BANE interview

*This is a Bane interview from around 2007 or so that was supposed to be used for Response fanzine issue #5. That issue never really saw the light of day, so here ya go…it’s fuckin long!*

Please comment on the decaying relationship between hardcore and hardcore kids

Well, I think there’s a lot of hardcore kids that lose sense that there’s a bigger picture in this community that stretches beyond them. A lot of of people get involved in this for very selfish reasons, they’re driven by some ego or trying to fit in…some place where they can go to have a crew or a code and these morals that you live by…hardcore comes ready made for insecure, confused kids. The crossroads exist now where it becomes very easy to go down the road where you don’t have to have any consideration at all for the people around you or the show, or the history…it just becomes a very selfish thing where there are people immediately drawing lines and that’s always real unhealthy for anything, especially a community run by the kids, you know we police this thing ourselves and we’re all expected to abide by some amount of respect or understanding. It just feels like there are kids that don’t go through that process of understanding that “look man, this is bigger than you and it has a rich history and if you give it will give back to you. But if you take, take, take it just starts to decay all over the place. That’s what I think, a very big selfishness. It’s sad because a lot of the people who are so selfish have been involved for years and just aren’t doing the right thing as far as teaching the new kids. They’re teaching them the wrong way to be involved, that’s why there’s so much fights and resentment, gossip and bullshit. It’s become very petty in a lot of ways. But at the same time there are kids that take the other road and are fighting and striving for this and that’s what we concentrate on and what we consider ourselves to be a part of. It’s still worth fighting for, I believe.

Have you guys ever been approached by a major label? And if so, who?

No. We were approached by Epitaph for a minute. I guess this was even before Give Blood came out and we let them hear some demos, and we weren’t sure if we wanted to leave EVR anyways. And when that pittered out we realized that we don’t have these high visions for this band as far as climbing up the ladder and getting more successful in a way that you would have to sell yourself out or do anything that didn’t seem natural for us. We realized we’d been going a long time and that ya know, we’re not gonna do this full time and really make a run of it like some of the bigger bands. EVR allows us to be self sustaining, do things on our own. We don’t know how much longer we’re gonna go for and it’s kinda cool to have this label from the beginning. They provide us with the things we ask for and we try to represent them well. At a time when they have a bunch of different bands and there’s a lot of rumors going on about how they don’t support hardcore or hardcore bands, we try to counter that I guess. If somebody came now I can’t imagine that we’d be able to do the things they’d expect of us. If a major was gonna come they’re not gonna say “put out your next record, tour when ya want, you don’t have to make a video or do photo shoots” They’re gonna come with an agenda and we get real defensive when that happens, we’re not willing to go that extra mile to sell a few more records.

How do you feel about bands that do sign to bigger labels and do you notice that those bands change at all?

Some change, and there’s no telling whether they were on that path to change or not, ya know? Every year there seems to be a rush of signings of extreme bands or bands that are right on the borderline or real hardcore sounding. A lot of those bands just sign on the dotted line and they don’t sell the numbers they’re supposed to sell and they get put on the backburner real fast. The climate of music today is so crazy, if you don’t hit hard and fast and explode through the gate then you’ve failed. There isn’t this sort of natural grassroots relationship with bigger labels with bands to let them grow and see what they’ll do and have faith in their vision. Its like “you gotta do this, dye your hair black, make these videos, show kids kickboxing. We need skulls, depressing song titles. We’re gonna throw this at the wall and hope it sticks and if it sells 80,000 records in the first week then you get the keys to the kingdom.” And if not then you’ve failed and now you’re signed into very absurd contracts where you’re just like, chained. Then there’s also bands that work really hard and are trying to get to the next level and their sound changes naturally and sometimes it’s a good fit. It’s great to see bands that we love and come up with and we know have worked hard that aren’t selling themselves out that have timed it correctly and have worked as hard as you can and have started to sell a lot of records and gotten more exposure. It’s good, you just worry because that for every one that gets let into the kingdom there’s a bunch that are locked out and signed into a situation that sucks for them, their freedom is just taken away. I worry about it, I just kinda try to take it one situation at a time and hope for the best for them.

What’s your job/money situation like when you’re not on the road?

