If you’ve even casually perused the Dying Scene archives at any point over the last fifteen years, you’re no doubt more than a little bit aware of the significance of 1994 in the annals of history. As a cultural touchstone (or more accurately a punk rock subcultural touchstone), it’s probably second only to 1976. While the latter saw bands like Ramones and Sex Pistols open the door for bands like The Clash and the scenes in the Lower East Side and London and eventually LA; the former blew the roof off the building, with bands like Green Day and The Offspring changing the sound of what qualified as ‘popular’ music and allowing the Rancids and the NOFXs and the Bad Religions of the world to not only create decades-long careers for themselves but to create exposure for another tier bands who have truly provided the life’s blood to the scene in perpetuity.
Enter Smoking Popes. The Chicago-based foursome centered around the trio of Caterer brothers (the golden-voiced Josh on vocals and guitar with brothers Eli and Matt on guitar and bass, respectively) and Mike Felumlee on drums released their sophomore record, Born To Quit, on their hometown’s Johann’s Face Records into the maelstrom that was 1994. Thanks to the modest radio success of lead single “Need You Around,” the album was picked up by Columbia Records and rereleased the following July, spawning even more modest success, the release of the now-classic “Rubella” as a single, and the use of a bunch of album tracks in movies like Tommy Boy and Angus and Boys.
This year, the Popes marked thirty years of Born To Quit with a celebratory reissue of sorts. I say “of sorts” because this isn’t your basic “remastered” or “remixed” or “repackaged with bonus content from the archives” edition. Instead, since control of the original record still lies in the corporate clutches of Capitol Records, the Popes decided to take a page from the Taylor Swift playbook and rerecord the album for release on a new label, Ryan Young of Off With Their Heads‘ Anxious & Angry. Earlier this year, the band gathered at Bombsight Recording Studio in Bloomington, Illinois, to update and redo the record. Rather than rework each song track by track or turn it into an acoustic record or something of the like, the band actually compiled a studio audience of a few dozen people, hit the “Record” button, and pulled it off live on the floor, sans overdubs or modern studio magic.
Because the original was largely recorded live on the floor in studio three decades ago, the two releases have a largely similar feel. The new one sounds a tad crisper and cleaner, but it’s still punchy and raw in all the right places. Plus, it features a cameo from the one-and-only Deanna Belos (Sincere Engingeer) on “Gotta Know Right Now,” whose vocal take in the second verse and chorus give the song an interesting wrinkle of immediacy. Despite being recorded live in front of a studio audience (unlike Josh Caterer’s two quarantine-era solo live albums, each recorded effectively in empty bars), the lack of banter or improvisational moments still create the feel that you’re listening to a studio record and not a traditional live album.
Always one of our favorite music scene folks to chat with – you can still see our (*both laugh*) Quarantine Chat episodes here and here – we caught up with Popes’ frontman Josh Caterer via Zoom from a hotel room in Worcester, Massachusetts, before the sold-out Boston stop on the band’s lengthy – and now completed – US tour opening for The Get Up Kids (editor’s note: here’s what the aforementioned show looked like!). We spoke at length about the recording – and re-recording – processes behind Born To Quit, embarking on their longest tour in decades, navigating what it means to be a working punk rock band circa 2024, and, perhaps, a sneak peak at what the band has in store for next year…tours? Music? Find out below!!
The following interview has been edited and condensed for content and clarity. Cover photo credit: Chris Tracy
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): Thank you for doing this. It’s been a while.
Josh Caterer: Yeah, and it worked out today, time-wise, because it’s a day off for us. And so we drove from Asbury Park. We’re playing in Boston tomorrow.
You certainly are. I’ll be there.
Oh, good, good, good. But we’re staying in a place that I’m told is pronounced Wor-ster.
Worcester.
Worcester.
Worcester, yes.
But it’s spelled Worchester.
Yeah, like Worcestershire sauce.
So there are syllables in there that you just ignore.
Yes, it’s very Massachusetts.
Who has time for three syllables when you can just use two instead?
Yeah, and then you actually got to cut the R off the end, so it’s Woostah
Woostah!
