Against Me!

The Honda Civic Tour this year was one to remember as three of my all time favourite bands made their way through Vancouver for one epic night of punk rock awesomeness. Before the music filled evening kicked off, I ran down to Rogers Arena during my lunch break to catch up with Against Me!‘s bassist Andrew Seward to see what he’s been doing since we last talked.

During the friendly chit-chat we talked about him making his dream come true of playing waffle ball with Rancid, going to a Blink 182 dance party, making their own studio and launching their own label. We also talked about the Gainesville punk scene, but you’ll have to pick up The Fest 10 guide book at this year’s festival to see what he has to say!

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 Bobby: This is your last day of the Blink 182 and Rancid tour. How was it?

Andrew: Amazing. We’re all super huge Rancid fans and we have been very fortunate to become friends with them. They’re super awesome guys and a great band, of course. But really just nice guys who hang out all the time. Basically, if you told any of our fifteen year old selves that we’ll be hanging out backstage with Rancid playing waffle ball in a hockey arena, we would’ve said “you’re fucking crazy.” But here we are, doing it; and it’s great.

The Blink guys are nice too. I had a dance party with Tom DeLonge before they played.

Bobby: A dance party?

Andrew: A dance party.

Bobby: And how was that?

Andrew: Good. It was good when he put on a song everybody knew, like Depeche Mode or something like that; but then…[laughs] every now and then he would put on an obscure Sigar Ros song or something like that and everyone would just kind of slow down and be like “oh.” But then he’d put on something everyone knew.

It’s been a really fun tour. It’s been super short; but we’ve been on tour pretty much the whole time about since May. We ended Warped Tour and that came into this. I’m sorry, we ended Warped Tour, played a show in Wyoming, flew to New York, played a show in New York, played a show in Pennsylvania and then played Best Friends Day in Richmond which was great. I’ve never seen so much chaos. So many punks at a water park. Then we went back up into Canada and now we’re all the way on the other side of the country. And tomorrow we go back to the other side of the country.

Bobby: But then you have two months off, which is kind of nice. Do you have any plans for what you’re going to do during those two months?

Andrew: Well, we do have a one off in Houston. That’s the only show until the Fest. Really just kind of be at home. Tom’s getting a studio together, and he’s going to record Cheap Girls and produce their next record. I think that’s going to be October, that should be fun. Hopefully, none of them will get mad if I just kind of drive out and stick my head in “Hey guys!” You know?

Bobby: “Hey, can I join?”

Andrew: “Do you need two bass players?” [laughs] So that’s going to be very time consuming.

Bobby:  I know he still needs to set up the studio, are you going to help him do that?

Andrew: Oh yeah, whatever help he needs. I want to help. I always want to be a part of it. I’m just super excited and happy that it’s happening. You know you hear stories about Arcade Fire, after Funeral they bought a church out in rural Quebec and made their own studio there and that’s where they recorded…umm… whatever the one after Funueral.

Bobby: Suburbs?

Andrew: The one before, Neon Bible. It’s just going to be awesome to not have any time constraints. You’re not looking at the clock and like “shit, that just cost a hundred dollars.” It’s completely do it yourself, I’m very excited.

Bobby: So do you think for future albums you’re still going to get Butch Vig to come in and produce or are you going to self-produce? Or are you just going to use that studio to just record a shit load of b-sides like you always do?

Andrew: No, no. The plan is to… Cheap Girls are kind of the guinea pigs but the plan is for that to be home base and just record everything there. Granted, knock on wood, it’s all going to turn out like that. You always have to anticipate a curve ball. As far as Butch, I mean Butch is one of our best friends. He might come out, he might not. Everything is just so up in the air.

Bobby: Yeah; the studio’s not even built yet.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve learned so much from Butch, it’s ridiculous. The one thing I think that I’ve learned from Butch that has helped me since I’m getting – not old, but older: patience. Like you don’t have to just fucking “okay, I only have this one time, let’s do it.” Now, we have a studio and we can do it until it’s done right. Does that make sense?

Bobby: Yeah, you don’t need to rush it. You have more time to test it and tweak it and make it the best possible product.

Andrew: Absolutely. You said it.

