Band: Against Me! Member: Tom Gabel Label: Fat Wreck Chords / Sire Records Location: Dinwoodie Lounge - Edmonton, Alberta Date: Friday, March 31st, 2007 Interviewer: Bobby Gorman

I had been really looking forward to this show and when it finally came I was pumped. Fresh out of the studio Against Me! have been tearing up the road in anticipation of their new album, New Wave, hitting stores July 10th. During their stop at the Dinwoodie Lounge in Edmonton, I had the chance to talk with Tom about the record, the current tour, signing to Sire and the punk philosophy. It was a nice, laid back interview and Tom impressed me with his very articulate answers. Thanks to Tom for doing it and to Melanie for setting it up.

You can see more photos from the night's concert here.

Bobby: Starting with the basics, you guys have been on tour with Fake Problems and Riverboat Gamblers for a few weeks now; how’s that going so far?

Tom: It’s going great. There’s really bad weather in Eastern Canada, but I guess it’s to be expected if you’re going on tour in Canada in March. All the shows have been really rad, all the bands get along really well.

Bobby: Have there been any really memorable moments from the tour so far?

Tom: South by South West was pretty awesome; we played down there in Austin. We played five shows in three days and the last show of the five was the Vice after party at this elk lodge and there was this huge balcony outside where people could go outside and smoke cigarettes and stuff. Then like fifteen minutes after we played the balcony collapsed under the weight of all the people. So the fire department came, ambulance, police, everything like that and the show was shut down and we were the only band that ended up playing. That was kind of memorable.

Bobby: Was anybody injured?

Tom: No, no, everyone was fine; so it’s cool to laugh about it now.

Bobby: In May you guys are doing a much harder tour than this with Cursive and Mastadon; are you excited for that?

Tom: Of course, yeah, yeah, it should be awesome.

Bobby: Are you excited to see all the different fans’ reaction to the different styles of bands?

Tom: Yeah, it should be interesting for sure. We did, I think it was two years ago now, a tour with The Blood Brothers who, stylistically, are really different than us. It was cool seeing the different kids who would come out and were definitely their fans and not our fans. You have the chance to win fans over then as opposed to kids coming out just because they know they like your band. It’s kind of cool.

Bobby: Do you think it’s important to do that every once in a while? To mix up the genres a bit so you get different fans in? Different crowds?

Tom: Completely, yeah, definitely.

Bobby: I talked to Jordan, your tour manager, back on the 8th when you guys were in London and he said that he was just out buying the band some soup because you were all getting sick. First off, are you better now?

Tom: Yeah, yeah, totally better.

Bobby: How hard is it, when you’re on the road, to get over a little cold? You can’t just go to sleep for two days to get over it.

Tom: It’s hard. It’s frustrating too because, for me, this is the most healthy I’ve been on any tour really. I’m making sure to eat well, I haven’t been drinking a lot, trying to exercise, stuff like that. Just like really taking care of myself; and then to still be sick, you know, it almost seems I would have stood a better chance to just be totally wasted all the time.

Bobby: I read that in Columbia, South Carolina you guys ended the show with a cover of The Replacement’s “Bastards of Young.” Have you ended every show with that cover?

Tom: Not every show, we played it a bunch tough on this tour. We recorded that song for a Replacements tribute comp that came out on 1-2-3-4-Go Records. It’s weird though because sometimes we play the song and people are like “yay! Awesome! Bastards of Young, it’s a great song!” And then sometimes we play the song and people are like “um, this is a new Against Me! song, I don’t know if I like it.” You definitely see the generation gap between people when you play that song.

Bobby: Speaking about covers, a few years ago you guys did a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Wagon Wheel” for the Protect comp. “Wagon Wheel” was a very rare, limited edition song that was only on rare Dylan outtakes, where did you originally hear the song? Or did you originally hear the Old Crow Medicine Show?

Tom: I heard the Old Crow Medicine Show version, that’s what attracted me to it first.

Bobby: Dylan was, of course, a very political writer and you guys have some political aspects to your songs. Your new song, “White People For Peace”, the chorus is “Protest songs: a response to military aggression.” How important do you think it is to mix in a political message in music? Do you think they go hand in hand sometimes?

