The Flatliners

As we sat in the back of The Flatliners van behind The Pawn Shop in Edmonton the day before they released Cavalcade, I realized something about the band’s front man Chris Cresswell: he talks – a lot. Now, that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it made the interview a lot more interesting because while I brought up one topic, he would cover that and a handful more with each and every answer. It was clear he was excited – and why shouldn’t he be? Signed to Fat Wreck, touring the world, jamming with Fat Mike and The Dillinger Four while making friends with bands left right and center – Cresswell is living the dream right now and we talked about that dream in detail.

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Bobby: Starting with the basics, you guys are a couple weeks into this tour with Broadway Calls and the Cobra Skulls. How’s that going so far?

Chris: It’s going really well man. Oh! Cobra Skulls just showed up! [Their van pulls into the parking lot] That’s perfect. We were worried they would miss the show. We love both those bands very much. We’ve known both of those bands for a couple years each and we’ve always wanted to bring both of them up to Canada and we pulled it off bringing both of them to Canada together; which is awesome. We’re really stoked to have those guys with us, especially on our CD release tour for Cavalcade.

The shows have been really good. In the US we were flip-flopping with Broadway Calls, for headlining which was really cool. It’s been rad dude. We’ve played every kind of venue. We’ve played at bars, we’ve played all-ages halls, we played a church, and we played the Roxy in Hollywood which was weird. The show was like okay, it wasn’t like the greatest show. It wasn’t a bad show, but it was at the Roxy so everyone was like “this is weird. Imagine if this was the eighties, this place would be packed and it wouldn’t even matter if our songs were good or not.” [laughs] But yeah, it’s been really fun though and these dudes are a blast to hang out with, so that makes it even better.

Bobby: And then last night you got to share the stage with Dave Hause. That must have been cool.

Chris: Yeah, that was fun man. I talked to him a couple days before we got to Canada and we figured out that we were going to be in Calgary on the same night because his solo show was our show’s after-party technically. So that was pretty rad. We learned Suture Self by the Loved Ones and we play Hybrid Moments from time to time by the Misfits so we had Dave sing both of those songs with us last night. And then after our show, we went to his show and got really wasted – it was awesome.

And his show was great man. It was a lot of fun. It was at a small bar, really mellow, low key. I’ve seen Dave in that element only twice before and it was pretty recently. So it was a lot of fun to see him do that. He was playing Loved Ones songs, some Explosions songs, some of his own songs. He played a new Loved Ones song too which was really good. It was really cool to see him like that. So last night was a good night.

Bobby: This tour is in support of Cavalcade which comes out tomorrow when you guys are playing Saskatoon. Do you have anything special planned to mark the night?

Chris: Just the fact that I guess when it’s midnight it will be the thirteenth and we’re stoked that the record’s coming out. My girlfriend’s on tour with us and it’s her birthday, so that will probably be the bigger party. [laughs] Cause I mean, a CD coming out is a CD coming out.

But we’re really stoked. The process to record it was a lot longer than we’ve ever done before. We did it basically between a bunch of tours. We did a bunch of demos, then we went on tour, then we did a chunk of recording in the summertime and then we went on tour, and then we recorded a bunch over the winter holidays in December. It was kind of a weird way to do it. I wouldn’t really suggest to any band to do it, it was just the only way we could pull it off. So it took longer than we thought. It was originally going to come out last fall but we’re really glad we waited and we worked on it a lot more. Yeah, we’re stoked now.

Bobby: Now I gotta admit, I kind of liked the named “Dave Coulier Has Our Last Record” [Dave Coulier played Uncle Joey on Full House and after they gave him a copy of The Great Awake, The Flatliners joked about naming their next record this.]

Chris: [laughs] I think we were pretty serious about that while we were drinking that night when we met Dave Coulier but by the time we sobered up the next day we were like “we should keep thinking of a name.” We weren’t totally sold, I don’t think, at that point.

Bobby: So what is the meaning behind Cavalcade as a name?

