Goin' for the Gusto

"My busiest time of day is in the morning," chimes Mark Adkins, sounding unusually chipper for the frontman of a punk band at 9 AM, but Adkins and Guttermouth aren't all too concerned with doing what's expected of them, as their latest album, Gusto, would attest. The new release was just one of the many things the band was involved in over the course of Summer 2002.
Guttermouth was featured on this year's Warped Tour, but they also spent some time overseas in Europe and Australia. When asked about their experience in foreign lands, Mark says, "It's always fun to get away from home and be out of your element. You get to learn a lot about different people and different cultures and all that crap. It makes you appreciate home a whole lot more too - and it's also fun to play the shows." Though he admits that travel contributes to his growth as a person, and indirectly contributes to his songwriting, it's the enjoyment of being in an international touring band that is important. He goes on to point out that he and Guttermouth don't do any writing on the road, because, frankly, that would make the whole thing seem too much like a job.
"We don't write anything on the road. It's impossible, because we kind of party and drink beers while we're out there so we're always sleeping in 'till two in the afternoon. Like in Europe, you go to bed about four or five [in the morning] and wake up about two and then go out and do a sound check, so there's no time for writing. And when we're not doing that we're out exploring and skating - because there's a lot of good places to skate out in Europe - we're always doing that kind of stuff. We don't want to make it like work. I don't understand bands who do that. I guess it's a good thing if they work [all the time], but I want to enjoy this as much as I can."
Fans who would like to know more about the band's oft-times raucous road experiences can read about them on Guttermouth's Web site (www.xxx-guttermouth-xxx.com). Mark Adkins himself regularly posts stories of the band's adventures while out on tour. One of these tales hearkens back to a night in Chico in December of 2000, of which Adkins writes, "I wish I could tell you more about the show, but I really don't remember that much. I do though remember waking up with a pounding headache, a big ugly scratch on my nose and some blood caked in my ear. I guess that means I had a good night."
Guttermouth will be returning to Chico to play The Brick Works on Wednesday, September 18th, and that is fine by Adkins. "We always look forward to Chico - it's always full of surprises. It definitely has been in the past. Some of the interesting characters I've come across there…," he trails off with a laugh. "The time before last that we were [in Chico], there was some guy there with a big bottle of liquid morphine just dosing a handful of people in the crowd who were interested in that sort of thing. I was like, 'woah, there's a lot of kooky people up there.' It was a lot of fun."
Though a summer spent spanning the globe and partying at every stop would seem to leave time for little else, August 13th saw the release of Guttermouth's second LP for Epitaph titled Gusto. This album has a remarkably different sound than their previous efforts. According to the band's frontman, it doesn't even compare to what they've done before. "As a band, you make record after record, and it's all well and good, but it comes to a point where you're kind of getting bored to write similar stuff all the time," explains Adkins. "I decided to branch out a little bit and see how it goes. And if it doesn't work out, oh well. We'll just make another record next year anyway - we could go back to the old formula. But if it's well-received - it's too early to tell at this point - we might stick with this, or who knows. Anything is possible at this point. This record has taken off in Australia already. There are songs all over the radio over there already, and some things happening in Europe already, but here in the States, it's just too early to tell."
While fan reviews of Gusto on Epitaph.com have been mixed, Adkins mentions that the response to the new songs live has been very positive. "On the Warped Tour, we played for at least 10,000 new faces a day, and we played a lot of the new songs off the record…they were homeruns everyday. People were loving [the new songs], because they kind of stuck out. They were a little bit different - just different enough from the normal punk rock crap to stand out on their own. And it worked everyday in a live setting, so we were really happy with that."
One listen to Gusto will reveal that the band has strayed a bit from straight, catchy, melodic Southern California punk, though not entirely. "Campfire Girl #62," "Scholarship in Punk" and the dangerously addictive "Pee in the Shower" are probably closer to what diehard Guttermouth fans would expect from the band, but the remainder of the album is refreshingly diverse. Other songs have a bit of a country flavor, and "My Town" is reminiscent of the B-52's. Adkins admits the latter was inevitable since he is a long-time fan of the B-52's, but other departures happened more unintentionally. "The country songs were songs that I wrote the melodies for, and I'd go in and sing them to the band, and Scott [Sheldon, guitar / bass] helped me write the music around a lot of those songs. They just came out like that. He had the clean guitar sound going. It wasn't intentional at all. It was just accidental - accidental genius," says the good-humored singer.
Perhaps the song with the most varied sound on the album is the closing track, "Lemon Water," which is more of a rant set to mellow, lounge-y music than a traditional punk song and features hilarious, rambling lyrics.
"I was in New York City like five or six years ago, and all the people I was hanging out with were telling me where I should go while they were at work," says Adkins, recounting the story behind the song. "I wanted to go to Times Square, I'd never been there, and they'd told me not to go. It's just full of idiots and tourists and stuff. So naturally, I went there, because there had to be something there. So I go, and I went into this upscale-looking bar, and I'm having some beers. People kept coming up to the bar asking for water with lemon, water with a twist of lemon, water with lime. It was just driving me bananas - the drunker I got, the more it started to irritate me. I started to jot all this stuff down on napkins. I save everything I've ever written down. I've got chests full of little notes, songs and poems and stuff like that. So I finally pulled it out and made it into a song."
Whether or not Guttermouth will continue to expand their sound in such ways, you can be certain that, at least as long as Adkins is at the helm, the band won't be looking to add an aggressive, socially conscious edge to their music. "We've always focused more on the fun element than the angry punk element, because that's just not interesting to me. It's all about having a party. In the bio, I dubbed us 'the alpha dogs of party punk.'"
When asked if he worries that this self-imposed moniker might hold them back from being taken seriously, Adkins' answer is an emphatic "no." In fact, he couldn't care less. "It doesn't matter to me. It's almost amusing to me, the ones who do take us so seriously, because it makes no sense… From the inception of the band, we've had songs like 'Mr. Barbeque' and 'Bruce Lee Vs. the Kiss Army'… This band's not really the thinking man's band, y'know? It's just a party! Let's have fun. Enough bands sing about politics - I don't wanna hear about it. It's boring to me." There is a short pause before Adkins continues. "You can't change the world through music - especially political views. I'm just looking at it from a realistic point of view."

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