Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
His songs bounce personal observations off of larger historical allegories.
How has your year been?
September is late enough to ask.I kind of bit off more than I can chew this time.
Planning for the wedding while planning this album rollout seemed like a great idea when I concocted it.
Its all working out great so far, but its been pretty hectic.
Its a great year for me.
I had idle hands the past couple years.
Im in a good place, I think.
Im happy, happier than ever in a lot of ways.
This album rollout, though, well see how it goes.
Im allowed to go anywhere I want, I suppose but … Im pretty happy with a small radius for my personal universe.
We got the practice space not far from here.
Is your new album sort of a purge of the bad stuff?I guess you could say that.
Its trying to process difficult experiences, hopefully to a positive end.
You said you had idle hands.
Have you picked up any new hobbies?Absolutely not.
Im finding that friend circles shrunk.That happens for me because I leave town for months at a time.
Its difficult as a traveling rock musician to maintain relationships as much as I would like to.
The first year of the pandemic, I didnt even really pursue my rock-music interests very much.
I wasnt productive at all.
I was just bummed out about losing my job.
I was like a loaf.
Eventually, I got back on the horse, got back on the road, back in the studio.
My job requires me to go on a lot of adventures, mandatory adventures.
Places I havent been before.
They deserve it as much as anybody else.
Im counting on there being some pretty alienated people down there.
A lot of artists were like, Well, were not going to play there.
Were boycotting the state.
They werent going to be at the concerts.
Why punish the kids?
We were going to do it in the fall of 2020.
We said wed do it in spring 2021, then that didnt work out either.
The juice might not have been worth the squeeze that time.
But were going down there now.
There are plenty of good people down there that are ready to rock.
Fayetteville, Arkansas, I would love for that to be packed, a blowout show.
Maybe it will be.
I cant really read the ticket-count reports nowadays.
Its bad enough I got my Spotify-analytics app on my phone.
Youre still scheduling tours and maintaining internet stuff in addition to writing songs?Im the manager, yeah.
I have a booking agent, but I make the itineraries.
Does that ever get hairy?
Is it ever too much?Absolutely.
I spin up the internet store, which I did all day today.
Im overseer of van maintenance.
Im running up a tab down the block right now, Im sure, with my fucking oil pressure.
I should take the cats to the vet before I go.
You should just do the creative stuff.
Black Flag and Husker Du didnt have a manager.
So complete control is taxing, but everything looks the way you want it to.Thats right.
Thats the idea, anyway.
Also, it does give me stuff to do, which is nice, you know?
Otherwise, I might just sit around all day.
Ive done plenty of that in the past couple years.
Why do it now?
Lets talk about the new album,The Will to Live.
Howd you come to record with Howard Bilerman this time?Great guy.
He came to me.
He actually went over my head when we played Montreal, where he lives.
She presented it to me as though thats the way that it was.
Im like,Sure, why not?I learned about the guy; his resume spoke for itself.
I found out hes a great actor.
Do you rememberThe Whole Nine Yardswith Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis?
Hes in it playing Matthew Perrys best friend.
We had been to his studio years before.
Our buddy Owen Pallett, the great violinist, took us there another time we went to Montreal.
So when I connected those dots, I was like, This will do.
He made an offer I couldnt refuse.
He was very generous with his time.
We were going to make the record almost two years ago, when we scheduled theMonitoranniversary tour.
Those months turned into years, but we kept talking about it.
We were able to develop a shared vocabulary and a series of reference points, which was beneficial.
The guitars have never sounded better.
On thatMonitortour,you played The Boys Are Back in Townessentially every night.We were back in town.
But really, it was Boston more than anybody that was the touchstone.
I got this machine called a Rock Man X100, which was invented by the guy from Boston.
Hes one of my favorites, like, a real genius mad-scientist kind of guy.
Then I found out that Def Leppard had used a Rock Man on theHysteriaalbum.
They recorded all the guitars on this funny little rig.
We did a lot of that, and we used regular amplifiers as well.
A lot of that stuff is reinforced with synthesizers and samplers that youre not really supposed to notice.
I dont really know why.
I happen to have the lyrics.
I wondered what was in the folder.
The lyrics have … the brogue of Biblical scripture.
Hes not the worlds most fictional character.
Its coming to a grim realization of the violent brutality of the natural world.
It continues to be.
Theres still lions eating wildebeest out there somewhere.
Thats part of how we keep the machine from overloading, as you say.
Thats part of Gods plan, for lack of a better term.
Theyre programmed to do it.
The will to live is motivating them to a certain degree.
We dont really need to be so violent.
Were not fighting to stay on top of the food chain anymore.
That, to me, is the birth of real evil on earth.
We dont exercise that.
Thats the story since time memorial.
I want to ask about Give Me Grief.
When he passed away, it was very painful.
It was a terrible experience that continues to be difficult.
I probably will never be all the way done processing it, I imagine.
He was such an important person in my life.
Im learning that the process never ends.
They go together like horse and carrot.
I say,I have friends to give me glee, so I need God to give me grief.
Its needed for the recipe.Thats my stance.
There are so many internal rhymes in that song.
Are you a big word nerd?
I find that it rarely happens accidentally.Its something I do very deliberately.
I study the greats.
What greats?MF Doom, Biggie, Ghostface.
I gotTha Carter IIandBulletproof Walletsin the car right now.
It feels like part of the New York experience.
I gotta mention Redman and Lauryn Hill.
And Joe Budden, for that matter.
Im from New Jersey.
I take a stab at keep the sword as sharp as I can even in the off-season.
Thats one thing I did continue to do during the pandemic.
I dont have much of an outlet for most of that stuff.
Maybe well make my rap album someday.
He sang on a little more than half of the records that we did.
He did great actingin our sitcomfrom a few years ago.
He had a beautiful voice and was a great actor and stand-up comedian.
He didnt in his life get the attention for that that I think he deserved it.
He was just an incredibly warm, gregarious guy.
Everyone was always happy when he was around.
Thats why we called him Money.
People are always happy when money is around.
Our mothers, my mother and her sisters, all got pregnant at the same time.
Me and Matt went to school together.
I was at his house every day.
So it was a very close bond.
When I say, This person was my cousin, it doesnt quite cover it.
He really was like a brother.
I told a friend last weekend that I think everyone alive right now misses something.
Some miss friends and family they lost.
The organism is not gone.
If you look at us eight or nine years ago, were not the same person.
So thats the name of the album.
It unites all things, precedes all living things.
Before there was life, there was the will to live.
One day there wasnt life on Earth, and the next day there was.
How did that happen?
Its not beyond my comprehension but I notice it.
I see it happening.
Now I sing about it.
