StubHub EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Against Me
StubHub recently caught up with Tom Gabel from
Against Me! while on tour in Europe to talk about
the upcoming Warped Tour where they'll be sharing
the bill with the All American Rejects, Angels and
Airwaves, and Paramore.
You're returning to Warped Tour this summer
starting June 20. What are you most looking
forward to about being on the tour again?
I'm looking forward to the sun, sweat, hanging out under
tents, being bored, playing music, and seeing GBH play.
Considering how big of a production it is, how does
Warped Tour differ for you from your other tours?
Warped tour is a big production but really that doesn't have
much to do with the bands. The crew people that have to
set everything up and break everything down every day
are the people who feel it most.
ARTIST BIO
A decade ago, Tom Gabel began his music career as a 17-year old solo acoustic act known as Against Me!, belting out songs of rebellion in laundromats and any other venue that would have him.
Against Me
StubHub recently caught up with Tom Gabel from Against Me! while on tour in Europe to talk about the upcoming Warped Tour where they'll be sharing the bill with the All American Rejects, Angels and Airwaves, and Paramore.
You're returning to Warped Tour this summer starting June 20. What are you most looking forward to about being on the tour again?
I'm looking forward to the sun, sweat, hanging out under tents, being bored, playing music, and seeing GBH play.
Considering how big of a production it is, how does Warped Tour differ for you from your other tours?
Warped tour is a big production but really that doesn't have much to do with the bands. The crew people that have to set everything up and break everything down every day are the people who feel it most.
The obvious difference for us between warped tour and a normal headlining tour is that its a festival environment. You're on tour with a lot more people, a lot more bands. It's like a circus, you're not the main attraction.
The actual time spent on stage playing compared to the time spent on site is kind of ridiculous. We play for half an hour a day, the rest of the day we spend sitting around in a parking lot, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning.
You're also on the line up for this year's Bonnaroo Festival on June 14th and played Coachella last year. What other major festivals have you recently played?
We played Lollapalooza this past year as well as Reading and Leeds in the U.K., Pukkelpop, and Roskilde to name a few. Oh, and Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin.
Are there any other bands playing Bonnaroo that you're anxious to see perform?
I'm not sure who all is playing on the day we are playing, but I would love to see Pearl Jam, The Raconteurs, Mastodon, Tegan and Sara, Vampire Weekend, and of course Willie Nelson.
What's the last live show you've been to?
Other than a show we played? Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Washington D.C. at the Verizon Wireless Center.
If you weren't on the road, who is touring now that you would really want to see perform?
Radiohead is playing in Florida a couple days before we get back from Australia. I would love to see them play. I'd also really love to see Gnarls Barkley play.
Did you enjoy touring with the veteran Foo Fighters earlier this year? Any great stories from the road?
The tour was an amazing experience. They are a great band, they have a great crew, and their fans were really open to us. No real crazy stories to speak of though.
Along the Foo Fighters tour route you scheduled a few separate shows to benefit the Harvest Hope Foundation. Is this a charity your regularly support? Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Harvest Of Hope is a non-profit organization based out of Gainesville, FL. We were turned onto them by a friend of ours who works at No Idea records. Basically what they do is take money and give it to migrant farm workers for whatever pressing need they may have - medical bills, tires for their car, clothes for their kids, etc. Its an incredible organization. If anyone is interested in learning more about them or donating, check out their website www.harvestofhope.net.
Your album New Wave has been a big success for you, including being named Spin's album of the year for 2007. Did you ever imagine yourself in this position when you were playing solo acoustic gigs around Florida 10 years ago?
No, I never really thought we would get anywhere near the critical acclamation we've received off of this album.
Has the songwriting/recording process changed for you at all while transitioning from indie labels to working with a major label?
Not at all. We definitely wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with Butch Vig had we not signed with Sire, but, other than creating new opportunities for us to take advantage of should we choose to do so, there hasn't been any change.
What can fans expect next from Against Me!?
I don't really know.
A decade ago, Tom Gabel began his music career as a 17-year old solo acoustic act known as Against Me!, belting out songs of rebellion in laundromats and any other venue that would have him.
Flash forward to today, and Gabel's agitation cycle is still cranked high, but not without a wild streak of optimism thrown in for good measure. For the past five years, the gravelly roar of the vocalist/guitar player has been part of a thunderous and thoughtful foursome featuring Andrew Seward (bass), Warren Oakes (drums) and James Bowman (guitar), still doing business under the Against Me! moniker. Churning out a distinctive blend of punk, rock, and even folk that is impossible to label, they have toured all 50 states and foreign lands from Iceland to Australia, forging an intense connection with their growing legions of fans.
