Brendan Kelly getting after it with his band The Lawrence Arms.
At the same time, while all this was happening, I remember one of those Tegan and Sara girls came out with this huge internet ramble about how she can’t believe people are okay with this Tyler The Creator, he talks about raping people and stuff like that, and I’m like, “Since when does singing about raping someone mean that you’re raping someone?” It’s insulting to the audience to say- I mean, I listened to N.W.A. constantly when I was a kid, and I have never once held a gun in someone’s face, slapped a bitch… It’s completely fucking ridiculous to me that people are like, “Oh, if the audience is glorifying that kind of behavior, people are gonna be out there doing that kind of shit.” Well, those people are stupid assholes who are gonna be doing something stupid anyway. Nobody fucking complains about the dude who directed the first Nightmare On Elm Street, or the first Halloween, as if all of the sudden people are gonna go out and start killing babysitters. For the record, I don’t give a shit about Tyler The Creator’s music one way or other, but I was bummed out about the notion that people were taking him to task for pushing buttons. I thought, fuck it, let’s take this record all the way, let’s make it as creepy as we possibly can.
It’s interesting that you reference a Green Day interview around the time they were making Warning. For me, that record, and also Nimrod, these are touchstones for band evolution done right. You’ve attempted a few things that are in a similar vein, whether you’re incorporating folk influences, or a sort of “gypsy-punk” vibe on some tracks, things like that. The difference being- they put out this stuff as Green Day. You decided to start a side project. What factors, specifically, kept you from bringing these ideas to The Lawrence Arms and seeing if they wanted to be pushed in a different direction?
Well, there’s a few things. First of all, this record started coming together and it became real obvious that it was gonna be weird, and like, there was a real singularity of vision, and I really didn’t wanna ask anyone to go along for that ride if they didn’t want to, you know what I mean? There’s some twisted shit, and I didn’t think these songs would fit too terribly well alongside like, six of Chris[McCaughan, guitar/vocals]’ songs. It would be like, “What the fuck is going on with you, man?”
That was one part of it, and the other part of it was like, after we stopped touring on Oh Calcutta!, then we made a couple more songs, but we didn’t do too much in the way of touring, and I had a kid, Chris’ old lady moved to town, Neil [Hennessy, drums] was touring with the [Smoking] Popes, so things were kind of stalled for The Lawrence Arms. Then, the band got audited. Apparently the accounting practices I’d put into place when I was nineteen had sort of become out-moded as the band has gotten more popular. Anyway, we were going through that, and it was just kind of scary to be in The Lawrence Arms at the time, so…this record was just something I felt like I needed to do, but The Lawrence Arms wasn’t in any sort of position- we weren’t, as a squad, I don’t think, ready to make a record.
You’ve said you made this record to sort of keep your edge as you’ve gotten older and started raising a family. Now that 2012 has come and gone, do you feel like you got what you wanted in that respect?
Well, for one thing, whenever I have said that, it’s sort of a bit of a joke, cause the record has fuckin’ xylophones on it. In some ways, this couldn’t be more of a weird old man record. It’s kind of a joke, making sure I don’t “lose my edge,” and then also there’s obviously truth to that…but there’s almost nothing so disgusting as somebody who’s not young, or doesn’t have that “edge” anymore, pretending like they still do. There’s nothing I want to more gracefully let go of than that.
I just needed to do something to sort of free up my brain so I could make a new Lawrence Arms record, and now we’ve been writing, and we’ve got seven songs- no, we’ve got like nine songs written, and of those nine, I think maybe seven of ‘em are good enough to go on a record. And what I hope it is, is a continuation of The Lawrence Arms’ sound, that doesn’t sound like dudes in their mid-thirties trying to sound like dudes in their mid-twenties.
You mentioned on your blog Bad Sandwich Chronicles that you work a day job now. What are you doing?
I’m like a freelance creative director at a marketing firm. So, if people need help selling hamburgers or cookies or whatever, I help think of exciting new ways to do that! [laughs] It’s kind of like being in a band where you don’t…know the other dudes in the band and you don’t like the songs. It’s a creative process, but I don’t care about it. People are like, “Ooh, we really didn’t like that idea you had for that new chicken sandwich.” And I’m like: “Oh, yeah? Fine, I don’t care, throw it away.” So there’s no ego involved, which is kind of refreshing, I guess.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how my friends with good careers envy the free-er ones in the group, the “rambling boys of pleasure” if you will, while those same unemployed friends envy the stability that the other group enjoys. You still seem to be holding fast to the “freedom” end of that spectrum.
It’s funny you should say that, because there’s definitely like, a give-and-take, right? I talk to a lot of dudes, especially now that you get older, that are in bands, like, “Fuck…what am I gonna do? I can’t be out here for the rest of my life.” And as you start to get to a certain age, you start to think about the benefits of the other side. I guess that’s because a lot of them have played in bands since they were nineteen, and now they’re forty and they have nothing to do, and nobody gives a shit about their band anymore, but they gotta keep going on tour, and they hate it. And they just wish they could get a job doing something, but they’ve never done anything before. And that’s kind of how I was starting to feel too, after we stopped touring. It’s hard to make enough money to justify being on the road nine months out of the year, missing your kids’ lives, or whatever.
