Scott Reynolds

In 1993, when ALL vocalist Scott Reynolds vacated his position as the band’s frontman, he wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen next. His optimism (as well as his rabidly loyal, though modest, fan base) reasoned that by way of his well of songwriting talent alone, he should have been able to hop back on another wagon and continue the ascension he’d enjoyed with his former compatriots. However, despite a string of seminal punk rock groups like Goodbye Harry, The Pavers and Bonesaw Romance, Reynolds has remained eluded by the sheen of consistent touring and album sales. However, his most recent project, The Steaming Beast, seems poised to change his fortune, with guest appearances by The Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd, Drag the River’s (and current ALL vocalist) Chad Price, all produced by recording heavyweight David Fridmann. Adventure Boy, the project’s first release, is full of Reynolds’ trademark gruffy croon, accompanied by tender lamentations of shrouded notoriety, the hurdles of poverty in an increasingly murky music industry and memories of teenage longing. Reynolds has also begun collaboration with Descendents/ALL guitarist Stephen Egerton for a project called 40Engine, which should be picking up steam in the coming months. Synthesis.net hooked up with Reynolds from his home in Austin, Texas, recently to dig up some of the dirt on his new album, his buoyant views on what passes now for the DIY underground scene and his imploring of a new dawn for music in the new America.

Adventure Boy took a while to get out and to get everything dialed in to get it released. Were the delays in getting it out more due to rustling up all the musicians who performed on it, or a label issue?
It was kind of piecemealed; some of those songs are really old. When we first recorded it, Dave Fridmann said I could use his studio. Originally, it was too expensive, but then the price was right because he did it for free. So then there was finding space at his studio. Steve Drozd came out and did some songs and then he was gone, and then I moved [laughs]. I started calling people from around there [Upstate New York] that I knew, some of the old Pavers. Then we had to find more studio time. So I guess it was between moving and drumming up musicians and…Dave’s studio is a very busy place, and for him to put a freebie in there, he really had to juggle some stuff. Then I didn’t know what to do with it once it was done. When I sell records, nobody buys them. So if I sell them myself, I can make 10 bucks a pop; and if I sell 100 of them I can make $1,000. If I put them on a label I can sell 20,000 of them and not make any money at all. But I had these ringers — I had Fridmann and Drozd on it — so I thought, “You gotta do the right thing, you gotta figure out what to do.” Then I just couldn’t get any interest, but Virgil [Dickerson] from Suburban Home said “sure.”

There seems to be a pretty divisive musical shift with this album from other albums you’ve been part of. Was that the result of a concerted effort to not write heavier material?
I think any of those songs could have been on another one of my records. The way I write songs really hasn’t changed much even since ALL. “Mary” [from 1989 ALL album Allroy’s Revenge] could have been on this record. It’s more just the instrumentation and the way it was handled. My musical taste has mellowed I guess…or maybe not; I’ve always liked Stevie Wonder and Glen Campbell and crap like that. I went into Dave’s studio and he and Steven started putting clarinet sounds and things on it. The first thing we did was “Tracy Hardman’s Cheek” and it came out like that and I thought, “Hey you know, it is okay to sissify the stuff and play it.” I don’t think it was any concerted effort to do anything. It never is; I’m not that organized.

Lyrically, you’ve always seemed to be more of a storyteller than an abstract writer. What these days is fueling a lot of your writing, particularly on Adventure Boy?
I always write the music and melody first. I usually just sit with the guitar or piano and hum along until I’ve got something put together. Always. I never go any other way. And a lot of times I’ll write a song and it’ll remind me of something [with the] way it sounds. I wrote that song “The Boy Who Stole Your Heart.” When I was playing it and humming it, it reminded me of those cold, weary nights when I used to walk this girl home. A lot of times I write songs about being poor because it’s such a damn struggle and it’s always at the forefront of my mind. And as I get older, there’s the guilt thing of: I married this woman and had kids and we live in an 800-square foot two-bedroom apartment and there’s no money. She’s always thought things were gonna go better and so did I, so I write a lot of songs about that. “Adventure Boy” — that’s what that song is about completely.
I mean I walk around thinking, “What the hell could this song be about?” Sometimes as the words start to come out, the song kind of takes over and writes itself as far as what I’m gonna do with it. It’s always a complete mystery to me until I start writing it.

You have the song topic contest on your MySpace page. Is your going around wondering what you’re gonna write about the catalyst for that contest?
No, no. Originally, the one from [Adventure Boy, “None of this is Funny”], I was listening to Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and I was thinking in my head what makes a good songwriter. Then I remembered that Barry Manilow used to write commercials and I thought, “Could I do that?” I had written a song for a Cartoon Network [series] that they didn’t take; it was about a robot. And it came out pretty good, but they didn’t want it. I thought, “why don’t I tax myself and see if I can actually write a song about whatever somebody threw at me, to see if I’m a hack or if I could write a commercial for nose drops.” We had another contest this year. The agoraphobia one. That one was easier because I’ve dealt with that; I had a song, “That Noise,” an old Goodbye Harry song, and I was struggling with agoraphobia so it was pretty easy. Trying to incorporate in the building, inside-outside thing.
I don’t have a lot of fans, and that makes it easy to do things where we can do stuff together, which is fun. I mean I’ve got nothing to lose; like I can hang my ass out and go, “I’m gonna write a song” and if it comes out completely shitty, a few thousand people go, “man, that was shitty,” not like the whole world [laughs]. That’s one thing good about my musical life is that I can do shit like that, just for fun.

