Why did you choose this venue? Is there any history for you here?
I played in Burlington years ago with The Misfits and I guess this venue reached out when the call went out that I was looking for venues to play.
How do you think the genre of Punk has changed from your generation to my generation?
My generation was the bastard son of Punk resurgence. The Grunge movement was my generation of Punk. That’s when The Sex Pistols got back together, The Damned got back together and toured. Eventually, The Misfits got back together and toured. The Punk that you and I look back on, such as The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, is very different. American Punk, such as The Ramones- being the first, was steeped in true Rock N’ Roll, Blues, Country, and Folk music. Punk Rock, depending on who was making it, was steeped in the political times. English Punk was very different from American Punk because they were experiencing fascism and tough economic times.
My generation was the “Nowhere and Nothing” generation. All our heroes were all messed up. Everyone died. Everyone was doing drugs. My generation was the generation where as we were coming of age, all of a sudden they threw AIDS at us. My generation had a feeling of hopelessness when we were younger, like most kids. When I was first starting to tour, there was no cell phones or internet, so that in itself, in the way that you grow up and communicate- there’s no more face-to-face interactions, so that affects things. So I’d say it’s the Times.
Do you feel that with your solo career that you can express yourself more musically than you could when you were in The Misfits?
Yeah, absolutely. As a musician I feel more like myself, not only because I do things that are me, but because now I’m 36, not 19 or 20. I have grown-up responsibilities and all those years of introspection and looking back, I know myself better and I’m a better musician for it.
Being in a band like The Misfits certainly had it’s limits on how I could create, but it challenged me and that’s why I tell those stories I do before I play those songs, because the creations I made with The Misfits where my life and my experience when I’m 19/20 years old- having my dreams come true literally, were cryptically put in all the songs and it was a great challenge for me as a writer. It made me better. I’m at a very great place now. I’m very happy.
What musical direction do you feel yourself going into with your new album?
I write a lot about the same things I have always written about. I’ve done a ton of traveling in the last couple of years. I’ve seen so much of the world and I’ve gotten to speak to so many people my age and your age about what they’re going through.
While spending time in Eastern Europe, I got to know people my age that tell me that when they were in high school they lived under an oppressive government to the point where they would ration electricity and if you said something wrong about the president you would get the “knock on the door.” It was completely different from what’s going on here in America, so it was getting in contact with people from there and flying in a plane five hours to a totally different place that inspired me to write about things like that; my life experience.
Thanks for the interview.
You sure you don’t have any other questions? You’re not gonna walk down the stairs and be like, “Damn! I shoulda asked him this!” (Laughs) If you have any other questions, you can ask me later.
Setlist:
- Black Bird
- Beware
- Tell Me
- Fiend Club
- Teenage Monster
- Frostbite
- Necrophilia
- Wormwood
- Best Of Me
- Shining
- Lucifer I Am
- Dig Up Her Bones
- Angels
- Locked Away
- Scream!
- Crying On Saturday Night