Chris: The term cavalcade originated with settlers coming to a new land and they would travel and explore this new land they just reached on horseback. So a cavalcade would be a line of horses and carriages kind of exploring this new place. Since then it’s really evolved to basically a series of anything: a series of emotions, of thoughts, of songs; anything really.

We were originally going to call the album Carry The Banner, not thinking of the Pinhead Gunpowder record Carry The Banner. We had Dillinger Four sing on a song, so when they were in the studio and we were talking about it they were like “oh.” They had to break it to us easy because we were really stoked about that name; they were like “you know that Pinhead Gunpowder album…” We were fucking pissed. We had one, we liked it. It’s kind of tough to come up with an album name that all four people like. We came up with a few before that half the band would be into. I don’t even remember what they were but they weren’t good ideas.

So we tried to find a way to kind of go with the overall theme of the record while not calling it Carry The Banner. We stilled figured we’d call the song Carry The Banner because that’s no big deal. There’s an overall theme on the record of kind of just positivity in dire times. It’s not a concept record at all. I guess every record is vaguely conceptual because every record will capture a timeframe in the artist’s life – when they’re writing and where they’re coming from, that kind of thing. We basically just spent a bunch of time of tour. We’re always broke on tour but we do it because it’s a lot of fun. We get to see the world and we’re young dudes. So why not do this? We don’t really want to go to school. We don’t want to work a regular job so we do this and we get to make really good friends like Broadway Calls, Cobra Skulls and just play awesome shows with awesome bands.

But yeah, we were just kind of in this spot where we were touring a lot and we were starting to realize this whole economic crumble of the entire world because we visited all these different countries while it was going down. It was really bizarre to see the drastic differences between countries. We’d be in Europe and one country would be severely affected by the economic crisis globally and then we would drive an hour to another country and they’d be totally fine. It’s really weird to experience the world like that. I think that kind of element of bizarre uncertainty – like “what the fuck? Maybe our parents’ jobs will be taken away.” We don’t have real jobs, what if everyone we know worked in the auto industry? Like what happened to Detroit, everything crumbles. That means that a city will fucking cease to exist basically. It’s pretty scary times for a lot of people.

We took that and it kind of found it’s way into the song writing process and a lot of songs have that element to it. Not all the songs are about that, but a lot of songs are basically just trying to keep as positive as you can in times where you have no idea really what will happen.

Bobby:  Like you said, you had three fourths of Dillinger Four come sing on the album.

Chris: We had the Dillinger Three. [laughs]

Bobby: You actually had a lot of guest appearances on the album. More than just vocals, but if you only look at the vocals you have Liam from Cancer Bats, the Dillinger Three, Nuno from A Wilhelm Scream. How did you get all these guys to work with you guys and what was it like working with them?

Chris: It was great. They’re all friends of ours; we’re so happy to be able to include all of our friends in that album. It was originally only going to be Nuno and Chicken from Dead To Me. We were going to get those two guys to sing a little part.

Bobby: Did Chicken end up singing?

Chris: No, no, it never worked out with Chicken which was a bummer. It was the studio; we couldn’t get a good time in there for him. He was going to go into Motor Studios in San Francisco.

Bobby: That’s Fat’s studio right?

Chris: Yeah, basically. I think Mike used to have a part in it, I don’t know if he does anymore, he may still; but I’m sure he has sway there. They were pretty busy with stuff. It never worked out which was a bummer, because those dudes have become just one of our favourite bands. Personally, they’re my favourite band that I’ve gotten into in the last… I guess they’ve been around for six years or so? I could be wrong. But they’re like not punk music, not like rock and roll music, just any music – I love that band. They’re like my favourite newer band, not that they’re really a new band anymore. But that didn’t work out, but we got Nuno. Trevor from A Wilhelm Scream has a studio in New Bedford, Massachusetts so he recorded Nuno’s vocals tracks. We did like a ProTools thing where we sent it back and forth.

