The Lawrence Arms

Not only is Brendan Kelly one of the singers and bassist for Chicago’s beloved The Lawrence Arms, in his spare time he writes an insightful, humorous blog called the Bad Sandwich Chronicles. While fan boys of his band read his blog in attempt to fill the void of not getting a new full-length Arms album in over 5 years, the blog is also enjoyed by those who have never even listened to the Lawrence Arms. I got a chance to catch up with Brendan on April 3 at the Beat Kitchen in Chicago to discuss how his kickass writing has let him slip by as a subpar musician, a movie he’s working on, and new music he’s working on, not for the Lawrence Arms.

Photos by Katie Hovland.

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Amy: So you have this solo acoustic split out with Joe McMahon from Smoke or Fire, and you played with Joe once at the Mutiny here in Chicago, have you guys ever discussed touring together?

Brendan: The whole thing with that is Joe had these songs and he wanted to put them out. Neil from Anchorless approached Joe to do it, Joe didn’t feel he had enough songs, and he didn’t want to rerecord anything. He called me up, asked me if I would do it, I said sure, and I did it in a day. I’m really happy with the way the record came out, I don’t want to belittle it or anything, but it was never a big project. I didn’t even write songs for it, it was something I did because my buddy wanted to do it and I thought it would be cool; it’s fun to sit there and play guitar. So in that regard, I’m not an acoustic solo artist, it’s not something I really desire to do. A lot of people are doing it, a lot of people do it really well, and I’m not really one of those people. I think there’s much better ways for me to make music and thrive than solo acoustic, but with that being said, I like to do it and have fun. I don’t want there to be any mistake that this is my main thing because it’s never going to be. In that regard, touring on it is like meh.

Amy: Have you played solo shows outside Chicago then?

Brendan: Yeah, yeah for sure. I did some shows out on the East Coast; I just went down to North Carolina and did a festival out there. I do little one off things. I’m going to Montréal in a couple months to play. We, as the Lawrence Arms, travel less and less these days, but I still like to get out and do what I can. I like to play, I like to travel, and this is the easiest way for me to do it.

Amy: So you would never necessarily go on a solo tour?

Brendan: I would. It would have to be the right situation and something that made sense. I did a couple dates with Matt Skiba in November. That was cool because Matt is a good buddy of mine and it made sense, but I have a lot of other stuff to take care of around here. In order for me to take off for awhile it would have to be something pretty cool.

Amy: Have you been writing songs amongst all your blogging?

Brendan: Yeah, I’ve got a whole record of music written for – I guess it’s kind of a band. I’ve been working with one guy putting together demos, and I’m going to work with this other dude because there are sort of two facets of this band. I don’t want to talk too much about it because the descriptions of it are going to sound terrible and it’s a little bit cooler than the only way I can describe it. I’m working with one guy who’s a rock and roll dude that I’ve been working with for a long time, and I’m working with another dude who’s less of a rock and roll dude, he’s more of a producer. All that stuff, if I can get it done, I’m hoping to have out this year. It should be interesting; I think it will kind of surprise people, some of it is a bit of a departure.

Amy: Where do you typically write?

Brendan: I write in my kitchen. I have a desk for my laptop and if I’m writing with a pen I tend to write at my kitchen table, which is about 4 feet from the desk where I usually write.

Amy: Do you usually go the pen and paper route?

Brendan: It depends on what I’m writing really. They’re both super different in terms of when I type if I can get a lot of ideas out really fast its good. When I blog for example, that’s pretty stream of consciousness, I like to go pretty fast. When I’m writing music, sometimes by the time I get to the end my brain has thought of better alternate words. When the word choice is really, really important like in writing music, I like to write with a pen and paper, but when I’m just trying to get big, broad ideas out I like to type.

Amy: What do you do when you’re not blogging and writing songs?

Brendan: My day is all taking my kids to the park and to play with their friends.

Amy: How old are they?

Brendan: 3 and 1, almost. By the time anyone reads this they will both be 3 and 1, their birthdays are both in the spring. I just hang out with them all day mostly. What do I like to do? Sleep. I love to hang out with my kids obviously, but it’s also thankless tasks and work. I really, really like being out, like I am today, by myself. I like solitude because I never get it. I like to be able to sit at the bar someplace and order my lunch sitting at the bar because I can’t do that with kids. I like doing stuff I can’t do with kids. I do this freelance writing work for a few publicists. It’s pretty lame, I used to have good answers to this question, but the monsters have gotten me man.

Amy: So you’re freelance writing and blogging right now, obviously you’re pretty passionate about writing. Would you say writing is your calling?

