Manchester Punk Festival Releases 37th Compilation
Manchester Punk Festival have released the 37th volume of their compilation series ahead of this year’s festival. Manchester Punk Festival Vol. 37 is…
After killing a bunch of time around campus, I finally headed towards the Dinwoodie Lounge at the University of Alberta to sit down with Mysterious Matt Wong and Ryland Steen of the third wave ska pioneers, Reel Big Fish. The interview went well as we discussed all sorts from their departure from their long time label to Duran Duran and Devo. It was the perfect introduction to one of the most entertaining concerts of the year, The Fall of Ska with RBF, Streetlight Manifesto, Suburban Legends and Westbound Train. If you ever the chance to see that show, I highly suggest you do, you won’t regret it. I’d like to thank Matt and Ryland for doing the interview and Mike and Tom for setting it for me.
Please Note: Most photos were taken, without permission, from the band’s official site and are copyright their rightful owner.
Bobby: Starting with the basics, you guys have been on this Fall of Ska tour for a few weeks now, how’s that going?
Matt: It’s going well; having a lot of fun. Listening to some great bands, everybody seems to like it.
Bobby: Has there been any really memorable moments from the tour so far?
Matt: I don’t know. Not so much for me. It’s all good; nothing’s stood out for me though. I don’t know about Ryland.
Ryland: Yeah, I mean even though this tour has been great, all the tour seems to be great in their own way, they all sort of blend together. But I think the positive thing about this tour is that all the bands get along. I think a lot of times when you go on tour bands will sort of stay clear of each other and kind of stay in their own little circles. And then usually it’s the very end of the tour and people actually start to communicate with each other. But it seems like from day one we’ve all been hanging out with each other, so that’s been fun.
Matt: It’s been really good actually.
Bobby: That’s good. Halloween was ten days ago, did you guys do anything crazy to celebrate?
Matt: Well we played. We had a hometown show and we all dressed up, so it was pretty fun.
Ryland: Matt had an amazing costume. *laughs*
Matt: I was a clown and I hate clowns. So I was a drunk, old, fat clown. So basically the only thing that was different was that I was a clown, cause I’m already drunk, fat and old.
Ryland: I dressed up as a member of the band Devo.
Matt: Yeah, it was fun. I mean, we were all in costumes and we were at home so we got to see our loved ones for a little bit. So that was kind of fun, I liked it.
Bobby: You guys just left your long time label Jive Records. Is it good to be free of them?
Matt: Oh yeah, it’s fantastic. This is what we wanted since the last record. The last record we put out… Well basically we had been dealing with a lot of label crap for a long time. And you know, when you’re young and you’re starting out in a band, basically you have these preconceived notions, well a lot of people do, especially when we started out; you put out a demo, a major label picks you up, and then push you and you get on MTV and you get on the radio and you get famous and you fly around in jets then do a lot of drugs and play rock and roll. As you get older and really understand the business side of music, especially these days and the situation that’s going on now with technology the way it is and the internet and being able to get music as quickly as people can, the accessibility I guess of music, it’s way better to be off a label and doing your own thing, financially and creatively, then it is to be on a label. Because we basically don’t have to answer to anybody. We can put out whatever we want, whenever we want, as long as we have the money to do it. So it’s more back in our control, which is nice.
Bobby: Like you guys wanted to leave back in 2000, why did it take six years to leave?
Matt: They wouldn’t let us go. Basically when you sign a record contract, it’s almost like you’re working for them and they have all the control in terms of what they can do, when they can let you go, what you can put out, etcetera. We wanted to be off the label but we couldn’t because contractually we were obligated to give them a certain amount of records. We fulfilled that contract and came up to them again and said, “Look, just let us go. Let us do our own thing,” and then finally said okay.
Ryland: The unfortunate thing about being on a major label if you want to get off of it is… The thing about record labels is, the bands are always at the mercy of the record label and the bands always have to fulfill their end of the contract but the record labels don’t necessarily have to fulfill their end. Because even if they don’t, the band can sue, but most of the time the bands don’t have the money to hire lawyers and they can’t pay the court costs so the major label ends up getting away with it. Same thing with trying to get off a label, you have to hire a lawyer. It costs tens of thousands, fifteen, a hundred… Depending on how long the label wants to draw it out, it could cost a huge amount of money that the bands just don’t have.
Matt: If you want to talk about financial backing in terms of the band versus a label, record labels usually have a pretty good sum of money; bands usually don’t have all that much money. So if a record label wants to just F you to death, they could just draw out the court and drive a band to break up.
Ryland: Just to screw with them.
Matt: Yeah, just to mess with them because they have the money to do it. So it’s great to be off the label.
