Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Embracing Your Fans With JOEY CAPE From LAGWAGON

Transcript

Embracing Your Fans With JOEY CAPE From LAGWAGON · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Yeah, all right. Well, I'm Joey Cape and play in a band
• 0:04
  called Lagwagon and we're coming there sometime really soon. I think, how's that
• 0:14
  for a plug? Plug shows? Concerts? Yeah? You know what's funny,
• 0:20
  It's like we been doing this so long that I often forget, but
• 0:25
  I think it's like what the end of October or something close enough? Brother,
• 0:31
  I'll fill you in on the details in just a second, but thanks
• 0:33
  for joining us. Yeah. Leg Wagon returned to Australia for the Fire Request
• 0:42
  Tour, starting in Wellington or October twenty fourth, before going through Auckland,
• 0:46
  Brisbane, Torque, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and finishing in Hobart on November
• 0:50
  the fifth. Mates, So she's not far away, bro, Are you
• 0:53
  getting excited yet? Hell? Yeah? I mean I love coming out there.
• 0:58
  It's that long ago that I was there. I did some solo shows
• 1:03
  and I did a tour with me first in the beginning game. He's this
• 1:06
  other band I played sometimes and uh, you know, two times in a
• 1:11
  year. Pretty great. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm trying
• 1:17
  to think, I mean, what is it going to be? Uh spring?
• 1:21
  What's the what am I looking in here? That's that's spring, right,
• 1:25
  it's just little little ways. Yeah. I like that because maybe sometimes
• 1:32
  I come there in January or February and it's fucking hot, you know,
• 1:37
  so it should be nice, right, that's a good time of the year
• 1:40
  to count. Be too bad, my friend. All right, as you
• 1:44
  say, you've been there, done that. Man, you've done a lot
• 1:46
  of touring. So what are three non essentials? So not including underwear and
• 1:51
  socks, things that you always travel with. Uh, that's tough because I'm
• 1:57
  a you know, I'm a light packer. I kind of do the whole
• 2:02
  after all these years. Sometimes I just go with a backpack, you know
• 2:06
  what I mean. I just it's just it's a hassle to carry too much
• 2:10
  stuff. I guess I could say nicorette, nicotine gum. You know,
• 2:15
  you can get it anywhere, but I always bring a boatload of that ship
• 2:21
  with me because I'm such a nicotine addict. What else that's about it?
• 2:29
  That's all I can think of. What's wrong with me? Oh maybe reading
• 2:31
  glasses. I'll often bring like ten pairs of glasses in case I lose them.
• 2:38
  Yeah, it's like totally dumb, you know, but I guess those
• 2:43
  are kind of the central I mean, if you can't see without it,
• 2:47
  I know what he's said, and me without nicotine not fun for anybody,
• 2:55
  right. If I can take all back back back on it, I don't
• 3:00
  have to wait at the other end for all the luggs to come off.
• 3:02
  I'm happy, yeah, yeah, and easily. Our trips out there are
• 3:07
  sort of brief. You know, it's only like a week or ten days
• 3:10
  or something, so you can get away with a lot of less. As
• 3:15
  the name of the tour, the Bar Request Tour suggests, mate bands are
• 3:19
  inventors to vote for what songs they wanted to hear, with online submissions closing
• 3:23
  on September the first. So did you actually did you get hips response to
• 3:25
  that? We did? And you know, it's funny because it's always a
• 3:32
  risk when you do these kinds of things. I don't know that lag Wagon's
• 3:36
  ever done this before, but I've done it quite a few times with solo
• 3:39
  shows, especially the streaming ones. And you know, it's risky because you
• 3:46
  never know, there might be a whole bunch of people that want that wont
• 3:50
  that you just can't do, you know what I mean, And the reality
• 3:54
  is that never happens. I mean, bands don't have hits, still have
• 4:01
  hits, you know what I mean, Like there's just popular songs and where
• 4:05
  there's about four of them that of course, like ninety percent of the request
• 4:10
  are always for these four songs, and it's like, oh man, all
• 4:14
  right, yeah, we'll do that for you guys. Just we don't do
• 4:18
  that in every single show we play, you know, So I haven't actually
• 4:26
  looked at the submissions yet or you know, like I just got the list
• 4:30
  last night. Our manager kind of put it together and edited it. So
• 4:35
  in theory, what you do is you do a different set for each town.