Are you comfortable operating outside the cogs of the industry to get your music out?
I am. Monetarily it’s very difficult. I put my eggs all in this one basket, which my father told me not to do, and I always figured I was gonna be a big success. I really did; I thought I was gonna find my niche. I didn’t think I would be a rock star, but I figured I see people that play to 2,000 people every night and make a decent living, and I was sure that was gonna happen. I figured if I had a backup plan, I would fall back on it at some point. I’ve seen so many people that there backup plan is, “well I’m gonna be a musician but I’m also gong to business school.” Then they end up with a job and they go, “boy this job is really good. I don’t think I’m gonna go on tour anymore,” and they end up miserable and wished they had. So I never had a backup plan and now I’m solidly middle-aged [laughs], so in answer to your question, working outside [the industry] is artistically free, but I wouldn’t mind just the occasional bone thrown my way. I’ve actually started sending things to music supervisors just to get one song in one TV show or something…just something to where I can tell my wife, “look, a check!” For the most part, I don’t give a shit about much anymore. Music is just something I do like a plumber does plumbing. I guess that sounds kind of impassionate, but it’s not, I’m just saying it is a part of me at this point.

Where are you hoping to take the Steaming Beast project? Is that something you’re hoping to record more albums for, or to tour with?
The whole idea of the Steaming Beast thing is, with the lack of money it’s very hard to keep a band together and to keep going. I keep changing personnel and bands and so I figured if I have the Steaming Beast I can do shows with whoever wants to get on stage or whoever can afford to go. Or if nobody wants to, my amplifier can be the Steaming Beast. Right now I’m trying to get together a show of just me and my guitar and some stories in between songs; just trying to put something together so I can go out for a week somewhere with just my guitar and me, and put on a show. That’s how I think a lot of people I know are headed, because it’s just too damned expensive. So I could show up in St. Louis and if there’s somebody I know in town I can send them a file ahead of time and say, “Why don’t you learn these songs, or we can do some old standards and you can be the Steaming Beast that night?”



You’ve been in a lot of different bands, all pretty distinct musically. Do you prefer having a lot of different outlets creatively, or is the focus now strictly on the Steaming Beast?
Well, right now more than ever in my life I have more things to do, and I’m not really sure how that happened. Prior to this, I’ve always only had one band because I’ve never really understood how people could devote time to all these different bands. Every band I’ve ever made has been the thing that I thought would be my vehicle to financial security and artistic security, so it’s always been something where all I think about is that band. When I go running or whatever, in my mind I think about what I can do with this band that I’m in. Now I’m doing stuff with Stephen [Egerton, Descendents, ALL] and I’m doing my solo thing and I’m doing the Steaming Beast. Right now I’m putting as many lines in the water as I can.

What is the status of 40Engine? Is that plugging along?
It wasn’t, and now we’ve gotten a real burst of energy and Chris Maggio, the drummer on I Can Smoke, the Goodbye Harry record, he’s learned some stuff and so we have a solid drummer — a really solid drummer; he’s an exceptional talent really. We’re getting excited. That’s kinda how it has to work; you can have ideas but it’s real easy if you don’t have…me, I need to put deadlines, I need to book shows in order to write songs. “When do I have to be in the studio? Two months, okay I better start writing songs.” Otherwise you can wait forever, and I think now there’s some really cool shit happening musically with it. I called Stephen originally to talk about doing music, because in ALL Stephen and I were kind of the odd men out. I write that wacky circus music and he writes D'Sonoqua [laughs]. I don’t even know where the fuck that comes from. And I wanted that; I wanted a record that people who were pretty hardcore into what the two of us did all those years ago would be really satisfied. And those people who wanted to hear another ALL record, a lot of them would be fairly disappointed [laughs]. That seemed like a good thing to me. We were headed mostly toward straight forward three-minute pop — ugh — pop-punk whatever songs. The ones that we came up with I liked, but it was in serious danger of being something that I just can’t relate to anymore at all. And now it’s kinda twisted back to NOMEANSNO meets the guy who wrote the music for Charlie Brown. It’s becoming more fucked up in a way that I think I’ll really enjoy.

