Back when I originally did this interview, a conflated situation occurred; both John and Rory responded, presumedly without the knowledge that either had. But all is well that ends well, I figured that I may as well upload both interviews to show you oh valued reader their independent answers to the same questions.
Who am I speaking with?
John.
How and when did you become actively involved in music?
I bought a guitar at a flea market when I was 8 and started playing soon after… and all through high school I was in various bands (or more accurately, various forms of the same band) that didn’t take ourselves very seriously but had a lot of fun. If you mean active in the sense of playing shows and touring, it wasn’t until after high school, when we started American Steel, that we got more serious.
One thing has always impressed me with American Steel (and extending to Communiqué) is that on the outside, from the fans’ perspective, friendship seems to be the foundation of the band. How important is friendship to the band?
Ryan, Rory and I started playing together as friends, and it wasn’t until after a few months that we decided to even play a show, let alone tour and make records. I think bands that start out of fun and spontaneity have a much longer life expectancy than those that start with professional ambition. When things get bad for us, we can draw on our history together and loyalty to each other to see us through.
Take me back to 1995 when American Steel first started. Beyond the obvious (progression of songwriting, etc), how have things changed for you as a band? What effect if any has that had on your personal life?
I think a lot of the ways we’ve changed have been the direct result of changes in the worlds of music and touring, which would include everything from gas prices to the rise of digital music. In an economic sense, it’s no longer possible to just hit the road aimlessly and piece together a few modest shows (if you’re talking about anything longer than a week and covering more than a few states). There’s a picture of me from the first American Steel tour standing in front of a gas station where gas is 79 cents per gallon, and I remember staying in lots of hotels during that time that were between 15 and 30 dollars per night. At this point, those prices have basically quadrupled, which means we have to be much more discerning about which tours we take. We’ve had to start turning down way more tours and shows than we play, just to avoid losing huge amounts of money.
To tie that thread into the rise of downloadable music, you could say that touring used to be a way of promoting a record, but with record sales decreasing every year, that becomes less and less of a justification for tour. So with the cost of touring skyrocketing and the rewards diminishing, it’s something of a vicious cycle. The insult to injury is that more and more venues now take a percentage of all the merchandise a band sells at their show, which makes it even harder to break even.
Musically, not too much has changed, other than the addition of some truly unnecessary subgenres – emo/screamo is essentially the glam rock of our era. When you hit the road and play a different city every night, you see a few great bands and a lot of horrible bands, as it has always been and always will be.
Photo by: Chrissy Piper
Back in 1995 did you ever think that you would get the opportunity to record three EPs and four LPs, and go on countless tours all over the place playing with some really amazing bands?
Not at all. It’s pretty incredible to see the country as thoroughly as we have, to have a web of close friends spread all over the place, and to play with a lot of the bands that inspired us to start playing in the first place.
Initially American Steel ceased to be after you had gone on some pretty high profile tours namely with Murder City Devils (who were at their height of popularity) and Hot Water Music. When you reformed under the American Steel moniker was there a conscious decision to pick up where you left off, or did you go into things with an attitude of whatever happens happens, and let’s just take things as they go?
Much more the latter. Our main approach with the current incarnation of the band was to keep it fun and simple. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a very self-sufficient band, but near the end of the first American Steel and our entire time as Communiqué, it became harder and harder to separate our own internal professionalism from the expectations of the music world. We got to sort of a bad place a few years ago, where we’d worked hard to get highly-regarded management, and we basically wasted a lot of time waiting for them to make things happen for us. That, coupled with Lookout Records essentially going bankrupt, really left us treading water for the better part of 2005 and 2006. The lesson was that we could make decisions about the direction of the band better (and much more quickly) on our own. Currently, we’re lucky to have a great label and a fantastic booking agent, which is all the outside help we really need at this point.
All of you have been playing music for the better part of your lives. Are there any drawbacks to being a musician?
Again, not to be too cynical, but it’s a great way to lose money, especially if you live in the Bay Area. I remember Tim from Avail talking about how he only got through their first few tours because his rent was 85 dollars a month, which is close to what my electric bill was last month. So to be a musician here, you somehow have to be a touring musician with a job at home – both to pay the rent, and to have any hope of having health insurance.
Photo from Fat Wreck website
Being in a band can make you feel the highest of highs and sometimes the lowest of lows. What keeps you going as a band?
If a band is representative of the people in it, then it becomes a real source of pride, and that pride can see you through a lot of hard times. Our records sound very different from one another, but each one was an accurate representation of what we were feeling at the time, and I’m proud of our entire output as a band.
What was the last ingenious thing that you’ve done?
On our way down to LA a few weeks ago to play with Social Distortion, we pulled over to buy gas and discovered that one of our trailer tires had almost sheared off. Within about 45 minutes, we’d found a Uhaul center, flipped our trailer hitch, picked up a new trailer, arranged a tow and repair for our old trailer, and got back on the road – and we were still on time. I can’t imagine any band has had more vehicle problems over the years than we have. We go through transmissions the way some people go through tires, and we can have a really grim, road-weary efficiency when it’s called for.
You all seem to be big soul fans like myself. What underdog groups/artists do you think more people should know about? Personally I think more people should listen to Frank Wilson, Mary Wells, and the Velvelettes.
There’s now a clear break in my mind between bands I like on record and bands I enjoy live. As I get older, I think of my collection of recorded music (LPs and CDs as well as mp3s) as more of a library, where I want to be discerning about what I own, and seek out stuff I’ll want to hear many, many times. In a practical sense, that means a lot of the music I own is from older artists like Velvet Underground, The Band, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, and so on. Every year I also have an increasing number of old classical, jazz, and blues LPs.
Live, I’m much more into newer and louder stuff… on this last tour, I loved watching the Lawrence Arms every night; they definitely have a much more manic stage presence than we do, and Brendan Kelly can be downright hilarious. I saw a show with the Arrivals and Triclops in New York that was amazing. NoMeansNo is my favorite live band of all time; I never miss them when they come through town.
This question might be a bit cryptic, but what song would you want to be played at your funeral?
“Bird on a Wire” by Leonard Cohen for the memorial, then “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC when my ashes are launched into space.
Any last words of inspiration or comments?
Everyone should read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Everyone of the gamer ilk should play Portal. Myspace is going the way of Friendster. Thanks for the thoughtful questions.
