Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Airing Your Dirty Laundry With BILLY JEANS From MEAN JEANS

Transcript

Airing Your Dirty Laundry With BILLY JEANS From MEAN JEANS · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:17
  My name is Christian, but I pretend my name is Billy Jeans on the
• 0:21
  Mean Jeans Records. I play in Mean Jeans, who are a us H
• 0:27
  garage punk pop punk band out of Portland, Oregon, and we've been on
• 0:33
  tour in Australia supporting the Chats and doing some headline shows of our own for
• 0:39
  the past couple of weeks and on the final week of it right now,
• 0:43
  and we've got we're supporting a new record we've got out on Fat Records that's
• 0:49
  called Blasted. And yeah, the record came out the day of the first
• 0:53
  show of the Australian tour, so this is this is our first, our
• 0:57
  first Blasted tour. Very nice, my thanks for joining us today, Billy.
• 1:03
  Yeah. Yeah, So, as you said, me and James released
• 1:07
  your latest album, Blasted, back on February the night. Like I know,
• 1:10
  it's only been in a couple of weeks. Might, but how's the
• 1:11
  early reception being for it? Awesome? Yeah, I felt good about it.
• 1:19
  You know, I'm judging primarily from social media and whatnot, but and
• 1:26
  and buddies sending text messages and we but not. I saw a bunch of
• 1:32
  reviews that the label sent that were all in German, so I don't even
• 1:34
  know what you said, but yeah, it's it's been a good reception.
• 1:40
  And I think while we were making this record, I could tell that it
• 1:46
  had a little more cohesion or more just true to what mean Jeans is supposed
• 1:53
  to be about at the core than than perhaps one or two others we had
• 1:57
  made. So I feel good about it. Hey, cool, So I
• 2:01
  can to tell us a bit more about the album from a musical point of
• 2:05
  view, and what are you gone forward it? Sure well, we never
• 2:09
  have and never will stray from about a four power chord chord progression structure has
• 2:16
  pretty much keep it ramoone simple and then kind of see what we can sprinkle
• 2:23
  on top of there. But this one we had the band wasn't on hiatus
• 2:31
  per se, but we actually were living in three different cities when COVID struck,
• 2:38
  And I mean we'd been touring in the US up until the end of
• 2:42
  February twenty twenty, so it was just like a week before the pandemic occurred,
• 2:47
  and we had a support tour with the Chats on the books, so
• 2:53
  we had never met these guys that got postponed and then postponed and then postponed
• 2:58
  and rescheduled. So I spent most of of the pandemic anticipating a tour that
• 3:06
  you know, all the booking agents had to just keep booking stuff even though
• 3:09
  no one knew when it would make sense to be doing so. So ultimately
• 3:14
  it actually took two years, for over two years for the tour happened,
• 3:20
  during which time Mean Jenes were not really functional. So the stuff I was
• 3:24
  writing, I actually just put out a solo record called Funky Punks in Space,
• 3:30
  but mostly because I knew there was no chance of these songs seeing they
• 3:37
  with mean jeans. So then we hadn't played a gig in two years,
• 3:43
  and then we did a six week US tour with the Chats, and then
• 3:46
  they took us to Australia a couple months later, and I think after that,
• 3:51
  after about ten weeks of touring, we like hopped off the stage and
• 3:53
  we're like, okay, that was really fun. We got to bang out
• 3:57
  another album, so so we kind of just all got together and again not
• 4:02
  living in the same city, we kind of the same process as we usually
• 4:09
  do, but I write some songs and our drummer Houndy write some songs on
• 4:13
  our own and then we all get together and bang them out, So it
• 4:18
  was I guess all I'm saying is that musically it was inspired by the live
• 4:25
  show a lot, and kind of realizing how much fun it is to play
• 4:29
  in this band and to be together because we're all best buddies and kind of
• 4:35
  after a long time of wondering what to do with ourselves, getting together and
• 4:42
  gett into rock. And we usually perform our songs about twice as fast as
• 4:46
  they are on the records, So I think this album is also quite fast
• 4:49
  in a way that just hopefully has somewhat of a live feel to it,
• 4:56
  or the same feel that the live Mean Gene show does. The press all
• 5:00
  as cool as we'd a wonderful and wacky album. Would you agree with that,
• 5:03
  Stigmon, Wonderful not wonderful is probably not the word I would uose,
• 5:10
  but it's it's it's more, you know, try to find some balance between
• 5:16
  like fun and funny and not serious. But sincere, so yeah, we
• 5:25
  always try to stay on the other side of the line of serious because it's
• 5:30
  a it's a project that's meant, you know, to be fun and for
• 5:34
  fun, and I always hope that it's fun to go s the mean jeans,
• 5:39
  or that you put a record on when you want to have some fun.
• 5:43
  So there's there's a goofiness to it. I don't know how weird it
• 5:48
  is. It's not weird to me, but maybe we're a bunch of weirdos,
• 5:54
  so I can't help it. The fifteen songs on the alt, so
• 6:00
  which one is you all personal favorite? You know, it always happens that
• 6:05
  you record a bunch of songs and think that it will be obvious which one
• 6:12
  or two are like the singles, and like these are clearly the best ones,
• 6:15
  and which one or two are crap and you should just scrap them.