Brendan: I’m not a particularly good musician, if I do have a talent its writing. I think that that comes through enough that my sort of subpar musical skills aren’t terribly offensive. If someone likes what I do, they tend to like the writing aspect of it. Is it my passion? I guess it’s what I’m good at, at least to me; it’s hard to say. Writing is such a subjective thing. I can be like, oh man can I articulate the shit out of a phrase or somebody can read my writing and be like, this guy is a blowhard asshole. I like to write, I have fun writing; I write all sorts of stuff, music, blogs, articles, press releases, and stories. I wrote a movie.

Amy: What’s up with this movie and is that something that’s in the works now?

Brendan: Yeah, we’re doing the final sound clips right now. It’s a big thing that hopefully we can hear more about really soon. We’re sending it off to some people tomorrow morning. I went down to SXSW to try and schmooze around and get in with the film industry. It’s hard, we’ll see what happens.

Amy: Did you see the riots or punches?

Brendan: Oh no, no, no. I wasn’t there for that, I was there for the film section, which was the week before. They try to separate the nerds from the other nerds, I was already home.

Amy: While we’re talking about movies, when can we expect to see the 10 year anniversary show movie?

Brendan: That’s coming out really soon. I think Fat is announcing it on Monday. It’s going to come out on Fat, that’s sort of what the delay was. The filmmaker didn’t know how we wanted to go about marketing it. He wanted to shoot it and I said look dude, you can do whatever you want, we’ll split the money with you, I just don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t want to think about it, I already have enough shit going on. He doesn’t have that much of a foothold in the industry of putting out rock and roll DVDs, so as a result the whole thing took a little longer than it should of. He did an amazing job and he’s a great guy. I was finally able to get off my lazy ass and link him and Fat together, so now tah-dah!

Amy: Everybody wins.

Brendan: Except anyone that was really waiting for that DVD that might of died in the process.

Amy: You mentioned that having kids eats up a lot of your time, would you say that’s the biggest way having children has affected your career?

Brendan: I don’t have time to do shit! The thing is I used to write when I was just chilling out between albums; not even thinking about it I would write a song a day. When I’d try to be writing a record, I’d sometimes write five or six songs a day. Most of these songs are god-awful dog shit by the way that I would never show anyone to anybody. That process of keeping your mental muscles flexed, that’s the way I work. I need a lot of output in order to sift through it and find the good stuff. Now I can barely get away to do anything. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining because I’m not, but it’s just a reality. If my kids are up I can’t be writing songs, and if my kids are asleep I can’t be fucking playing guitar. I don’t live in a huge mansion; I don’t have the rock wing or whatever. They’re asleep 15 feet away behind a shitty door, so it makes things more difficult. You just don’t have time to do shit, that’s basically it. Everything is a production. If I want to go to the post office, I have to stand in the fucking line with a three year old and a one year old with a basket. She starts screaming, he’s running all over the fucking place, it’s a pain in the dick, but what are you doing to do? You know has to deal with kids? Every single person on this earth, it’s not like getting stuck in a Tiger’s cage in Vietnam, it’s just having kids.

Amy: What’s the most rewarding thing about being a dad?

Brendan: You know, the most rewarding thing about being a dad is you have these kids and they’re awesome. These little kids are half me and half my wife and I love that. They’re just funny. When my wife was super pregnant and she came out to visit on tour in San Francisco, Joey Cape, my wife, and I were sitting on our bus. Joey was like, when that kid comes along you get to do everything in your life again, you get to vicariously live through your kid. I thought that sounded so stupid because I never really understood the idea of living vicariously through someone. Even if it doesn’t make any sense, but this is the best analogy I can use, you know when you find a band that you know your friend is going to like? You get so stoked to show it to them, and they’re like yeah, you’re right this is awesome, and it’s such a great feeling. With a little kid, that’s fucking everything. It’s like oh, you know what you’re going to like? Trains. You know what you’re going to like? Pudding. You know what you’re going to like? The pool, and they’re so stoked. My son is at the age now where he’s like dad, this is AWESOME! It really is the best feeling in the world to stoke out a little kid. That is the best part about parenting, there are a lot of other great parts, but that’s my favorite.

Amy: How did you get involved with JBTV?

Brendan: They did an open casting call and were looking for different people to host different segments based on different genres of music. Toby called me up and said, hey they’re doing a casting call at JBTV and they need a punk rock host, you and I could probably qualify for that. We already knew those dudes a little bit, so we came in, we did it, and next thing you know (they’re on JBTV). It’s crazy, the format has changed so much and everything has switched around. Originally, we had a show and then we were part of a different show because it went from being on the Internet to TV. The whole thing is just constantly evolving and changing. It’s been a fun experience thus far; I’m really interested to see where it goes. Obviously we’re not doing it as much now as we were for awhile, but that could all change tomorrow.