• 4:40
  Now we've run into a little bit of trouble with that. Are our
• 4:45
  great, big, giant guitar player is not able to join us because he's
• 4:50
  had some health issues and we just found out that he cannot come. So
• 4:56
  I'm I may not be I mean the right thing. He've been saying this,
• 5:00
  but I feel like, well, you know, you're you're the first
• 5:03
  to hear of it. Is all I'm saying. He's too sick, and
• 5:10
  which is sad, but because of that, we're gonna have to a filling
• 5:15
  so he's have his work cut out. And also it might you know,
• 5:19
  I don't know. I don't know what's going to have, but we're going
• 5:23
  to do our best to do what we said we would do. Luckily,
• 5:28
  like I said, most of the time the songs people request we all know.
• 5:31
  So yeah, let's hope there aren't any too many deep cuts, I
• 5:36
  bet I speaking of that, bro, like, are there any songs that
• 5:41
  you're actually hoping that they didn't pick? Like, is there anything in your
• 5:44
  repertoire that might be a bit too difficult to replicate life? For me as
• 5:48
  a singer, there's only really one record, and it's the very first album
• 5:53
  we made. When people request songs from that, I mean, I was
• 5:56
  like twenty two when I was singing. I mean naturally, as you get
• 6:00
  older, your voice gets lower and you rely more on falsetto and things like
• 6:06
  that. As a singer, you know, you can't when you're a kid,
• 6:10
  you can like drink a bottle of whiskey and scream all day long and
• 6:14
  the next day you wake up like, hey mom, you know you're you
• 6:18
  know, it's fucking unfair, man. So yeah, like some of the
• 6:25
  really old ones, it's physics, like you know by by, But yeah,
• 6:33
  other than that, I'm some of the guys band I think probably have
• 6:38
  songs that they would like, you know, that take a bit for them
• 6:42
  to get comfy with, you know. But I mean, for the most
• 6:46
  part, I have to say, other than that first record, I love
• 6:49
  this kind of stuff because you do tend to start falling back on a lot
• 6:56
  of songs that you just know people want to hear, and your set list
• 6:59
  over the year. Even if you have like forty to fifty songs that are
• 7:02
  rotating throughout the years, after a while, it's still forty or fifty of
• 7:06
  the same fucking songs, you know what I mean, So you start to
• 7:10
  get bored. So you know, you know, I'm always hoping that there's
• 7:14
  a couple in there that are like, Okay, who never played this song
• 7:17
  live? That's that's a challenge, like it should be challenging. Yeah,
• 7:23
  we'll see. You're also playing a show on the Schooner or Light of Hobby
• 7:27
  Crazy Sydney Bright Light. That sounds fun, sounds dangerous, but it sounds
• 7:30
  fun. We've done it before, a live rugon did it once, and
• 7:34
  I did it not too long ago with me first and the Gimmi Gummis and
• 7:39
  h I think it's one of those things that might be more fun for the
• 7:42
  people who attend, you know what I mean. I think for in the
• 7:46
  band, you know, the guy like downstairs and the little room, it's
• 7:50
  kind of like it's like where people put their jackets and extra kisses of beer
• 7:57
  and or you know what I mean, Like you just sitting in this little
• 8:01
  room downstairs and this boat, you know, unless you want to go upstairs
• 8:05
  and maybe take photos with people, like it depends on how you know.
• 8:09
  If you don't care, then you could be out there on the boat and
• 8:13
  just having a good time. But yeah, you kind of tend to sit
• 8:16
  down there for a while and then you come up and play. And I
• 8:20
  don't remember if it's like a shorter set. I don't know. I guess
• 8:26
  we do a lot of those boat shows around the world, and they sound
• 8:31
  more fun than they are, if that makes sense, you know what I
• 8:35
  mean. Like it's not like we're the ones getting drunk hanging out on the
• 8:39
  boat with all our mates, you know what I mean, Like we actually
• 8:41
  have to play, and so, yeah, it sounds cooler than it is.
• 8:46
  Sometimes I will say occasionally those cruises are at night, Like there's a
• 8:52
  New York one that we do in the States in New York City and that
• 8:56
  one goes, you know, through the water at night with all those city
• 9:00
  lights and everything, and that one's pretty pretty cool. But h it's going
• 9:07
  to be the best ever. Being really negative, it's gonna be right,
• 9:15
  Joey said, he hates it. That's what people are going to say to
• 9:18
  me. So you really hate this, so you don't even want to be
• 9:20
  here, That's what people want to hear. I'm not going to grab out
• 9:26
  and run with that. Look like hustle, I sound like a real INGRAYDT.