• 6:18
  But then you kind of just spend too much time like mixing them and you
• 6:24
  know, writing them, practicing and performing and mixing them. Not that we
• 6:27
  practice very much or spent very much time recording it, but I personally lose
• 6:32
  I personally lose all perspective on that. So I think for me, there's
• 6:38
  a song called Taco Bell Parking Lot that is just just just it's a song
• 6:46
  that I wrote, but it kind of strikes a chord with me most,
• 6:49
  so that'd probably be the one that I chose. It's just a song about
• 6:56
  sitting in a car and a Taco Bell parking lot, you know, sifting
• 7:00
  through the dirty rappers and and remembering a relationship. I guess. But yeah,
• 7:05
  my answer is going to be Taco Bell parking lot. On that note,
• 7:14
  someone told me which I was not aware of, that I believe it's
• 7:18
  Friendzile Rom the Australian band has a song called uh Hungry Jack's Car Park.
• 7:31
  Oh perhaps music and I've never heard that one. Okay, well, well
• 7:36
  this is what I was told. I was like, which meant it means
• 7:41
  almost no nothing to me about you know, we don't call it a park,
• 7:44
  a car park, We call it a parking lot, don't. Is
• 7:46
  it called Hungry Jacks? Yeah, we go to Hungry Jackson. Yeah,
• 7:49
  basing that up. Is it called called Hungry Jacts? Then that's that's called
• 7:55
  Burger king in in the US, which is not too far of a from
• 8:00
  Taco Bell. So I just thought it was funny that there's some similar line
• 8:05
  of similar inspiration between the two artists, but without having known that that song
• 8:11
  existed. You have a connection, mane, Yeah, there it is.
• 8:18
  You're not far off completing the bargain bin chore of Australia with the Chats,
• 8:22
  the Prize and the Unknown. So as it occurred to you that you're the
• 8:26
  only non that band on the line up made everyone else is a that No,
• 8:33
  that had not occurred to me. But you know, a lot of
• 8:35
  them are kind of interchangeable. You could say the mean jeans if you want.
• 8:39
  I don't even know why I noticed it. I was just writing it
• 8:41
  all down. Yes, and when these guys are ripped off, they're not
• 8:45
  a da Yeah, I think Uh. I think we never maybe really decided
• 8:50
  if there's a the or not, kind of like the Oblivions or something.
• 8:54
  I don't I think they're just called Oblivions, but everyone says the Oblivions.
• 8:58
  I don't know. It was running a silent shall we? Yeah? So
• 9:03
  how's it toll being gone sci Fi? Does it be gone off? Yeah?
• 9:07
  It's It's been awesome and we're we're accustomed. This is our third tour
• 9:11
  with the Chats, so I think that's really not even a a business decision.
• 9:18
  I think we just got along quite well and have a good vibe together.
• 9:24
  So supporting the Chats is always super fun because you know they're really not
• 9:28
  an underground band, whereas me and Jean's the Unknowns the Prize, you know,
• 9:33
  we're we're in some form of underground, I would say, Whereas you
• 9:41
  know, they're reaching a really wide audience, and so you see everyone throughout
• 9:48
  the US. Also, you see everybody from eight year old who have Chat's
• 9:54
  T shirts and know every word to every song, which is insane, to
• 9:58
  like the old guar of garage punk, you know, fifteen sixty year old
• 10:03
  guys who are usually kind of like the gatekeepers. But the Chats past their
• 10:07
  tests also, so it's just a really wide range. But also I think
• 10:11
  people who come to see the Chats want to just have fun, and we
• 10:16
  like to have fun while we're playing, and that's kind of the whole point
• 10:20
  of the band. So it's a good match and we really like supporting them.
• 10:24
  And then headline shows have been fun also. And previously when we toured
• 10:31
  Australia, it was kind of a like fly to each city and play a
• 10:35
  gig deal, whereas this one has been all driving and kind of going down
• 10:39
  the coast, and we played a bunch of a bunch of beach towns that
• 10:43
  honestly I'd never heard of in my life, you know, Byron Bay and
• 10:50
  got Osford and Coffs Harbor, but you know people, so I didn't know
• 10:56
  what to expect if those are just like really small towns or whatnot. But
• 10:58
  again, because it's the Chats, they fill the room and then we get
• 11:03
  to dive in the ocean afterwards. Yautiful, yautful, and then the show's
• 11:07
  you got left prior are they headlining shows or are they with the Chats.
• 11:13
  The remaining shows are two to show supporting Chats in Frankton and at Northcote Theater,
• 11:24
  and then we're doing our own show at the Tote here in Melbourne where
• 11:28
  I am right now, and I'm told it's a legendary spot, so I'm
• 11:33
  excited. Classic. Yeah, you'll have a ball. Yeah yeah. It
• 11:37
  was described to me as CBGB's of we've we've toured with some other Australian bands
• 11:45
  and so we're all friends on Instagram and whatnot. And I've seen over the
• 11:50
  over the past year maybe two years, a bunch of stuff about saving the
• 11:52
  Tote and seemed like it was a successful thing, and I never really knew
• 11:56
  what that was. But I'm honored to get to go rock there. Fantastic
• 12:00
  man, all right, well, thanks very much for your time today,
• 12:01
  Brad. The album blasted out now. The tour is still got a couple
• 12:05
  of Victorian shows to go, so check out on the website if you want
• 12:09
  some tickets. Thanks Chris, thank you love Seen Sunny Funny, What don't
• 12:33
  you come? Alstens Wet? But where's Beau? So it's as this guy
• 13:05
  that's that one? A fox hut by