Liam from Cancer Bats came in to do some backups on some lines and all the Cancer Bats did gang vocals with all of us for basically the whole album. That was cool because they’re always on tour so we were really lucky to get them at a point where they were home for a little while. The same thing with some friends’ bands from Toronto – Junior Battle, Permanent Bastards – those two bands were home from touring or whatever so they did some gang vocals. We got Chris and Ricky from The Snips to play some horns on a song, just little ear candy kind of shit. We got into that stuff when we were in the studio. I feel like I’m forgetting someone here.

We had Dillinger Four come by, that was rad. I talked to Eric Funk from D4 a few days before the show they played in Toronto. Just talking about the show, wanting to meet up and stuff. They were playing North By North East so the festival got them a hotel room and everything and I asked them “what are you doing on Sunday?” And he said that they’d be checking out of their hotel at about noon but they don’t fly home to Minneapolis until eight PM. I was like “well, the studio we’re recording our record at right now is ten minutes from the airport. So if you guys want a ride to the airport, we can do that but you gotta sing on a song.” And they were like “fuck yeah.” They were into it which was really cool. We bought them a bottle of Jameson and its history.

That was one of the most fun days in the studio. It was rad. Just to have those guys there, kicking it, we had some lunch, we showed them the songs, we picked out the lines. It was pretty early in the recording process, so we didn’t really know what to do but we got them just to double me on some lines and shit like that. If you listen really carefully, you hear Eric and Billy in the choruses of Bleed, the song’s called Bleed; and Paddy sings one line. He slept all day, he was super hung over. He sang one line after drinking three quarters of the bottle of Jameson and he nailed it like second or third try. He just heard the song for the first time and yeah, it was awesome. It was wicked. We have a lot of audio of him just joking around, and a lot of video footage of him just joking around. It’s fucking hilarious to look at dude.

It’s weird that it happened; because we all love that band so much that it’s one of those things where you’re like “is this actually happening right now?” Where you’re so stoked you’re out of your body and it was a lot of fun.

Bobby: Well that also sort of happened with Fat Mike. I read somewhere that Fat Mike came up to jam with you guys last November which got him an actual production credit on the album. What was it like jamming with him and what did he bring to the album?

Chris: That was pretty wild. He heard a bunch of songs and he was digging them but he was like “you know what, I’m not sure if they’re ready yet.”  This was the fall at some point and he said “I don’t know if they’re ready yet, maybe we can work on some songs together.” We were like “I don’t know, we should be able to figure them out or whatever.” At first we were kind of hesitant just because we didn’t really want to waste his time because we knew we couldn’t go to San Francisco so he’d have to go to Toronto; which was a lot of money to spend.

Him and I spoke a couple times about it. I told him we were working on some new songs too because he was also like “you have enough songs for an album, but that’s it. You don’t have any extra songs at this point really.”  We were like “yeah, you’re right.” We had ideas, but the one chunk of recording time we had in the summer, we couldn’t get them all down. I think we recorded fourteen or thirteen but we couldn’t get all of them recorded. He was like “yeah, maybe let’s just push it back a bit and we’ll keep working on it.”

At first we were kind of bummed because we felt we were ready to release it, but after a while, we obviously stepped back. We were out of the recording process. Because when you’re in there, you’re really stoked and you just want to finish it. Everything basically just becomes a check list I guess to finish off. But after we listened to it a lot, and listened to Mike – he’s a very bright dude. He really is. He knows what he’s doing. We were glad that we ran into him on tour in his neck of the woods in the States and he asked us “do you guys want me to come up or not? You guys are on tour for another two weeks and then we could do this if you want.” We were like “yeah, you know what, if you want to kick around some ideas for these songs and some new songs we could show you those – yeah, totally.”

So he came up and we basically listened to each song and he was like “do you guys not like anything about this song? Do you like anything about this song?” We kind of just picked them all apart and at the end of the day we worked on, I want to say we worked on four… I can’t really give you an exact number actually; like a few songs specifically with him in pretty fine detail. A lot of the time it was just him going through a melody with me and being like “what if you went up here instead of down here?” Just little things like that that we’d never thought of and it worked out really well in the end.

