Lagwagon Interview

WBGU = WBGU 88.1 FM Punk Department (Kyle)
L = Lagwagon (Jesse)

WBGU: Hey, this is Kyle, and I'm outside of Bogart's right now with Jesse from Lagwagon before their show, and I've got a few questions for you. First I'd just like to start off with a basic question, who are your musical infuences?

L: Personally? As a bass player? Iron Maiden, Steve Harris. That's about the extent of that.

WBGU: Oh really?

L: Yeah. That's why I never bothered to learn how to play with a pick.

WBGU: Alright, now, with Lagwagon, there's been a lot of line-up changes through out the ten year plus history of the band. If you just want to talk about those and how that's affected the band.

L: Well, basically, we had the original line-up for the first three albums, and then we broke up on stage in Pensacola, Florida. Lost our drummer, and then we lost our guitarist a little bit after that. So, at the time, we were basically just going to call it quits, and we stayed broken up for a couple months. And then, we found out that R.K.L. had broken up. So, we decided, “Hey, if we can steal their drummer, then we’ll do that, and if not, then we’ll just call it quits.” And fortunately, we were able to do that. And then we had a temporary guitar player named Ken Stringfellow for a little bit, who’s actually playing with R.E.M. now. So, he went on to much bigger and better things. And then, we stole R.K.L.’s guitarist, Chris. So we’re basically just kind of trying to thieve everyone from R.K.L. that we can. I’m next on the chopping block.

WBGU: Now, you guys have been of Fat Wreck Chords for a really long time. It’s kind of like as your band got bigger and better, Fat Wreck Chords developed as a record label too. What was it kind of like the two coinciding together?

L: Um, I mean…it was really cool. At the time when we signed to Fat, we were the first album—well the second album they released besides the NOFX Longest Line and the first band that they actually signed. So, at the time we figured that the album probably wouldn’t get outside of California. Basically, it was the smallest label we’d ever really heard of. And so, it’s pretty amazing what Mike’s done with Fat over the years.

WBGU: Alright, now your guy’s new album that just came out this past April, Blaze, I understand you guys have been working on it a long time, perfecting it and everything. And, if you just want to talk about why it kind of took a while?

L: Basically, we just—well we kind of took a break for awhile because we were just kind of touring too much, and it wasn’t quite as a fun as it once was. So we just sort of took some time off. Then it—basically, it just kind of took awhile to get the momentum going again. We recorded, I think, four different times and you know for the most part we just weren’t really happy with how the songs were turning out, and we didn’t really get any pressure from Fat to put anything out so we just kept trying and trying again. And we finally got something that we’re somewhat happy with.

WBGU: In some of your songs you guys have some political themes in them. What’s kind of your attitudes towards politics and state of affairs today?

L: It’s horrid, horrible. Boy, the Bush Administration is just—oo—can’t even put it into words just how disturbing everything that is going on is and the—basically their agenda is just very frightening.

WBGU: Also, on that same note, and with punk music, it seems like for awhile punk music got away from politics, and now it seems like—really alarmingly with the latest NOFX release, The War On Errorism—do you think punk’s getting a lot more back involved with politics?

L: I think so. I think it just basically, in the last couple years it came to the point where it’s really impossible not to say anything about it. I mean, for awhile, Lagwagon has always kind of somewhat avoided the political arena because there are just so many bands that say what we would say but much better. Basically, at this point, for the last few years, we’ve just walked around pissed off all the time because of what’s going on these days so it’s really hard to keep that out of the music.

WBGU: Do you like Justin Timberlake’s solo project, or do you like him with N’SYNC better?

[Lagwagon guitarist Chris walks by]

L: Um, you know, at first I wasn’t really too into it, but then our guitar player Chris, he plays it constantly, and after the fiftieth or sixtieth time, it kind of started to grow on me. He’s bringing back the whole like Miami Vice-Three Days Devil thing, so that’s good too.

WBGU: For you personally, growing up, how did you get involved in punk music and what is your background in that as a kid to now?

L: Um, well basically, I started off kind of listening to more metal. I grew up in a really small town where there were probably about four people that listened to punk, and I ended up becoming good friends with one of them, and he’s the one that turned me on to everything: all the old—for a while I was really big on all the old Revelation’s stuff, mainly because of Gorilla Biscuits because they were my favorite band ever for a long time. So, I kinda started getting into Gorilla Biscuits, Bold, Judge, Youth Of Today, that whole kind of scene, and then also D.R.I. and Bad Brains and Minor Threat and stuff like that. Yeah, and then basically this friend who kind of turned me on to everything, who’s my main corrupter in life. He’s the first one who got me to drink, first one who got me to smoke pot, first one to play punk rock for me. He’s ruined me, completely ruined me, but he was also the drummer for my first band, so that’s kind of how I started playing it.

WBGU: That’s all I have for you right now. Is there anything you’d like to add or say?

L: I don’t think so.

WBGU: Alright, thanks a lot.

L: Aw, no problem.