Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Fire From Above With BILL STEVENSON From DESCENDENTS

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Fire From Above With BILL STEVENSON From DESCENDENTS · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  My name's Bill Stevenson. I'm a member of the Descendants and uh, we're
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  going to be coming to Australia really soon. And well, yeah, welcome
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  by thanks for joining us. Bill. It's the key for having me pleasure.
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  Brother. I'm trying to look at those pictures. I'm trying to look
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  at those pictures behind you to see who who they are? That collage?
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  Oh slip knot collage? Okay, Oh my god, I've got my kids
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  up there. Got the drum Skin song by Ulyie back there. Who's up?
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  Signed by Ugly Kidji Oh Ugly Cook Joe drum Head. Okay, that's
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  that's about it, sort of just a couple of little memorabilia faces to caper
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  and very nice, very cool bro. So as you say to the Senator's
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  return to Australia in October for a running show, starting in Alton on October
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  the eleventh, before hitting Brisbane, Wollongong, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne and
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  finishing in Turkey on October the nineteenth. Mate, So it's only a few
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  weeks away. You get packed and ready to go. Yeah yeah, yeah,
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  I got I get my checklist out and everything. It's funny It's funny.
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  The older you get, you you got to have a checklist before you
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  go on tour. It used to just be just I wouldn't even think about
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  it. Just you know, one one change of clothes and that's it.
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  Let's go. And the frailties of age, my friend, I don't know
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  if it's frailties. I think it's more like you get more, you get
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  more like specific hiack thing, and you got to bring some stuff with you
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  to make that way. So pride a little bit here, bro, but
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  always underwear and told trees, what the what are the one what's the one
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  thing that you always take with you when you go into all others? Well,
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  the best, the best thing is if we can take one of our
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  our tremendous coffee makers that make you just press the button and you get perfect
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  espresso, and then you know we have our our really dark bold coffee that
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  we like, our descendants coffee. That's a pretty important thing. Uh,
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  Let's see. Another really important thing would be I like to have a like
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  a noise canceling headphone and and a noise canceling earbuds. I like the noise
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  canceling headphones on the airplane so I can watch movies and not you know,
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  not have to just be part of the whole thing and kind of kind of
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  tune out. And then I like the noise canceling earbududs for in the bunk
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  on the bus, so that if people are partying, I can just still
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  be in the bunk, kind of like in tranquility. I'll actually tell you
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  probably know this thret of yourself, but it's a little trick. I'll learn
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  it from flying overseas, like flying to England, but you know on most
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  of those planes. Like speaking about watching the movies when you stop them,
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  like if you stop someone else's movie while they're watching it, it can't go
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  back to where it was. I have to actually watch the whole thing all
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  over again to get back to that point. So I've done that with a
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  few friends of mine. I sort of leaned over press stop when they're about
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  an hour into a movie and they've had to start all over again because you
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  can't go back to where you left it. Oh you okay, but you
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  mean if you're watching the movie that like the airline provides with their little screens,
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  no way, no. See. That's another thing on the checklist,
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  is I get I got my iPad and I loaded up with all my favorite
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  movies and TV shows and stuff. So then then I don't have to rely
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  on the internet or on anything. I have to rely on anybody to prevent
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  me from watching The Godfather Marathon or whatever it is. You've done this before,
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  Yeah, so's it's not a massive on of shows, but it's enough.
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  It's it's a lot of shows a long way from home. So what
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  do you do mentally and physically to prepare for something? I don't. I
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  don't think anything special. I just the older I get it to try to
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  try to be to watch what I watch, the things I eat, and
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  try to get get get some decent sleep each night. And it's really about
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  just practicing practice. We for like this, just going to practice of like
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  three days on day off, three days on, one day off, three
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  days on one day off, until we get to that level where everything's just
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  really really going smoothly. Is that a yeah? And uh, that's about
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  it. Yeah. I got to do my stretches. I like to do
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  all my stretches every day. I got. I guess you could technically you
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  could call it yoga, but that's sort of a too stuffy have a term
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  for me. It's just I just call it. I just call it my
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  stretches. It's just normal stuff. I think. I think you should do
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  it every when you wake up. I'll reach to the sky and touch touchdown
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  toes and all that just around, you know, moviems around you feel good.