Amy: What is Static Age and what does the future hold for the show?

Brendan: Static Age is the show that Toby and I did, and then when JBTV got absorbed into NBC, now they just have one show. Before it was this constantly rotating, one time it would be Static Age, then it would be a regular JBTV show, then it would be a band in the studio. When they got absorbed into NBC, they kind of took all that stuff and parched it down, so we no longer had our own show and were just part of this big show. The result is, there’s no more Static Age and we got relegated to a smaller role because everybody did. That’s what Static Age is, there’s talk of bringing it back or whatever. Like I said, it’s an hour a week on television, there’s all sorts of talk about ways to expand that into more shows, I don’t really know. I honestly have no fucking idea what’s going on over there, but more than that, I don’t know what’s allowed to be talked about or not. Suffice to say the great minds at JBTV are concocting some shit and I don’t know what it is.

Amy: Is anything in the works for the Lawrence Arms right now?

Brendan: Not really, we just got an offer, well not an offer, but we were in talks with somebody to go to Africa. I don’t know a goddamn thing about Africa, but the thing I do know about Africa is that South Africa is where all the white people are, and then there’s the rest of Africa. This would be not just South Africa, but Southern Africa. This is all so tentative that I have no idea if this guy will ever even hit me back, but we talked about us going to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland. According to this dude I talked to, based on the five emails we exchanged there’s a real scene down there. Not huge, but real vibrant and I really, really, really hope it happens. That’s where fucking human beings came from, that’s the wellspring of humanity, that’s awesome and I would love to do that. That’s essentially all that’s on our horizon anyway; we’re playing at Congress with the Dead Milkmen

Amy: And Asian Man in San Francisco.

Brendan: Oh yeah, we are! The Asian Man festival, it’s going to be a busy week.

Amy: How did Slapstick playing Asian Man in San Fran come about?

Brendan: Mike Park is kind of a wizard at getting people to do what he wants. He was just kind of like, hey, hey, if I can get everyone else to say yes, will you say yes? I think he did that to all of us and nobody is going to that asshole, like no fucking way Mike! You can’t say no to Mike because Mike is one of the most awesome dudes in the world. He’s kind of famous for that, being super amazing. He just worked his magic, and next thing you know there’s two men in their thirties out in their sheds practicing their trombones and trumpets, it’s pretty hilarious.

Amy: How long have you been doing the blog?

Brendan: Almost two years.

Amy: Is there any way to figure out how many people read it? I feel like the popularity has increased in those two years.

Brendan: I do not know how to do that; it’s not as easy as it seems. A lot of people read it, I talk to people more and more that read it that don’t listen to my band. It’s definitely, I don’t want to say transcending, because that makes it sound a lot more important than it is, but it’s gone outside the realm of people that just like the Lawrence Arms that don’t have a song to hear so they read it. It’s a fun thing, I like to do it. In a world where I do have such a limited time to have creative output, it’s really awesome that the technology exists for me to sit down for fifteen minutes every day and crank something out and bounce it off the world, no matter how small or weird of an exchange it is.

Amy: I’ve been reading the blog this week and am under the impression you’ve been hearing some shit talk going around with the mention of Coldplay and the new Rise Against record.

Brendan: No, no, not me! I haven’t heard a single bad word about that Rise Against record actually; I haven’t heard the record either so I don’t know. I just love Tim and Joe and all those guys. They have the number one record in the world essentially and that’s so cool. After all the SXSW bullshit, everybody was just shit-talking and fighting in the, I hate to use this term, but punk rock community or whatever. I was just like man, you know for everybody fighting and talking about who’s right, who’s wrong, and who’s abandoning what, it’s like dude; can we look at the fucking big picture here? We have a band that comes from this little place where we all are, that this week, maybe not next week, but this week, is the biggest band in the world, that’s pretty awesome.

Amy: I know you’ve been involved in the past, but with Weaselfest being cancelled, has Windy City Sound Clash asked you to get involved at all?

Brendan: No, no. We couldn’t do that anyway, we’re playing the Dead Milkmen show. We try to keep the Chicago shows an event. I want to make it so that it’s exciting and people keep coming and being stoked. It’s not like we’re putting out tons and tons of new records right now.

Amy: And the Falcon is playing in June.

Brendan: That’s true, interesting side note about the Falcon playing, we’ve been having Chris fill in on the bass, but he can’t do it because it’s his old lady’s graduation that weekend, so I think Jason Black from Hot Water Music is going to come down and play the bass for that. That’ll be really cool; I’m looking forward to that.

Amy: Anything I didn’t cover you’d like to add?

Brendan: I got nothin.