countrified side project Lenny And The Piss Poor Boys. In 2011, he put out his first release under the moniker Lenny Lashley’s Gang Of One, a self-titled seven-inch on Asbury Park’s Holdfast Records. Save for his stint in Street Dogs prior to their hiatus, the Gang Of One project has been home to all of Lashley’s work since then, and has found him working with a wide variety of friends and fellow musicians and playing in lineups of numerous shapes and sizes. The initial 2011 self-titled seven-inch record was followed by his debut full-length, Illuminator, in 2013 and All Are Welcome in 2019, both of which were released by Pirates Press. After a parting of the ways there, 2022’s Five Great Egrets was released by Omerta/Durty Mick Records.
Chronologically speaking, that brings us to Pray For Death, Lashley’s fourth Gang Of One full-length, whose release remains imminent (hit him up on Instagram if you want it early though). As he has done on each Gang Of One release to date, Lashley once again collaborated with producer extraordinaire (and Bouncing Soul) Pete Steinkopf. “It’s almost at the point where I don’t think I’d feel comfortable working with anybody else now,” Lashley explains. Their working relationship began in 2011 after an introduction from Holdfast Records owner Joe Koukos. In addition to the store and record label he operated in Asbury Park under the Holdfast name, Koukos had been a staple in the local scene from his time working at the Stone Pony and Club Deep, and had booked Darkbuster at the latter establishment a few times. “Eventually, when (Koukos) found out I was doing this stuff,” says Lashley, “he said ‘Hey, I can put you in touch and we can do a seven-inch with Pete‘.” The pair hit it off virtually instantaneously: “I think it took all of fifteen seconds for me to ask if he wanted to do a full record.”
While much of the previous recording that Lashley and Steinkopf have collaborated on took place on the latter’s home turf at Little Eden Studios in Asbury Park, Pray For Death was recorded at Somerville, Massachusetts’ Q Division Studio. For the project, Lashley called in a few longtime Boston area musician friends, many of him he met during his days tending bar at the legendary Midway Cafe. Chuck Hargreaves (Field Day) engineered the project. Andrew Stern and Cody Nilsen man the electric guitar and pedal steel duties. Sam Gelston plays drums. John Sheerhan (who played in a band called The Spitzz with Victoria and Tom from Showcase Showdown!!!) played bass. Tom West played the keys and the accordion. Jared Sims led the horns. New Jersey heavyweights Jared Hart (Mercy Union) and Doug Zambon (The Vansaders) and some guy called (*checks notes*) Brian Fallon helped with backing vocals. Stylistically, it’s very much a “Lenny Lashley record,” meaning that it draws influences and textures from a pretty wide palette, albeit maybe not quite as wide as the palette on Five Great Egrets. “From the get-go with this album sonically, I suggested to Pete that we chase the idea of Damn The Torpedos by Tom Petty,” he explains. “That was such a once-in-a-musical-history type of recording, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the history of that and what it entailed. So sonically, we tried to chase a little bit of that dragon. Not that we were making Damn The Torpedos, but we recorded everything in a live-ish way, and we went for takes. That’s kind of not done a lot that way anymore.“
The resulting nine songs that make up Pray For Death are among the most honest and well-thought-out of his career, which is saying something. Part of that is due to Lashley having much more time to solidify his ideas before going into the studio. “When I went in to record Illuminator, a few of the songs were really raw,” Lashley chuckles. “Matter of fact, I remember that (Michael) McDermott (The Kilograms, Joan Jett, ex-Bouncing Souls) did drums on “Hooligans,” and Pete asked me to play it for him on acoustic guitar, and McDermott sorta shot me a look because I couldn’t even play it at that point.” This time around, the songs were generally much more polished going into the studio. That, coupled with the caliber of the musicians he compiled, made for what Lashley refers to as the “most magical musical time of (his) life.” One track, “One Shot Down,” started as a rough sketch and was essentially composed real-time in the studio. Two other tracks, “Hate Anymore” and the John Lennon cover “Working Class Hero,” were recorded live in-studio in one take with no overdubs, with Lashley both singing and playing guitar simultaneously, something he’d never done before. “(That) probably would never occur if I hadn’t had quite a bit of time to get myself up to speed. The other guys are competent musicians, I’m a bit of a third wheel, you know?” he jokes.
