Black Pacific

There was one thing that become immediately evident as I was sitting backstage at Rexall place in in Edmonton, Alberta with the guys from The Black Pacific on their recent tour opening for Rise Against.That was the fact that they were extremely welcome guys. Offering me a sandwich and something to drink no less than 5 times, our time together felt more like a casual conversation than a formal interview; which says a lot about the guys’ wonderful personalities. We discussed a variety of things over the course of our time together, from stealing hockey sticks to overcoming the shadow of former bands. Their casual demeanor was in direct contrast to the serious punk rock that they play live; with dedication and skill that betrays the various members’ pedigrees in the music business. While the band may be a relatively new name on the scene, The Black Pacific are setting their sights on playing together for the long run.

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Dustin:  So, how’s the tour going so far?

Jim Lindberg: Join in or be quiet. Ss far it’s going great. It’s an absolutely amazing tour. It’s all the hockey rinks across Canada; its been super fun.

Alan Vega: Actually we have a hockey stick that we stole at the last show.

Marc Orrell: We? I had nothing to do with that!

Dustin:  Wow, stealing a Canadian’s hockey stick, that’s pretty cold.

Jim: It was by the trash, so we figured it was probably garbage. We were kind of worried, what if it’s the one that won their cup or something and they keep it there superstitiously.

Alan: I might get all choked up watching Slap Shot tonight.

Jim: But yeah, the tour has been going really good. Great group of bands and people. There is not one person that I dislike on this whole tour and that is a first.

Alan: My one person is this guy over here, his name is Gavin. (laughing)

Jim: It’s going great.

Dustin:  Have you guys all toured with both of these bands before?

Jim: In different incarnations, in different bands I have played with both bands before and I think Marc has too. We are all friends with them from various gigs.

Dustin:  As the Black Pacific, this is the biggest tour you have been on so far. How is that going?

Jim: It’s going great. We get to a certain extent the walk in crowd, but there has been a crowd for us every night. At certain places, like Quebec City, the whole crowd was in, so that was great. Overall, we are happy with the response that the band has been getting. We went out on a few European and festival tours before, but nothing like this. It has been cool. Nobody has been throwing shit at us or booing so we have been having a good time.

Dustin:  Do you think that people are starting to get over the whole “guy from Pennywise” thing?

Jim: That couldn’t happen soon enough for me. I really feel like this is a new band and a new beginning for me. While I am not denying that I was in a band for a long time, I have great memories from it, it was a great experience, for the most part, its time to start over and that is fun to do.

Alan: I think unfortunately, a lot of people they don’t know about the band already, so they kind of come into it blind. They don’t have any preconceived notions. They walk in and are like hey who are these guys and then they are like hey, that’s the dude from Pennywise.

Jim: A lot of people come up and they are like, I didn’t know you were in another band, but then I heard your voice and knew it was you. I guess it’s cool in some ways and not cool in others. Why don’t they know about us? It doesn’t happen overnight. We are building our fanbase.

Dustin:  Well, one album is still a pretty fresh start.

Jim: Yeah, we have a lot of work to do.

Dustin:  How is Side One Dummy Records? It’s a different label than you dealt with for such a long time with Pennywise, how is it working with them?

Jim: It’s been a challenge. They are all nice guys. I think our band really needs to get our name out there a lot and its difficult in this music environment. I wanted a little harder push for our record, I think we deserved that, but… they are all nice guys. We are happy to be making music, but we want people to hear our music. We want to play shows where we have a big crowd of people there for us. We are working towards that, but the easiest way to do that is through the label. So far, the best way we have made fans is by playing. The live show seals it.

Dustin:  I was wondering about that because many of their bands are at the fringes of the punk scene, like the gypsy folk of Gogol Bordello or the blues of Reverend Peyton. I felt like on a label full of bands that stand out in the punk scene, you guys stand out because you are the only actual punk band.

Jim: I think that they have an eclectic mix of bands and I think they have done a good job.

Alan: Circus bands.

Jim: They have made a nice roster of bands. It is one of the better labels out there.

Dustin:  So are you working on the follow up album yet?

Jim: The last 5 months, I wish that we had more time to work on that. This is a brand new band, so getting the show lined up and getting various things sorted out takes time. We have a handful of songs that I really like a lot that just need lyrics and things like that. I have a ton of songs that need some work. When we get off of this tour I’d like to do an EP, because we have enough songs for that. We just need to get music out there.