Bobby: Your last release, “Our Live Album Is Better Then Your Live Album” CD/DVD was self-released. Do you have any plans to find a new label or do you plan stay independent?
Matt: I can’t speak for Aaron because he’s basically the head of the band, that’s just how it is, but if you want my opinion, my personal opinion, I would rather stay off a label for as long as we can. Just do it our way. I’ve been in the band since the beginning and I’ve seen us go through so much bullshit – pardon my language, hopefully you can bleep it off. But I don’t want to deal with that stuff anymore, I’m just too old and I think it’s just a pipe dream, even to the point where it’s being a pipe dream.
Ryland: I think if we were ever to sign another deal, it would have to be a huge cash advance. If they were like “800,000 dollars signing bonus and that’s non recoupable.” Okay, well yeah, we’ll think about it then.
Matt: It would have to be such an amazing amount of money that everybody in the band would be taken care of and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Ryland: Yeah, exactly.
Matt: And that would never, ever, ever happen. Well, who knows, it might happen, stranger things have happened, but I highly, highly doubt that.
Ryland: But that’s what it would take.
Matt: Basically, yeah. I would have to be a millionaire after it was done.
Bobby: Fair enough, fair enough. Like I just said, your last CD was a live release. What I found interesting was that it was done over an entire tour instead of just one show, why did you do that?
Matt: Basically, in terms of the CD, we wanted to put together the best show that we could possibly give somebody with all the hits. Now we can’t play all those hits at one show or else we’d be at that one show for hours and hours, you know? And to have the most options, like one night we could be totally on with Beer and then we play Sell Out that night and be totally off. So we wanted more options to pick and choose. Like some nights we’re super funny and some nights we tank, so we wanted to pick and choose and make the best total package that we could. So that’s why we did it that way.
Bobby: On the release you also had guest vocals from Ali of Zebrahead and Rachel of Zolof The Rock And Roll Destroyer.
Matt: Yeah, on the DVD.
Bobby: When they come out on tour with you guys do they often come out and sing with you guys?
Matt: Not really, I mean sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. We’ve been on tour with Zebrahead probably more than we’ve been on tour with any other band besides Goldfinger. We’re really good friends with them and that song calls for kind of a rapping kind of rhythm and to be honest, and Aaron will say this, he’s not the best rapper in the world. We were in a local show, it was a hometown crowd, and Zebrahead is a pretty big band locally so a lot of people like him; and he’s a really good friend of ours so we had him come out and do it. And it seemed to fit. It fit the genre and it fit the song. Rachel from Zolof, we were at the time working on a double CD with them, like a covers album, so it kind of just fit that way too. And we had just got off tour with them too hadn’t we?
Ryland: Yeah, I think so. Well, that summer. The connection was there.
Bobby: That was my next question. There were rumors that you were doing a split CD with Zolof The Rock And Roll Destroyer, you just said you were doing a double album. Can you give us any more details?
Ryland: It’s still kind of up in the air. It looks like it’s gonna happen, but it’s still kind of up in the air.
Matt: Yeah, I don’t know. Like I said, from our point, it’s done. Rabbit and I are done.
Ryland: After that we don’t know what happens.
Matt: Exactly.
Ryland: We’re encouraged to stay away from the studio when our parts are done. *laughs*
Bobby: You just said this CD is going to be a cover CD. Throughout your entire career you’ve done a couple cover songs on every CD, and you do cover songs live all the time. Why do you do so many covers?
Matt: Well, I think that it’s always fun to connect to an audience in anyway possible; and playing a song that people are already familiar with and doing it our own way is just fun. It’s fun for us as musicians and it’s fun for, I think, for people to hear. “Oh yeah, I know that song. It’s really weird their take on it” or “it’s really cool.” It’s really helped us in the past, like Take On Me, it opened up a lot of doors for us. It’s something that we did since the very beginning, messed around with songs in the studio or in the practice studio, just to have fun and we decided to do it live just to se what people thought and it worked. It’s just a bunch of fun.
Ryland: I think also with being the type of band that Reel Big Fish is, the band is really able to make the songs their own. Some people cover tunes and it really doesn’t… I feel like when Reel Big Fish covers a song it kind of becomes their song, and I think that’s the whole idea, I think, of doing a cover song.
Matt: Yeah, perfectly. I mean to cover something straight you might as well listen to the original.
Bobby: Throughout your career you’ve also always had a constant revolution of band members; do you think you’ve finally found a lineup that you’ll stick with for a while?
