Rise Against

0:00Not a lot of bad interviews yourself as a singer. I sing in rising. Oh yeah. Is that typical? I do it for other singers. You know what I mean? We're all part of a union. Yeah, we're all part of a club. A club. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Suss and quarterbacks and pictures. This is what Greg Graffin from Bad Religion told me once. OK. And we were opening up for him. He was loading gear with the band. And he goes, Tim, what are you doing?

0:46And I was like, I'm just loading in, Greg. And he's like, Tim, we're singers. We don't have gear. We don't load gear. If I don't load gear, I've got three really pissed off guys at me. It's just supposed to have been way back when when you were actually loading gear. Yeah, yeah. We were opening for Bad Religion. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. Admittedly, I haven't loaded gear in a while. So that's the way things work. Yeah, yeah. That's where you go for as a band, right? That's the goal. Like, that was the coolest benchmark. The benchmarks were like the day we stopped all five of us sharing a hotel room. You know, I was like, whoa. I mean, last week. Last week, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, shit, we've made it. We can afford two rooms. You know? And of course, you hire more guys. Like four guys in a room. Yeah. But like, I remember the thinking that I made it then. And then when someone else was setting up my gear, I remember feeling like I made it then. Because it got to the point where you were walking out

1:32on stage and people were cheering. Like, yeah. And then you're like, cool. But 10 more minutes. Just got to tune this thing up. Make sure it's all good. You're going to watch me bend over and lift a lot of things for the next 10, 15 minutes. And then we're going to go on in the most anti-colonactic way possible. So how does a rise against show start now? How does it start? Yeah. Do you have the opening song that you know, especially with the new record and everything? That's something we're figuring out right now. We just played a few shows. I went in Quebec a couple weeks ago in Summerfest in the walk-in Thursday. And yeah, we opened up with Ready to Fall. But we're always, that's something that we're always conscious of. We need to open up with a different song we didn't last year or the year before. And so we go with different strategies. Sometimes it's like, let's open up with a new song

2:18no one knows. To kind of let them hear something. Or sometimes it's like, let's open up with a classic that gets everybody going. Different strategies for festivals and headline shows. I had a line show like you're playing for exclusively usually your fans, a festival you're playing for a lot of other fans. Fans. Yeah, helping to gain new fans. Exactly. Yeah. So I had Brian, your friend from Gaslight on the day. And because his record doesn't go until August. And he's saying, I don't want to play any of those songs yet until people know them. Yeah. Your record's not out yet. How do you feel about that? It's interesting. It's a Brian text to me too just a few months ago. Like, when's your record coming out? I want to make sure our records don't come out in the same day. And we do the kind of thing where, and I think this is a band. This is a music irony, is that people

3:05don't want you to go back on tour until you have a new record out. Like, they want you to put a new record out. And then they want you to go back on tour. Because otherwise, you're just kind of still on tour playing the old songs. Once you get on tour. Once you arrive at that stage, they just want to hear the old songs. So it's like that weird sort of battle. But we'll play new songs just because we love to play new songs. But we don't do too many. I think that these last few shows, we only did one new song out of an 18 song set. What song is that? What is that? I don't want to be here yet. It's single. Because people will have heard it. But we'll try to sneak as many in as we feel like we can get away with while still keeping people's attention. And we'll try songs. And we'll gauge their reaction. Sometimes songs sound great in the studio or in your headphones.

3:51And sometimes you play them live. And they're like bastard children that don't fit into the family of songs. And then in the crowd, you lose the crowd. And then you're like, oh, this was a good song for rocking out in your car. But something about the arc of the show, it didn't fit. That makes me think I was listening to an interview of you saying you didn't want Savior to be on a record. I did. I think you were just like, oh. I know. There was something about it. I don't know what it was. And you're on a love? I've grown to love it. Yeah, yeah. And I love all the songs. You know what I mean? I think in that question I was talking about, just picking singles. And I just don't care about singles. I love all the songs. I'm too close to them. I feel not qualified to weigh in. And I don't really care which song is the gateway drug to our record. You know what I mean? Like whatever song someone else thinks is going to do that,

4:39cool. And that's fine with me. I love all of them. Well, speaking of songs that are out there, I just love the word eco-terrorist. Yes. So that's just a thing. It's not a thing. It's not a thing. I'm going to thank you for saying that. So explain to me wanting to use that in a title. Yeah, I think that was my lack of reverence for that word. I mean, it was just sort of the eco-terrorist. And me, it's like from what big business, big factory farm corporations and big companies that are making a living and making a profit by hurting the environment in a way. Environmentalists and activists have always been a thorn in their side. And so now, instead of trying to clean up their act, they're trying to find ways to make the act of exposing them illegal. So now in some states, in America, if you report on animal abuse