Bobby: But little things like that can affect the tone or the flow of the song quite drastically.

Chris: Exactly, yeah. I mean at that point we were so convinced that these songs were done. Maybe not convinced but we were so used to the way they were that we weren’t able to look at it objectively. So he came up and that’s what he did; and yeah, he really helped out on some of those songs. It was really cool.

It was pretty mellow too the whole time. We were just hanging out at our jam space, all playing guitars pretty quickly. We’d show him the chords for a song and he’d be like “what about that chord there instead of this one?” And if we liked it, we’d be stoked and if we didn’t we’d be like “I don’t know, I think it’s okay the way it is” and he was never like “no, no, no, no.”

Bobby: He never forced his opinions on you.

Chris: No, no, it was cool. There was one song that we did a lot of arrangement changes. It was actually the song Bleed that Dillinger Four sang on. That was the one drastic change we made. He definitely helped us on that song, it was pretty different before and he has an ear for the catchy parts of the song and that kind of thing. We had a lot of – not noisy stuff; we’re not a noisy kind of band – but a lot of extra stuff, you know what I mean? We were thinking “oh, this could be cool” and it was almost a four minute long song, or a three and a half minute long song. We were sitting with him and we were like “this is one we’re not really sure if it’s like totally good but we think it’s got good potential.” He felt the same way so we picked that one apart a lot; but it turned out fucking awesome.

Bobby: Yeah, it’s one of the better songs on the album.

Chris: Thanks man. It turned out great. That was the one that he had a very big hand in and we’re so stoked that we can say that; like we grew up on NOFX. When we signed to Fat that was like crazy of course. We didn’t really believe it at first. Then it started to sink in a bit. NOFX took us on tour a few times – that was incredible. Some of the best tours of our lives. All those guys are just so generous and so genuine. Especially Mike, he’s taken such good care of our band. And the fact that that guy, who we’ve grown up on his music, cares about our band – it fucks with our head, it really does. It’s cool, it’s awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so weird to digest some times. And then that, working on a record with him, I was just like “man, what the fuck is next?” I don’t know, it’s getting pretty crazy. We’re really excited.

Bobby: Well you started this band when you were fourteen or fifteen, did you ever imagine that you would be jamming with Fat Mike or signed to Fat Wreck Chords or touring through Europe?

Chris: No man, never ever. We started the band hoping that one day we would graduate high school and not have to go to school after that. That was basically it. We were like “yeah, let’s play some shows on the weekend.” We would play as many shows as we could when we were in high school. Basically like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday – so three or four shows a weekend. Yeah, go to school all week and hate it and be like “we’re almost done, we’re almost done.” Then, yeah, the first summer we got out of high school, we went on tour and we never stopped after that.

It’s still funny to like… Like tonight, it sounds cheesy, but to be in Edmonton on a Monday night with two bands we love and are friends with and there’s over a hundred and fifty tickets sold for the show; on a Monday especially. That’s awesome. We’re stoked man.  That’s all you can ask for. Being in a band these days, you can’t really expect much because there’s so many bands. No one buys music anymore, you know what I mean, it’s inevitable. We don’t care. Paul made a fake version of our record because we knew it was going to leak – every album leaks. We were like “ah, it’s going to happen, whatever.” Paul had a lot of down time right before we left on tour – like a few days – so he made this fake record. He took like the first ten to fifteen second of each song and then he fucking threw in all these weird, awful high school bands’ Blink-182 and Nirvana covers; opera covers of Beatle’s songs and he had this cat and dog piano on his phone. So he just put all this weird shit. It delayed the leak which was cool, that’s all we could pull off we knew that. We were like “maybe we can delay the leak” and it only leaked around two weeks ago which was cool.