• 9:33
  Anyway, now, it's going to be the best. So besides from
• 9:37
  the fan fan pick songs, mate, Like, what else can we expect
• 9:41
  you guys on these run of shows? Uh? Well, the filling guitar
• 9:48
  player, as I said, who is I cannot am I going to announce
• 9:50
  that yet, because I'm sure there'll be a day that we sort of decided
• 9:54
  to announce that. Yeah, I don't know, I'm I mean lag Wagon,
• 10:01
  I mean yeah, lag Wagon. You know, I'm pretty sure the
• 10:11
  band lag Wagon is going to play. Yeah, it's funny. I mean,
• 10:15
  we've been not doing this for so long, I don't you know,
• 10:16
  it's hard for me to like you know, I guess yeah, we're playing
• 10:22
  these days, say that we go through sometimes and starting a little funny,
• 10:30
  you know. And the last couple of years the band has been consistently just
• 10:35
  iron mean, all cylinders, so minus one of the guys that messes with
• 10:41
  the chemistry a bit, but usually it works out anyway, and you know,
• 10:46
  yeah it should be fun right, Like you guys have been around for
• 10:52
  a while. You start in California back in nineteen eighty nine, So what
• 10:56
  was a musical climate like back then that gave birth to Where did you fit?
• 11:01
  Initially? It was strange because California, I mean, all of us
• 11:05
  are old enough that we sort of come from the California punk scene before that
• 11:11
  and some of the metal bands. I mean, we all grew up listening
• 11:16
  to Black Sabbath and stuff like that and early metal, you know, all
• 11:20
  the new wave of Burthers having metal stuff. But then in the eighties and
• 11:26
  late seventies as well, there was all this punk rock in California had a
• 11:30
  great punk scene, especially a southern cal well northern cal too, with Dead
• 11:33
  Kennedy's and stuff. So I think we all kind of came from both of
• 11:37
  those things and this all town bands. A town called Barbara is really leader
• 11:46
  this bird. You know, it's like everybody played with everybody. You know
• 11:50
  at some point if you were in a band and you were in the punk
• 11:52
  scene or the metal scene here or both, you probably played with every guy,
• 11:58
  you know what I mean, kind of incestual that way. You know,
• 12:01
  it was like it's kind of fucked up. So but but the late
• 12:07
  nineties, you know, when the band when our bands that there were like
• 12:13
  a couple bands that ended up fusing to become what was leftag writing, and
• 12:16
  the scene that we were in was sort of post the punk scene, you
• 12:20
  know what I mean, because it was dying out and there were all these
• 12:22
  like crossover bands starting up, so we were kind of I feel like there
• 12:28
  was a little bit of a no man's land, a little bit of middle
• 12:31
  ground between the our scene and the early part scene in California where bands were
• 12:37
  like a tiny bit lost. You know, it was a little bit like,
• 12:41
  I don't know, it's like we're all old enough, we're all in
• 12:45
  bands from before, but we're in this new skate punk scene kind of thing.
• 12:52
  So the way I remember it is just feeling a little bit like with
• 12:56
  the older guys that I knew they're gonna eat up, you know what I
• 13:03
  mean, We're not really pumped, you know that kind of and it was
• 13:07
  like, funk, I don't want to be really punk. We just want
• 13:09
  to make the music we want to make. And then we were just not
• 13:13
  lucky if you ask me. I mean, it was just one of those
• 13:16
  things where the whole bunch of other bands doing the same thing at the same
• 13:18
  time, and we made friends with them all we started touring and it just
• 13:22
  kind of came together and then our scene was great. You know, it
• 13:28
  was great. We were just very lucky to be a part of a nice
• 13:33
  second movement, you know, pretty cool. Before we kick out, mad,
• 13:37
  I gotta ask about your ship mate. I've been checking it out.
• 13:41
  Is that is that your actual dog or is it this was my dog Mochi,
• 13:46
  who passed away a couple of months ago. Beautiful ship Yeah, I
• 13:52
  uh, my daughter. You know, I was pretty torn up when I
• 13:58
  lost Mochie. I mean she had her for sixteen years and now and she
• 14:01
  got cancer and it was it was brutal. And my daughter made this shirt
• 14:05
  for me, like, like, what's cooler than merchandise for your dog?