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  I'll take that under advisement. So so for all that, Bry,
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  what can fans in the sky are actually expect from these Runner shows? What
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  do you got in store for us? Well? So, you know,
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  we're we're pretty excited because we just we're just getting out of a run of
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  like a three month run of just rotten luck, right where we had all
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  kinds of we had like forty four years worth of bad luck all in all
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  in three months. Oh you had? Oh well, it started with us
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  spending twenty six hours in the air port and not and failing to get to
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  a show. We fail to get our own wall. And then then three
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  days later we we kind of recovered from that and we thought, okay,
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  well now we got that bad luck out of the world. And three days
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  later we flew to Europe and we landed in Barcelona, and so what does
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  Milo do that night? He has a heart attack. So so we had
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  to take Milo to the hospital, and so we had to cancel that europe
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  tour and uh, but now we're back on it. Now we're back on
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  it. We played it. We played a show in Seattle a couple of
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  weeks ago and we killed it. Milo is feeling great. He yeah,
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  he he called me after he got home from the from from the hospital,
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  you know, he called me and when once he started singing again, and
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  he goes, yeah, yeah, this feels great. They put the plogged
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  one art and now it's much easier to sing than it has been for five
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  years. Yeah, yeah, he was really so he really do it at
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  this housearch it was good. We're gonna we're gonna have good fun. You've
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  actually toured Australia for the first time back in twenty ten. Mate bands couldn't
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  get enough, Like things sold out quick. It was just the demand was
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  huge. But what's actually changed with the band since that first visits and now,
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  let's see, since then, we've put out the ninth and Walnut album
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  that was maybe six seven years ago. Wait, I'm on crack. No,
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  don't listen to me, don't trust me, don't don't listen to anything.
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  I said, said no. We put hyper Hyperfum Sasonate album, and
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  then then a few years after that we put the ninth of Walnut album.
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  And we've been we've been to a lot of lot of shows. So I
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  guess we're more We're more kind of we're more kind of like a functioning band
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  now, and we then we were for most of our uh career, if
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  you want to call it that. Yeah, we we we we do a
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  lot. We do a lot each year. It's fun. I think it's
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  I think we're having more fun than we used to. I think me personally,
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  I don't think I knew how to have fun when I was younger.
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  I was too uptight to like self conselfs or I prove myself to people something
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  I don't know. I don't know. We have a lot of fun out
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  together. It's funny when up there we're playing. It sounds corny to say
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  it, but I mean for real, and I'm sitting there and I'm going
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  Wow. So when I'm on my deathbed, these three guys, it's gonna
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  be these three guys and and my family. That's who's gonna be there in
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  that room with me. You know, they're my they're my best friends in
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  the whole world. So it's just it's sort of cool, you know,
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  when you when you've got when you've been in a band with people for that
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  long. In the case of Milo, I think he and I it's been
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  what was a forty three years or something since he joined some crazy amount of
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  time, and then with Stephan Carl it's been, yeah, thirty seven years.
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  So it's just this is like a this is a really there's deep,
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  deep, well seasoned roots and friendship in this band. Well, the band's
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  got a host of fan favorites, including Marley goes to college. So I
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  don't want to cover up a good thing, Suburban You just said, I
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  don't want to cover up. That's what what is it? I don't want
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  to grow up? Yeah, we read by writing yeah, but I don't
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  want to cover up? Is like that would be if the band did a
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  bunch of sentence covers. You call it that, Well you get this,
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  or if it's you and you're a kid putting the putting the blanks off.