But it’s going to happen. Bands get pissed off that people download music; you’ve got to get over it. I understand that in the eighties and the seventies and the sixties, bands made so much money off of music; but it’s a different climate. Everything changes.  You can’t be upset about it. You’ve just got to role with the punches and just tour as much as you can and try to accommodate your fans with other cool things that they can maybe spend your money on so they can get to the next show. Like we’re not against it really.

Bobby: Well that actually ties into one my question. I remember the first time I was introduced to you guys was on the self-released version of Destroy to Create; and on the back, I forget the exact terminology because I forgot to look at it, but it says “share this CD with everybody you want.”

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bobby: And then a year or two later, it was re-released on STOMP and exactly where you had that is now “Copying is punishable by law” blah, blah blah.

Chris: See, that’s the thing – it’s a toss up. When you put out your own album, it’s like “yeah, fucking have it. Here, here, here” and you pass it out; and you want to do that with a label released album but you can’t really. Just because this label’s put in so much money to the band, the band hasn’t put in any money of their own, it’s all the label and they’re the ones that have a lot riding on it. I think we’ve just been lucky with the opportunities we’ve been given. Like STOMP Records gave us an amazing opportunity when we were first starting out touring and stuff, we did two records with them. And we grew up on a lot of STOMP bands, so that was a big deal, we were stoked and those guys were rad dudes. This time around in Canada, we put our record out on our own basically.

Bobby: Yeah, Drive Entertainment.

Chris: Yeah, we just felt like maybe because the times are so rough these days, it’s about time we go try that. We know we’re in a very good spot with Fat Wreck Chords all around the world but in Canada we felt like if we could pull this off, that might not be a bad thing. There’s no bad blood between us and STOMP. We love those dudes and we love the opportunity they’ve given us. We just felt like it was time to try it and see how it goes. It’s really a fucking experiment and if it goes well, cool, and if not –fucking, oh well. There’s nothing you can do. We’re only in the driver’s seat as much as we really can be; a lot of it depends on people buying CDs and whatever. Coming to a show and not buying a CD but buying a t-shirt – anything.

Bobby:  So is Drive Records only you guys or what is it?

Chris: Steve Rizum, the guy we record all our stuff with, he manages us and he has this label now – it’s pretty new. The only other release he’s got on there is the Snips EP, which is really good. I think it’s just us and them right now which is cool because those guys are really good buddies of ours too. Again, for them it’s the same shit. They were on STOMP before, or Union or whatever, and they just kind of feel the same thing.

You see bands like Less Than Jake, they press their own albums.

Bobby: Yeah, with Sleep It Off.

Chris: Yeah, they manufacture their own records; they drive them to the distributor themselves, they put it out themselves. That’s smart. I mean, for a band like Less Than Jake it’s easy because you know they have a built in demographic of people who will buy it.

Bobby: They have the fan base.

Chris: Yeah, exactly, exactly; and they’re a great band and it’s so cool that they do that. It’s the same thing with NOFX and why Fat Mike started Fat Wreck Chords. I remember him telling me the story about it and basically their contract with Epitaph was running out and he had Fat going already; I think it was still pretty new. He said “we can do the album and give Brett Gurewitz the rights to the record or you can give me the rights” and the whole band was like “yeah, let’s just do it ourselves.” And look at Fat now, it’s amazing. It’s like one of the only real punk labels left; so we feel very honoured to be a part of that because that’s how it all started.

It’s cool. They take care of us. They don’t blow smoke up band’s asses. They’re not going to promise you the world. They’re going to tell you what they can for you and they’re going to tell you what you can do for them to help and it’s really cool. Everyone’s super easy going, it’s really easy to work with those guys and we couldn’t be happier.

Bobby: I’ve heard good things about Fat Mike, kinda like what he did with you guys where he’ll hear an album and say “it’s good, but it’s not ready.”

Chris: Exactly, that’s the thing. He’s not into putting records out that he really doesn’t believe in. We were no exception in the sense that that can hurt a band’s feelings at first. Because you never want to hear that your music that you’ve worked on a lot isn’t good enough; and that’s not what he’s saying but you always think that’s what someone’s saying when they’re like “oh, I don’t know yet.” You’re like “oh, it’s not good enough! Ah fuck, we suck! Blah blah blah.” You’re all bummed out with yourself.