Eschewing the traditional label distribution models that he’s used in the past, Lashley is going completely on his own for distribution on Pray For Death, virtually ensuring – by design – that he makes no profit from the record, though he jokes that “in my short span of twelve years of doing my own releases, (profit) has been negated to zero anyway.” In part, this takes some of the worry about expectations or being beholden to outside influences away, relying instead on the word-of-mouth support of the fanbase he’s cultivated over the last few decades. It also has to do with the wisdom that comes after achieving more than nine years of sobriety at this point, and after years of chasing the proverbial carrot that the music industry – even in the punk rock scene – tends to always promise but so infrequently deliver. “I’ve been chasing my tail and this idea that music is going to provide some type of lottery ticket for me down the road or some type of accolades,” he explains. “I’m much more comfortable being present with what I have and being grateful for what I have now…I can be okay with just the way it is.”
Check out our chat below, which covers all of this and more in great detail. It’s been somewhat edited and condensed for content and clarity’s sake. And stay tuned for where and when you can actually get your ears on a copy of Pray For Death – or just check in with Lenny on Instagram!
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): I tend to start every interview this way, but congrats on the new record! I feel like somebody commented online that they had heard either all or parts of the new record, I forget who it was, but they made a comment that “Lenny Lashley fans will like this.” Like, if you liked Illuminator, if you liked All Are Welcome, you’ll like this record. And I think that’s entirely accurate. Lenny Lashley fans are going to dig this one.
Yeah, I hope so. I mean, they’ve been the sole source of support throughout the whole process anyway.
You mentioned that you’re giving it away, essentially. Not to fast forward to the release of the record right at the beginning, but you mentioned that you’re essentially giving the new record away, or as close to giving it away as you can?
Yeah, you’re beholden to some sort of charge with the distro and the digital release system. There’s no viable way to just give it away. However, the way that it’s set up through the digital distributor, there is a lowest amount they’ll let you charge, so that’s the only option really in that department. My goal throughout, as far as physical copies of it, is to hopefully have people contribute to the manufacturing and shipping costs. In other words, no potential profit which, I mean, in my short span of twelve years of doing my own releases has been negated to zero anyway (*both laugh*). It was just a way to give it less pressure and not have to worry about any expectations about recouping anything on my part, you know?
So, there will be physical copies of it?
Yeah, I have yet to determine how many there will be. When it is finally released in the digital realm, my hope is to then announce a pre-order and see how many people are into getting a physical copy of the record. Because the manufacturers want the cash upfront, I’ll have to have people that are willing to come on board with that so I have a basic amount of how many. I’m hoping between three- and five-hundred, because I think three (hundred) is like a minimum pressing. So then, if you get the three hundred, they give you a significant discount to get to the five hundred option, so maybe I’ll be able to swing some money out of pocket to kick it up so I’ll be able to have five hundred copies. Then people can order them from me, you know, pay for the cost to make the record and ship the record. I want to be transparent about that and show people the invoices from the manufacturer about what it costs to make and ship media through the Postal Service or whatever, you know?
So, sort of like a Kickstarter thing, but just without the mechanism of using Kickstarter, and just essentially trying to do it yourself?
Yeah, right, exactly. The thing is, for me personally – and not to come from a place of sour grapes or contempt or anything – but the idea is to connect directly with the people that are interested in the music and take the middle people out. In fact, I saw a thing the other day from Kay Hanley of Letters To Cleo. She had a little Instagram thing and she was talking about the record industry. She was really talking about more of the major labels and how they’re not geared really to help out new artists. Now, for a number of years, who knows who they’ve really been geared to help out – but her point was that all of these people who are trying to make it in the music business or whatever, they don’t have a real viable way to make a living. They’re beholden to whatever crumbs they can get from these guys, you know? It doesn’t bother me anymore, it just is what it is. So for me personally, as a musician or an artist or whatever you want to call it, it’s empowering to run it the way I’ve always managed to run things, you know?
That just seems like a lot. I mean, knowing just sort of peripherally, and obviously I have never released music, so I don’t know all the details of how that works, but that, like, that just seems like such an overwhelming thing from where I sit, that I sort of get why people either stop making music, or just let the label deal with it, if you have a small label, because it just seems, like, daunting to try to take on. So, I give you all sorts of props for doing it this way.
