Good Time With Good Riddance

That’s right kids, Good Riddance is dropping into town for the second time this year, as part of the all-ages pop punk blow out at The Brick Works on March 16. Headlining is Less Than Jake, and tag teaming the opening slots with Good Riddance are the legendary ALL, and those rascals from the East Bay, Limp (Zocalo Room regulars).

Good Riddance is a multifaceted act, sprinkling their sets with that melodo-pop stuff that drives the kiddies wild, and then slamming them with some late ‘90s Cali-Melodic hardcore. Overtly political one instant, and sentimental the next, they have a topical range that not many bands dare to broach.

Individually, they are some of the best in the biz. Sean (drums) hits the skins hard and fast, but it is the metal work, with his detailed fills and tight cymbal stitches, where he shows his precision and dexterity. Luke (guitar) is the only man on axe, but he single-handedly gives Good Riddance a multi-guitar sound with his appropriate lead work and heavy rhythms. Chuck (bass) gets naked a lot and pounds out the intense bass lines, while Russ (singer) has the vocal range to cover Good Riddance’s diverse tracks, whether it’s a poppy, tender love song or an angry, animal rights anthem. And Mario can really sell some T-shirts.

I talked to Russ last week about the group’s upcoming fourth album, the upcoming tour and all the little things that make a punk rocker punk rock.

Is the new album done yet and is there a release date set?

Yes, it’s all done; May 4.

I think we were supposed to get a promo copy of it, but I haven’t heard it yet.

They haven’t even pressed it yet. We finished it last Friday night.

Ballads From The Revolution was a lot harder from previous releases, but there was still a poppy side to it. What direction are you going with the new album?

It’s harder than the last one, less pop.

Last time you were in Chico, Chuck said that Good Riddance was hoping to have Stephen (Egerton) and Bill (Stevenson) from ALL/Descendents produce the new album, did that end up coming together?

Yes, we ended up recording with those guys in the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado.

How did it go?

Good. It was really cool recording with them. They are people that have a lot of history in this kind of music, and people that we really respect. To get a chance to work with them was really cool. We all learned a lot and had a good time.

Chuck was saying that many consider Good Riddance to be a better live band than a studio band and he thought Stephen and Bill could pull that out on the new album.

I don’t know if we are a better live band or studio band, but a lot of people say, "Wow, you guys sound a lot more one way or another than you do on your record. You sound a lot faster or harder."

I think each record that we’ve recorded has gotten closer to where we want it as far as getting a good, aggressive feel and a good live tone. You can’t record albums that way anymore. You can’t just go in for one day and crank everything out the way you used to be able to. I guess you could, but nobody wants to. People want to take their time and do a good job.

There’s got to be some kind of medium between playing well and getting all the tones right, having good performances, but still trying to capture some sort of spontaneity. Now a days a lot of that, in punk, is lost in the recording process because there’s more money to be spent recording and bands are able to spend more time to get a better product. Which may be technically and sound-wise better, but energy-wise not quite as good.

I listen to some of my favorite bands, old records from 10, 12, 13 years ago... They may not be up to snuff sound quality wise [compared] to the recordings today, but I think the performances blow most of what we do away.

Have you set a name for the album yet?

It’s going to be called Operation Phoenix

What’s that about?

From 1968 to 1975 during the Vietnam War, the CIA decided to launch a counter-terrorist offensive to try to turn the tide of the war after the Tet Offensive because there was so much anti-war sentiment growing at the home, they needed to do something to turn the tide. They set up these detention camps and recruited indigenous soldiers and went out and kidnapped people who were Viet Cong or were suspected of being Viet Cong sympathizers. They would round people up and torture and kill them. Nobody was ever given a trial. Most of these never even admitted they were Viet Cong. None of them were seen again. Over those six years over 40,000 Vietnamese citizens were tortured and murdered by the CIA. That was called Operation Phoenix.

How does a band become tagged a "political" band like Good Riddance has?

Really? I’ve always heard we weren’t political enough. Everybody always says they like our first record the most because it’s more political.