But he firmly believes in putting out the best record you can; and that’s what we finally pulled off with this record. We worked on it a lot and we’re really stoked, really stoked. I mean, we recorded enough songs that it turned into a seven inch and an album – that’s a lot of music. He was into it and we’re stoked; he’s a smart guy, he knows what he’s doing.

Bobby: Like you said you released Cynics, the seven inch, before Cavalcade. On Cynics, side A was a b-side from this recording session and side B was a b-side from the Great Awake recording session.

Chris: The A-side of Cynics was Filthy Habits which actually ended up on Cavalcade as well. At first we weren’t sure if we were going to put it on it. A lot of people do buy vinyl these days but there’s still like a hundred times the amount of people that don’t. So we’re like “maybe we should give that song a good shot” – on an actual album that more people would hear. And then yeah, Thunder and Lightning is a b-side from all these sessions – the Cavalcade sessions and 407 is a bside from The Great Awake.

We only cut that song from the album because of timing issues. It was going to be too long to put on one LP – on one piece of wax. We were like “oh fuck.” We didn’t want our first record on Fat… like we’re this new band, young dudes “can we get a double LP?” We’re not going to do that, you know what I mean? We didn’t blame him for not wanting to. So we’re like “alright, we’ll cut that song for timing reasons.” We always wanted to do something with it and we finally did on that; that was cool.

Bobby: You also released a split EP with the Snips on Paper + Plastick. How did that end up happening with Vinnie?

Chris: With Vinnie, we just meet him after going on tour with Less Than Jake once and he was a fan of the band and we kept in touch with him ever since and all those guys. We showed him the idea while we were on tour with him because this idea between us and the Snips had been in existent for a long time before we put it out. I think it was about five years in the making.

We were at a show with the Snips in, I wanna say, 2003, maybe 2004 and we just kind of conjured up this idea of yeah “let’s just do five really short songs and you guys have one side and we have one side.” We were all hanging out with the Snips, drinking or whatever at the show and we came up with that idea. We play with those guys all the time, we see them all time and we kept in touch about the ideas and we’d keep each other updated on the progress we’ve made and showed them rough versions of the songs. Eventually, we told them “man, our songs are starting to go into one another; so I don’t know if they’re going to be five separate songs anymore. They’ll be five distinct parts but now it’s just like some weird jam song.” And then were like “yeah, that’s kind of what happened with us too.” We were like “perfect, let’s just do that instead.” It was a weird idea to begin with; why not make it even weirder? Just one five minute long song that may not repeat any part. Ours repeats one part because we are not good at writing weird stuff. Well, we write some pretty weird songs I guess. But the Snips got their shit down, it was awesome.

But yeah, we showed Vinnie the idea. We showed Fat first and Mike was like “I don’t know, it seems like you can kind of go anywhere with it so if you want to, cool.” So we were like “oh, rad” and we talked to Vinnie and we knew he was really into the whole colour vinyl, awesome packaging, do whatever you want kind of thing and it worked out really well. It was cool to do it with him.

I mean, that label’s awesome. They have such a wicked roster, it’s always growing and it’s a cool idea because, again no one buys CDs anymore. You collect the vinyl and get the MP3s to listen to.

Bobby: You get the best of both worlds.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. It was a pretty long process in one way with that, but with Vinnie it was super easy. He was just like “yeah, sure, I love it. Put it out.” He’s a pretty easy going guy.

Bobby: Like I said, you started this band when you were fourteen and now you’re in your early twenties. With you guys being so young while you were doing it, did you ever run into any problems or barriers with people not giving you the respect or the belief that you’d be able to do this?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Our families and friends have always been super supportive and the bands we toured with have been super cool too. One of the first tours we did was with Catch 22 when we were seventeen years old and they were super cool. We became really good friends with some of those guys and still keep in touch all the time. But most of the time it was promoters and shit at shows while we were on tour that were like “you guys are the Flatliners? How old are you guys?” We’re like seventeen, eighteen and they’re like “really?!?!?” Like it really mattered. It was kind of weird.