For a year now I’ve made my money playing poker. Online, in casinos, and in home games around Baltimore. I don’t make a lot of money, it sounds more glamorous than it is…there’s not like riches pouring in. There are days when it’s like, if I can make $30 that day I consider that a very good day. Poker has gone through a huge boom of popularity lately; everyone thinks they know how to play. People can literally see it on TV, see a commercial or a website and that night they can be sitting in a game and really having no idea what they’re doing. Poker is not a game of chance and spinning the wheel, there’s so many degrees of skill and cunning and aggression for that game that if you don’t know what you’re doing you are going to get torn apart in the long run. There’s players that run very lucky and catch miracle cards and have good things happen to them despite making a million mistakes, but in the long haul these people go broke. And the casinos and websites are just flooded with them now. I try to live real meager, like I’m not making a lot of money. When the band tours we make a little money, when we don’t tour I make a little bit more playing cards and my rent is dirt cheap, I don’t have a car, I don’t buy a lot of fancy things. I’m just trying to take it easy, not get a real job, get up when you get up, and I genuinely love to play cards and compete in the whole mental warfare thing. It’s just really exciting to me. I’m taking it slow and I’ve had a good year.

Have you had any other interesting jobs in the past?

Just a bunch of stupid bullshit jobs, never a job that had any sense of upward mobility or sense of “god, this could be what I turn into” For a long time when Bane started I worked in a print shop and they allowed me to go on tour and paid my insurance and I stayed at that job for a long time, that’s the longest I’ve ever held a job. Besides that I’ve made pizzas, been a telemarketer, I’ve cleaned carpets, whatever it took to survive. I don’t have a strong work ethic when it comes to working for someone else and doing something that doesn’t inspire me at all, it’s really hard for me to get up in the morning and go through the process of having to get there. I really mean it when I say I’m willing to be broke if I’m happy, I’ll eat oodles and noodles and wear non-cool clothes if it means I don’t have to get up at 8 and go listen to some motherfucker bark orders in my face. So we’ll see how it goes, I don’t know. It’s scary because poker is a real scary beast, you can lose a lot of money if you’re not careful. And I’d be forced to find a job, ya know Bane isn’t making a lot money and we don’t tour THAT often. You know last year was a busy year but this year it’s the first tour that we’re doing that isn’t like 2 or 3 weeks. So I’ve gotta be careful as far as my budget goes.

How do you feel when people put you on a pedestal in their lives? And do you feel that’s more of a blessing or a curse?

To be honest, I try not to think about it too much. The band’s been around for a long time and I’m not gonna lie and say I’ve never had a sense that some people hold this band in a very high regard. I never wanted to spend much time figuring out my opinion on it because I never wanna expect it; I don’t want it to be this thing that’s cool about being in Bane. It’s just this extra thing that happens sometimes, like you’ll get a letter or someone will come up to you and say these overwhelming things about how you’ve affected them one way or another and it’s beautiful and humbling, and it’s completely overwhelming. I always find myself just stuttering through some sort of a thank you and hoping that they can understand that I’m not taking this lightly like it’s something I hear all the time like “good show”, I really understand what you’re saying and know what it’s like to be on the other side, having a band that’s affected your life through lyrics and feeling sort of a debt to them. Minor Threat changed my life, I’m on this path now in my mid 30’s because of that band and the things he sang about and the conviction they held. To be that to a few kids is completely overwhelming, someday this band will be done and I’ll look back in my mid 40’s and then I’ll be able to be like “holy shit, think of the things we did”. I have a folder at home full of letters about how Superhero helped people quit smoking. Someday it’ll be there and I’ll be like “I did something with my life” There was a time before Bane where I thought I’d never live up to my potential or have any affect on the world around me, and I felt like I had things to say and wanted to live a more adventurous, creative life and now I’m in the midst of doing it and I don’t wanna take it for granted. I’m not very good at explaining how much it means when people tell me that. I can talk forever as you’re finding out but that’s the one thing that always leaves me short winded and overwhelmed.