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  That's why the album perversion of the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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  yeah, you've got all those fand favorites. Anyway, that you've got to
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  play every night, right, But what are your personal favorites to play live?
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  Like you got you got different songs what everybody else likes. You know,
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  It's there's kind of two levels to it. There's the me as a
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  musician as a drummer kind of thing, you know, those those would be
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  certain songs. And then there's more like the ones that I know everyone's gonna
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  love and the audience and it's gonna be you know, heartwarming or make people
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  happy or make people laugh, and those those aren't always the same song.
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  Like I really like playing like Wienerschnitzel just because it's such a stupid little it's
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  like a not song song, and I just like the how how how just
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  weird it is. But then something more like say as a as a you
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  know, as a musician or whatever, I like playing some of the ones
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  that are they're just they just happened to be challenging for me to play on
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  drums, like in my hand or or you mentioned I want to grow up
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  songs quite difficult on drums or yeah, right, So I kind of look
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  at it in two different ways. There's ones that are the ones that like
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  you and the audience can kind of share in the you know, the social
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  aspect of it all. And then there's ones that just as a musician,
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  I liked some of the ones that they're just tough to get through and I
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  like playing those. I like that challenge of it. So go back to
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  the study of write Trip down Memory Lane. Like Sentence formed in Manhattan Beach,
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  California back in nineteen seventy seven. So what was the musical climate like
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  back then that gave birth to the band and where did it fit in initially?
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  Yeah, my easy answer is the Sentences is one third The Last and
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  one third Black Flag and one third the Alley Cats, and these were just
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  three bands that had a really big influence on us early on. Now,
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  of course we branched out from there, but the climate was it was too
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  much to be believed. You could go on any given night back then,
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  you could go and you could see I'm just trying to think of some of
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  these bills like you know, Fear the Germs, the Go gos X.
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  You could go see shows like that for five bucks and there'd be one hundred
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  and fifty two hundred people there that none that didn't have anywhere else to be
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  they're kind of I'm not saying it's not like they were all we were all
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  misfits or all outcasts, but it was people that that didn't quite they didn't
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  sit at the Palin show or or the LEDs up and show, so that
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  they were and I felt comfortable be yourself at those shows, and so it
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  was a It was life changing for me. And I know I speak for
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  the guys one hundred percent on this. It was life changing just to see
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  all that, all that music, the weirdos, the plugs, the black
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  flag, the Minutemen. It was just it was too too much to be
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  believed. I look back on it and I think, wow, I was
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  We were very lucky to be born in that little spot. At that time.
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  It's commonly referred to as being from the Southern Californian punk scene. Like
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  I'm here in Australia. We had no idea about the geographical significance I guess
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  of the music over there. So what's the Southern California scene as opposed to
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  other areas? Is it different? Do you mean other areas in the US,
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  And so bartically say the southern Southern Californian punk saying what's the significance of
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  that, I don't know, because I think it was. I think it
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  was happening all over just that was what Those were the shows we could drive
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  to or hitch a ride to, or get one of our big brothers to
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  take us too. But I mean in New York you had you had,
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  you know, even more, you had television and obviously the Ramones and Blondie,
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  I mean so and you know, you had bands all over the place.
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  You had Minor Threat in Washington, d C. And you had the
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  Necros, And in Detroit you had you had the Effigies and Naked Reygun and
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  and you know, and in the Midwest and you know, you had Hohoskerdoo
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  and the Replacements in Minneapolis. It was it was happening all over. Maybe
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  not all at exactly at the same time, but but it was a it
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  was a you know it it kept me from being a sad, lonely kid
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  with no friends. I was able to find family in the punk rock scene.