That was really the only bullshit we really caught. No one coming to shows was like “you guys are so young, you guys suck.” No one was really doing that. It was just promoters being dicks about it and not taking us seriously. We’re like “dude, you don’t really need to take us seriously. We don’t take ourselves that seriously. We’re young kids who just want to play these shows so give us our hundred dollars.” It was pretty stupid.

But that was only the first few years. I think once we started touring away more, we started meeting a lot of people and they were like “you guys are that young? Wow.” They had no idea which was weird because I look like I’m twelve and Paul does too. Scott and Jon have beards; Paul and I have beard envy for sure. But yeah, it was hard at first but we knew to take it with a grain of salt.

Bobby: Okay, just a few more questions. You said an interesting quote in an interview with PunkNews where you said that over the years, as you’ve been touring and grown, your tastes in music has expanded as well to the point where you’re listening to music that you would have condemned when you were a kid, drinking forties and listening to the Casualties. Do you think its good that your music tastes have expanded and that you’re able to take this new taste into your song writing?

Chris: Yeah. The four of us listen to a pretty eclectic mix of bands. We all have our bands that we all agree on, there are a lot of bands that we all agree one. We’re basically just music dorks anyways; we listen to music all the time. But yeah, we try to always kind of learn about new bands and new styles of music that we maybe used to not like. But yeah, there’s all these bands that I remember when I was a kid I was like “oh, that band sucks! I only listen to punk rock music” and that’s cool when you’re a kid but I don’t know. Even the dudes that have been in punk rock bands they’re entire lives – like Bad Religion, NOFX, Bouncing Souls – all those bands who are like twenty five, thirty years strong, they don’t just listen to punk rock. You know what I mean? And they’re some of the most successful punk bands around and they’re some of the best still, which is rad; and they don’t only listen to punk.

That’s, I think, where bands kind of become, not derivative, but just boring. You can’t put the same shit out over and over again. It’s really cool to see how all these different influences kind of just find their way into your songs. Because we’re not listening to some song by this indie rock band and be like “oh, let’s do that” and then listen to A Wilhelm Scream and want to totally fucking rip it up. It just happens; but it’s cool after a while of going through the process of writing and stuff and then listening to the songs you can kind of start to pick apart where you get the ideas from which is cool. I think that having an eclectic taste in music is natural; it’s going to happen as you get older.

I was the same way when I was a kid. I only wanted to listen to the Casualties. That was basically it. “If it’s not punk rock, I don’t want to listen to it.” I felt like it was a waste of time if it wasn’t punk music. But now I’m like “dude, if it’s a good song I’ll listen to it.” It doesn’t matter who it’s by, it doesn’t matter what kind of music it’s classified as. I really just think genres are really just a way of explaining to people’s friends what a band sounds like which is weird. We consider ourselves a punk rock band at heart but I mean we try to play different styles of music, just even within a few songs. It’s fun; we don’t want it to be boring.

Bobby: That whole punk philosophy in a way is detrimental to itself where it has to be this one style, genre, whatever which if you only listen to that, you just kind of start regurgitating the same sound over and over again.

Chris: Yeah, it just gets pretty saturated within your own catalogue which is not what you want. There are tons of massive punk bands like that where all their records sound the exact same. I think that’s why. Maybe those guys only listen to that kind of music. Maybe they only listen to Black Flag and stuff like that. There’s nothing wrong with Black Flag but there’s a lot of great bands as well that play a ton of different styles as well.

Bobby: You don’t need to limit yourself to one genre.

Chris: No, not at all. Not at all.

Bobby: Well I guess that’s about it. It’s been quite a long chat. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Chris: I don’t know. Just come to the shows and hang out, that’s all we’ll be doing. So thank you everyone for your support.