Yeah, it’s really a matter of getting your ducks in a row as far as manufacturing goes and all that kind of stuff and then being diligent about who’s ordering stuff. It’s just taking notes really, and you do that quite a bit, Jason. I’m not really good at it myself. But the point is, the whole process has been pretty enlightening in that regard. And that’s not to diss anybody from any scope of the businesses that I’ve been lucky enough to work with in the past. This is much more me getting to have the last word on what things are from the album art to the content to whatever. There’s no middle person in there giving me an opinion on things, except for Pete (Steinkopf), who did the role well as a producer. And the other guys who were in the band or whatever. That’s as far as any critique goes prior to making anything, you know?
Was that always the plan when it came time to record album…four? This is technically the fourth full-length Lenny Lashley’s Gang Of One record, right?
This would be the fourth, yeah.
When it was time to write for this record, was it always the goal to do it yourself this time, or did that come together as you were writing it or pulling it together?
It wasn’t really. After not being with Pirates Press anymore after the second record and into the third record or whatever, Dirty Mick at Omerta was nice enough to help me get the Egrets record out. And he did that as a sort of family favor sort of thing, it wasn’t a profitable venture for them really, in the end. It was really just something where Mick had some experience from a previous record label that he had and he had some connections with Revelation, who was able to do some distro, and the Coretex people. He’s a friend and somebody I’ve known for a long time and basically had full support of regardless of what the content of the record was, you know? And that was important to me. You’re into music as much as I am, when you read things from a guy like Tom Petty or a guy like Frank Zappa, it’s always difficult broaching a higher-up in a situation like that and what their views are on what an artist is trying to do, you know what I mean?
You mentioned working with Pete again. Did Pete do all four records? He did Illuminator, right?
Yeah, he did Illuminator, and the first thing he helped me out with was a little three-song seven-inch that he helped me out with, and that was through a mutual friend, Joe Koukos, who had a record store down there in Asbury, Hold Fast Records.
Oh sure, that was a great spot.
So Joe, knowing those guys and being a staple in the Asbury Park scene – because he had worked at the Stone Pony for years, and Club Deep for three or four years before that. He had had Darkbuster down there at Club Deep, and eventually when he found out I was kinda doing this stuff, he said “hey, I can put you in touch and we can do a seven-inch with Pete” and then I think it took all of fifteen seconds for me to ask if he wanted to do a full record.
Yeah, of course. Pete’s the best.
I’ve been very fortunate. It’s almost at the point where I don’t think I’d feel comfortable working with anybody else now, you know?
Yeah yeah yeah. What’s his role in the process? Do you go to him with completed ideas? Or is your relationship the kind where you can go to him with a sonic idea and then go to him like for advice like “Should we do this? Should we do this instead?” Because there’s a bunch of cool sort of textures and different sonic themes, musical themes, on the record. How much of that is your vision or Pete’s vision or both of you together?
For this particular one, there was like a year or something in between. I had been writing and working on stuff, so a lot of things were quite a bit more developed than in the past, you know? When I went in to record Illuminator with him, a few of the songs were really raw. Matter of fact, I remember that (Michael) McDermott (The Kilograms, Joan Jett, ex-Bouncing Souls) did drums on “Hooligans,” and Pete asked me to play it for him on acoustic guitar, and McDermott sorta shot me a look because I couldn’t even play it at that point (*both laugh*). He was like “go upstairs to Kate’s kitchen and try to get it together a little bit.” This one had a little bit more time for me to develop things at home and try to work on my vocal range. Pete is a super encourager of when an idea is flowing. He did have some tweaks or ideas about extending a break or doing a chord break here or little things like that that give things a little bit more body in the whole. I’ve learned to trust him. He’s such a good producer that if he suggests something, he wants what’s best for the song. Even if it’s out of my comfort zone, I defer to his judgement.
It’s funny, before this, one of the last interviews that I did was with Sammy Kay, who has recorded like twelve projects with Pete now, between splits and seven-inches and full lengths and whatever. And he says almost the exact same thing about having the trust in his vision that you were just talking about.
It’s funny because I’ve developed, over the years, a real respect for the things I’m doing musically. I feel really lucky to be able to make music, even if it’s self-funded, but just the fact that people want to listen to it occasionally. Pete really gets the gravity of that stuff. I remember after a long day of work on that first record, Pete would say “well, this is forever. This is going to be forever.” So that kind of changed my perspective on mailing something in. It’s a tremendous amount of effort and resolve to get something done the way that I want to get it done.