Yeah, Worcester… W-O-O-S-T-A-H…Worcester.
But so yeah, we checked in here a little while ago and just kind of chilling for the evening. Perfect time to do an interview.
How’s tour going so far? It seems like a long one for you guys comparatively, at least since COVID.
It is, especially if you include the two weeks in Europe that we did starting at the end of July. We were over there for two weeks, home for 10 days. Then we started the Get Up Kids tour, the first leg of which was three and a half weeks, home for 10 days again, and then started the second leg. So it all feels like one big tour. And it’s pretty cool. It’s been going great, but it feels long. It’s long enough to where we feel like we just live out here now.
Does it feel like the old days in some speaking? Granted, touring has changed a lot since like 94, but…
Yeah, I mean, we have not done this much touring in this short amount of time since the 90s. So, yeah, it’s old days for us. But better.
I was going to say, how has that part changed in 30 years?
Back then, there was a lot of substance abuse and general destructive behavior going on. So we weren’t really enjoying it…we thought we were enjoying life, but in reality, we weren’t enjoying life as much as we are now.
Who’s in the touring lineup now? Is it the three brothers, Caterer and Mike in this edition or is it you and Mike?
My brothers are not touring right now because they both have little kids. So it’s me and Mike. And then on guitar, we have Jack Sibilski who plays in a band called Telethon.
Sure.
So we’re kind of borrowing him. And then on bass, we have Reuben Baird, who’s been playing with us on the road for a few years now, because even before they had kids, my brother Matt decided that he didn’t want to tour anymore. Like basically, he got married. He wasn’t in being away from home. So we started asking Reuben to fill in and he’s officially our tour bass player.
I feel like I have seen Reuben live. I feel like one of, I can’t remember the last time you were in Boston or where the last time I saw you was because I’ve sort of seen you all over, but I feel like Reuben was there last time.
Yeah, he’s been with us for, I wish I knew the exact number of years, but I don’t. But it’s funny because on the road, people will give Jack kind of a hard time for being obviously the new guy, the fill-in guy. People come up to him and ask him, where’s Eli? What are you doing here? But nobody says anything to Reuben because he looks like a Caterer. He’s got the Caterer hairstyle for sure. (*both laugh*)
You know, I feel like that actually sounds familiar now from the last time I saw you. I know that that’s not Matt, but maybe that’s like the cousin.
Yeah, maybe they put Matt into some sort of a stretching (machine), put him on the rack. (*both laugh*)
So let’s talk about Born to Quit, the live session. So when we have talked the last couple of times, we’re about live albums that you did solo, essentially in front of nobody during COVID.
So this was a chance to do a live album with the actual four, the three Caterers and Mike who were on the original album, but with a little bit of a studio audience. We had about, I think there were 60 people in there.
It’s at a studio studio, right? It wasn’t at like a live performance venue.
Yeah, it’s at a recording studio where we recorded most of our new album that’s coming out next year. A beautiful studio called Bombsite in Bloomington, Illinois, which is pretty close to where Mike lives. And so, you know, the idea was to kind of do, in essence, a “Taylor’s Version” of Born to Quit. But then that evolved into, well, let’s get some people in there and do like a small studio audience. So it’s sort of a live album, but because it’s in a recording studio, it has the production quality of a studio album. It’s sort of the best of both worlds, I think. And, you know, we got to do like most of what ended up on the album was just a single take of things. But there were three or four songs that we did a second take of because we felt like there was a little something wonky in there that we could do better. But as Mike pointed out after, we ended up, even in those cases, using the first take for most of those. And there were no actual overdubs. I know like a lot of times on a live album, the live will be in air quotes and all the vocals have been re-sung and the guitar solos have been redone. But now this is actually as it happened, warts and all. And it was pretty cool because the crowd that had assembled there were people who were really passionate about that album and many of whom had like flown in from different parts of the country. There was even a dude from Ireland there.
Wow!
And so it just felt really special. It felt to everyone, including us, like we were kind of showing some reverence for the material and trying to do it tastefully and sort of not change it too much. There are a couple of moments where we veer from the original arrangement. For example, we did a duet. We did “Gotta Know Right Now” as a duet with Deanna from Sincere Engineer.