Marc: You might just hear a new song tonight.

Dustin:  Are any of the other band members fathers?

Jim: Not at all. I have a wife and three kids. I wrote a book called Punk Rock Dad that was made into a documentary called The Other F Word that is coming soon. We were lucky enough that Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys bought the film to distribute it. It was really odd because I never imagined that he would be into something like that. I think he just saw the film and fell in love with it and wanted to put it out, which is really cool because they are a really great company for something like this. They do really diverse documentaries and films. It’s really cool. Tim from Rise Against is in it, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mark from Blink 182, Lars from Rancid is really funny. One of my favorite parts is Ron Reyes, the original singer for Black Flag who lives in Vancouver, he is in the movie. He is resurfacing after 20 or 25 years out of the scene. He sounds better than ever. I think he is going to get up on stage with us in Vancouver and play a song. It has been a cool experience. It’s been long too. It goes through the process of me leaving Pennywise at the end. It goes through the whole process of dads growing up listening to punk music and then becoming fathers themselves.

Dustin:  I loved the book. I picked it up when it came out because I have 2 kids myself, so I felt like I could identify with someone. There is that weird time when all of your friends are still going out drinking and partying all the time, but you have these kids at home. It’s the weird balance of trying to still be involved in the scene, while still being a good parent.

Jim: Yeah. Although there are some dads out there who have one kid and mellow a bit, then when they have another they get wilder than they ever were and you see the bad dads out on the town. It’s like Friday night and they are going as strong as they ever were, trying to make up for lost time. It does force you to change; there is no doubt about that. That is the difficult part, finding the balance. So far I have been successful at it. If my kids become axe murderers, I guess I failed.

Dustin:  How old are the girls now?

Jim: 14, 12 and 7.

Dustin:  Teenage girls, that’s scary. Are you going to be the dad sitting at the front door polishing your shotgun?

Jim: I’ll have more than a shotgun, I’ll have a tank.

Dustin:  It must be harder to get out and tour and leave home these days.

Jim: Someone was saying the other day that actually it’s a lot easier now than when they were little. Now, they are like get out of my face dad, so I’m like okay, I’ll go do my own thing. Once again, it’s just balance. To think that it doesn’t really hurt marriages and family relationships is absolutely crazy. I know more guys in bands whose families have now split up than the opposite. I am the rarity, with a family that stays together and I think that’s because I tried so hard to keep that balance. It is difficult for the wives to stay at home with the kids while the man is gone. Guys are out on the road with groupies and stuff like that. When you are as good looking as me it’s hard to fight them off. 
(All the guys laugh)

Jim: Why is that funny?

Gavin Caswell: We were, uh, just watching cat videos…

Dustin:  How about you other guys? Is there any tension where you want to keep on going, while Jim wants to go home to see his family? Some guys tour for years on end.

Alan: It is all about trying to keep a somewhat normal life. You can tour forever.

Gavin: Yeah, we don’t have kids, but we all have girlfriends and family at home, so we still want to have a normal life.

Jim: At this point though, I would say that we are actually looking for more tours. We need more, instead of the opposite. It is really great to support bands like Rise Against and Flogging Molly. You are basically using their crowd to get your name out there. We would love to do more of that, so I will be badgering Bad Religion and NOFX and Face to Face and any other bands out there to take us on tour with them. The Foo Fighters, we want them to take us too. Rolling Stones would be good too.

Dustin:  A lot of the Epitaph/Fat skate punk bands that I listened to growing up seemed to be centered in the California area. Do you guys ever run into each other? Like NOFX and Bad Religion?

Jim: You run into them randomly. We ran into a bunch of guys at Punk Rock Bowling in Vegas. That was a great event.

Alan: Groezrock too.

Jim: We saw the Descendents and Bosstones at Reading. Also OFF, with Circle Jerks lead singer. All kinds of crazy people.

Dustin:  So, you played Reading and Leeds? Something like this arena tour has you playing to big crowds, but shows like that have massive crowds. How is it playing something that big?