Tom: I don’t know. I really, sometimes, identify in a lot of ways with the way Bob Dylan, I think, looked at it. Just because you write a song that sides with a certain struggle or has an opinion one way or another doesn’t mean it’s a political song, you know? I get really weary of the term “political” because I feel like once you start lumping yourself into that category you’re usually aligning yourself with people who have agendas and are interested in using you to further their agendas. They also have very strict guidelines of the band or the artist you’re allowed to be and if you step out of those guidelines then you’re shunned by that community or whatever. So I’m not necessarily interested in it.

Bobby: So basically, if you say you’re political it sort of confines your artist ability?

Tom: I think so, yeah. I think that most people have a really narrow view of what it means for something to be political. I think that there’s politics in everything in life.

Bobby: Now, what everyone wants to know about is the new album, “New Wave”, which was supposed to come out in spring but has been delayed until the summer. Can you tell us anything about the album yet?

Tom: I just got an e-mail like twenty minutes ago that said that July 10th is the definite date, so I’m pretty psyched about that. But yeah, we just had some trouble with the mixing. The way we ended up having to do it was we were supposed to start mixing it on February 1st and then it got pushed back until like February 9th and this tour started on the twentieth. So we mixed for like ten days and then we had to leave and the mixing wasn’t done. So we had to finish the mixing, basically, while we were on tour where Rich and Butch would e-mail us a song and we’d listen to it and have to call them back and be like “No, a little more vocal there. A little more snare there.” And then they would fix it and they would e-mail it back. So it ended up taking a lot longer to do it like that. But hopefully the mastering will be done this week, the artwork will be wrapped up too and it will be done.

Bobby: Is it annoying having this big delay time from when you recorded it and now you have to wait until July 10th?

Tom: Yeah, it’s really frustrating. I find it the most annoying thing about being in a band. I mean, I feel like the second that we were done recording it, it should be out. It’s done, here you go. Why wait? What’s the point? It only loses relevance the longer that you wait to put it out. It kind of just shows just how archaic the system that distributes music is. That they can’t just get their shit together and get it out there. But it is what it is.

Bobby: Yeah, you can’t change it now. I’ve read that during this tour you’ve been playing four new songs from the album….

Tom: Four or five, yeah.

Bobby: How has the reaction been so far?

Tom: You know, it’s definitely like you play the new song and people stop moving and they’re just staring at you. But we, through email or whatever, have gotten lots of good responses and positive reaction from people so far; and, of course, negative reaction too. That’s the way it’s always going to be.

Bobby: You also had Tegan Quinn from Tegan and Sara come and sing vocals on one of the songs, what song did she sing on?

Tom: It’s a song called “Born On The FM Waves Of The Heart.”

Bobby: How did you get in touch with her and work with her?

Tom: When we were on Warped Tour this past summer, I forget where it was, it might have been the Vancouver show; but she was out at the show and Much Music had her interview us on TV. During the interview she was just joking around, she was like “need anyone to do backing vocals on your next record, give me a call!” The song that she sings on is the last song I wrote for the record. I kept that in mind when she said that and I really like her voice, I’m a really big fan of Tegan and Sara. So I just had this idea for a song that was like a duet and I just kind of wrote it with her voice in mind, thinking how her voice would work. It’s kind of like a duet between me and her and I wrote it specifically for her. When I wrote it, I phoned her up and I was like “hey, I wrote this song, I’ll send you the demo version and the lyrics. Hopefully you’ll like it and you’re in to doing it.” She liked it so she came out.

Bobby: I’m looking forward to hearing it now. I just bought “So Jealous”, such a good CD.

Tom: Yeah, yeah. They just finished their new record too.

Bobby: Do you have any other guest appearances on the album or is Tegan the only one?

Tom: No, Tegan’s the only one. It’s a short record kind of. It’s only ten songs. But it’s still around forty minutes or so that it clocks in at.

Bobby: Throughout the recording you guys were filming video updates with questions for fans, who came up with that idea?

Tom: We just kind of did it ourselves. We were just kind of bored in the studio. The way we were doing it, tracking wise, was just kind of bit by bit – like drums and then bass. So some days it would be all drums, and then me, Andrew, and James would be sitting around “well, what the fuck do we do all day today?” So we just kind of came up with that idea.

Bobby: You also worked with Butch Vig on this record, what was it like working with him?

