AGAINST ME

MUSIC INTERVIEW Anti-Pop Consortium Indie Punks Against Me! Move To The Majors

WAR GAINST ME! IS ABOUT AS FAR AWAY FROM TOP 40 pop-punk as one can get. They write songs about international injustice, not bitter high school breakups. Their hair is not asymmetrically styled, and it’s hard to imagine a single band member squeezing into a pair of ladies’ jeans. Though they’re clearly not afraid of melodies, the band doesn’t write traditional radio-friendly jams, so it surprised many fans when they announced they were signing to Sire Records last year. There were the predictable screams of “sellout!” and plenty of hand wringing in the close-knit world of indie punk. But it turns out all the worry was for nothing. The band’s soon-to-be released major label debut is just as defiant as their three other records, with the first single, “ White People for Peace,” another stiff middle finger to Bush and his administration. The band carved out a niche early on as an intelligent punk-rock band– like Billy Bragg with louder amps– and the new record is no different.

It seems like the rest of the world is finally catching on to their sound. They just played Coachella, and have been invited to take the stage at this year’s Lollapalooza. Frontman Tom Gabel sat down with us backstage last month as they prepared to play their final show on a tour with monolithic metal band Mastodon. All of the songs on the new record where written on the road, right?

Pretty much the whole entire thing and also, some of it was written while I was living in a hotel. I lived in a hotel for about a year and a half. After our last record came out, Searching for a Former Clarity, I knew that we were going to be touring so much, so I put all of my shit in storage, so even when we were home, I was living in a hotel. So are there a lot of road songs on this record?

No not really. Surprisingly, considering we wrote it on the road. Why was it written on the road? Was it because your new label wanted a record right away?

Yeah. “Searching for a Former Clarity” came out on September 6 of 2005, we signed with Sire in December of 2005 and we usually tour for a year straight, so we were on the road through September of 2006. I knew they weren’t going to be like, “Oh, take a couple of years to work on it, take a break”. We were in the studio pretty much once we were done touring. We took a month to hammer out songs and then we went right into the studio. Was that tough on you guys as a band?

I found the process surprisingly easy. It felt really great to be that focused and that into it. Living in a hotel and having completely built my life into being in a band, there were no distractions. When I was in the hotel, I could either watch TV, go swimming or work out in the gym or write songs. Because we started writing so long in advance, we were so focused and there were never any panicked moments where we said “What are we going to do, we don’t have any songs.” This was your first record for a major label, how different was it to record? I’m assuming you had more money and more time in the studio?

Exactly, and working with someone like (producer) Butch Vig was just amazing. I’d always been a fan of his work. I just never thought it would ever be a possibility, so I never considered it. Where you surprised by the flack you caught signing to Sire? No, I expected it. It’s funny, if you look back at The Clash and The Replacements, they were on majors and most people didn’t give them crap for it.

Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to go with Sire, because that’s the label The Replacements were on. The Replacements were on Sire, The Ramones were on Sire. I love all of these bands. Most peoples’ response to decisions you make as a band are usually pretty predictable. How was the reaction from the people at your old label, Fat Wreck Chords? Were they cool with it?

Yeah, they were great. They were a little sad to see us go, but we had a great working relationship with them and it was not anything like “Things are bad, so we’re leaving.” Mike (Fat Wreck Records founder) was completely supportive. He said, “I want you guys to be happy with whatever you decide to do.” We still work with Vanessa, the publicist there. It’s not like we severed all ties. We still have working relationships with a lot of these people. Fat’s been undergoing a lot of changes lately too with the way their label is structured, so it really was, I think, the right time for us to go. They’re scaling back their operations, and they really want to focus on the bands they already have and not so much on looking for new bands, so it was kind of the right time for us. Have you been pleased with Sire, so far?

So far, so good. It helps that we made a record that we’re really happy with and that they’re really happy with, as well. Right now, before for the record comes out, they’re all saying “ We love it. It’s great!” But, you didn’t have them dropping by the recording studio saying, “Why don’t you just change this song or add this to it”?

No, and that was actually a concern because we were recording so close to where they were located. They literally could stop by, but they were really respectful. Our A&R guys would call and say “Is it cool if we stop by?” They’d say “It sounds good,” but they weren’t asking us to make changes. I think a lot of that comes with the fact that we were working with Butch Vig. I guess Sire has a pretty good reputation with the bands they sign.

Yeah, and a reputation of sticking with their bands. They’re part of Warner, which has had the Flaming Lips for a long time. They at one point released an album that had three different records you had to play at the same time. What major label is going to do that? That is not marketable. That’s what record labels should do. They should sign bands they believe in and are fans of and stick with them throughout their careers. You’re in a good place right now in terms of job security. What was the hardest thing about being a touring band, playing music that was not exactly made for the masses?

It really was kind of being broke all the time. The first three tours that we did, we basically did one tour a year for the first three years. It was kind of like you had to save up all year long to buy a piece of shit van and you book this tour yourself, you have your 7”or a t-shirt to sell on the tour and you’d just work all year long for this, go on tour for a month or two, half the shows fall through and you come home and you would just be destitute. Just completely fucking broke. The van would have broken down, you now have no job, no place to live and you were broke. It was just a drag. I’ve always been amazed with the music scene in Gainesville. Your band came out of there, Hot Water Music and others. What is it about that place that draws so many groups? The fact that there’s a good music scene is definitely because it’s a college town. You have young kids coming in, new and fresh each year that are excited about life, excited about playing music and then you also have a strong community that’s built there that coddles and brings up bands. You have No Idea Records that is really interested in documenting a scene; you have Rob McGregor who runs Goldentone Studios, who every No Idea band has recorded with, who will cheaply record your band. When bands there realize how possible it all is, it really pushes you to do it. Is that how you ended up in Gainesville?

Yeah, because of the music scene. Growing up in Florida, you get to that age when you want to move out of your parent’s house and Gainesville is cheap rent. You don’t have to have a car, you can just walk around. And then there’s a great music scene, so that’s the place to go. Is that where you met the rest of the guys in the band? I went to high school with James (Bowman), I knew Warren (Oakes) from around Florida – he lived in Sarasota before he moved to Gainesville. Andrew (Seward) played in a band called Kill Devil Hills that Against Me! played with a few times before and when our bass player went back to college we got a drunken e-mail from him one night that said “You should kick your bass player out and hire me.” Tell me a little bit about what this new record is going to sound like. Is it fairly consistent with the sound of the last album? I feel like in a lot of ways it’s a reaction to the last record. How so? The last record was really a kind of dark, moody record and writing it for me was really a cathartic experience. I was really working through a lot of things. At the end of writing it, I had figured out how I felt and was actually feeling good. After finishing it though, I still had to do interviews and tour, talking and singing about things I didn’t want to think about anymore. So it wasn’t fun in a lot of ways. It was really difficult to relive this stuff again every night and every day. I knew I didn’t want to write songs about that stuff again. I wanted to write songs that made me feel really good. So, musically it’s a lot more up beat and lyrically it’s just coming from a better place. Any more anti-Bush songs this time around? “White People for Peace” is probably the most overtly anti-war songs we have. It’s challenging. For the past three records that we’ve done there’s been this war going on and for the past three records we’ve addressed the fact that there’s this war going on. You want to feel like you’re doing this in a creative way each time, you don’t want to feel like you’re just doing the same thing A BY JOHN B. MOORE IDEALLY, I JUST WISH THE WAR WOULD END, SO WE

DIDN’T H AVE TO ADDRESS THIS ANY MORE.