Comment on each album that you’ve put out and maybe tell a little story about them

Well, Holding This Moment was just the compilation of our first three 7 inches and kinda documented the first 3 years of this band and we had never done a tour when that came out, we still hadn’t left New England, we were still kind of a side band to Converge. And to have a label like EVR that put out bands that I respected as a kid was just great like “holy shit”. And then as soon as it came out we did our first tour, and for me the only thing I ever wanted to do with music, I did a bunch of bands before Bane that never did anything beyond a demo, was just to get to California. California was like fucking mars to me, I just wanted to get to the ocean on the back of the music of the band I was in played, I always said that if we do that then anything after that would be like extra credit. So we did that in 1998 like a month after Holding This Moment came out and I always equate that with that major mission of ours. Those songs somehow managed to stand the test of time and still manage to get kids psyched and I still like singing some of those lyrics. It’s crazy that all those years’ later kids would still give a fuck about Count Me Out, it’s just a silly little song but it makes me happy to play it and see kids smile.

So, It All Comes Down to This…we had 3 successful 7 inches locally, everyone well reviewed and kids went crazy for the songs. Finally on a label doing a full length and the Refused “The Shape of Punk to Come” had just come out and Radiohead “Ok Computer” and all these high concept records and we got a little cocky thinking we could do some next level shit with the acoustic songs fading in and out and we just wanted to make a record that was a statement like “we’re not gonna be a band that has a million songs that sound like Every Effort Made” ya know? The lyrics became more personal, I’d gone through the first big breakup of my life where I was the victim of the breakup and it was out of control with like getting the relationship back together or calling it off and that was hard and there were friends involved in the mess and friendships were being severed, so it was kind of a darker more personal album. At that point I’d written lyrics for like 3 years and felt like I didn’t have to obey rules anymore I can just go for it. So I’m real proud of that record and the songs and some of the chances we took but I don’t think that the delivery was that successful and we made a huge error…it’s funny I was thinking about that on the ride here like the biggest mistake we ever made was not recording that with Brian McTiernan. He would’ve kicked our asses and kept us more in line and said “you don’t need all these frills” ya know cause with Give Blood he was like “we’re cutting out all this bullshit, you’re a hardcore band, your songs are gonna be short, energetic bursts, we’re not fucking Radiohead here” and that’s really what we needed and I think that’s probably our best record sonically and I’m still proud of a lot of those songs and that was a record that felt like more people responded to it than ever before and that’s when we started touring really hard and things were spinning out of control, we had this record out that people were excited about. When I think of Give Blood it’s the only record where there’s not one thing I wish had gone differently, we took complete command of the layout. Cause It All Comes Down To This we were so disappointed with the layout and the design and the way the designer designed and he sort of disobeyed some of the requests we made and after that we kinda made a deal that we don’t need someone else to do that for us we can do it, and it’ll look the way we want it to, and if we fail then it’s on us. And we came up with the concept of Give Blood and I’m still really excited about it.

And then things got crazy, Nick left and we weren’t sure what was gonna happen with the band then we got Bobby from Reach the Sky and we had obligations as far as tours and Aaron joined Only Crime and Pete and Zach started Silent Drive and the years sort of went by and the next thing you knew we were like “holy shit we haven’t put out a record in a really long time”. And there was all these great bands coming out that kids were so excited about that we were like “has it been too long, will we still be relevant?” So we got busy and did The Note and did it with Brian McTiernan and knew he would kick our ass, knew going in what he would expect and wouldn’t put up with. We kept it tight; we did a few ideas like the piano thing and Zach singing more melodically. I think the record came out good but there was a problem where it went to the mastering plant and Brian and the dude who mastered it went back and forth and they couldn’t get a sound. I guess the mastering guys vision was more bassy and gritty and he thought that was the sound hardcore bands want and Brian was like “this is not that band; they’re not trying to capture a new sound they’re about forceful guitars and a really bright sound”. We didn’t get as involved as we should have cause all we wanted was it to come out in time for our tour, probably another big mistake in the legacy of Bane because you know it sounds a little weak, it didn’t have the punch it had when we listened to it on our stereos before it went to get mastered. We were driving today and Pete had his Ipod on shuffle and a song came on and it sounded so weak, like thin and it broke my heart a little cause there’s no telling if we’re gonna do another one and you kinda want your last statement to be your vision carried through completely and it wasn’t. But, kids seem to like the songs and kids seem happy with the lyrics and it seems like we kinda walked through the raindrops a little bit. Think about it, It All Comes Down To This sounds like shit! My vocals are terrible, I had no one pushing me in any direction; the dude recording it was a metal pothead just pressing buttons saying “that sounds fuckin sick dude!” I am the laziest guy in the world if you tell me it’s good, I’m not gonna try it again. To think we have a song like Can We Start Again that has become the thing it’s become is like wow, how did we manage this miracle to have this record that is nowhere near as it should be sound wise or delivery-wise to be able to have a few gems on it that kids love makes me really happy. When I hear Give Blood and hear Speechless kick in and the energy and the vocals and backing vocals and the snare is exploding, I don’t think there’s too many throwaway tracks on there, when it’s all said and done if we have that then that’s cool with me.