• 14:09
  You know what? I mean like it's I don't know that is. I
• 14:13
  love the look on his face. They're like looks like he's posing, like
• 14:16
  he's just gone. Yeah, yeah, just like this noble beautiful guy.
• 14:24
  Yeah she was. She was very special. I don't know they all are.
• 14:28
  Yeah, they are. To miserations bro, Yeah, thanks man,
• 14:33
  lag We're going to abandoned always. You've always played on your own chams,
• 14:37
  mate. You've sort of shunned mainstream success in exchange for like your self belief
• 14:41
  in doing what you want to do, bro, which it's always still been
• 14:45
  successful for you guys. But have you ever actually been tempted to sort of
• 14:48
  change your evolve over the years and go for that more massive ill or you're
• 14:52
  happy just doing what you're doing. Definitely, I guess the question is what
• 14:58
  does evil should look like? You know, when you're in the driver's seat
• 15:05
  or writing songs or anybody in the bend, you know, the creative side
• 15:09
  of it, it's always well, let's do what we like. And then
• 15:13
  the real question is do the counterparts to these five people start sounding differently?
• 15:20
  Sure? Just kind of where happens actually, and there's only times where if
• 15:28
  a Fennis exists long if I think any kind of art, there's there's definitely
• 15:33
  times where you cheese, we're not even really evolving enough. And then there's
• 15:37
  other times like, oh boy, is anybody even gonna like this? Because
• 15:41
  this is something different? And then I think, with time and distance,
• 15:46
  you look back and go, jeez, it's really barely different. You know,
• 15:50
  we're evolving very slowly as a group. I don't know those kinds of
• 15:56
  things, you know, those those sort of worries he has come and go.
• 16:00
  And I think the more time that you spend doing it, the more
• 16:03
  you just get comfortable with the idea. As long as everybody's happy, there
• 16:07
  must be collectively something good going on, and that's really all that matters.
• 16:12
  Yeah, because people are going to react however they react to your music,
• 16:18
  you can't control that at all. So it's kind of a fool's errand too,
• 16:22
  I don't really understand dans that are pretty you know, operate under a
• 16:26
  prediction. You know, they're trying to like predict the market, like they're
• 16:32
  selling something. It's kind of it's it almost doesn't work. You know,
• 16:37
  you just got to do your own thing and if happy with it and regardless
• 16:41
  of what happens. But there's been a few times it was a little like
• 16:47
  radical evolution, you know, on my behalf. And what I did was,
• 16:52
  I'll just give you an example. We made an album called Let's Talk
• 16:55
  About Feelings, and there's a song called owen MENI on that a prayer for
• 17:00
  me. No, it just own medi It was from the book was called
• 17:03
  a paraphone media. It was based on and I. It had cello and
• 17:07
  piano and all this stuff. And right around the same time I was working
• 17:11
  with these guys that would later become Bad Astronaut, this other band I had,
• 17:15
  and I brought this to the band and some of the Jews in the
• 17:19
  band were like, what are you doing? Man? Like, like,
• 17:22
  you know, they left the studio track their parts, they come back in.
• 17:26
  I got like a cello player, I got some piano guy playing,
• 17:30
  and everybody in the band's like, whoa wait, you know. So that
• 17:34
  was like the one tune. And then I went, Okay, that's not
• 17:38
  really fair. I can't just like run with this, you know thing.
• 17:42
  So I formed this other thing. And sometimes like that sort of evolution can
• 17:48
  be done in a different project. There was a way that I, I
• 17:52
  think forever after that looked at those things. You know, I just formed
• 17:55
  different projects so that way. You know, like I said to me,
• 18:00
  the only thing that matters is everyone has happened. Yeah, very diplomatic,
• 18:07
  brother, Very diplomatic. Yeah, you try. You know, I don't
• 18:15
  know. I just wonder if it's not a question to many people, bro,
• 18:17
  but you've been going for the thirty years, so you definitely qualified answer
• 18:21
  it. So what were your top three commandments of punk rocky? Oh?
