KEEP IT BURNING
Anti-Flag Stokes the Fires of Discontent
by John B. Moore
You’d think with George Bush & Company back on the range in Texas and where ever else they managed to scurry off to, the political punks in Anti-Flag would finally be able to take a few years off. You clearly haven’t been watching the news lately. Billion dollar corporate bailouts, massive job losses and the coming of the New Depression all make cameos on the band’s latest effort The People Or The Gun.
Fresh off a somewhat controversial two-record stint on RCA Records, Anti-Flag have just released their ninth studio album on indie stalwart Side One Dummy. Bassist Chris #2 was kind enough to speak with us recently about the new record, politics and recording in Pittsburgh.
You recorded this latest album in your hometown, right?
We had a lot of fun making it and we kind of go through this whole rigmarole. Everyone who is from (Pittsburgh) is very conflicted about the city. We’ll be like, “We need to get the fuck away from here,” then we’ll be like, “No, we need to make this record in Pittsburgh.” I think all of our records that we make in Pittsburgh are hands down better than the others.
Is this the first one you made in your own studio?
Yeah. What it actually helped with was the energy of the songs. Too often we write and have a demo set up for a long time and then we go into the studio and forget how we played it on the demo. This just afforded us the ability to write the song, record it and then use that recording, because it wasn’t just a boom box demo, but was recorded with real mics and stuff.
How long did it take you to work on this one? It came out almost exactly a year after your last record.
The whole gist was that we were writing the whole time and before Bright Lights even came out the entire team surrounding us at RCA was let go, so we decided to move on. We had some tours booked in support of Bright Lights, but really it was not a real release, because those guys just kind of went away. In our mind, we knew we had fulfilled our contract with them, so in between tours let’s build a studio so that we can write. There’s no sense in crying over spilt milk. Let’s do some due diligence.
I used to live in Pittsburgh in the 90’s and to this day, I still think it’s got one of the most underrated punk scenes out there.
A lot of people don’t know about the Roboto Project in Pittsburgh. (Editor’s Note: The Mr. Roboto Project is a co-operatively-run performance space for the DIY community in Pittsburgh). It started in ‘99. What DIY venue lasts 10 years? None of them. There’s always been a rich culture of progressive, open-minded punk rock in Pittsburgh and I think it’s because all of our moms, dads and uncles were coming home from mills getting shut down. Growing up and seeing that affects you. It shapes your view of the world and I think that’s why you want to make a better life for the people that are coming after you. I think that’s what all of these songs are always about.
You mentioned the two records you did for RCA. How was that experience overall? There was obviously a lot of handwringing in the punk community when you announced you were joining a major label. Did you get the amount of control you were hoping to get when you were working on those two albums?
Yeah, absolutely. The cool thing about the time we entered that whole entire deal, that was right when the shit was hitting the fan for major labels. You look around and say why did Rise Against, Anti -Flag, Against Me!, Motion City Soundtrack - any band that sold 100,000 records – why did they all of a sudden get picked up by majors? Majors didn’t know how to sell 100,000 records. They only know how to sell a million albums. They have this radio/video, very archaic business model. They were reaching out and trying to bring other people in. For us, it was like “Sure. You want to spend Sony money for us to create things like the Military Free Zone? Go right ahead. We were going to do these things anyway. We might as well have you pay for it.”
And your sound didn’t seem to change at all.
Yeah. As far as I’m concerned there are many draw backs to doing it and if I had a time machine, would I do it again? I don’t know. I certainly feel like it didn’t hurt our band. I feel politically and musically, around the world we’re bigger than ever and honestly that’s the biggest plus that came out of the two records on the major label.
What are some of the negatives then?
I think the negatives are that it’s a big corporate machine and if you want things done… Just as an example, three weeks before we have a record release, you have an entirely new team of five or six people that you’re supposed to talk to on a daily basis to ensure that your record is supposed to be released properly and has an ad in a magazine and these people don’t care about you. They are completely different from the people we signed with. There’s all of a sudden this new guy who came over from the urban division and now he’s got to work on the Anti Flag record and maybe the Clay Aiken record and you have all this shit to deal with. That part really sucks, because I know those mother fuckers don’t give a shit. That’s why we don’t give a shit about them. There is business that is attached to everything in our lives because we live in a capitalistic system. But, because we use our music as a business, I firmly work hard every day to ensure our music is not a business. I know it’s totally six of one, but at the same time, I think if you can be in control of your involvement, if you say, “How can I balance this out and take some of the negatives and make them positives,” even thinking about that puts you leaps and bounds ahead of these mother fuckers, because all they care about is selling records. I don’t want to sound like now that we don’t put records out for them all we do is shit on them. They did a lot of great things for our band and I’m actually glad that we went through it, but my best analogy for it is if you’re a very large ship and you have to turn around it takes a long time. There’s a fucking iceberg in front of those motherfuckers and they can’t turn around.
What made you sign with Side One Dummy Records?
