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The Gaslight Anthem
Interview with Brian Fallon on Feb 26, 2008 by
By: Michelle Stoffel
The Gaslight Anthem recently released their four-song EP, Senor and the Queen, a follow-up to their debut Sink or Swim, which took my top spot for best albums released in 2007. Listen to either release and you'll hear some of the most exciting music currently coming out of the punk scene. I got a chance to talk with singer and guitarist Brian Fallon when Gaslight was in Chicago on their most recent tour with Dead To Me and The Draft. They'll be on the road again this February with The Loved Ones.
Is this your first time playing in Chicago?
Brian Fallon: No, directly in the city, yes. We have played around the Chicago area.
So you guys have been on tour forever now?
BF: We started on July 12 and we did a tour with Signal to Noise and we didn't go home. We stopped in Texas for five days and recorded a record, an EP for Sabot. Then we went right back on tour with Against Me!, and then went home for six days, and then went to Europe [Germany] for 30 days and then we came home for like four days and then we came out here. Right after this we're gonna meet up with the Flatliners for like five days. So we'll be home in November. We're gonna go home, but we're just gonna start rehearsing immediately and I think we're gonna record the record on our own.
So how have the tours been going? Obviously the bands you've toured with have differed a lot. Is there a huge difference with the way the tours go?
BF: The schedules are crazy [with the bigger bands]. You have to be there at a certain time every day, and there's a sound check every day. You start to get on this routine where you eat, sleep and play at the same time every day. That actually is kind of cool about it cause you always have something to do. But regular touring, when you show up at the club-like today, we showed up at 3 and it's 6:45; I haven't done anything for three-and-a-half hours.
You don't even sound check?
BF: No, not on this tour. We could if we wanted to, but we haven't been. It's not really conducive to the clubs that we're playing.
Have you been playing big audiences/small audiences?
BF: The Against Me! tour was crazy, like a lot of kids; big, huge venues. It was nuts. This is more what we're used to: 300 to 400 standing people, so it's more comfortable. Now we're so used to this that it's just regular, like another day. Like, "Alright, we're in Chicago, cool, let's play a show."
Well it is the best city in the world.
BF: I really like Chicago. It's one of the only cities that I would leave New Jersey for.
Obviously having listened to your record you really connected to your roots. Would you call Sink or Swim a hometown record, thematically developed around growing up in New Jersey?
BF: Yeah, definitely, for sure. It's such a weird thing there, that it just gets into me.
You guys are from New Brunswick?
BF: Yeah, right around there. Alex, the bass player from north Jersey and I'm from a little bit further south. The ocean is good stuff.
And driving came up a lot.
BF: Yeah.
Do you do most of the songwriting?
BF: We all kind of work it out. There's like the basic structures and I'll come in with a song and everybody else turns it into what it becomes. Nobody ever says anything to each other; it's really weird, we'll just walk in there and everybody kind of puts it together and somebody says, "Hey, I think this should be different or that should be different." But it's not like, "You play this; you play that." It's not like that. There's a lot of ideas we talk about outside of the practice room and then when we go in there it just kind of happens. So we don't have to ever talk. It's weird.
So what's going on with this new EP?
BF: It's all recorded...it's called Senor and the Queen. It's just about summertime in New Jersey and it's about kids experiencing summertime. You know that weird thing that happens as soon as the weather gets hot and everyone goes crazy and starts going outside and there's those parties that happen and carnivals everything like that-it's just about that. It's almost this romantic view of how life should be when you're young.
How many tracks are on it?
BF: Four.
What about the next LP? What are the plans for that?
BF: It's really loose right now. We're not sure whether we're gonna do it or not, so people might read this and then be like, "Hey, they didn't do that," but we're gonna throw it out there. We were really listening to a lot of soul records at the same time-like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, James Brown-so we were like, "Soul records punk rock, hrm." A lot of the newer songs have to do with like, sixties soul, which is weird, but it's cool. Our live set started to get real loose. We're not sure what's gonna happen every night. We've been playing so much and playing the same songs over and over again that we're like, "This has gotta get different." So we started watching videos of James Brown on late-night TV when they try to sell those record collections to you. That guy's counting out stuff and they're not sure when they're gonna come back in. And old Bruce Springsteen videos-you never sure what's gonna go on. So we started doing that and then we're like, "Wait a minute, what if we really made this a soul song, but played it like punk rock?" It started getting crazy, so we're thinking we're gonna go in that direction.
Do you feel that since Sink or Swim was released that your popularity increased? How has that changed touring for you?
BF: I think that since it got released, we noticed more kids come to the shows; that could also be because we've been touring so much. I'm not sure yet. I don't really know how to gauge it. We still show up at shows and we're like, "I wonder if anyone's gonna be here tonight." It's still that whole new thing to us. So it's like, "The kids, they know the songs, that's kinda weird." We're usually going out there thinking, "Alright, these kids are gonna hate us and we've got to win them over somehow, so let's just go out there and do it for us, cause it's fun." When we first started touring so much, we thought, "We're gonna go out there and some kids are gonna hate us and some kids are gonna like us." But I don't think we can think about that so much. We've just got to go out there and have the best time we can on stage. Forget what everybody else thinks, if they like it-cool, if they don't-cool.
Who do you count as your influences?