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  I was there to find like the home you spike it about Black Flag
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  if your Chimes probably like you actually joined them for a few years in the
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  early ninety nineties before eventually committing sol to Descendancy ninety five. But was that
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  a hard decision for you, like to choose between the three bands at the
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  time, It was a little confusing, Yeah, because at the time Descendants
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  were in a place where touring really wasn't a possibility. I mean, there
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  were multiple reasons, but the two biggest reasons were just we nobody knew who
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  we were. And also Tony our bass player. You know, he was
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  a postman and he would it would be all he could do to get off
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  a week or two every year, you know. So, so touring wasn't
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  really a possibility for the Sentence. And then Milo was kind of coming in
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  and out of it, focusing more on his college and his science interests,
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  so you know, a just Sentence was sort of relegated to a part time
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  thing, and so I it was it was sort of easy for me to
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  go to Black Flag knowing that it would be one hundred percent full time thing
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  and that I would actually be paying front of people who liked the band.
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  And plus Black I was certainly my favorite band at the time, you know,
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  that lineup with Chuck and Greg Robo, that was that was my that
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  still is probably my favorite band of all time. So for me to be
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  able to play with those guys was such an honor. I was just happy
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  to be there. Let's sort of ask you so many people, bro,
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  but you're definitely in a position to answer. So give me your top three
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  commandments of the punk scene. Oh, commandments of the punk scene. Let's
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  see. Oh oh boy, I could get myself into some trouble here.
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  Ah, I don't do that. They got to be shout knos, right,
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  not shouts whatever you want, rather than they're your commandments, so you
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  can do whatever you like. Okay, Oh oh, too much pressure.
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  Okay, let me think. Let me think. They should not expect the
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  band to stay at one play, make the same album and over again.
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  Thou should not expect a band to play for five dollars at the door in
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  twenty twenty three, because that means that you're paying each band member. Say
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  there's three bands, you're paying each band member once they get their cut of
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  that door. You're paying each band member about twenty cents to play for you.
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  Uh uh. When you when you come up on stage, when you're
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  stage diving, when you come up on stage, don't break that. Shall
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  not break the band's equipment so that they are not able to finish the song
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  a superla, oh dad, before we let you go, abom, gonna
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  put you on the spot a little bit more like We've got started doing up
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  three different Spotify playlists based on songs from people we speak to you, so
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  using songs can be any band you've ever played with, but songs from your
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  bands. Give me a song for a playlist to get the party started,
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  one for a playlist to save your marriage, and one for a playlist it
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  can potentially end your marriage? Oh uh, okay, get the already started.
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  I'm gonna go with the band audio karate. The song is called Jesus
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  is Alive and Well and living in Mexico. Uh two, did you say
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  to save your marriage? I can't think. I hope you've had a communication
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  right down there. I can't, I can't, I can't. I can't
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  again. Uh uh? How about how about propagandi and the song is called
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  without Love all right now? One that could potentially end a marriage? I
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  can see that right, smile da, I had dye my bride from the
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  murder dollars? Was my bridal waltz? Uh oh? I can't think,
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  uh h h, I don't know. How about fear I don't care about
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  you. That'll do it beautiful, all right. I never do those lists
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  things well. When it's under pressure you, I always choke, I pretty
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  much. I always choke like I'm the king joke. I actually respect the
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  fact that you gave everything a bit of thought there, mate. It didn't
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  just blurred something out, So I don't call it choke. It made I
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  call it respectful thinking. All right, wrote Well, thanks very much your
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  time. Bill's been absolutely pleasure speaking with you. The descend inside in Australia
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  October. So get yourself along to your showmate or pop along to the Brisbane
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  show and hopefully catch up and have a beer or coffee. Yes, it'll
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  be great. We're so excited to get over there and kick some butt.
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  See you in a couple of weeks. But don't forget your hancel noisier phones,
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  no no, I got them on the list here the checklist checklist is
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  a way again, all right, brother, enjoy the rest of you,
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  Dave, I'm man. We'll see in a couple of weeks. Okay,
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  thank you for your time. Thank you for your time, brother, enjoy
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  day. Bye bye