Bobby: I want to go back just quickly to this Canadian tour. Like we’ve spoken on and off over the last 

Andrew: Well, none of it is calculated. Like “okay, we had a stadium tour, now we do a club tour.” The bottom line is we tour Canada extensively, quite a lot. Getting up here we played the Mod Club in Toronto and then we played a show in Thunder Bay just to get to Winnipeg. I don’t know when we’re going to tour Canada next because we’re going to be working on a new record, but we never leave Canada out. Some people in the Maritimes would probably disagree with me but they also know how fucking hard it is logistically to get all the way out there.couple years and one thing I’ve found interesting is you always alternate. You did a stadium tour with Foo Fighters and then a club tour. Stadium tour with Billy Talent then a club tour. Now a stadium tour with Blink. Do you got another club tour in the works? Do you like alternating?

Yeah, we don’t have any other arena tours in the works for Canada so the next time we come will probably be a headlining club tour. And this is the first time Canadians have seen us with Jay on drums.

Bobby: With Jay, he’s already recorded two songs with you guys. Occult Enemies and… I forget the name.

Andrew: Russian Spies.

Bobby: Yeah, Russian Spies, sorry. Are you excited to have him working on a new album with you and see what he brings to a full album as opposed to just two songs?

Andrew: Oh yeah, definitely. Jay’s a great guy and an insanely talented drummer. You can tell how, when we play live, how manic he is – and I mean manic as a compliment. He’s singing along with every word and beating the shit out of the drums. He’s got really good energy to him.

EDITORS NOTE: Here we began a lengthy conversation about the annual music festival known as The Fest. However, that portion of the interview will be reprinted in this year’s guide book given out at registration at The Fest in Gainesville. Go there and pick it up to read more. At a later day, this message will be removed and replaced with the full interview – but for now, head to Gainesville and pick up The Fest guidebook!

Bobby: Of course, like you said you’re friends with Dead To Me and over the years you’ve become friends with a lot of people in the punk world. Jordan, your manager, he owns Sabot Production. Vinnie from Less Than Jake owns Paper + Plastick, Var owns No Idea. When you guys decided to start Total Treble Music did you go to any of these guys and ask for advice for starting your own independent label?

Andrew: I didn’t but if I recall, I’m pretty sure Tom had a good conversation with Vinnie. Any advice or stuff like that, we’re always open to – counselling I guess. I know Tom hit up Vinnie. We had a good talk with Al Barr of the Dropkick Murphys about everything.

Bobby: Oh yes, Born and Bred Records.

Andrew: Yeah. He was very pro-do this. Like “you should fucking do this, don’t worry about labels anymore, just do it.” When Al Barr’s in your face, what are you going to do? Nothing!! – Kidding! Love you Al!

Bobby: Now that you did go and do it, and everything is in your complete control – are you glad that everything is in your control or is it overwhelming like “oh shit, it’s all on us now”?

Andrew:  Yes and no. I think it was the absolute best thing we could’ve done. I mean, you start your own label – the number one thing you need to do is… it’s weird. You’re an interviewer, you know this. You hire a publicist. Most bands do that no matter level it is. Odd enough, those are like the gate keepers. You probably called Melanie right?

Andrew: And there’s nothing wrong with that. Melanie’s great. She organizes all this, so you don’t forget. But all the responsibility is on the band. It’s just natural. It needed to happen. I don’t know if I’m really answering the question that well but you’re the middle man. There’s no real need for a middle man now. We’ve been a band for so long that going to another label – what are they actually going to do?Bobby: Yeah.

I mean, they’ll probably promise you a lot of stuff but do you trust them to actually do it? So you get rid of that, you don’t have that anxiety anymore. You have a whole different kind of anxiety. Like you said, “oh shit, the ball’s completely in our court.”

But that’s what’s so exciting about it. It goes back to Tom getting a studio and stuff like that. I’m just super excited.

Bobby: Your first release on it was the White Crosses/Black Crosses re-release. The album was just released like a little over six months ago.

Andrew: White Crosses was a year and two months ago. June? July? I don’t even fucking now. [laughs]. I know when it leaked, it leaked a long time before that.

Bobby: My question is how were you able to get the control over the album so quickly? I know Less Than Jake fought for years to get theirs back, I know Reel Big Fish is still fighting. How were you able to leave Sire and get the masters right away?

Andrew: Honestly, they just gave it to us. I wish there was more of a story – actually, I don’t wish there was more of a story because then there would been a battle like you were saying.