When you write at home, if you’re sending him demos, let’s say, or even just when you’re writing at home in general, are you, I mean, for somebody who plays so many shows as a literal gang of one, right? Like, there’s a lot of different sounds. You’ve always got horns. You’ve always got, like, pedal steel, especially lately. Like, how much of that comes from, like, do you write that stuff in your head or do you demo stuff like that while you’re writing as well? Or do you wait until you kind of have the song fleshed out in the studio with Pete to figure out what to add to it?
It kind of depends on what would serve the song. Luckily enough, the group of folks that I’ve worked with are super talented. Cody Nilsen, who’s been phenomenal as a pedal steel guy, is someone I’ve done a bunch of shows with just him and me. It’s a very unique sort of sound that it brings to the country-er sounding stuff. So automatically, I know that that should be a voice that’s in there, and Cody is so intuitive about what to put down. He doesn’t need a tremendous amount of coaching or whatever.
He’s so good. I’ve seen the two of you together a few times. He’s so great.
It’s mind-blowing to me to be in the type of position like Cody or like Andrew Stern. They are both phenomenal guitar players that can translate what they have in their brain to their fingers and they can play it instantaneously. It’s like alien shit, you know? (*both laugh*)
And to be able to sort of know what you’re going for, probably without you playing it for them all the way through. Like, you could start playing them a song and they know what to do while they’re hearing it, basically. Even though they haven’t played it yet and they didn’t write the song.
It’s a real strange talent that folks like that have. Tim Brennan of the Dropkicks is very intuitive like that. So the one song that has the horns on it on the new record, “Devil Behind The Wheel,” I had worked with those guys before. I had them do some stuff on the previous record, so I knew that they had it in their wheelhouse. I did give them a little direction, because there was a line that I had in my head. They had a more elaborate part worked up, and when Pete heard it, he said “well, maybe we can scale it down a little bit” because he didn’t want it to step on some of those beautiful organ lines. I just kinda deferred to Pete. He knows enough to tease people into some ideas and not totally just standing on a table, jumping up and down and beating it into the ground. I’m a ‘beat a dead horse’ kind of person, so I appreciate that. (*both laugh*)
So who else plays on the record? Obviously Cody and Andrew, but who else plays on the record this time, because I want to make sure those people get their flowers too.
The guy who played the drums is a buddy of mine, Sam Gelston. He worked with me at the Midway (Cafe) for a bunch of years. Super talented all-around musician. Plays guitar and sings and is a really good drummer, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t realize he was as good of a drummer as he is. A buddy John Sheeran played bass. I’m going to space it on some of the bands he’s been in, but he was in The Spitzz with Tom and Victoria from Showcase Showdown. He’s been around forever and I’ve always kinda known him but never had gotten a chance to get to make music with him. He does a lot of stuff with Andrew Stern, who I also developed a relationship with through the Midway. He was coming in and playing a lot of Wednesday night gigs there when I was tending bar, so we got to be friends. Andrew suggested “oh, we should do something together at some point!” And then on organ is a guy Tom West, who is just like the coolest old cat ever. He’s done stuff with Peter Wolf from J. Giles Band and fills in with a bunch of other folks. I had met him too from coming in the Midway. It’s kind of mind-blowing that all of the people that I had watched doing other projects and was in awe of wound up being a part of this. And also Jared Hart did some background vocals. And (Doug Zambon) who is so nice, did some other background vocals. He did a bunch of stuff on the previous record too. And also, a real big surprise is Brian Fallon from Gaslight Anthem. I had been back and forth with him a little bit on Instagram, messaging about how much I loved the solo stuff that he had recently done. The common denominator was Ted Hutt, who has done a bunch of stuff with Dropkicks and did The ‘59 Sound with those guys. But that solo stuff from Brian really, really struck me more than the Gaslight stuff, you know what I mean? I reached out to him and conveyed that and on one song, I actually heard his voice in my head. I’d listen to his solo records so much that it must have subconsciously seeped in and I heard his voice, you know? I just asked and he said “sure, I’d love to do it!” That was a real mind-blowing thing. He’s such a nice guy to do something like that, you know?”
What song does he do backup vocals on? Is that “Mrs. Breeze”?
Yeah, “Mrs. Breeze.” He actually starts the song. It’s his vocal from the get-go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That totally didn’t dawn on me. I mean, I actually wrote in my notes to the song “who’s doing the other vocal here?” So it’s funny that I’ve been listening to him for 20 years and didn’t register that that was his voice.