BF: For the band it's different; each member has their own thing. I like Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen and Dylan. I like this band called The Constantines on Sub Pop, they're really good, and that's about it for me. I don't listen to a lot of punk rock records, not anymore, I used to but now I don't. The bands that we tour with, we've become friends with, so I kind of listen to their records but I don't really listen to a lot of that style on my own. But I know that everybody else does. I know that Benny likes more hardcore stuff and the bass player Alex loves Hot Water Music that's one of his favorite bands. He's totally psyched, well we're all psyched cause we totally grew up on Hot Water. I think they inspired us to play in the first place. When we first heard Hot Water, we were like, "We should be in a band. That's awesome."
Did you guys grow up together?
BF: Some of us, we all knew each other throughout the central Jersey scene. We were all at the same shows and we all liked the same bands and we kind of figured out, "Oh, I know you." So we all knew each other, which is how we hooked up. It's such a small scene, but its big enough to where sometimes you know people but you don't know who they are. So you think, "I know that kid. He's in that band." But you know, you never hung out.
So did you guys all have separate bands?
BF: Yeah we did and they all kind of fizzled out at the same time. So we were all like, "Let's try this and see what we like." We all just wanted the same thing.
What's the meaning behind Gaslight Anthem?
BF: There was a club in New York in the sixties that Dylan played at and all these young folk artists and so that's where it came from. The main point was that they weren't famous and they were all sharing their ideas. So we were like, "Gaslight, hrm, anthem, hrm." The collective idea of that, that's us.
The central Jersey scene has traditionally been a strong scene. Do you see a lot of good bands coming out of there right now? How is it changing?
BF: I think people watch it, because it's the same scene that like Thursday and the Bouncing Souls and Lifetime came from. I don't want to say it to be presumptuous but those bands have all established themselves. You now the Bouncing Souls are gonna be around for awhile and they've been around for a while. There's like a new bunch of bands that are coming out of there and they learned from all those bands, maybe not musically, but they learned from them by saying, you gotta go out there and you gotta work hard and it's not about the money, wearing make-up and jumping around on stage in a dress because somebody told you to. You know what I mean, how some people kind of manufacture bands. Growing up, watching the Souls, they just did what they wanted to do and Lifetime too. You just learned from watching those bands-hard work, persistence, good songs.
There's the formula right there.
BF: Exactly and I think a lot of us got that cause we had such a close relationship with those guys. You can still go to different venues and you'll see Bryan [Kienlen]. You'll see those guys hanging out and they'll talk to you. It inspires you to take up your own thing. What do I have to add to this whole scene what is my part in it? I think a lot of bands are taking that to the next level.
Have you guys gotten band tattoos yet?
BF: Nah. [laughs] Well, two of us got a tattoo that said "sink or swim." That title was more about where we were at the time. We weren't the youngest of guys so we were kind of like, "We either gotta do this for real or we gotta knock it off and go get some real jobs and have kids or something." So we were like, alright, we're gonna go crazy then; it's gonna be sink or swim. We're gonna go on tour ‘til we die and if it doesn't work we'll go home. But that's what happened and we were fortunate enough to just go. I don't know, there's a lot of really good people that we found to work with and the different responses from the bands have been super fortunate, cause I know a lot of bands that try and probably toured a lot more than us and don't get the same opportunities. So we're psyched about that. We feel like people are gonna back us, so we owe it to them to do a good job and be honest about it and go out there and kill it. So we try. We get held accountable a lot too. People are like, "Hey you gotta tighten up," and we're like, "Okay."
We have a lot of good people to look up to, not necessarily musically. Especially going on tour with Against Me!. It was really crazy to watch them and the way they work and the dedication they have to their music and the way that they're playing and they really do things by their own terms. They're like, "We don't care what you think, this is what we think and it's our band, it's not your band. We're gonna do what we think is right and we're gonna do that every step of the way, and wherever that takes us, fine." And it's strange because when I sit down to write a song, I'd say Against Me! is probably the last band that even comes to mind as an influence. As far as how they work, they're one of the first [bands] I think of when it comes to ethic and professionalism.
Why did you choose to write a song about Joe Strummer?
BF: Being from Jersey we're heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen and everyone's like, "Oh you play a Telecaster just like Bruce Springsteen," and I'm like, "No, let me educate you, Mr. Fancypants with your observations, check this out." I was in a record store, when I was probably 15 years old and I had my mohawk and my leather jacket with spikes all over the place and I was probably looking for a Rancid record. The guy at the store and his friend were standing there, and the girl worked at the radio station at the college locally, and the guy was the owner. It was like a mom and pop store, it was called Sound Effects in Hackettstown, New Jersey. I went in there and the guy was like, "What are you looking for?" and I'm like, "I don't know, Rancid or something stupid," and he's like "Listen, do you know why you listen to that? Do you know where that came from?" And I'm like, "No," cause I'm 15, I don't know anything. So he asks his friend, "Do you have six bucks?" and she's like, "Yeah I got six bucks." So she gives him six bucks and he puts [it] on the table and they pulls out this green record, this CD, and he goes, "Take this home." And I was like, "Are you serious?"
And it was the original Clash album.
BF: The original Clash album and it blew my face off. So that was what started everything. I started playing Telecasters cause Joe Strummer played Telecasters. So I have played nothing but Telecasters since then. I actually saw the Joe Strummer Telecaster at Guitar Center the other day and I was like, "That's dumb, I'm not buying that." Cause it says ‘Revolution Rock' on the back and, you know, it's not really a revolution if its at Guitar Center.
I'd like to thank Brian for his time and anecdotes and Vanessa at Mutiny PR for setting this whole thing up.