Of all your groups, ALL was probably your most spotlighted endeavor. What did you learn from those years of touring and recording that you’ve utilized since?
Man, that’s a good question. I’ve never really thought about that. Well, I really do miss the touring. That kind of touring that we did, not just because of age and lifestyle, but that’s kinda gonna be a thing of the past, at least for a while until they find something else to run vans on. If they can run on water we’ll get back out there. But I learned that when you bring the merchandise you should have a lot of dollar items, especially if you’re playing a bar because people spend their money on booze and they won’t buy a shirt but they might buy a few stickers. I also learned that…well I knew this before…but it became clearer by the ALL thing that you can’t really direct your music toward what you think it should be. Try very hard just to write a song and show up to practice. Because in ALL, everything that we did by the time I quit was marginally calculated, and there was worry about who we would alienate. When you do that, you end up alienating more people that way anyway. I think people that like a band like that, like the band. They don’t have posters of us on their walls and stuff; they actually want us to keep trying. So I’ve learned over the years to just sit down, play your guitar and don’t think about what you wanna do with it.

Who was everyone worried about alienating?
I don’t even think it was anything in particular. I just think we were always walking a line between doing pretty well and not doing well. And when you have that and you’re young enough to go, “hey if we did a little better…” We used to tour with Bad Religion a lot and we started out where we would co-headline and switch back and forth to, you know…they had a bus and some people coming and then we would write, like, the ugliest thing ever, which is what I loved about that band. I felt all our potential lay — if we hung in their long enough — in the fact that we were marginally fearless. In the middle of writing “She’s My Ex” we would write “Charligan.” I think that when we thought we knew what the “kids” wanted, that’s when we were doomed. Because Allroy’s Revenge was really just a stone soup kind of thing. We were under duress to get something out and we went and threw all our songs in a pot, and the album came out how it was, and it was cool [laughs]! Then I think by the time we got to the end, when I lost interest, it was more like “uh oh, you really wanna use a piano on ‘Charligan?’ They don’t wanna hear piano.” So it got mixed real quiet, that kind of thing. Then I was like, “I’ll go get a job if we’re gonna do this.”

I remember reading a big rant you had a few years ago, railing against the music industry. What are three things that you would change about the music industry today?
I think the industry shoots itself in the foot by underestimating the intelligence of the listener. The way the industry is — and now it’s getting its comeuppance because no one is buying records anymore — I think groups like The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, couldn’t happen in today’s climate. Everybody wants something that already happened; they want their piece of that. Things progress so slowly and when you do get something interesting, it’s a complete shock. So the first thing I would change would be to get A&R people to actually go out and look for somebody who’s actually very talented. I really think real talented people, left to their own devices, eventually will create something that a lot of people like. People have to be talked into liking stuff, but they’re not stupid; they’re not offered that. They’re plumbers and housewives and stuff; they’re not going to actively seek out something wonderful. But if it’s handed to them, they’ll get it.
The other thing is that musicians need to try a little harder to DIY themselves, not in a phony way, but they need to take back certain things from the industry. My big thing in that rant was about the Warped Tour, and how it really bothered me that a lot of bands — and I don’t have anything against these guys, and now the Warped Tour’s gotten bizarre, but at the time it was still NOFX and Pennywise and Bad Religion — but those guys all goin’ out together was fine. That made sense to me. But I remember a lot of bands that I thought were really good, or at least had their hearts in the right place, would play this Warped Tour. I would think, “Why are you doing that? Nobody’s here to see you and nobody’s gonna listen.” Like I said a minute ago, you have to talk them into liking it, and you’re not gonna do it in between NOFX and Pennywise. [The crowd is] gonna go buy shirts or have a mud fight or they’re just not gonna pay attention. If you came to town and played to, instead of however many thousands, to a few hundred at a VFW Hall or something, you’re gonna make a dent more than if you play to thousands and thousands and they’re in line buying Pennywise T-shirts.
The second thing I would do is say to musicians: Stop looking for the big break. Stop looking for the American Idol thing where you show up for one contest or one Warped Tour and that’s your break. Start from the ground up and rebuild the underground because that’s where all the good ideas lie and that’s where bands like Nirvana came from.
What would be the third thing…I would urge bands…I remember back in the day we’d play Gilman St. and they’d get all pissed and say we asked for too much at the door, and they printed our rider in Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll. And they always used to say, “Support the scene, support the scene, support the scene.” At the time we were dirt poor, living in an office. These people were coming from their nice jobs and their apartments and they’d say, “Support the scene, motherfucker.” They come from their parent’s house, and I’d sit there goin’, “Why don’t you guys support the bands so you can have this scene?” And that’s why it all collapses, because people need to make a couple hundred bucks a week. I would urge people who do a lot of file trading, the guys who want the freebies, to maybe fight for good music by supporting it. I’d like to see that change a bit, because it really is hard when people aren’t showing up. I mean, buy a T-shirt, even if you don’t wanna wear it, because it’s not that much and the guy can get another tank of gas out of it. And they’ll say, “Yeah the last time I played Flint, Michigan, we sold 10 shirts and did alright, so we’re gonna come back.”

Okay, I have about four minutes left on my recorder, and no more questions prepared, so if you had anything else you wanted to add, now would be the time…
Eh, no. I mean, I hope people check out the record. I guess we should all support each other as far as music goes and try to build something nice like it used to be. Now it’s just loud, boring, same ol’ same ol’ with thousands of people watching…I remember I used to just go to a show at a Quonset hut somewhere and there’d be tons of people and four really good bands, and I miss that.

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