It’s funny because Pete had him over and they did that at Little Eden. And Pete said “you guys have such a similar tonality, it sounds really good with you guys singing together.”
It does, yeah.
Brian really bought into the whole thing. There’s the whole call-and-response part on the bridge, and he just took the ball and ran with it. It just brings so much to the song. At the end, he’s singing with me. I sing a line and he sings a line and we sing it together on the last line. I’m just so pleased with how it came out.
Yeah, I almost wondered if I was just hearing like… because I was listening to it in my car and my 10-year-old Honda Accord doesn’t have the best stereo system in it. But I was like, oh, I wonder if I’m just hearing like left channel, right channel as the different voices. So it’s interesting that that’s Brian. I love that song, by the way. I was making a list and trying to prioritize the songs that I wanted to talk about. And I think that one might be my favorite one on the record. I’m not entirely sure…
Here’s a thing that I’ve come to terms with over the years, Jason. I write on a really emotional level. It doesn’t fit in with a lot of the criteria in the music business because it’s kind of depressing, sad-ish stuff, you know what I mean? I’ve always gravitated toward that stuff even since I Was a kid and listening to the AM Radio. With that one, there’s an obvious nod to classic rock, like “Call Me The Breeze” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The tale of eating orange sunshine, those are my teenage years. That was high school, you know? Popping kegs and eating acid or whatever. I don’t know how relatable that is to the younger generation, but the emotion I think comes through. It’s about a lost kid or a kid that just gets swept up and away from their parents.
I thought from like the first line of the song, it’s sort of like retelling the Petty song, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Because “the Indiana Boys and the Indiana nights.” I was like, oh, it’s interesting to think about this as like the same character, but from like if things went a little more sideways.
It’s so funny that you mention Petty, because last night, when we were rehearsing, we did “Gone World,” and Andrew said “That feels like a Traveling Wilbury’s tune” and until he said that, I didn’t quite get that, but from the get-go with this album sonically, I suggested to Pete that we chase the idea of Damn The Torpedos by Tom Petty. That was such a once-in-a-musical-history type of recording, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the history of that and what it entailed. So sonically, we tried to chase a little bit of that dragon. Not that we were making Damn The Torpedos, but we recorded everything in a live-ish way, and we went for takes. That’s kind of not done a lot that way anymore.
No, I think because of like digital music and the way that like people will just take 40, 50 takes and like make sure you nail a part and whatever. So I think one of the things that that sort of recording style has gotten people into bad habits around, like just record a bunch of takes of it rather than the old-fashioned, like get you all in a room and play the damn song together. Because that’s like… Those are the records that translate the best, I think, to a live show anyway, right? Because that’s essentially what we’re going to hear.
Ideally that certainly is a thing. It’s a little bit of a tightrope walk, but the spontaneity and the magical, unquantifiable moments don’t happen if it’s all pre-determined. That’s how we did “One Shot Down.” That was pretty much just a sketch of a verse and we worked it all out right there. Nick Hebditch did a video of the whole experience in there and at some point in my life, I can’t wait to watch that, because you can kinda see the whole thing transpiring. Me explaining it to the guys and Andrew picking up a twelve-string and everybody working it out, and the next thing you know, we’re ripping through a take. It was pretty magical, you know?
That’s awesome. I mean as necessary as it is for people to write and record sometimes digitally and by themselves and whatever, you’re right about that sort of studio magic thing, which I hope never goes away.
I defer to Rick Rubin’s sort of methodology, that everything is a tool in the box. And don’t really ever say no to anything. But this particular record was really the most magical musical time of my life. Two of the songs on the record were first takes, all the way through from start to finish. And that’s with me singing and playing guitar, and I’ve never done that in my life. I always go back and track a vocal as a separate thing.
Which two? I’m curious about that. I mean, you sort of mentioned “One Shot Down” but…
So that one was worked out in the studio. Every song was done full takes, but first, complete takes without having to go back was “Working Class Hero,” the Lennon cover. Pete heard that one the first pass through with me singing it and playing it and said “well, dude, I just got some goosebumps. You don’t need to do that one again.” And then the closing track, “Hate Anymore,” was done all in one pass too. It was me playing guitar and singing and the band playing and it was one take and that was it.
Wow. That’s really impressive.
