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Putting The Fun Back In Punk With FLETCHER From PENNYWISE · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  I am Fletcher from the band Pennywise, as you may know, and uh
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  yeah, we're coming down to Australia in about a two weeks to play a
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  couple of shows for Good Things and a couple of side shows, so it
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  should be a looking like it's going to be a pretty good time. Beautiful
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  Fletcher, thanks for joining us today, mate. Yep, as you mentioned,
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  Pennywise one of the main acts coming to a try If for Good Things
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  festival, which it's Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane over December one, two and
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  three. So as you say, man, it's not long now, so
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  you're packed and ready to go? Got my suitcases right there? It hasn't
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  It hasn't been unpacked from the Salty Dog cruise I got home from a couple
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  of days ago. So yeah, it's it's just I just emptied out into
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  the washing machine, try it and put it back in and I'm ready to
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  go. That's how we do it around here. So you would have done
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  a lot of traveling over the years, bry. So what's one luxury on
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  them? You never leave hide without oh toms, you know, got to
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  have the tombs, gotta have the antacids. I'm joking, but heartburn always
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  comes up to get you on the road, right. Wow, what are
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  the luxury items? I recently I bought a fan, like a little battery
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  powered fan. I've been thinking about doing it for like twenty years or ten
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  years or something gets hot on the plane, hot hot spots, and I
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  got this little fan and I swear to god it runs for twelve hours and
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  it's totally silent. That's my new luxury item. On the plane, people
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  like, what's that. I'm like, a little fan, a battery powered
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  fan, and they're like, oh, I need one of those. I'm
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  like, yeah, you do, because it's it's like when you're on hot
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  a hot, stuffy plane, Like it's a life saver because I'm like claustrophobic
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  and I hate hot planes. And I'm like, now I got this little
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  device that I just stick right in my face and next to the bed.
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  It's fucking awesome. So yeah, battery battery fan, that's my That's my
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  new luxury item. Listen, good things aside fats bands like full At b
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  Oi Limp, Biscuit Bullo from My Valentine and Davi Cory Tale to Hikari like
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  as well, but are there any bands on the festival you haven't played with
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  before. Oh, probably a bunch. I don't know the whole lineup,
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  but I know there's a couple of Aussie bands that I haven't heard of.
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  The people said I should check out. I can't remember the names offhand,
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  but uh, I think we've done bull Of for my Valentine before Divo,
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  Like we've played so many big festivals that there's We've probably played with every single
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  band you know, but you just haven't seen them. So uh yeah,
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  I don't know. I'll just kind of like Darren Darren Hawthorne's are our guy
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  over there, usual tour manager and he actually works for Good Things on the
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  production side, so he'll have our list of to do's. Like he'll be
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  like, you're going to watch this band today, Let's go grab a couple
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  of beers and we'll go check it out. So well, we'll be making
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  the rounds for sure. I mean, obviously, Devo is one of the
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  bands that turned my life around and got me into punk rock, so I'll
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  be checking them out as much as possible, and Limp Biscuit as well.
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  I'm a fan. I know a lot of people want to hate on limb
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  Biscuit at times, but uh, you know we used to. We toured
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  with them on the Warped tour when they're tiny, and there was like three
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  hundred people watching them play, and I liked it. I liked it from
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  the get go. It's hard, it's heavy. I mean, yeah,
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  it can get kind of goofy at times obviously, but you know, they're
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  they're all cool guys when you strip away the whole the whole rock star thing,
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  and they've always been good to us. So I'll be definitely checking out
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  some uh some limb Biscuit. Fall Out Boy is another band like not my
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  real cup, you know, go to Cup of Tea if you must know
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  the truth. But great songwriters, good live show. So we'll be we'll
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  be making the rounds. It's gonna be a it's gonna be a great tour.
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  I like the I like diversity. Yeah, hell yeah. What's it
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  like backstage stage for you guys? It shows on this like maybe always like
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  a family reunion, So it wouldn't you be catched up with pape I haven't
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  saying for a while. And absolutely, oh friends are wrong, by the
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  way, Sorry didn't give them a mentory. Those are our boys. We've
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  we've done some serious partying, partying with U with good old friends. I
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  don't know if Jay's drinking. I heard he was on the wagon last time
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  I heard, so I don't know if he's back on the bottle or not.