5:31that you've witnessed, you can be prosecuted. I saw that in the talk entry. It's called an agricultural gag act or ag gag. And in some places, it's called the Animal Enterprise Act. In some places, if you blow the whistle on some wrongdoing within a company that specifically deals with cattle, like animals, that kind of thing, then you can be called a terrorist. And it's just like these really backwards laws that are actually passing in some places. And to me, I feel like that word means nothing to me. And so as it's defined as an eco-terrorist of somebody who wants to promote environmentalism, kind of lay down on the tracks for these things that are just stomping over the world, I

6:16have far more in common with what you're describing as an eco-terrorist than I deal with people that are prosecuting them. And so that's where the song came from, the eco-terrorist in me. Cool. It reminds me of, oh, Marcus is just saying, veggie dogs, they're more prevalent here than they are down there. You can get them in the states, but our hot dog stands, your hot dog stands, our hot dog stands do not carry them for the most part. Here, everywhere from Toronto to all the way to Vancouver, you can get a veggie dog on the street. I'm happy you are talking about that. So I'm so happy about it. I love it. It's seriously like, when I leave here, I'm not going to walk into some fancy restaurant. After this, I'm going to go get a veggie hot dog. And I'm going to go sit out at the ACC and watch the World Cup. There you go. Who are you chicken for?

7:01I don't know. I feel like that's what someone said. Someone said that once your team loses, you've got to pick another team that you're rooting for. Kind of. Because they don't really have a horse in this race anymore. I'm just kind of enjoying watching the game. It's fun. I like the camaraderie it brings. The people together standing in front of TVs. Like you don't see that any other time. Totally, you're right. And I think, I guess I always cheer for the underdog. That doesn't surprise me. You said something to, if I can give one thing back to music and stuff, some kid in middle America feel like, oh, this span feels the way I do. So that's OK. On the black market, what do you want that kid to take? Well, that's a good question. I think this record is an extension of that rise against narrative of just trying to connect with people and let them know that if they're in a dark place, there's a way out of it.

7:48And that's something that rise against us. It has always tried to do. And then sometimes we've successfully done it. And that's when you get someone in the audience telling you this record helped me through this or helped me through that. That stuff is so much more validating than selling a ticket or a CD or whatever. That stuff is like it means that you've created something meaningful and not just disposable. And it's amazing when people get it. You write it and you hope people get it. But you don't ever have that kind of bravado that like, I will be understood as an artist. I mean, you just actually it's the opposite. You kind of assume that it'll get lost in translation. Who's going to really hear it in the myriad of bands and music that's out there. But when people get it, it's amazing. Is there a song that keeps coming back? That may be surprised you to be like, oh, I didn't think

8:34this would touch people as much as it did. A lot of our songs. Yeah. We've a song. When people come up to you and be like, I really like that Bob Dylan song. I guess maybe because he covered one. We did cover one here. The we'd order a song called Survive off of one of our records. And it wasn't a single. It was kind of buried in the record. It was like a pretty punk rock song. It wasn't a poppy kind of number that would just kind of take off. But I put a lot into the lyrics, you know what I mean? It was all about all the trials and tribulations that you go through in your life. They kind of carve you and make you into the person that you are. And it's important to embrace that and not let those things kind of destroy you. And I see kids with the lyrics tattooed on them. I see things on the internet, people using the lyrics to create all kinds of cool art projects.

9:20And so it's always amazing. Like, cool. That song never had a big push behind a label and never had a video and never had that kind of thing. But it found people and people found it, which is awesome. Was it a hard song to write or did you just flow? Those ones always just float or flew or float. And so those ones always just kind of came out. You know what I mean? And I wanted to... The whole process of Rise Against has been as much as people are discovering the band. Like I'm discovering the band. And I'm discovering what we are and the music and the lyrics and all that. I feel like every record we kind of learn about. This identity that was never a strategy. You know, it was never like a PowerPoint presentation. Like a 99 and we're like, here's the band we are going to be. You know what I mean? I appreciate using the Microsoft product on this.