The wonderful Deanna Belos.
Yeah, she’s just great. So we had her sing the third verse, but we had to change the key. So we had to like modulate coming out of the guitar solo from D to G. And so that kind of changes the flavor of the song.
But to have her vocal on it, it brings a whole new element to the song. It’s pretty great.
Yeah!
And she sort of gets after it, too. She’s capable of doing harmonies, but she really made that gritty, I think. That’s an interesting element to add to that song.
If we had kept it in my key and that was her original suggestion, just like leave it where it is and I’ll just sing in your key. But it would have been really low for her. And so she wouldn’t have been pushing her voice up to where it really sounds great. You know, when she kind of starts getting screamy and her voice shreds a little bit, it’s really awesome. So we wanted that to happen.
Sort of changes the context of the lyric a little bit, too. Like people say, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” There’s a certain sort of like delicacy and earnestness to the way that you sing it. But then when she sings it, it’s like grabbing you by the throat. It’s like, hey! This is time sensitive! I need to know right fucking now!
Yeah. She brings a kind of a manic quality to it.
Right. It’s great. Sort of a two-part question, but a lot of those songs that you have played, you’ve played for quite a while and they have been sort of staples in the set. Are there songs that sort of grew as you played them live over the course of the last 30 years that you had to sort of cut things out of to make them more like the studio record, like extended solos that you might do during “Rubella” or something like that? Are there songs that sort of you had to morph back into the original because of the way that they’ve changed in the live setting over 30 years?
No, we weren’t thinking in those terms. Like a song like you mentioned, “Rubella.” We’ve always played, we have not changed the structure of that over the years. And so Eli is doing the leads that lead into every verse. And I think he kind of improvises a little bit, but they’re fairly similar to the original. And I think some of Mike’s drum fills are different than the original recording. And I’m not sure about the tempo. He might play it faster now, but it’s not significantly different. Same with “Midnight Moon.” I mean, I think the two songs on this album that are different, like noticeably different than the original studio versions are “Gotta Know Right Now” and “On The Shoulder.” And usually when we play “Gotta Know Right Now” and Deanna is not with us, we do stretch out the solo and make it this kind of call-and-response guitar solo thing. And then I’ll kind of like sing other things over that part of the song and just kind of just have fun with it. But yeah, we didn’t do that. But we weren’t getting it back to the original. We were doing a completely different thing. But then with “On The Shoulder,” we haven’t played that song much over the years. It’s not a regular part of a live set. So it was cool. And it has been cool since we re-recorded the album to start bringing that back into our set. That’s one of the songs that since we haven’t played it that much, it still kind of feels fresh to us. And there were a couple of songs on the album that are like that, like “Can’t Help The Teardrops From Getting Cried.”
I love that song, but yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it live.
I think we played it three or four times in front of an audience. And now I’m not even sure why. I think we had an idea that it just wasn’t going to go over well with audiences or it didn’t rock enough or something. But now that we’re playing it again, it’s like, “oh, this is really fun! This feels good to play!” Especially the guitar in there is fun. So it’s good to dust off some of those. And it’s like, “hey, old friend, welcome back into the fold.”
Yeah. And it does, I mean, it sounds like a live album, but then so I’ve gone back and listened to the original. Obviously, we’re in an age where people don’t listen to albums straight through as much anymore. And much to my chagrin, I’m as guilty of that as anybody. But I’ve been going through and comparing and contrasting the original album with the live session. And A, it’s been really fun. But B, it sort of made me wonder how much of the original was recorded live in studio? Meaning like, how was the original tracked? Because there are parts of it where it almost sounds feel-wise similar, like you record it live and then maybe just overdub the vocals.
That is typically our approach to recording is that all the rhythm tracks are recorded simultaneously. So all the drums, bass and rhythm guitars on that album were recorded at once without really any fixes or overdubs or anything. And then we would go back in and I would do my vocal take and any guitar solos. And I feel like we only ever did a few takes of any song. We’ve never been a band that’s going to do 10, 15, 20 takes of a song.