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  But uh, it'll Oh my god. That reminds me of an interview
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  I did recently. I got to bring that up to them. But it's
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  uh, yeah, I mean seeing seeing those guys was will be awesome.
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  And and seeing everybody, you know, it's it's always like that backstage when
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  you when you play these big festivals, you run into people, whether it's
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  a band member you know, or a crew member or a production guy.
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  It could it could be anybody, could be you know, a bus driver.
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  I mean not on this tour, but like it's always cool to be
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  to be backstage and see people that you haven't seen. It's just it's,
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  I don't know, it's one of the perks of being in a band.
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  You know. It's kind of like an unwritten uh, an unwritten rule that
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  you're you're going to go back there, and that's kind of like it's like
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  a holiday. It's like Thanksgiving or Christmas or something. Hey, wow,
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  I haven't seen you. It's like family, It's like a family gathering.
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  So it'll definitely be cool and fun for sure. I remember the first time
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  I met friends Romo was about twenty five years ago, and I got on
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  that well with Giant when they played. He said, right next to the
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  base by Alexa so on. He said, a table, two chairs,
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  a flower, bottle of vodka, a bottle of orange juice, and two
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  glasses of all ice. And he said, this is how bad should be
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  watching my ight off you guy. Ah, yeah, yeah, I mean
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  that those guys are awesome. They they've they've come over here and done some
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  recording and hung out with us in the South day. Just solid dudes,
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  hilarious guys, very very very cool and definitely looking forward to it and get
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  some hang time in with them for sure. As you said earlier, man
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  Pennywise, they're also doing a few side shows, starting in Brisbane on the
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  sand of the fifth and going the Gold Coast, Extra Coast and a sold
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  out show already at Chalky. Say what can fans expect from those side shows
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  that they might not get it good things, hopefully a different set. You
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  know we've been talking about it not Hopefully it'll be a different set. We'll
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  switch it up. I mean, you know, big festivals, barricades,
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  you know, big stages kind of like in a diverse crowd where you know
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  you're going to have fall Up Boy fans and Deebo fans. Like maybe there's
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  you know, a percentage of that crowd that's never heard of Penny Wiser,
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  never seen us play live, and we want to be able to connect with
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  them. So maybe maybe we're not going to play a three hundred mile an
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  hour song that we would play in a club show, like, hey,
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  this song is like a mid tempo and more you know, new user friendly,
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  I guess you could say, versus like some deep cut that like a
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  penny Wise fan is going to appreciate off of, Like you know, our
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  second album, you know that's thirty years old at this point. So it'll
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  it'll be a different set. Club set will be a little bit more geared
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  towards just strictly like a hardcore penny Wise fan, where the festival set will
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  be geared towards a little bit of everybody. I think you know, got
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  back in history of it for us out bro penny Wise started back in Manhattan,
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  Beach and Naughty. So was the musical climate luck that guy back to
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  penny Wise and where did you fit in initially? Well, so we grew
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  up, I was saying earlier. You know, we grew up what we
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  call the South Bay. It's Manhattan Beach from Mossa Beach and Redondo Beach,
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  these three cities that make up like maybe four square miles or something like that.
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  It's a really small area. And you know, growing up in the
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  eighties, we had Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, the Germs, the
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  Descendants, Red Cross, Toxic Shock. We had all these bands that came
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  out of the city and we're literally playing like high school dances and backyard parties
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  and warehouse parties and the Moose Lodge and shit like some it's kind of unheard
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  of, like to have that many of the biggest punk rock bands of all
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  times, like in your own backyard, like going to school with them.
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  You know, they went to my high school and shit. And that was
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  a really like great upbringing. And then I started playing in bands when I
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  in like nineteen eighty one. I Guess was my first recording and we started
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  playing backyard parties and some clubs in this band called Conne hundred and we were
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  part of that whole scene. Obviously were tiny. We never put our record
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  out or anything. But by the time Pennywise started kind of in like eighty
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  six, we went through a couple of lineup changes early on before Jim and
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  Byron got in the band. And when they got in the band, we
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  were like, Okay, this is it. This is like the solid this
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  is this is go time. And the climate then was kind of like a
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  lot of bands had broken up, a lot of venues had closed because punk
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  rock had turned into this kind of violent. I mean, I don't really
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  see it as violent. It was mostly the cops come in trying to break
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  up shows, and they were coming in beating on people. So there was
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  a bunch of riots in those early days in the eighty three eighty four,
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  and they kind of closed the door. Clubs are like, we're not going
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  to deal with this, and a lot of bands were like, well,
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  we can't make a living doing punk rock, and so some bands changed their
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  style a little bit, like tried to get more commercial, and other bands
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  did side projects and guys left, and then I kind of found like was
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  like I just found this void. I was like, well, what am
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  I going to do on Friday Night? There's no show to go to,
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  Like, there's no punk rock. Like maybe once in a month you'd find
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  a good punk rock show to go to up in Hollywood or something. I'm
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  like, I'm going to do another band, and I want to start,
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  you know, playing shows and making my own fucking Friday night. Right.