10:05Thank you. Okay. I forgot. And then, yeah, this is always a very natural and organic thing. And it's the kind of people that have been attracted to Rise Against that help me understand like, oh, this is the kind of band we are. This is where we fit in. You know, without having to succumb to expectations but to kind of have a little more self-awareness about like, this is the niche that we feel in people's lives. These are the kind of people that gravitate towards our music. And that's how it always helped me kind of discover who we are. And in that sense, like Rise Against I'll be honest was a pretty arbitrary band name when we picked it. And we grew into it. It was like we bought shoes that were too big for us. You know what I mean? And we eventually kind of, we grew into it and we earned the right to call ourselves that.

10:51What did you grow into on this record? Because I've heard you say this like you're writing about yourselves a lot more on this record. And then Rise Against is always looked outward. And this one was a lot more looking inward. And it was a lot more of that kind of self-awareness. Like kind of like figuring out what is this crazy endeavor that we've been doing for 15 years. What does it mean? What does it still mean after all this? And I think that I was doing a lot of like just self-reflection on that. I think one reason because it took so much time between the last two records. So I had time to kind of get a little bit of distance from it as much distance as someone was in the band could possibly get. But that offered me a little bit of perspective. And it was I was processing that. I did the only thing I know how to do which is to write about it. I had to write in the record about this endeavor of four guys going onto a stage every night

11:40and kind of exchanging these emotions with like different people. You know and different audience members and all of that was something that was like just really interesting. That's where the black market came from. I wrote down that lyric. Yeah, yeah. It was like we were like trafficking and all this like emotional cathartic kind of stuff. And I was just thinking what a bizarre endeavor for us to be doing all these years later. Now that you're going out and you're stripping the oil, I saw you with acoustic guitar earlier. How different are the songs that are playing to an audience when it's stripped down like that. And you don't have everyone backing you up and all the sound and the production and everything. Yeah, it's way different. A lot more nerve-wracking. It's like okay I can't rely on everybody to clean up my mistakes. And it's also I think back in the day when someone would say oh can you play the song acoustic I would just kind of just freight train through it the same way I do on a stage

12:26and then at some point I realized well the song deserves more than that. You know it's an acoustic guitar. It's being slung in a different kind of setting and now I've been trying to approach them a little more tactfully like trying to like bring out the melodies and bring out the lyrics. I feel like that's the sign of a good song is that when you can do it not just like at full volume with a martial stack in front of thousands of people but you can also do it around a campfire you know and then that means like you create something that's like okay this is a good song. You write on acoustic or is it an electric? I do write on both. I kind of write all the different ways you could possibly write but I do a lot of times I'm tinkering around with an acoustic guitar. Well what change, let's go because we're talking about this record. We can change the most like if you wrote something on acoustic and then because nothing sounds. Well I guess there's the second or the second or the last song on this record that's written

13:13down but other than that. Yeah like the second or the last one people live here that was all. I don't know what titles I'm sorry. Oh it's all good. I'm still figuring them out too. My band is really figuring it out because they all have boys working titles that we would live with for months and like oh man like even our producer Bill Stevenson we've done like all these records with him and he's never figured out the real titles you know. He's like to him like the records of what is taking place there in the studio he doesn't really board with the actual music. Exactly yeah he doesn't care about the release the thing that you can buy over at HMV whatever he's like it's all about like what we did there and like this many years later are you gonna play a no effects and we're like what's no effects like that's what you were calling Black Masks in gasoline and you're like oh yeah that was what we called it you know and so it's like we'll always call these songs by bands that were referencing like oh

14:00this one kind of sounds like Algon Trio let's call it that you know what I mean like it's I haven't heard Algon Trio in a lot. Yeah and we take we offer all these influences. So what's on Change the Most? Oh thank you. That's a good question. Be it directly or sonically or whatever. That's a good question. What took the most to get right? That's a good question. Turn him here for. Maybe zero visibility was the different guitar tone. Yeah it's like Drop D, different guitar tone and it was really long. It was like we just went for it it was like a Sabbath song you know at some point and it's still long at some point we just kind of embraced the length of it we were like we just decided this isn't going to be a radio edit you know we're going to make this song the way it should be and so that one changed a little bit from its inception to like the final completion.

14:50Cool. I can let you go so I know you got a bunch of other stuff to do. Five quick questions. Okay. One word answers. All right. Road or studio? Road. London or McCartney? Oh. The London? When you hear a song what usually hits you first lyrics melody or rhythm? Melody. Someone's never heard rising ants before what song do they start with? Survive. In one word rising ants. Physical. Nice. Actually I do want to close with that just for a second. Okay. How do you keep your like I don't know how you can scream like I don't know how it's every night I don't know either. I'm dying. I just keep my fingers crossed that the next day rolls around and I'm still still talking

15:38and just thinking. Yeah. Thanks man. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you.