It probably would never occur if I hadn’t had quite a bit of time to get myself up to speed. The other guys are competent musicians, I’m a bit of a third wheel, you know? (*both laugh*)
They’re your songs but you have to catch up. (*both laugh*)
It took me a year to get to be able to play the stuff good enough to record. I’ve never had that luxury going into the studio. I’m always learning on the fly and a little bit behind the curve with everybody.
When did you start writing for this one? Do you essentially just write straight along and then when you have a batch done you make a record?
Generally I’m always writing or getting ideas, and if I’m lucky some things seem totally close to where they should be. Other things I’ll just kinda bank and won’t hammer them out too much until it’s time to pull a record together, you know? I like to keep ideas that are fresh. Sometimes things go by the wayside and you hear them again three months later or a year later and you’re like “What the heck was I thinking on that one?” you know? (*both laugh*)
Fallon, to go back to him for a minute, I remember during Covid he was doing a songwriter Instagram podcast sort of thing, and he and another writer would go back and forth and play songs, and one of the things he talked about all the time was “just write all of it.” Don’t worry about what it is, just write all of it, you’re going to throw out most of it, but then you can look back at it and you might find some line or some chord progression in there to build on if you just keep going.
Years ago, I read a book called The Artist’s Way. Coppola’s wife I think wrote it. (*editor’s note: it was Julia Coleman, Martin Scorcese’s wife) That was like “when you get up in the morning, don’t think, just put the pen to paper and write.” It was designed to help eliminate some kind of writer’s block. Editing is such a big thing. But that being said, it is nice when you can catch lightning in a bottle where the whole thing just writes itself. A lot of people argue that those are the best ones. I don’t know. I think those are the lucky ones, but the best ones can require a little more effort, you know?
Do you like the songs where you’re telling your story more first person, or the songs where you’re telling a character’s story? A song like “Mrs. Breeze,” for example. Do you like one exercise more than the other?
It’s really, to be honest, when I look at it introspectively, aspects of it are really all me anyway, you know? Like the line in that song “Mama, don’t you worry ‘bout me,” is really kinda trying to make amends to my mother, because I put her through a lot of hell when I was a kid. Fortunately we got to see the other side where hopefully she doesn’t worry about me anymore. But I was a troubled kid. A troubled not even kid, a troubled adult. I must have caused her a lot of anxiety over the years. So there’s always a little bit of a personal thing. It’s much easier to build characters around it because it doesn’t hurt as bad, you know? It’s nice to tell a story in the Springsteen fashion. That was a great thing that I picked up from him years ago, that “the big secret is I made it all up!” And he didn’t make it all up. I don’t believe that’s true. If you listen to his stuff, you believe that it was him because he believed that it was him when he was writing it, you know?
He had the ability to be an empath enough that he could observe what was going on around him and tap into the emotions that other people were feeling and relate to them. So it maybe didn’t happen to HIM, but it did happen and it certainly happened around him.
He had the gift to be able to convey that to the listener. Like when you listen to “Factory,” there’s no way you could tell me he wasn’t getting up in the morning walking to the factory, or walking home at the end of the night with death in his eyes, you know?
That’s a thing that we give songwriters like Springsteen shit for but we don’t really do that in other artforms? Like we don’t do that in film, we don’t do that in painting or sculpture. You don’t assume that Francis Ford Coppola or Marlon Brando went through the things that they were putting on the screen, they weren’t documentaries, you know.
The music scene is pretty savage about the vetting process, yeah. And I don’t get it, really. I’m a Gram Parsons kind of guy – good music is good music, you don’t have to classify it or prove that you like Taylor Swift by reciting every song that she ever wrote. Or the Circle Jerks or whoever. And maybe that’s the 60-year-old in me too. I don’t feel like I have to justify anything. If I like it I like it and if I don’t, I don’t.
Yeah, and I think that punk rock especially has had so much gatekeeping involved historically. What is punk, what isn’t punk, who sold out, whatever…who gives a shit, if you like the music, you like the music.
You want to talk about the big lie, there’s a big lie. Punk rock was supposed to be all inviting. I really defer to that thing about making music that speaks to you. That’s a Bowie thing. Make music for yourself, and if people happen to like it, that’s cool.
I haven’t seen the cover art for the record yet, but I saw the video for “Gone World,” that Lewis Rossignol did, who did the Egrets record. I love him. That came out so great.
Yeah, he’s awesome.
And it’s a weird thing to say that about somebody who paints the way that he paints.