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  So we started doing that and we got you know, setlers together, and
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  what we do go to backyard parties. We'd buy a keg of beer and
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  we'd get one hundred people there and it would go crazy, and then it
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  was two hundred people, then it was three hundred people, and then you
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  know, before you knew it, it was just like a legendary situation where
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  you know, you had like a lot of fights happening, but like just
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  complete mayhem in these backyards and front yards. And then eventually clubs when we
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  had a big enough following, but the scene was kind of dead. The
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  punk rock scene was kind of dead, and we were able to reinvigorate it
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  around like our city, and then that carried into like Hollywood and then you
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  started seeing like no effects, like we get a show with no effects,
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  and then Green Day we put Green Day open for us when they were like
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  literally nobody. The scene was the small like Offspring, you know, like
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  they were nobody, Like we took Offspring on tour with us. They were
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  our opening direct support. We took Link one two on tour with us.
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  We took like all one of the big The first big show we played in
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  La Corn was the opener and Offspring, Yeah, Corn and Offspring opening.
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  We sold out like the Shrine auditorium, like three thousand people. It was
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  like a huge deal for penny Wise. We had no songs in the radio,
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  we had nothing. It was just like our following and uh it was
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  like Offspring Corn, Uh Manic was it Manic Hispanic or something like that,
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  and uh it wasn't n Expanic with some other some other trollo band and uh
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  and penny Wise and like it was crazy. So like there was the scene
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  was dying when penny Wise first started, you know, coming around. And
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  then Bad Religion came out with Suffer, and I mean Bad Religion was Byron
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  Our drummer. I took him to his first punk show. It was the
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  Bad Religion album. They played Suffer in their entirety and the club they were
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  playing and held one hundred and ninety five people, and that was like that,
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  that's about what bands were doing one hundred ninety five people in those days.
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  So the scene was the scene was kind of dead, but it slowly
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  started to you know, come around and change, and we're just super grateful
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  to be a part of that, like resurgence, because that Suffer album I
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  think changed everything. You know, it really invigorated and motivated a lot of
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  people. And then a lot of the old bands started getting back together,
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  like the Adolescents or whatever, and you know, Circle Jerks, and all
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  of a sudden, bands that were barely playing were like, hey, people
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  are liking this again and there's a new scene happening. And then they kind
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  of exploded worldwide. So here we are today and grateful to be along for
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  that ride. Well that's an awesome story, bro, I thought, say,
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  they're running out of time, so I gotta have to skip to the
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  last question. RT. So Heavies have started up a couple of new Spotify
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  playlists to help people get acquainted with the band. So can you give us
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  three different playlists? Can you give us a penny Wise song for h So
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  give a song for a playlist to get the party started. A playlist to
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  save your marriage and a playlist to potentially end your marriage. Okay, let's
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  see get the party started. What is the song for that? I think
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  maybe fuck Authority is a good a good Uh no, wait, that would
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  be a good in the marriage song. We'll go with authority for the in
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  the marriage party started. How about bro Him? Even though it's kind of
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  a somber song. I think that's that's one where everybody will we'll get get
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  going pretty quick and kind of get their arms around each other and raise your
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  toast. So let's the good one and then get the marriage started? Was
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  that the other one? I got some save your marriage Dave of your marriage,
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  stand by me day by Yeah, it'll for Fletcher. Well, thanks
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  for you to brah you a pleasure to speak with you. You'll be out
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  here from December first the Good Things and your side shows from December fifth,
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  take care of shore. They might not see in a couple of weeks.
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  All right, dude, thank you, sorry about the short time.