• 18:26
  Boy? Well, you know, I think it's changed so so much over
• 18:33
  the years, but everybody identifies with different things when it comes to the words
• 18:38
  punk rock. You know, it's different for people ge a lot, you
• 18:42
  know, different parts of the world, different times, different eras. But
• 18:49
  it's a very personal experience, right, So for me, I think initially
• 18:53
  what it was about, and it feels like it really isn't the same thing
• 18:59
  these days or or even for the past twenty years. But it was about
• 19:03
  being an individual, being yourself, you know, being true to what it
• 19:10
  was that you wanted and with really no exceptions, just being self. Sorry,
• 19:19
  I don't know. I think I think it's ust so I can say
• 19:23
  that word, but but I apologize. Yeah, So, you know,
• 19:33
  I think it's about just kind of being true to yourself, and then there
• 19:40
  sort of should be some feeling of going against the grain, you know,
• 19:48
  for it to qualify, I suppose. But that thing is different for everyone,
• 19:52
  you know. I don't know, things have changed so much since I
• 19:57
  was a kid. I mean when I was fifteen and I was just getting
• 20:02
  into the punk scene. Here we're talking like nineteen eighty or something. I
• 20:07
  mean, none of that really exists anymore, you know. Yeah. Also,
• 20:15
  the early bands that I was in were pretty stupid. I love your
• 20:22
  kid, Yeah, chops, they all know it, tops, they I'll
• 20:27
  show you know, I mean, I mean, I don't even I can
• 20:30
  just start thinking about these songs that I was just a drummer, you know,
• 20:36
  I was this little kid playing drums in like punk rock bands. Terrible.
• 20:41
  Oh shit, before we let you go, man, have you started
• 20:45
  up three new Spotify lists curated by people like yourself? So using your own
• 20:49
  songs. Give me a song for a playlist to get the party started,
• 20:53
  one for a playlist to save your marriage, and one for a playlist that
• 20:57
  could end you your marriage. Oh god, that's tough, man, and
• 21:04
  you're talking. They have to be lagwagon songs or songs that are involved in
• 21:08
  that you've involved in. Okay, Uh, For some reason, I immediately
• 21:18
  go to the infidelity thing. And I've got one song called Possession that was
• 21:25
  on an album called let Me Know When You give Up. So that's a
• 21:29
  solo song. But that song is about people not treating their partner can possess
• 21:36
  and an op relation that doesn't most people to write. Way. I'm sure
• 21:42
  it was being a hippie when I wrote that song. Not sure I feel
• 21:49
  about it now. The other one would be another solo song I wrote called
• 21:52
  who We've Become, which is probably the only love song I've ever written.
• 21:56
  It's really like, you know, it's really just about finding your person,
• 22:03
  you know. And it was a song I wrote for my ex wife.
• 22:07
  I mean, I don't tell anybody. Man. Yeah, so you might
• 22:17
  know, want to listen to it because ex wife? Yeah, so that
• 22:21
  one didn't work. Jeez. I don't know what was the first one?
• 22:25
  Oh, getting the Party started? Oh boy? Well, geez, lag
• 22:30
  Wagon has lots of songs like that. Why can't I think of one?
• 22:38
  You know, I'll say one thing real quick. At some point in my
• 22:44
  life I realized a lot of the songs I write are pretty sad. You
• 22:48
  know, I don't know what it is about music that I find that I
• 22:52
  connect soon to the dark subject matter, you know what I mean. I
• 23:00
  write a lot about friends that I've lost and they're going wrong, you know,
• 23:06
  most about loss, and boy do I have a lot of songs about
• 23:10
  loss, and so those are not party songs because the big joke is always
• 23:18
  winding your sale is probably the saddest song. According to people that listen to
• 23:23
  the bands that I've been in. I hear that a lot like that is
• 23:27
  the saddest song you ever wrote. So sometimes we say, yeah, put
• 23:32
  that one on. It's a real party starter. Oh, I don't know,
• 23:37
  let's see maybe falling apart. It's kind of funny. That's on Blaze.
• 23:44
  That's a Lagwagon song. What else? Oh to all my friends,
• 23:49
  to all my friends there you go. That one is just an absolute party
• 23:53
  song. It's literally stealing the line from Lukowski, you know, one of
• 24:00
  my fans here. Yeah, cheers, you know, very good. Yeah,
• 24:04
  that's the one. That's one. That's the one. All right,
• 24:07
  Joe, Well, thanks very much for your time today, Bro, I'm
• 24:08
  played. I got out a bit early for that lag Wagon buy request.
• 24:11
  Tore kicks off on October twenty fourth. I shall be along to the Brisbane
• 24:15
  show, so I'll wait at you from the crowd, all right, Chris,
• 24:18
  Thanks man.