Yeah.
You know, we go in and we’ll do two or three takes. And if you do three takes of a song and it’s not feeling good, you’re not going to get it by doing more takes. Take a break.
Yeah, right.
You know, go and have a burrito and come back to it later because it’s not clicking.
And you weren’t writing in the studio, right? Everything had been written ahead of time and worked out ahead of time. So when you go in, it’s like hit record and go.
So all the arrangements were already set by the time we went in. We couldn’t afford to write things in the studio. Back then we were saving up money from our little minimum wage jobs until we had enough for a studio session. So we didn’t have time to mess around and go in and record two or three songs and mix them all in one 12-hour session.
Oh, wow.
Which is a fun way to do it. And one thing I do remember, though, is that on the song “Gotta Know Right Now,” on the original studio version, I went back and redid my vocal takes or did what was supposed to be a real vocal take. But I remember Phil Bonnet just kept saying, “I don’t know, guys, I really like that scratch vocal track. There was just something about it. And I think you should consider using that, even if it wasn’t EQ’d properly and it’s a little bit distorted.” So you can hear that, especially on the higher notes, like, “I gotta know RIGHT now!” It’s a little distorted and that wasn’t me roasting my voice. That was like overloading the track because it wasn’t EQ’d properly.
Oh, wow. I’m going to have to go back and listen for that again. Something I’ve probably heard a thousand times, but not realizing what it was.
Well, yeah, I know that was a Phil thing. He was amazing to work with because he was always more interested in how something felt than perfect. So on our recordings with him, there are these mistakes that we left in that just had a certain, they brought a certain character to it that he always really liked. But then when we got around to doing Destination Failure, working with Jerry Finn, who I have no complaints about because he was a genius in his own right. But he was much more meticulous about making things perfect. And if one of the strings on one of our guitars was slightly out of tune, he would stop the song, go over there and we’d have to plug into this huge chromatic tuner that was mounted into the wall and get our things had to be perfect.
That’s awesome. The way you record now, is it sort of an amalgamation of the way that you’ve recorded on those early records or have you just sort of figured out your own way of doing things now?
Yeah, it’s just a continuation of the way that we were doing Born to Quit, really, especially on this album that we just finished recording that’s coming up here. Because we’ve recorded this one like two songs at a time. And so it has taken us a really long time to make this record. I think, you know, Born to Quit only took us maybe, I don’t know how many months, it says so on the album, but maybe six months or so to start to finish. But this new album, it has taken us well over a year, just because we’d go in and record two songs. And then I would keep writing and we would get together very occasionally to work on arrangements. And then maybe three or four months later, we’d go in and record two more songs. So the process is just stretched out. But it’s basically like the same approach that we had on Born to Quit, where just all the basic tracks, rhythm tracks, are live simultaneous, and I overdub my vocals. I think the difference now is that we tend to put more layers of things on our music, especially with Eli in the studio. He is very creative and nuanced and will get ideas about little atmospheric things that can be added to the track. And so on our last couple of albums, he’s been really inspired about that and done some great guitar work that I don’t think we were capable of when we made Born to Quit.
Yeah, he used to post stuff like that. I feel like pre having a little one, he used to post a lot of stuff like that on his Instagram, a lot of like atmospheric things he was sort of creating, just not folks related, just like stuff he would put together in a studio or in his house.
Yeah, he’s great at that.
I forgot about that until you just mentioned it.
Yeah. And I’m always delighted when he brings some of that to the Popes recording sessions.
You put this live session out on Anxious and Angry, and I know that Ryan is a very big Popes fan and has been forever. Who approached whom about doing that? Because he doesn’t necessarily put out a lot of records as anxious, like he does a lot of merchandise and things, but he doesn’t necessarily put out a lot of records as Anxious and Angry.
