Pennywise: Yesterdays And Today (Interview)

Veteran skatepunkers Pennywise have just released Yesterdays, a new album full of old, previously unreleased and newly-recorded songs that date back to when bassist Jason Thirsk was still alive and well. Thirsk died in 1996, while the band was rising to the top og the California punk scene. Longtime fans will be thrilled to know that original vocalist Jim Linberg is back in the band, after leaving in 2010. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge about Linberg’s return and 25 years of Pennywise history.

Listen to the interview with Pennywise here:

Read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: So you’ve got a new album coming out, it’s called Yesterdays. Judging by the title obviously there’s some kind of look to the past on that so maybe you can me a bit about how that all fits together. I’ve read that you know, varying reports about the album that its old tracks, are they newly recorded tracks or are they old songs that have been updated? What’s the deal?

FD: Basically we, you know, Jim was gone out of the band for a little while, took a little break, came back and we did a, it was our 25^th year as a band, 25 year anniversary. We played a local show for a bunch of our friends and a benefit for Surfrider Foundation…keep the oceans clean type of, oceans and waterways clean type of non-profit organisation that’s you know, all over the world but mainly in California…and so played the show and we broke out about 6 or 7 old songs that we haven’t played in 15, 20 years and it went really cool like it was a great feeling. All our old friends were there that saw us at backyard parties and they just really got into these songs and it was kinda like, I don’t know, reliving the past in a way. We decided that it would be cool to go and record some songs that no one’s ever heard before that were actually, you know, really written like literally 25 years ago.

MD: Right.

FD: And just played in backyards so we set out to do that. We had a couple of outtakes from different albums, Full Circle, About Time …you know, we usually write about 30, 40 songs for an album and about 15 make it on there, 12 to 15 so. As you can imagine we got a lot of leftover stuff laying around so.

MD: Right.

FD: We dusted it off did a lot of cool stuff that Jason, our original bass player, had written and got in the studio, did an old school style, no sampled drums, no crazy computer business and just got in the room together and played and you know, it turned out really cool and it sounds like a, I don’t know, an old school Pennywise record with a little, maybe a little bit better recording quality.

MD: Right okay. So did you learn something about the band by going back and checking out you know, these old songs. Was there a feeling that you kind of gotten away from what you should have been doing or is it just a natural progression?

FD: No I think absolutely, I think it happens to all bands and artists you know, you start of in this pure form in your garage or your bedroom and you know, you’re playing parties and hoping five people will show up you know.

MD: Right.

FD: And you’re just doing it cause you have the need to do it, you know. And when you’re doing it like that, the way the songs come out of you, the way that you play, the way that you record when you have no money. You know, when you’re on a $200 dollar budget to do a single, you know 5 songs, it’s like you don’t, you’re not so anal, you know, you’re not worried about your guitar tuning, you’re not worried about this that or the other you know, the vocals being in pitch or the drums being the right sound. You just do it and I think to me, those are some of the best records in history that theband have done.

MD: Right.

FD: And so as you get older and you know, you get more popular, you get pressure you know, are you gonna have a song for the radio, how many records are you gonna sell, is it gonna sound like your last album, is it gonna sound like the new, you know, the new metal stuff that’s popular now, is it gonna be a little pop. You get all these pressures and you get pressures from critics and fans and the record label.

MD: Yeah.

FD: And that just made us feel like… we didn’t care, you know, we had no pressure, we weren’t trying to please anybody but ourselves and then hopefully the fans are gonna like it and be like this is really cool look into the past. I think it helped ground us, you know, reground us. Having Jim back in the band has, you know, been really awesome and to have celebrated our 25^th year of band and being able to go back and do like an album where we weren’t spending this kind of money, we weren’t spending a lot of time, we were just in there having a lot of fun, I think really, you know, put us back in our place a little bit. Not that we were ever out of our place but I think it just made us remember like you know how we used to do it and how much funner, even though there’s no such word as funner, how much funner it was back in those days when you just didn’t care you know and we even, we have a song, you know, called Yesterdays, it’s not on this album that Jim wrote? I wish we could go back to those days when we didn’t have a care at all. You know, it’s kinda like it’s like going back to the innocence of and a purity of what Pennywise was 25 years ago so it was a pretty cool experience.

MD: Excellent. Well I imagine, obviously I mean, 25 years people change and their lifestyles change, you can’t be the same person you were 25 years ago. So does that affect why you’re in a band now as opposed to why you were in a band 25 years ago? That must also, you know, then affect the music.

FD: I mean we started of playing music because we loved it and you know I think we all still love playing music.  That for me, that’s the number one thing. Just getting out there and playing on stage. Um, you know, song writing is fun, being in the studio is kind of a nightmare. Um I’m probably a pretty big contributor to that nightmare.

MD: Right.

FD: Probably ask the other band members but I’ll blame it on them as well. I mean, this is one of those things we don’t, we’re not you know, rich and famous, we don’t make a tonne of money doing this, we make a humble living and we’re not Metallica, you know, we’re not Linkin Park so we’re not out there doing it for the money you know, this is our job, we’re like blue collar labour. If I wasn’t doing this I’d be pounding nails or something of that nature so obviously I’m gonna play music and that’s where my passion lies so. I think, you know, we’re in it for the right reasons still. I do see a lot of bands out there that I think are in it for the wrong reasons and I think it’s real easy to spot the bands that are doing it, you know, for the money or you know, for the fame or for the wrong reasons but you know, we actually really like getting up there and playing and you know, throwing a big party for the fans and this is like the dream job you know, we get to travel around the world and drink free beer and play punk rock, who can ask for a better job.