Do you consider Good Riddance to be a political band?

I don’t know. I really lean that way, but the other guys in my band could give a shit, they just want to play music. There’s very few bands where you could really have a label like that and have it truthfully stick with all the guys in the band.

People are going to label your band, but it’s not really fair to the other guys for me to go into an interview and say, "Yeah, we’re a political band," because there is going to be all kinds of "future political zealots of the world" coming up to Chuck or Sean and asking them these questions about stuff they ever don’t know or don’t care about, because neither one of them does the lyrics.

The guys allow me to write lyrics about what I feel strongly about. They all read the lyrics and say "yeah that’s good" or "no, that’s too crazy." There’s some kind of consensus, definitely, but to say that it’s equally shared among the four members of the group is unfair.

You are hitting the road with Less Than Jake, ALL and Limp pretty soon. Is that the entire country?

Just the western United States. Frenzal Rhomb is taking over when we’re done.

Last year, you joked to Sliver Magazine that you told Fat Mike that taking Good Riddance out on tour has to be a contract stipulation when he signed Sick Of It All. Are we going to see a Sick Of It All/Good Riddance tour?

I don’t know. They took us to Australia last spring. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I would assume that we’ll play with them occasionally. We love playing shows with them and they seem to not mind us around. I told them any time they need a band, call us and we’ll drop what we’re doing and go. They’re one of my favorite bands; the best live band I’ve ever seen. They are the nicest guys and have done nothing but help us out and been super cool. We owe those guys a lot.

You’ve played with just about every kind of band out there. What have been your favorite bands to play with?

Sick Of It All, definitely. Lifetime, Ensign, 88 Fingers Louie. We had a really good time playing with Snapcase and AFI. We spent three months in a row with AFI last spring. Six weeks in Europe and six weeks in the States. Back to back with them. It was awesome.

Good Riddance has the luxury of playing to a wide variety of audiences. The harder, more political songs probably go over well with a hardcore audience, but it must nice to play to a Less Than Jake or ALL audience, and spread some of your messages to people that wouldn’t normally have access to that.

It might be nice to play to the Less Than Jake crowd, or they might blow us off the stage. I don’t know what is going to happen. The reason you do a tour like this—besides getting to see ALL for free every night—with a band like Less Than Jake, who can take anybody they want on tour, is that we get the opportunity to do something like that with a really big band. A lot of it’s courtesy.

It’s like, wow, this is a chance for a lot of kids who maybe would never go see Good Riddance on their own, who are going to see Less Than Jake or ALL and [they might say], ‘Wow that other band, that Good Riddance band was OK’ and then when we come back to that town, maybe they’ll remember us and come back. That’s happened to us a lot when we’ve toured with bands that have a much bigger or specialized audience that’s different from what we would consider our audience. Playing so much with bands like Ensign and Sick Of It All and Snapcase, now when we tour we get all these hardcore kids that come out to see us because they saw us those bands and liked us.

It’s awesome to see a mixed crowd, because when I got into this type of music, Punk and hardcore were like the same thing, and now its so splintered. It’s nice to see kids interact with each other and see different faces at our shows.

We went out with the Offspring last winter. A lot of people questioned why we would do it. When the Offspring wants you to go on tour with them, for you to say no? They were totally nice guys and treated us really well. We got to play in front of a bunch of people who wouldn’t normally see us, and those people have come back to our shows later and say "Yeah, I never heard of you guys until I saw the Offspring." And there they were coming to see us headline.

And then they get to see openers like Ensign that you bring out with you.

Exactly. That one of the main reasons for doing tours like that. Unfortunately, there’s always going to be a few kids outside who are like "that show is way too much money, I’m not going to pay that much money, blah, blah, blah." I understand that, if they don’t want to pay that much money, they can pay less when we come back and headline.

It usually works out pretty well. We end meeting new people, new bands. The guys in ALL have toured with Less Than Jake before and said they are super nice guys. Just having spent three weeks recording with the guys from ALL, we know them pretty well. It should be cool.

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