Jay: Hey you still there?
Bill: Yeah, I’m here.
Jay: Good, let’s do it.
Bill: Alright, cool. How did you end up hooking up with Matador for the singles series?
Jay: For the singles?
Bill: Yeah.
Jay: Well I’d already been talking to multiple labels about where my next full length was going to live. I was caught up in the red tape of all that, talking to three or four labels, and I thought “well, I know I’m going to get bored not being able to work.” Because I put out six or more records a year so standing still for a year doing these negotiations, all this business crap is pretty irritating. So I thought I’ll ask these dudes if they want to do some records that aren’t so committal, not like an LP, and they went for it.
Bill: So are you going to stick with Matador once this is done?
Jay: Yeah, after delving into this project with them, it gave me the confidence to sign another three album deal with them.
Bill: That’s good, because they’ve been doing a lot of cool stuff lately with signing you and signing Fucked Up too, it seems like they’re diversifying out.
Jay: Yeah I think so, I think… (pause) It’s kind of odd because I would have always pigeonholed Matador as your stereotypical indie rock label until I met the dudes that ran it. I mean the general manager has one of the best record collections I’ve ever seen, it’s kind of crazy, you know?
Bill: Whose idea was it to put the records on a sliding scale with declining pressings? I mean I tried to get the last couple and just gave up after a little bit.
Jay: Well my idea was to make them limited.
Bill: So do you collect records then?
Jay: Me, myself?
Bill: Yeah.
Jay: Well I wouldn’t collect records like these (laughter)
Bill: (hearty chuckle)
Jay: I’ll buy records, I’ll go to the record store two or three times a week and probably spend a hundred bucks a week on records but I wouldn’t consider myself a record collector. They’re a lot of things to take care of. It’s kind of disposable, I’ll listen to something for about a week and then it just ends up in a pile or I end up loaning it out and forgetting where it is. I buy a lot of music but I’m not necessarily collecting it.
Bill: With Matador being your prototypical “indie” label and within the last couple years I’ve been kind of surprised by how embraced you’ve become by that community. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Jay: I don’t know. The big joke with me was that I always used to say that as soon as I stopped screaming that a whole other audience would latch on to what I was doing. I always felt that I was writing songs with very basic pop structures but maybe the vocals were too intense.
Bill: Yeah.
Jay: I kind of knew in the back of my head that maybe this was going to open up some sort of crossover audience, so I kind of stopped screaming. It wasn’t a conscious decision; I was just kind of getting old and tired of screaming at the tip of my lungs. I have no idea though, maybe Matador had something to do with it but those people were already kind of latching onto it when the album came out on In The Red. I don’t know, I think that there’s punk rockers, and there are people that like independent music and punk rock, and that’s such a small percentage and everybody else gets coined an “Indie Rocker.”
Bill: And that term doesn’t even mean anything any more because there’s so much crap out there.
Jay: Yeah it really doesn’t mean anything at all, indie rock is so diluted anyway, most people are just using as a stepping stone until they get their major label contract or whatever they do, you know?
Bill: Is that anything you’d ever be interested in? How far do you see this going?
Jay: I’ve actually already turned down two major label deals.
Bill: Oh, nice, congratulations.
Jay: (chuckle) It just wasn’t really the path I saw myself taking. I mean you know it seemed tempting. Honestly I thought “Wow man, I could take this much, much further possibly on this label than any indie label” but I’m not a gambler. I’ve been working too long to kind of throw any credibility or any momentum that I had down the toilet for some minimal gain. It was a maximum risk with a minimal pay off; it just wasn’t going to work out, I couldn’t see it. But then again I tend to be negative, so….
Bill: And they probably wouldn’t have allowed all the singles and shit to keep going on either.
Jay: Oh absolutely not. I wouldn’t have been making records and you wouldn’t hear anything from me for two years if I was on a major label with the way things are.
Bill: What exactly is your creative process? How many songs do you estimate you write per week or per month?
Jay: When I’m at home and not on tour, if I’m not writing a song I’m re-recording. I kind of re-record the same songs over and over until I have them right. There’s a process of refining them. This week I’ve probably written three songs and tried to re-record them two or three times each.
Bill: Shit! Do you end up throwing a lot of stuff out?
Jay: Oh tons man. If you took all the alternate takes from any typical album; like Blood Visions could turn into a five LP box set, ha. I junk so much shit. I’ll start with a song that’s just a verse and a chorus, record it and think something’s missing, then add a part. By the time the album’s done there’s usually anywhere from three to five different versions of the same song.