What covers have you guys done?

We’ve done a bunch, the first we ever did when we had a sxe kid drumming in the band was Just How Much by Chain of Strength and that came out on some tribute lp years ago. For a while we did Unbroken’s Absentee Debate, we were lucky enough to play that in San Diego with their bass player on bass, that was real special. We did a Bjork cover for a Bjork tribute that was supposed to come out we did the song Enjoy and we’re gonna leak it sometime cause it sounds great with Nick on drums it sounds like fuckin Helmet or something it’s just this mid tempo wall of sound. Came out good and it was gonna come out on Geffen or some Geffen offshoot, Chad from New Found Glory, it was his brainchild, some label went outta business and the thing got shelled. We don’t even have a master of it, Brian who recorded it had to sent his hard drive to the label but we have an un-mastered version that sounds heavy as shit so we’re gonna leak that. We did an Eye for an Eye song, this old Boston band, the cd release of the Indecision records split series has that on it. This year we did a Lifetime song, there was gonna be a Lifetime tribute, I think that’s changed now cause they’re back together. We did umm…the Truth About Liars and I think it came out pretty good. We also did a Sick of It All song, they came to us personally and asked us cause they were putting out a 20th anniversary record so we did We Stand Alone. I’m a little upset about the Lifetime song and a little upset that it may be shelled for a while. We’ve got our share of covers we just don’t like to do them live too often because it becomes the type of thing where kids lean on that and they’re always screaming for them, kids still scream for the Chain cover all the time and it’s like “get over it”, we’re here to play our songs, ya know? We were thinking about doing a Pantera song, we were thinking about doing Fucking Hostile and I thought that would’ve been fun but we don’t rehearse enough to execute these aspirations of ours.

What covers would you want to do?

I’d like to do Fucking Hostile. I guess I’d like to do Out of Time by Burn. I think that’s about it I don’t spend too much time thinking about covers I mean sometimes when we go to Europe I think it’d be cool to do a song everyone knows, but it seems like every Minor Threat and 7 Seconds song has been rinsed out. I’d be happy if we could do Out of Time by Burn.

What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you personally?

Well I lost my mother when I was 21, she died of cancer and that was the worst thing I’d ever had to go through cause we were pretty close and she was the one who loved me unconditionally no matter how bad I fucked up or how confused I was and it was a hard blow to have to have to go through that and see her parents go through the death of their daughter, that was a miserable half of a year. But somehow I decided like that’s it, this is the worst that’s happened like nothing can get worse than this. I’ve never planned to get married or have kids or have to go through that myself so it’s like there’s nothing that can be taken away now that can compare to that. A very close second was losing Steve Neale, the drummer from Ink Cartridge Funeral and singer of Barrit, a very close friend of the band. It was the first time that the members of the band had to suffer a loss of that magnitude. I had to go through it a few times with my mother and the suicide of some friends, and to see these kids I loved so much having to face it for the first time was real hard for me. That’s sort of what Don’t Go was about, trying to save them from having to go through that again but obviously you can’t.

There’s a song on Give Blood: “Snakes Among Us” and I had heard that it was about something that happened with Saves the Day, if you could go into that?