Right. Well, he not only does our merch, but he just has a close working relationship with our drummer, Mike. Those two guys are really good friends. And so I don’t know who approached whom, but somewhere in their relationship, they were talking at one point and got the idea that we would do our album on Anxious and Angry, which seems great to me. Ryan’s been great to work with. And we’ve played some shows with Off With Their Heads. And not only are they a great band, but they’re cool people to be around. So I’m all for exploring that. I’m not sure that that means that we’re necessarily done putting things out on Asian Man Records. We’ll probably release, hopefully, more stuff on Asian Man in the future. It just sort of depends on what we’re doing.
I was going to say, are you allowed to spill the beans about where next year’s new album is going to come out or is that to be revealed?
Oh, I think I should wait on anything else about that. (*both laugh*)
I really dig the live records that you were doing during COVID from the sort of empty bars and that whole atmosphere. But I like this new version of Born To Quit. It’s an album I’ve listened to, like I said, a thousand times. And it’s enough like the original that it’s not like bands obviously will do complete reimaginings of records and strip them down. That has its place, but I don’t necessarily want that.
These are songs I’ve sung a thousand times. “Need You Around” wouldn’t sound the same. And that was part of the discussion, too. We knew we wanted to do something for the 30th anniversary and that it would be too much of a pain to try to license the album from Capitol / Universal.
Do they still have it?
They still have it. We get it back in a few years, but we don’t have it back yet. And so we needed to create a different version of it. And early in the discussion, we were thinking of doing the old acoustic version, which I mean, there are a lot of pretty cool examples of that. First that comes to mind is Superchunk did an acoustic one of their albums recently, and that’s cool. I know Bayside has done that. A lot of bands have done that and we considered it. But I don’t know, just the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like at least my feeling about it was that a couple of the songs, particularly “Need You Around,” is so dependent on the drum beat that any attempt to soften that or diminish that is just going to defang the song. And so it needed to be a full volume rock and roll version of it. And so that’s why we ended up doing it the way that we did.
Yeah, and I feel like it sort of changes when bands do that. It sort of changes the way that you tour about an album, because if people get into the acoustic versions, then they’re going to want to hear you play the acoustic versions. But if you go out with Get Up Kids and they’re not doing an acoustic set, then it seems sort of weird to have an opening Smoking Pope set with a mini acoustic set in the middle. To me, it messes with the flow of it. Not that it’s inherently bad.
It just sort of changes the whole approach, I would imagine, to how you perform those songs. Yeah, I agree.
Not inherently bad.
Right. And I feel like a lot of what we’re doing live as a band depends on there being a certain energy and a certain momentum to the set as much as I love doing acoustic shows, those are those are a different thing than going Smoking Popes live.
Yeah, I think increasingly, like every time I see Smoking Popes, I’m like, you know what? That band rocks. And that increase, that amplifies itself over the years too. Sometimes obviously bands will lose a step or three with age and with a lot of miles on their tires, but every time I see the Popes, I come away thinking “they just keep getting better, and they just keep rocking harder.” More shreddy guitar solos! It’s awesome. The pendulum usually swings the other way so I’m glad it isn’t.
I’m glad it isn’t too. Maybe eventually it’ll have to swing the other way because we physically won’t be able to rock as hard as we do now,
See but I think with your voice especially, you can still “rock” for longer than some people. You don’t have a screamer’s voice. Bands like Strung Out or whatever have put out acoustic record and Jason has put out side projects because he’s like “I can’t scream when I’m 60 the way I can when I’m 30 or 40.” I feel like as long as the voice is in place, the rest of the music is going to be there.
Thankfully I have a singing style that doesn’t overly strain my voice and it doesn’t shred my vocal chords. I don’t smoke anymore, I don’t even drink anymore, so that effect that alcohol can have on the voice, from the acids or whatever
Whiskey and cigarettes sound great on a voice but they do shorten the shelf life a little…
But then you end up sounding like Bob Dylan (*both laugh*)
Yes! And as much as I like and respect Bob Dylan…I’m sort of glad I haven’t seen him recently.
Yeah, I’m a huge fan, how could you not have tremendous respect for him? But his voice has been shot for a couple decades at this point!
Whereas Neil Young, who’s basically a contemporary…his voice has been shot since the beginning so it didn’t matter.
Exactly! It’s only as shot now as it was before! (*both laugh*)
