Bad Copy

Interesting. I don’t think that it’s… surprising.

That’s great!

Oh, for sure.

I don’t think that’s an option. I don’t want to get into how dope I think my own record is. Although, I do think it’s dope. You should all buy it. It comes out on Black Friday *laughs* But the truth of the matter is that the record is its own experience and I think that what it’s selling is a style and attitude.

First, there’s the pragmatic consideration which is like, “this band isn’t very popular.” So I would have to hire like six musicians to do this live in a way to approximate what’s on the record. And make no money. And I can’t afford to do that. I’ve got kids and a house and a job that I’d be leaving.

Another thing I could do is do it with a kind of a stripped down skeleton crew and just be like, “Well, its not gonna sound anything like that shit. Here we go.” And the other thing is that I could just like sell the attitude and do it myself acoustically. And I think that until some fucking Netflix special makes one of theses songs their theme song, we’re gonna have to deal with those two options.

I’ll do as much as anybody wants. And if there’s a demand for it, I will put the band together that can do that exactly. I’m really proud of songs and the sound and I would love nothing more than to be out there making that sound every night. But, unfortunately, I don’t get to have the boots on the ground like I used to in the past in order to get a project up and running. It’s a little bit harder. So this is a bit more of an art project.

Well, Dan Tinkler became a part of the band because he was engineering the record. It just got to a point where it was Nick and I. Dan was just such an integral part that I had him play the drums on one song and he played lead guitar on another song. And it was like “Dude you’re as much in this band as we are.”

This whole thing isn’t like a group of dudes standing around practicing. It’s me writing them, talking to Nick about arrangements, and then Dan taking those arrangements and then putting them together. It’s less of a band and more of a collective. Dan is absolutely part of that collective. You know, the core foundation of the Wandering Birds is me and Nick, but Dan is right in there. He is a member of the band.

Okay. Uh… NO. *laughs* I don’t like that at all. I’m not trying to sell a brand.

Yes. Absolutely. So Nick is my oldest friend. When I was like eleven, Nick had a four track and bass and we would make songs. He would play the bass, play the guitar, and we would make music, and I would sing over it. All through high school we would do this stuff. We’d just take drugs and put on the four track. Chris was part of this for a very long time as well. I don’t want to minimize his part of all this. But Nick and I have always had this sort of sound in our heads. Right? So this is the record I’ve been trying to make since I was like eleven years old.

The first time I played it for somebody, it was my friend Dave who I love and respect very much. I got the distinct impression that he fucking hated it and I was like, “Don’t care. Still love the record!” This one is more like something I really wanted to do that really needed to come out. But no, I’m not trying to sell and brand or persona with this, although I know I did use those terms earlier.

What I mean by that is, I think what you take out of it is a more fundamental core kind of thing. It’s the same thing with the first record. Nobody has asked me to bring the Wandering Birds around and play a version of that album on their stage. But I come acoustic and people want to hear those songs. What it offers is something different and I think that this cashes the check that that record wrote. This is the real Wandering Birds. That one still has its tone but it had its toes in other stuff. It was like “Look this is going to be weird. But there’s still enough stuff here that’s punk influenced that you can come along.”

When I sit down to write a record, I sit down to write a record. So when I sat down to write the new Falcon record, I got a new notebook and I sat down and wrote Falcon songs. The same thing with The Lawrence Arms or with this. I sit down and I think, “What are The Wandering Birds about?” And I write and I write and I write and the few things that might pop out of it might make it up to the top and it’s filtered up through there.

The way I approach it differently is that this is very much less tethered to anything. I feel like there is sort of a freedom to do whatever the fuck I want.

*laughs* Well, I don’t hate that. The objectives that I’m trying to achieve are different. There’s no rage and any malaise is sort of tempered with a glaze of pills or something. Which isn’t to say that I don’t think it’s an emotional record. There’s some very emotional stuff on there. It’s a different aspect.

*laughs* This is some classic me talking too much but here it goes. You know there’s all this talk about what it means to be a man and about masculinity and all that kind of shit. I mean, I’m obviously a big, stupid, oafish man. There’s no way around it. No one is gonna look at me and say, “He’s not a big, stupid, oafish man.” But, in my own little way, I’ve wanted to subvert those ideas with the idea of The Lawrence Arms being like a slightly more thoughtful band than it appears or with The Falcon almost being a hardcore band that is either so over the top that it’s satire or becomes so sensitive that it’s embarrassing. Right?

And with this, I think of it like… Punk Rock is so puritanical, in general, right? Especially if you want to talk about ‘Punk Rock saved my life’ or ‘Punk Rock pushes the envelope.’ Punk Rock is also like PRETTY into white dudes and gender norms and self censorship. It’s the worst of the Left and the worst of the Right all combined into one scene. And this record, not being a punk rock record, there’s sort of a freedom to eschew that thing entirely and just be an artist…and I’m fully aware of how dumb that sounds.

Sure!

Beautiful! This song is stupid as shit, don’t get me wrong.

*Laughs* So I was riding with Nick out to his mom’s house in Michigan and he said, “Man, I can’t wait ’til we get out of these woods. We can stop someplace and get a shitty margarita.”

And I was like, “Did you just say SHITTY MARGARITA?? That’s a song, like a Cheech and Chong song from some 80s movie.” And right then I was like, “Wake up in the morning and my head is feeling rough. Drink a shitty margarita…” I wrote the whole song sitting shotgun in the car. Every bit of it was done except for the bridge, you know the emotionally resonate part (I’m using finger quotes) and that was the only thing I added. But everything else was completely written in that car and were cracking up. And then we went and had some VERY, very shitty margaritas, so it was terrific.

Somebody pointed this out to me, which I never thought of. I’m gonna be getting handed terrible margaritas for the rest of my life. *Laughs* and I’m gonna have another song “Shitty Diabetes.”