That is absolutely not about Saves the Day, that’s fuckin bullshit. We had an amazing tour with those guys and when it ended we were closer than we were when it started. And for the next year when they put out their 2nd record and they were on the rise and blowing up we were lucky enough to play shows with them and stay in touch with them. I don’t know where that rumor would’ve come from, that is more about what we were talking about earlier just bands signing their life away real quickly and not understanding that you get one shot about this and if you miss they don’t give a fuck about you. Saves the Day took their shot and hit a home run, that band deserves to get on the label they got on and have all the great things that happened for them. When the 2nd and 3rd record came out we were proud of them we felt like those were our little brothers making it. On that tour in 98 when it was us and Saves the Day playing small places, we headlined a show in Florida that was Chris from Dashboards band, NFG and Saves the Day. Like they all opened for us, all small bands getting started. It was so cool a year later to see Saves the Day making it and then 2 years later to be like look at all those guys…they are in the kingdom, they’re living the life every musician wants to lead. There was never any resentment at all, we were very proud of them, that’s a rumor. That’s for the bands that maybe aren’t quite as ready to work as hard as they worked to take that shot, in order to get to that level you have to be willing to sacrifice everything, leave everything behind, it has to be an all-consuming passion. Some bands they’re doin well, they got the moves, they got a single on mtv2 or whatever and the label comes calling and they can’t sign their life away fast enough and you never hear of them again. Two months later ya never hear of em and no ones listening to them, label gives them no tour support, they’re wishing they never left their small grassroots label that cared about them, that’s what that songs about. Bands using the hardcore stage as a fuckin springboard for something else and not caring about hardcore at all. Definitely not about Saves the Day.

What are some things in life or in the hardcore/punk scene that really make you angry?

Oh god (laughter)…obviously the violence, the crew mentality of me against you. And that if you don’t live by these codes that we live by here at these shows people will get hurt and I can’t stand that I think it goes against everything we started this for. Then it just goes down the line to different degrees of pettiness, kids being excluded because they’re not fuckin pretty enough or they don’t have the cool clothes, kids being excluded cause they’re too young or don’t know how to dance or their record collection isn’t big enough. There’s so much shit people use to make others feel not as cool as them, and for me, it sounds so cliché but I got involved in this because that’s what fucking high school was, I hated high school because I didn’t know how to play by the rules, I wasn’t cool or pretty and I didn’t know how to hang with those dudes and this offered you an alternative just to be yourself and love music and love that there’s people trying to make the world a better place and make friendship something that means more to you…things like that. It breaks my heart to see hardcore losing that more and more all the time and becoming something that people feel like they have to defend and there’s all this macho pressure, I think it goes counter to everything that this should be about. And then it’s just as simple as not respecting someone, like if you’re going to stage dive think about it, how would yu like someone to stage dive on your head. If you go through that thought process before you do anything at a show: “How would I feel if this was happening to me?” Think of how beautiful things would be, kids wouldn’t be getting kicked or punched in the face, people wouldn’t be flying offstage feet first. There would be less fights, less kids afraidto come to shows. We played a show last night in VA Beach and some kid got a concussion, an ambulance came and 3 kids came out that were sorta hippie-ish and clearly this wasn’t their scene but they were there for some reason they wanted to be part of the music. And one of them said “I hate to say this, but this will probably be my last show, I just can’t handle this bullshit”. And I said I don’t blame you, it breaks my heart but I completely understand. That’s the last thing you wanna hear is that you were some kids last show. My grocery list of complaints with this is long and all you gotta do is look at a lyric or 2 and you’ll see.

What about in life, do you get road rage or anything like that?

I don’t drive so, I don’t know anything about road rage. I’m pretty even tempered I guess unless…I don’t know I don’t wanna get into my own personal bullshit. I don’t explode or break things or go too far all that often, and when I reach that point I feel like a fuckin idiot. I remember once I had an apartment and didn’t have good reception on my TV and there was a tennis match I really wanted to watch and I picked up the TV and I slammed it, and the TV broke and I didn’t have a TV anymore and I learned a big lesson that day. So I try more and more as I get older not to like punch the wall or throw the book across the room. Not that it doesn’t feel good to do it, but yeah there’s all kinds of stuff that drives me crazy in life…just people that are idiots, that aren’t tolerant, that don’t get it that we’re all in this world together and it would be cooler if we looked out for each other. Sounds so cheesy but it seems real simple to me. I try to be nice to people if I’m like at the cash register, it just feels easier to be nice and smile than have your default setting be a dick and me vs. you. Maybe I’m a hippie at heart.

You talked a little about this earlier; losing your drummer Nick…you said there was a point when you weren’t sure what was going on. How did you feel about Bane as a band after that happened?