Matt: Right now, the lineup that we have is the strongest lineup that we’ve ever had and I don’t see anyone leaving for a while, in terms of getting fired or anything like that. The only way the band’s lineup would change was if somebody left voluntarily and I don’t think anybody would. There have been other aspects of a band where people were fired or things didn’t work out that way, but right now it’s the strongest, musically, that I think we’ve had ever. Personality wise, besides the little tips and everything but that’s going to happen anyway.
Ryland: Everybody’s pretty mellow and we’re all here to have fun, try to have as much fun as we can. Play the gig, do some music.
Bobby: I love going to concerts, I try to go to as many as I can, but of course some are always more memorable than others. So thinking back, what are some concerts that you went to or played at that are really memorable for you guys?
Ryland: Well for me, before their old drummer Carlos de la Garza, I had filled in for him and the band played the Redding festival and that was the biggest crowd I had ever played for at that point, so that was really fun for me.
Matt: That was crazy.
Ryland: Yeah, that was a good one.
Matt: For me, we played at a Japanese festival in the summer called Summer Sonic and at the time it was just amazing. We were in Japan, couldn’t speak the language, and there were just tens of thousands of kids singing along and it just freaked me out. That one and the first big radio show we played on the East coast of the United States. There used be a radio station called WHSF and they used to have a WHSF Festival and it was our first huge concert. We were playing outside on a small stage. Sell Out had just started hitting so we get up on stage and the parking lot is completely full and up into the stadium there were people standing there watching us and that freaked me out. Those two are juts crazy for me.
Ryland: As far as seeing bands, one of the favorite shows I ever saw was the band The Mars Volta at the Coachella Festival in 2001 maybe or 2002, I think it was 2002. That was just an amazing show. Their record hadn’t come out yet and not a whole lot of people knew about them but that, for me, that was an amazing show.
Bobby: Now onto a bit more unusual questions that I just like to ask at all my interviews just to keep it interesting and stuff like that. First of all, if you guys were a member of the opposite sex for a day, week, month, however long you wanted, what would you do and why?
Matt: Oh jeeze.
Ryland: Oh man, I don’t know. I think I would probably go around and talk to as many other girls as I could because I think girls tell each other things that they would never tell guys. So I think I would go around and do some research and talk to as many girl, I would draw up some questions. Or I would just sit and look at myself in front of a mirror until I was a guy again.
Matt: I think I would masturbate all day long; all fricking day long.
Bobby: Okay, if you guys, as a band, were stranded on a desert island with no food and nothing to eat, which one of the band members would you eat to survive and why?
Ryland: *laughs* Probably our merchandise guy, we call him The Chib. He’s got a lot of meat on him. We’d have to sacrifice him.
Matt: Yeah, we’d have to sacrifice The Chib. Yeah, I’d eat the Chib because The Chib would last for days.
Ryland: Or a month.
Matt: Actually, properly preserved, maybe years.
Bobby: Could you tell us something about the band or one of its members that not many people know about? Like a little quirk they do on the road or something like that?
Ryland: I walk around the bus without a shirt on.
Matt: Yeah, Ryland is the hairiest man, like totally body hair, in our band. But you can’t see it because he has blondish red hair. So it’s funny, because you’re not just really hairy, but you’re fuzzy.
Ryland: I’m fuzzy. But I don’t really have any hair on my back.
Matt: But it’s all on his legs man.
Ryland: It’s all on my legs and on my arms.
Matt: And on his chest. He’s the non-obviously hairy hairiest man there is probably.
Ryland: Even more than Scott probably.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, I would say so.
Bobby: Now, growing up, whose poster did you have on your wall?
Matt: Oh, I had Duran Duran. Easy. Duran Duran, Seven And The Ragged Tiger, Japanese tour poster right by my bed.
Ryland: I had Nirvana. I had a Nirvana poster.
Matt: You can tell our age difference now.
Ryland: I had a Nirvana poster, it wasn’t for any record, it was just like…
Matt: Was it the smiley face one?
Ryland: No, it was just a poster of the three of them. Just like a band photo that said “Nirvana” underneath.
Matt: Yeah, I had the Duran Duran one. And I had a Rio poster for a long time.
Ryland: The animated one?
Matt: The Patrick Nagel one, with the girl face.
Ryland: Oh yeah.
Bobby: Okay, if you guys could have one thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?
*after a pause of thought* Ryland: I’ll just say five million dollars in the bank, that’s all.
Matt: Twenty billion dollars, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. You know what, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything for the rest of my life and neither would any of my family. And for those people that say money doesn’t buy happiness, that’s crap.
Ryland: It can make it a lot easier to get it though. It can buy comfort and comfort can equal happiness.
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Bobby: I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?
Ryland: Come see our show. Check out the Reel Big Fish myspace page, it’s “the reel big fish” and reelbigfish.com
Matt: Yeah.
Bobby: Okay, thank you.