Yeah, he gets a lot of hate for the childlike way he paints. It really speaks to me too. Yeah, he did that video, and it came out so good. The album art was done by an artist who goes by Timmy Tanker. He does woodblock stuff. He did a design for me a number of years ago. I find a lot of people through social media or mutual friends or whatever. If something speaks to me, I’ll usually beg them to do something for me. So a bunch of years ago, I begged him to do a shirt design, and as is often the case, not everybody is always as enthralled with some stuff as I am. Some people are Renoir guys, some people are Van Gogh guys.I really always appreciate Tim’s style and his honesty and the place of emotion that comes from the stuff that he does, so with the Pray For Death title, it’s a little doom-and-gloomish, so he seemed like the obvious choice, you know?
I hope that the pre-order thing goes well, because I’m excited for people to hear it and I’m always excited for it to be a real, physical thing. It’s a super fun record. It’s a Lenny record.
Yeah, I hope so. I think there’s some variety. And to put my professional musician hat on, the plan is to not repress it or anything. The industry in a large scale has developed a commodity sort of ideology, with short runs of different colors and variants. There’s nothing wrong with that, it seems like a great trend for people who are collectors, but this will be all black, one pressing of however many it is. I don’t plan to press it again. Kind of like the Piss Poor Boys thing years ago. You get in where you get in, otherwise pay a tremendous amount down the road on Discogs or whatever. I feel like it should have a finite kind of thing about it.
I can appreciate that. I get that people are collectors, but for me personally, I think it’s a little weird to chase down like 40 different variants of the same record. I think that music was meant to be listened to, so I’m not a “collector” like that. I love Born To Run, but I don’t need fifteen copies of Born To Run, you know?
And I’m guilty of it a little bit too. The supply and demand thing has always struck me a little funny insofar as commerce. We’re so lied to as a people generally, and I tried to make an example of it when Illuminator was out, with the gold records. If you look at DeBeers, the diamond company, and you look at the value that the world places on diamonds…if DeBeers just opened the doors to their warehouses and flooded the world with their stockpile of diamonds, the value of a diamond would be like a glass marble, right? It’s basically a smoke-and-mirrors kind of thing. It’s the way a lot of the world is now, and I don’t want to be someone who goes down in history as someone who was smoke-and-mirrors.
Oh I don’t think there’s anybody who would accuse Lenny Lashley of being smoke and mirrors. (*both laugh*) I can stand on that. I know you, and the other people I know who know you I can guarantee would never accuse Lenny Lashley of being smoke and mirrors.
That’s something that makes me feel good.
And we laugh, but I do mean that genuinely. The amount of people that will comment when I have my Lenny’s Gang Of One hoodie from time to time, that they “Love Lenny, he’s such a good dude.” Whether they’re in the music scene or not.
It’s not lost on me. I really love that other people, especially peers, appreciate it. I would be lying if I said that that stuff wasn’t important. Because when people like Pete or Brian (Fallon) in the industry can say they appreciate it and get a little bit real, it’s encouraging to know that maybe I’m not far off the right track with what I do.
That stuff helps, right, with the imposter syndrome stuff that we’ve talked about before? Like knowing that someone like Chuck Ragan is a big fan. Tim Barry…
Yeah, and there could probably be a list, but thing about it is, I’m a recovering drug addict and recovering alcoholic, right? The internal stuff, it does make me feel good. But there’s never really enough for that, somewhere deep in my psyche. So to just be okay with who I am now, that’s been a real transformative part of this process and this particular record, you know what I mean? Therein – like the Lennon song says – it’s okay to just be not chasing my tail for some sort of bigger success. It’s the King Midas thing, you know? Be careful what you wish for, because if everything you touch turns to gold, then everything you eat is gold. There are no long-term emotional benefits from that, you know?
I think the first time you and I talked like this was back for Illuminator, maybe just before it came out. Do you think we’d be having that sort of conversation and you would have that sort of insight back then?
Absolutely not. No fucking way. I’ve been chasing my tail and, if I’m being totally honest with you – this idea that music is going to provide some type of lottery ticket for me down the road or some type of accolades. I’m much more comfortable being present with what I have and being grateful for what I have now. It’s night and day compared to how I was back then. It’s not illusory, it’s not always how I want it to be, but it’s better than I deserve most of the time. And that goes into the recovery piece, you know? And some Buddhism and some other spirituality that’s crept into my life. I can be okay with just the way it is.