It felt very shaky because I had been a loudmouth since 1998 saying that this band is Bane and if anyone leaves the band will fold, like this goes beyond any of our bullshit this is us 5. And then when faced with the prospect of ending the band I had to take a second take. When he left I wasn’t sure how it was gonna be, if it was gonna feel like a family. We had been through so much and been all over the world and to have him leave was strange but at the same time the rest of us felt like we had so much to do, we were getting excited about new songs, had a tour booked with the Suicide File and the Promise. And we had Nick saying “you can’t stop, you need to find another drummer, it may be hard but you’re a great band and just because I don’t have it in me anymore doesn’t mean you should stop” And he was devastated cause he was so worried that his leaving would end the band and he knew we loved the band and a lot of people loved the band, and that it was gonna affect more people than just us and he hated that. We waited it out and tried to find the right fit and Bobby was the guy who loved to tour, loved hardcore and shared our very simple beliefs. It was like a new wind got breathed into us. Nick, for the last little while, just wasn’t feeling it on the road, he was feeling a little claustrophobic, he’d lost his love for the music, I think a lot of the opening bands were really hard for him to wade through and he just didn’t feel that connection and he knew that the last thing that anyone would wanna be doing is faking it. In the end it wasn’t really that big of a surprise to us when he came and said he can’t do it anymore. What was a surprise was how bad he felt, like he was betraying something and we let him know that there’s nothing more important than you being honest with yourself first. We got really lucky with Bob, he’s a hard charger, he loves the road and this band. We lucked out, we really did, cause there was a few months there where it felt like “holy shit it’s done, I wasn’t expecting it to be done, I wanted to go on that tour so bad, I wanted to write new songs” We lucked out on that one for sure.

Losing friends is a big deal to anyone, reading 2 of your songs you can tell that you’ve had some loss, and could you tell who the songs are about and maybe a little about the people?

Sure, the 2 that are about specific people is Don’t Go, which is about having to see the band go through the death of Steve Neale, and how much it taught me. And, a song on It All Comes Down to This called My Cross to Bear is about a friend of mine Christopher Watson who committed suicide. I used to be in a rock n rolley type band with him, he was a very highly emotional manic person who went through big highs and lows, and the lows got too low and he took his own life, that was the first time I’d ever had to go through something like that. With that came some feelings of guilt, like we were a part of a group of friends who played music and sports together, and to lose him and think we should have seen it coming. There was feelings of what could we have done, I had feelings of what if I had reached out more and been there. That song helps me deal with the fact that it’s not my fault or our friends fault, it just happened and it sucked…and I hope it helped his family maybe to understand how we were dealing with it and that we were gonna be ok and we were there for each other and stuff like that. And then, A Place in the Sun is sort of about the loss of my mother, just in the sense that you can bounce back from anything no matter how hard or crazy this life will get, you can get through it somehow, someway. I think that’s it, I dunno there’s a lot of weird death images and extreme stuff in the lyrics, but the 2 that really stick out are Don’t Go and My Cross to Bear.

What hardcore bands are you listening to right now new or old?

I love Blacklisted, I think they’re really great, they have great lyrics and a great attitude, I like them an awful lot. Umm…there’s a band from Baltimore called Ruiner who fuckin rip it live every time they take the stage and I think they’re so good and intense. I went through a phase earlier this year; my roommate is sort of into the more punk, more crusty political side of things. His rooms right next to me so we can kinda share our iTunes I can look and see what he has, I started finding myself listening to Tragedy and Drop Dead who I think are a fuckin amazing band and that band RAMBO from Philly…they’re fuckin awesome, super fed up fast opinionated stuff. It’s like I was going through some weird midlife crisis just listening to the fastest most angry punk in my room. Cause to be honest usually I don’t listen to a lot of hardcore music. There’s bands I love, Unbroken, Burn, Suicide File…Mental is another one who I truly loved. For the most part I’m just listening to other types of stuff, and it was weird waking up listening to something so pissed and raging, it felt like I was 16 again. There’s a lot of good young bands out there and I always draw a blank…Guns Up I think are real hot, they’re a real fuckin cool band.

What are some non-hardcore bands you’ve been into?