Tom: It was awesome. I can’t say enough good things. I mean, the record that we made would definitely not have been possible without him.

Bobby: When you guys signed to Fat Wreck Chords, a whole bunch of people said you sold out. When you signed to Sire Records even more people said you sold out. What do you think it is with the punk ideal that as soon as a band gets a little bit popular or grows a bit that they’re automatically sell outs? Why do you think that ideology is drummed into people’s heads?

Tom: I don’t know. It’s just kind of a self-defeating, shoot yourself in the foot-like attitude to have. I find it completely frustrating and off-putting and it turns me off of the punk scene really because people are very closed minded. Sometimes it sucks too, like not necessarily with our band but with other bands too, you have bands that stayed on the same label but maybe decide that they wanted to change their sound and try something different and people call them sell outs. Sell-out is the new witch hunt; it’s a very McCarthyism type of finger-pointing way to be. I guess I don’t really view things the way that people who act like that view. I think that I just have a really different perspective than those people. I mean, they’re more than welcomed to do whatever they want, but I just find the subject completely boring.

Bobby: In a recent interview with the National Post, you said "When it comes to the punk musical genre, it has become limiting, when it was always supposed to be something that was limitless and uncontainable." Can you explain a bit on that? Like what you meant by that?

Tom: Well, I mean, punk was supposed to be more of an attitude and a state of mind as opposed to a sound. Like “that sounds punk” or whatever, that just seems like it should be a contradiction. “Sounds punk.” It seems like that’s what people view it as now. It’s a sound and the way you dress when people, in theory, should be able to come out with a full orchestra and have it be punk if the spirit is behind it. But I think people have a skewed sense of what punk is.

Bobby: Continuing on in that interview, on the expectations of what punk should be you said that “But as a philosophy, as a way of thinking, I dig it. Completely.” So what do you think the punk philosophy is? What do you think makes it so a band can come out with a full orchestra and still be punk?

Tom: I think it’s the attitudes and the intentions behind it. For me, punk is just about doing what I want. It’s been an outlet for me, getting out anger, getting out frustration; or it’s fucking positive things too. I feel like I do these things because I have to. If I didn’t, I would be a very unhappy person in life. And I want to play shows and I want to make music so that other people can hear that. I want to share ideas with people and I would like for them, in turn, to share ideas with me. I’d like to do that on my terms completely, and not someone else’s terms. I don’t know; that’s just how punk is to me.

Bobby: Going back to your record label signing, why did you decide to finally go and join with Sire instead of someone like Universal who were courting you a lot on your DVD and taking you out to ball games? What made you finally go with Sire instead of Universal or Virgin or any of those?

Tom: Well, there’s a number of reason behind it. Basically, there’s three major labels now. All the major labels are under one of the three major labels, under one of the umbrellas. When you start looking at the three and looking at your options you realize pretty quick that Virgin is a shitty record label. No bands do good on Virgin. Universal’s a record label that’s really geared towards rap and hip-hop and Warner, or Sire, is a label that’s geared towards rock or whatever music. So fit wise, that seems like the more logical decision in that sense. Then looking at Sire too, especially the bands that are on there, to me it was kind of appealing and I was in to being a part of that.

Bobby: I was reading this article about the Bouncing Souls at this BMX derby. They were walking through and ran into this kid in a Casualties t-shirt. The only punk kid there selling hot dogs, so they started talking to him, asking him what bands he liked. He said “I like Against All Authority. I like Against Me!” Which got them thinking “Against Me! They’re from Florida. Against All Authority, they’re from Florida. What’s with all the Floridian bands being against stuff?”

Tom: *laughs* I don’t know… It’s just a place that’s full of teen angst. You got me.

Bobby: Okay, one final question, when you were growing up, whose poster did you have on your wall?

Tom: Well, I’ve had many posters on my wall when I was growing up. When I was growing up and got into punk?

Bobby: Yeah.

Tom: I used to be a really big Doors fanatic, so I had a lot of Jim Morrison posters. I had a Sex Pistols poster on my wall at one point. The one when they’re standing against a wall and Sid’s drinking a Fanta. I’ve had tons but I think those are like my most memorable posters.

Bobby: Okay, I guess that’s about it. Thanks a lot, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Tom: No, no, thanks for the interview.