Now, after three successful full-length records on indie labels-- Reinventing Axl Rose (No Idea, 2002); As The Eternal Cowboy (Fat Wreck Chords, 2003) and Searching For A Former Clarity (Fat Wreck Chords 2005), which reached #9 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums chart and featured the thumping "Don't Lose Touch"-- this Gainesville, Florida band is making its major-label debut on July 10, 2007 with New Wave (Sire Records). The title is tidal for a powerful reason.
"We felt like that was our mission statement, or our manifesto for the record," Gabel said. "Instead of sitting back and complaining about how there's no good music out there, you should be energized and take things over. Be the bands you want to hear. It meant 'wave' in a literal sense, coming and washing away mediocrity Why let someone else have the loudest voice?" asks Gabel, and with his band's new record, he most surely has not.
The album opens with a colossal, angst-fueled one-two punch: "New Wave" and "Up The Cuts" are driving, irresistible tracks, seething with energy and alternately pleading and snarling for change. It's a theme that reverberates throughout the record, both on personal and artistic levels, coming up again most pointedly in "Piss And Vinegar," with Gabel caterwauling "Just say what you're thinking!" to the faceless pap-pushers of the mainstream.
For a D.I.Y. outfit like Against Me!, signing to a major label meant some changes in approach namely, that the band was going to enlist a full-time producer for the first time. They didn't mess around, teaming up with alt-rock heavyweight Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Garbage).
When the label was prepping a list of potential producers, Gabel and his mates were afraid the candidates would be hot-shots who "didn't even give a f*ck about our band," the singer says with a laugh. He confirms that a few mega-producers were indeed on the document, "but Butch was there, and I've been a fan of tons of his records, all across the board. I like the fact that the majority of his records are great-sounding sonically, but still sound like real bands. They don't sound like all the life has been drained out of them."
For his part, Vig was instantly drawn to the relative unknowns the first time he saw the band play live. "I was blown away by the way they played the intensity and the reaction from the crowd," Vig said. "The way the audience sings all the songs, I could see this passionate connection with their fans and the way the band communicates with them."
The veteran producer was excited to work with a band that's not shy about sharing their feeling on any subject. "One of things I found refreshing in their music, in Tom's lyrics, is that they give a shit, but they're never preachy or anything," Vig shares. "He's saying something that makes you think about what's going on. The songs lyrically are complicated and dense. They're not simple pop songs, but they rock."
The first single, "Thrash Unreal (Bah Bah)," is a perfect example. In the manner of early Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen songs, it empathetically chronicles the damaged life of a typical college-town burnout a 40-something female junkie who says she has no regrets to a defiantly upbeat chorus.
Bass player Seward, who joined Against Me! in 2002, says the new step forward for the band is "not a new adventure it's an extension of the adventure. It's something we wanted to do we own this move [to a major label]. But I'm not going to lie to you," Seward added. "I was scared shitless, like 'Oh shit we're going to make a complete rookie mistake, we're going to go to Hollywood to some big-time studio and record something that sounds like " he trails off with a laugh. Instead, Seward is proud of their latest work, saying "Tom has written by far the best batch of songs he's ever crafted Everything is necessary in these songs, everything is there for the greater good. There's no bullshit or filler in there."
To make sure he had absolute focus on writing the record, Gabel holed up in a Gainesville motel whenever the band wasn't touring. As with previous Against Me! records, the subject matter on New Wave is freewheeling, as befits the mind of a 27-year old American male at a crossroads in his life. Conceived by Gabel as "in many ways, a reaction" to the "self-centered, dark and moody" terrain of Searching For A Former Clarity, the new 10-track, 34-minute CD covers the topics of love, lust, war, personal integrity and substance abuse, with a unique blend of attitude that Vig describes as "intense, but with a positive undercurrent."
New fans drawn by the incendiary 2006 "Jimmy Kimmel Live" performance of Former Clarity's sizzling screed "From Her Lips To God's Ears (The Energizer)," with its plaintive chorus of "Condoleeza! What are we gonna do now?" will find more in store. The former "Army brat" (until his parents divorced when he was 12) has stepped up to the plate and cranked out two more raucous fist-pumpers about war and national identity.
"White People For Peace" celebrates the nobility/futility of protesting war, while "Americans Abroad" rails against corporate greed with the aid of Oakes' road-rage drums and Bowman's ominous guitar tremolos, before boomeranging with a cautionary that maybe we're all part of the problem even the band.
"I don't feel like I'm a person who has any answers," says Gabel, who self-published a 'zine called Misanthrope while in his teens. "But I often feel like I'm searching for identity in the world and trying to figure out where I fit in."
Wide-eyed and world-weary. Never na?ve, but often idealistic, Against Me! is in many ways the punk-rock embodiment of Matthew Modine's character, "Private Joker," in the classic Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket. They're flashing peace signs in a seething mosh pit, and there's no place else they'd rather be.