Bill: Well yeah, you had the demo 7” before the LP came out, right?
Jay: Yeah, it was a demo single that came out in
Bill: Yeah I just picked that up on the singles collection since I missed out on a bunch of the stuff when it first came out. Now all that I’d heard for awhile was just the Blood Visions LP and when I was able to get the singles collection and hear a bunch of other stuff I was kind of surprised that there was a lot more softer stuff in there. Have you ever thought about doing any shows where it’s just you and a guitar or doing just the softer material?
Jay: Well we were mixing it in on one tour. As a band it didn’t feel right at that point. I think we’re going to try it again on this next tour, to pull out the acoustic. I’ll still play with the band, I don’t want to cross the line into singer/songwriter territory because I like playing rock and roll and that’s not the platform I want to take. I’m not some fucking troubadour with a guitar. I’ve seen too many people go down that road and it ends up being embarrassing. I don’t want to look in the mirror one day and be Jesse Malin!
Bill: (very loud laughter)
Jay: You know what I mean man, right?
Bill: Yeah, christ.
Jay: There’s a fine line and it’s kind of blurry and when you cross it I don’t even know if it’s obvious to yourself, you know? You just kind of turn around and you’re like “What the fuck am I doing?” I definitely don’t see playing any shows with just me but maybe I can incorporate some of the material into the show not so calmly.
Bill: Yeah all the times I’ve seen you it’s been “1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 Go!” and stuff, it’s what you’re infamous for. That’s why I was surprised when I finally heard this stuff, just thinking “oh shit, this isn’t just “Let’s go! Hey!”
Jay: Yeah I like it to be two separate things too. The Ramones are pretty much my all time favorite band and even their songs that were soft on record were ferocious live, a total blitzkrieg. I kind of like that, with two different settings. Like in a bar or a club where people are drinking, I don’t know if that’s the place to be strumming acoustic guitars.
Bill: If you’re getting drunk you don’t want to relax.
Jay: (hearty chuckle) Yeah!
Bill: Is there any stuff that you regret putting out, either solo or any of your past bands?
Jay: Um, not really. I look back on everything and I’m glad it’s out. There’s stuff I regret not putting out. There’s stuff that I’ve lost, like, I’ve lost entire albums from losing the tapes or whatnot. There’s stuff that I think doesn’t stand up to the other stuff I’ve recorded but I’m still glad I put it out. At the time it seemed like a good idea so I have to stand by that.
Bill: Have you started working on songs for the new LP yet or are you concentrating on touring off of the singles?
Jay: No man, right when you called I had my headphones on and heard the phone ring. I’m recording the new album right now.
Bill: Oh fuck, cool. What’s the status of it? Any idea when it’ll be out or is it too early to say?
Jay: It should be out by spring of 2009.
Bill: That’s not too far off.
Jay: Yeah I have about a month left to work on it.
Bill: Are there any plans to keep Shattered Records going on your end?
Jay: Well I’ve been tooling around with the idea of changing the name. I mean I haven’t put out a record under that label name in I don’t even know how long. Eighteen months maybe? I think I’m going to kill that label but I don’t think I’ll start another one soon. The idea is to do a single series kind of similar to what I’m doing with Matador just with other bands. So I’ll pick six other bands and ever two months I’ll mail copies out. So it’ll be kind of like a subscription thing.
Bill: Like the old Sub Pop club?
Jay: Yeah, like the singles club.
Bill: Within the last year or two you’ve gotten relatively huge in some terms. What’s the biggest show you’ve played?
Jay: As far as the amount of people watching us? I mean we’ve played a lot of festivals to seas of people but it’s hard to tell if they’re watching you or not. I think probably as far as captive audiences probably 8,000.
Bill: Jesus.
Jay: Yeah it’s weird, those aren’t much fun. I mean it’s fun that there are that many people but you lose something. Something definitely gets lost when you’re outdoors and then you have the media pits where the people are like 15 feet away from you.
Bill: Yeah, from my end unless it’s a huge thing, like there’s a band I absolutely have to see I don’t go to shows in that setting, they’re just not worth it. That’s all I have, I’m out of questions. Is there anything you want to say, last words or thoughts?
Jay: No man, it seems like you hit on everything.
Bill: Alright cool, good luck with the recording and see you in October.
Jay: See ya.
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