Marc: It was definitely better than the Warped Tour. We did a bit of the Warped Tour, which had a youngster sort of crowd. That’s what is good about this type of crowd; it seems to fit better with our age group and listeners. We also did a tour with Sum 41, which was close, but we got there with Riverboat Gamblers. This tour is great. Reading and Leeds was full of typical bands like us, Bosstones, Flogging Molly. Frank Turner was there. Basically, it was a lot of people who are into the same sort of stuff. We just fit right in there. It was great. We watched a bit of Muse.

Jim: I really think that even though the US festivals are catching up to Europe, they still have a lot to learn in the sense that they for some reason pigeonhole. This tour is a totally indie tour. Or this one is only big names, like Lollapalooza, bands have to be pretty popular. Coachella is pretty indie, with huge headliners. There needs to be a festival here where all bets are off. You can have indie, punk, techno, you can have 6 stages. They just don’t have that here, everyone is so segregated.

Alan: I think it is the concert goers also. The fans, the people who go to festivals in Europe, have a different mentality. They are more open minded, not to diss on the US fans.

Marc: Coachella is starting to do that now. They have the big 4; they also have Stagecoach, which is a country festival. I think that is what they are going to start doing is start breaking them up into genres.

Jim: To be honest, I understand it from a promoter’s point of view. Kevin Lyman found a way around it, but when you play a heavy metal or punk festival things get a little out of control. There is a little more violence. It has gotten a little out of hand. I hope that we can find our way.

Dustin:  I think a lot of it has to do with the concert goers in Europe. I’m not even 30, but when I go to a punk show it is usually dominated by kids who look at me like, what are you doing here grandpa? It feels really weird, but you hear about the wide range of people who go to shows in Europe. Then you hear about North American punk bands that have a small following at home, but play huge shows in Europe.

Jim: We were just talking about that before we came. There is no rhyme or reason for why some bands are big in Europe but not at home. We have toured Europe a lot, but we haven’t done a US tour. We have toured more there, so we are still looking for a US tour.

Marc: The thing is that people just don’t go out to shows in the States.

Gavin: Certain markets used to be big and now they have totally dried up.

Dustin:  I don’t think that it is that Europe is “behind” musically because they produce a lot of creative music, but they seem to still celebrate traditional punk, while North America largely ignores it. With the exception of a small group of people, fans seem to have moved on to the next big thing.

Jim: I think that the younger Warped Tour kids have gone into this melodic metal popcore stuff.

Gavin: I think the genre for it is actually called crap.

Jim: Yeah, so we don’t really have an in with that crowd. Probably the people our age have seen it a lot. That is what is cool for us being a new band. Once you’ve seen certain bands for 15 years and they continue to go on tour, then fans start to say, I’ve seen them a lot. It’s nice that they keep it up. That’s why it’s cool to have a new band.

Alan: This tour is great for us. This is the one that we have been waiting to do for a while. We all love Rise Against and Flogging Molly.

Jim: That’s why we really hope Rise Against takes us on a US tour someday. (In a loud voice next to the door to their dressing room)

Dustin:  I know a lot of people are into Rise Against because they had a lot of mainstream radio play. Just a couple of weeks ago, Rancid and Against Me! opened for Blink 182. It seems like a lot of old school punk bands are touring with more radio friendly bands to play larger shows.

Jim: The goal is to get enough exposure to come back through and headline our own shows. That is what the next batch of songs hinges on. Bringing in something new and different, while keeping the same energy. The musical landscape is changing. Flogging Molly has left our label and I have never seen so much Flogging Molly exposure before. We are reading the weeklies and seeing ads everywhere. They have done a great job of this record on their own. That is the fault of the record labels, unless they work hard for their bands they are going to lose them.

Alan: I think I have to wear the mustard jeans tonight. Gavin threw mustard at me last night.

Gavin: I kind of bean bag tossed a piece of roast beef onto his plate gently and it landed on his jeans and he was a crybaby about it.

Alan: Yeah, but I don’t eat meat, so you threw meat at me on purpose. Which happened to be covered in mustard.

Dustin:  Tony Sly, Russ Rankin and Chuck Ragan have all came through the city recently doing their solo stuff. Do you have any urge to do that?

Jim: Yeah, I have a bunch of songs that I like to play. I think that there is a brand of acoustic punk rock out there that I love, but my stuff sounds nothing like it. I love Chuck Ragan and the acoustic stuff from the Loved Ones. Tim Barry from Avail is great too. It sounds like backwoods Kentucky punk, but I am from the beach and my shit does not sound like that at all.