We could have signed with anyone after the deal was up, but really what we wanted to do was record the record ourselves, pay for it all ourselves; keep people out of it. Once we were done and saw what kind of record we had, we said let’s see who wants to get involved. We are friends with Brett (Gurewitz) at Epitaph, we’re friends with (Fat) Mike at Fat (Wreck Chords) and we’re friends with Joe (Sib) and Bill (Armstrong) at Side One. It’s not like “Oh no, now we’ve got to get our foot in the door.” It was more like, “Hey, who wants to hang out?”
Are they just putting out this one record.
Yeah. So far, I would do another record with them. Whether or not at the end of this they’ll do another record with us I don’t know. I call those guys at Side One like a hundred times a day. They might already be annoyed with me.
I did an interview with Frank Turner recently and he mentioned that he was supposed to tour with you guys, but you had to cancel the shows because Justin (Sane, AF singer) got hurt. What happened?
Yeah, we’re going to play together in Switzerland. We were supposed to go to Russia together. We actually had to cancel the end of the tour. We were in the U.K. with Rise Against and from the UK we were supposed to go to Russia with Frank and we had never played with him outside of festivals, so we were really excited about it. But at the show in Norwich, there was a kid who was throwing things at Justin. I’m not sure what he threw, but it was something substantial. I thought it was a battery. Kids these days. I think people were upset with him for throwing things in the crowd, so there was a shoving match and then it was too far, so in one motion Justin threw off his guitar and jumped in to try and break it up and missed and fell and jarred his shoulder and snapped like a twig. I think he thinks he’s a lot bigger than he is. He’s small and fragile, but tough. We brought the kid on the stage and were like “You can throw shit at us all day long, but don’t fuck with other people.” We made the crowd tell him to fuck off for interrupting our show. I think when the adrenaline from all of that came down, Justin’s shoulder really started hurting. An ambulance came and everything and they said “It’s broken.”
What can you tell me about the new record, The People Or The Gun?
I think that it’s a very Anti-Flag record. I think with us making more records and growing as a band, we’ve become more focused and been able to realize what works with our songs and to be able to translate the message of that songs and be able to put it into such context that not only something that’s understandable, but when you listen to the music, the music feels like that ideology. That’s something that we’ve been working on for years, trying to find that right balance. Too often you’ll play something and someone will be so turned off by it that they won’t even listen to what the song is about. So we’ve been trying to hone that craft and that’s something I think we’ve been able to do better than ever on The People Or The Gun. The album is certainly political, but I think it’s really cool and there’s certainly something freeing about writing an album without George W. Bush being over head. That was really liberating for us. Ding dong the cliché is dead and the midget came out and danced around us. At the same time, while we’re celebrating that we have the election of Barack Obama and we’re very happy in celebrating the step forward in the direction of racial equality, but then in that very election you have affirmative action programs being repealed in states, you have gay marriage being trampled on in states and you’re like “Fuck!” For every step forward there’s two steps back. There was definitely a lot to write about, not to mention a global economic meltdown and the endless war in Iraq. Even Barrack Obama is now questioning the time table for troop removal. There’s certainly a lot of shit still going on.
Based on the tour dates already up on your Web site, it looks like you guys are going to be making up for the fact that you didn’t tour too much behind the last record.
Absolutely. It was one of those deals where we spent a lot of time in Europe because the European labels were actually facilitating the release and on this record. Knowing that Side One Dummy is there, we’re ready. We back this record 100 percent and we’re going to be playing these songs to as many people as we can find.
You guys have always used your album and shows to highlight various non-profits. Are there any organizations you want to call out?
Absolutely. We’re working on a bunch of different things for the tours that we’re doing. I find that too often those of us in bands don’t really realize what we’ve got going on; especially bands that are like-minded like Anti-Flag. We come to these shows, we hold these big rallies for equality and peace and anytime we play there’s between 1,000 and 2,000 people and they high five each other and ultimately the show exists as a celebration of the unity and of the community… Then Anti-Flag moves onto the next city, then what’s left in that city? It’s not like we live there and can be a part of that scene and talk to the DIY printers there, or painters there, or poets there. I’m really trying to see how we can give back to the cities we play in for what they’ve given us. When we go across Europe we’ll be working with Emmaus-europe.org and we’ll be trying to get these people who oftentimes sponsor rock and roll stuff – be it Eastpak or Vans – and see if instead of talking to us as a band, why don’t they donate shoes and backpacks to these homeless and youth shelters? Each city that we play in, we can walk in with a box of goods. I just think it’s a better idea. We’re also working on designing a guitar that we’re going to raffle off across the Warped Tour. (The money) will go to the African Well Fund. It’s ridiculous how little it costs to fund a well in Africa. It’s somewhere around $1,500 to put in a well and get drinking water to people who don’t have drinking water. We’re just trying to create some tangible victories. Often times in Anti-Flag, I’m saying “This shit is bad.” Now I get to say, “This shit is good.”
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