My favorite band in the world the last couple years is this British/French sort of pop band called Stereolab, I love em to death. I listen to a lot of really cheesy hip hop like Jay-Z and Biggie. I listen to a lot of sad girly indie rock like Fiona Apple and old Liz Phair and just heartbroken songs from chicks who can barely tune their guitars. I love Quicksand…umm…lemme try to think if there’s something new I’ve been excited about lately, I’m like a fiend, always looking for new music and downloading stuff. Alright…there’s a band called the Marked Men from Texas this pop punk band, awesome…their last 2 records are amazing, real Ramones-ey, real sassy.

I guess you were on the cover of a Youth of Today record, is this true, and where were you on the cover?

True…I’m set way in the background, a lot people think I’m the handsome dude in the YOT shirt onstage with his fist in the air…but I was the biggest dork and that dude was like smooth, I’m this little face set back between 2 faces in the crowd. I can show it to you and it comes through on like every poster and if there’s an ad that uses that image, but I’m not up front and I’m not the kid on the stage. When that came out YOT wasn’t YOT, they were a band I thought me and some of my friends love and we were all excited about it but I never imagined that years later they’d be this iconic group. So I was kinda like oh cool there I am, cause I’d been in fanzines and stuff stage diving so I didn’t think it was that big of a deal but obviously as the years have gone on and they’ve become what they’ve become it’s kinda cool.

Do you have any memories of that show, of the lineup or anything?

Yep, umm…the lineup was a band called 76% Uncertain, YOT opened for 7 seconds, it was the first time I’d taken a bus alone from my city to go see a show by myself usually I went with kids that were older that drove into Boston and knew where the clubs were. And this was on a weekday and I had to go on my own, I had just seen Crippled Youth, maybe 2 weeks before some big show in Rhode Island and it was something new to me, these kids with big hooded sweatshirts and Nikes jumping around and having shit to say between songs. At that point I was a very punk rock kid with army pants and boots and crazy hair. I just instantly connected with it and the kids in the band were real approachable and I talked to them about “what the fuck was that” ya know and they told me about YOT and Underdog and the Cro Mags and that sound that was going on in NY. This was like, I wanna say 85, it wasn’t what it was yet it had just started to rumble and I heard they were playing and I knew I had to be there and I went and it was amazing and they were approachable as well and I told them how much their show and the new sound meant to me and like where could I hear some of the bands. And Ray brought me up to the van and gave me Can’t Close My Eyes which was like the first press with the red ink and was like “here we don’t have a lot of these but you can have one”. It just set me on a path and next thing I knew I was looking up all the bands on their thank you list and next thing I knew I was this kid very excited about straight edge hardcore and then boom, 87 hit, 88 hit…I timed it very well.

Our band was on tour in Mass and we stopped in Worcester and we needed to print some demo covers so we went to a print shop…

Haha, my Uncle Dana!

Yeah we ran into your uncle and uh…

You don’t know how many bands tell me this same fuckin story, he’s awesome right!?

He seemed real supportive and really cool, and I was wondering was there ever a time when anyone you really cared about discouraged you or wasn’t supportive in what you were doing?

Not too much musically, my uncle was in a band with his brother when they were my age, and he played guitar, my uncle Bobby was a drummer, and his son also played drums. So I always knew music was something you could do, that you could make, I had that sense from that side of the family real early. I think it worried my father a bit more because he comes from more of a traditional conservative way of thinking. But yeah, my mother’s side of the family had that kinda belief ingrained in them, just a little more rebellious. He made the first demo covers for us, I think he may have done the first insert off the 7″, and once things started to go good for us anytime bands would come in there he’d be like “do you know my nephews band?” He always gives em a deal and a hook up, I’ve heard that story at least 5 times. That’s awesome that you guys found him, makes me so happy, he’s a sweetheart.

What’s the best hardcore record of all time?

Out of Step. What do you think…Start Today?

Uhhh Start Today is pretty good, uh…

Well come on you gotta say! I’m saying Out of Step.
If you put a gun to my head I’ll take fuckin Out of Step up to the island with me for sure.

(Random banter about Black Flag, Bad Brains, Unbroken etc)
Well that’s really all I’ve got

That’s fine I think they’re all waiting for me

Got anything to end with?

I’m terrible with that. Just thanks for the interview and thanks to you guys for coming to the shows all these years and traveling with us all the time, it means the world to us, thank you.

*Bane has a new 7 inch series out, all the songs are awesome so do yourself a favor and check it out. www.myspace.com/banecentral*