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PL: State something interesting about yourself.
JE: Um...hmmm...something interesting...I don't know, man. I'm not a very interesting guy. I know right before I left for this tour, my great grandma celebrated her 90th birthday party, and I was there for that. That was an exciting thing. I have a great grandma and she's 90 years old.
PL: Are you guys looking forward to My Love My Way again being available in stores?
JE: Definitely. The history on that record is...first of all, Marytr put it out when they were under different ownership. At that time, we were super greatful that anyone was willing to spend any money or time on our band. That was awesome, and I don't have any regrets about the whole thing. It came out, and basically the only place you could get it from was us. We toured on it a lot and sold a lot of copies to kids ourselves, but its been a really hard record for kids to just go to a record store and buy, or to go to a place online and get it. We're excited that someone who wants it can go to a store and pick it up easily.
PL: Would you let a label now rerelease an album of yours thats already in print?
JE: As long as something is still in print, but My Love My Way was still technically in print and it fell out of print. I guess the important thing for me and the rest of the band is that you can get our records at major record stores. Where we grew up, there weren't those kinds of shops. Out in California, there's Amoeba, and you guys have Newbury Comics and stuff like that. We don't have shit like that where we grew up, so we had to go to Best Buy or Sam Goody's if we wanted to buy an album from our favorite punk bands. Thats not ideal, but thats reality for us, and thats the way it is for a lot of other kids in America. Its pretty important for us to have our records available in big stores.
PL: I interviewed you guys (Tyler Oleson, drummer) a few years ago, and he said that you weren't a full time band back then. Are you guys a full time band now?
JE: Um hmm.
PL: Do you think its possible to be a successful band and not be doing it full time?
JE: Yeah, we're doing it full time now. The big difference is that it almost feels that you're bigger when you're not full time because you have these other things in your life, whether you're going to school or you have a full time job or a serious girlfriend, and then your band goes on a tour and its pretty good. And when you make the leap to full time, you're more successful, but you give up so much in your life and we're so much more broke now than we were a few years ago. People think that our band is doing really well, and we're getting bigger and bigger, which is true, but it gets really really hard when you're trying to make a living out of this. We're scraping by. Its success, but in a different way. Ten years ago, being a full time touring hardcore punk band not a possibility, and now it is, but its not easy by any stretch of the imagination. You have bands like Terror and Bane, Comeback Kid and Strike Anywhere who can do it. We are not really there but trying our fucking damndest to be there. Its a different kind of success.
PL: Who is the craziest band to watch live?
JE: I saw At the Drive In during In Casino Out, and they were a fucking crazy live band. They were very impressive and very fun to watch, and they had a style that I definitely hadn't seen before. It kind of seemed like they were on their own plane. Aside from that, we saw a band called D.S.B. on our Japanese tour, and they were a crazy live band. I remember the singer of that band jumping off the bass drum, smashing his head and taking a flourescent light bulb that exploded and throwing it into the crowd. They were one of the craziest live bands I've seen for sure. Then there's bands that we've actually toured with. I don't know if I'd call Terror a crazy live band, but Scott is a very charismatic front man. I feel like, to some extent, he understands crowd psychology and he can get inside people's heads and make them go fucking crazy. That was real neat to watch when we toured with those guys, and I have a lot of respect for what he does up there.
PL: Would you rather tour or put out records?
JE: Both. Recording records is fun, but I want to play to every kid that has our record. I couldn't really pick either one.
PL: Whats one movie everyone should see?
JE: I just got this new movie that I can probably say is my favorite of all time at this point. Its called "The Outsiders," and its made after an S.E. Hinton novel, and that same guy (we talk about S.E. Hinton actually being a girl) wrote a book called "Rumblefish," and Francis Ford Coppola directed it. Its fucking incredible. Everyone should check that movie out. The cinematagraphy and the story are great.
PL: Whats a little known fact about Iowa?
JE: I actually have a great fact about Marshalltown, our hometown. The Nike swoosh, the symbol for Nike shoes, the guy who designed that logo comes from Marshalltown, Iowa. And thats a big hardcore thing because everyone collects Dunks. None of us wear Dunks, but for all those cool Boston guys who collect Dunks, they better respect Marshalltown.
PL: Name one album, besides your own, that you think all kids should have in their collection.
JE: For me, I'm gonna go with London Calling. I think London Calling is the perfect mix of genres of music, as far as having punk and roots rock and roll and raggae, which are some of my favorite styles of music. Thats the album that speaks to me the most, and if I had one desert island record, it would be London Calling. I think that album mixes the personal and the political and the social in the perfect way. Thats my album.
PL: Is there anything else you want to say?
JE: I'm plugging bands. There are three bands that I love and want the world to know about. They are Spanish Bombs, who are from New Jersey and New York City. They have their whole demo up on MP3 form for free on their website. So go check that out and download their demo. There's two bands from Iowa that we're good friends with, and I love their music. They're the Old Scratch Revival Singers and Beat Strings. They're both on Myspace. Look both those bands up and see what you think. Neither band is a hardcore or punk band, but I think the spirit of what they do is the exact same as what we do. We grew up with those guys and we feel the exact same way about music as they do. The spirit of their bands are the same as ours, even though the music is completely different.