MD: Right. Now you mentioned that this is the first album that Jim has sung on you know, since he returned to the band after leaving for several years. That must be a weird kind of dynamic to have one of the original members of the band leave and then return and did that affect the, kind of the chemistry within the band or how things were in the studio? It’s one thing to be performing with him again but another thing to, I imagine, create new music.

FD: We’ve always had a pretty rough time in the studio because everyone’s pretty opinionated in this band and like I said everyone will blame everyone else for their wrong doings, but we actually started writing an album and, you know, I think we kind of looked at like you know, Jim’s just back, we’re just doing shows and do we really wanna throw ourselves in harm’s way almost by getting back to the studio and that’s where it gets ugly, that’s where you know, the passion comes out and the…creativity trying to, you know… four guys trying to put their hand on a paintbrush trying to paint a picture, it’s pretty tough but going back and having these songs that we already recorded and we can just listen to them on a cassette player and just say ‘yeah this is rad, let’s do this’ and you know, there’s very little arguing, it’s kinda like well, was that a high hat or a ride symbol? Or the recording are horrible, you know and how does the bass line go that Jason played. You know, that was the jist of it. So that was a good step to get us back in the studio without having a bunch of tension and stuff. It was a good way to get us back to you know,  helping us remember where we came from.

MD: Yeah. And I’ve also read that there is a box set in the works. Is that correct?

FD: Yeah, I mean there’s always a box set in the works….it’s always just a matter of getting the label to spend the money on it so, I don’t know. It’s something that we might wind up putting out ourselves if you know, if the label doesn’t want to. There’s so few brick and mortar stores now and everybody’s … its all digital…but I think box sets are one of the coolest things ever so  we’re talking about it. It’s not gonna happen on this particular release but we’re talking about doing some really cool box set-type bundle stuff coming up down the road so hopefully we’ll get to that someday.

MD: Cause I got to imagine that a good portion of your audience is an older audience that still wants to buy hard, you know, physical copies of things. So that’s got to help at some point to be able to sell that stuff, they wanna have that.

FD: For me if I can like get, a Misfits box you know, a coffin set…like the bundle pack is where you get like a t-shirt, some stickers, you know, a book, a book of pictures you know, whatever buttons. It’s like you get something like that, it’s just cool, I mean we come from the days of, you know, vinyl records and stickers and you know pins to put on your jacket and you know, all the cool stuff that was punk rock back in those days. Now it’s such a digital age and you know, people just, I think have lost that and a lot of kids never had it, they never will but like you said, there’s certain amount of people out there that are looking for that still.

MD: Yeah. And do you guys have an opinion about like the whole Spotify, you know, streaming thing and how the bands are getting paid for that. I know there’s a lot of hubbub these days about independent labels and the deal that they’re getting from like YouTube and Spotify and things like that and how that kind of trickles down to you guys. Do you discuss that amongst yourselves?

FD: Well, yeah I mean we do a little bit but I mean it’s something that definitely needs to be discussed more. I mean the problem is here that I’m hearing more and more that the labels are making the lion’s share from Spotify for licensing to them and the bands. I mean literally I’ve seen, we’ve had, you know, 22,000 plays on a song and I get a $1.50.

MD: Right.

FD: And you know, it’s actually ludicrous and something’s got to change, the bands need to start getting aware of this and figure out where the discrepancy lies in the contracts because you know, not only. I mean first of all, iTunes and digital took away from record sales because they gave the people the ability to buy one song at a time instead of an album. We don’t only write one song, you know, we write 12 songs that are cohesive and have a message behind them and so, when, you know, iTunes came along and it was like ‘oh, we can just make our own compilation here, I’ll buy one Pennywise song, one Offspring, on Bad Religion and I’ll spend my $17 bucks like that, instead of on a CD and that hurt everything. Well now, you know you got Pandora and Spotify where you don’t even need to go and buy a record, you can just, you know, it’s absolutely free, you put it on and if you want, for $10 bucks you can be commercial free and I mean so, basically you have, you know, how many millions of songs at your disposal for $10 dollars a month. It’s like why would you buy a record.

MD: Yeah. I mean it seems like their eroding the possibility of any money coming from the artists while still maintaining their own ability to make money.

FD: It’s absolutely ridiculous and if they’re gonna be renting our songs like it’s something that no one in the band foresaw so you know, it’s completely unfair, I’m not sure, I don’t wanna say anything about, you know, Epitaph or any other label without doing any research but, you know, licensing deals do not favour the bands, they favour the label and that’s basically what they’re doing is licensing our songs to these people. So it’s something that we have to look into and I’ve heard rumours now of people, you know, bands that are well-known starting their own label and then putting their songs out on Spotify and Pandora and getting huge checks because they’re the label side of it.

MD: Right. I See.

FD: Yeah, well maybe not huge but definitely a lot more than, you know, $1.50 for 22,000 spins. So it’s a crazy world, it’s ever changing and you got to keep up with the times or you know.

MD: Yeah I hear you.

FD: Or stop complaining so.

MD: So I know you guys are going on tour with Offspring and Bad Religion in The States. Are there any plans to come down to this part of the world at all in the near future?

FD: There are no plans but, I mean I’m shooting for, hopefully like a January type scenario, summer time over there.

MD: Yeah.

FD: I mean, we were talking the other day and I was talking about booking agent and we talked about how awesome it would be to be able to go down that way with Bad Religion and do a package tour, but will it happen, who knows. It’s just loose talk at this point. It would be great, we had a great time last time we came through and you know, we don’t get down often enough so hopefully we can get back there and hammer it out again.

LIsten to I Can Remember from Yesterdays here: