About two years ago, I got to interview Jeff Rosenstock while sitting on a curb Downtown after he played at 11th Street Records. This weekend, Jeff’s back in Las Vegas to play Emerge Impact + Music Fest, playing the Mat Franco Theatre on April 7, 2018. Despite his unbelievably hectic schedule, coupled with the fact that I’m not even in the country (thank god for technology- but mostly thank you to Jeff, Talia Miller, Mike Henry, and our very own Emily Matview for helping me actually do this thing!), I was lucky enough to interview Jeff Rosenstock again!
Disclaimer: this interview was done over email, so apologies to everyone for the lack of follow-up questions and dumb comments on my part!
What’s it like going from playing largely DIY shows to playing a bunch of festivals? Even now, you’re still playing diy shows and house shows.
They’re different things of course and they both have their benefits. My heart definitely feels at home in DIY spaces, always has since I was young. A lot of the time it feels like a place that was made by people who just love music so much that they couldn’t see their town NOT have a place for bands without mainstream acceptance to play. I feel like the bands I like are often from that world, I feel like you often find these pop nuggets underneath sometimes harsh sounds and it usually feels pretty honest.
That said, festivals are nice because we get to play with bands we don’t usually cross paths with. Also they pay quite well, and with my schedule getting weird this year thanks to working full-time-ish on composing music for a cartoon, it gives us the opportunity to come to a place like Las Vegas and play, whereas we would usually play a DIY show here and that shit wouldn’t pay for flights obviously. There’s also the added benefit of playing a big stage (which we all like, cause we like running around a lot) often OUTSIDE!!! and having a place for all of our keyboards… just in general the opportunity to make a different kind of big sound. I feel lucky to be able to bounce back and forth between different worlds. I’ll always have a chip on my shoulder for the many years in Bomb the Music Industry! where promoters, venues, DIY spaces, whoever, wouldn’t respond to my e-mails trying to book a show in their city, so quite honestly I’m always thankful anyone wants us to play anywhere.
Emerge is this really interesting, really refreshing idea of bringing together musicians, artists, speakers, etc who the fest-producers feel are making big impacts on the world (or who are going to in the future). And it’s very geared towards college students, as far as I know (University of Las Vegas, Nevada students each get a free ticket, if I recall correctly). Other festivals tend to cater to younger/older crowds, or more niche audiences, etc. How do you think the vibe of Emerge will differ from other festivals?
I have no idea, but I think the lineup on our show is fuckin’ sick. Never seen Downtown Boys, been wanting to for years but always been on tour when they’ve played.
Going along with the festival theme, I’ve got some more personal (aka self-serving) questions from the Punks in Vegas staff:
a. Are you ever going to play Punk Rock Bowling? Would you like to?
b. What is the likelihood of you playing ‘Teenager’ at Sasquatch and how do I increase that likelihood?
a. I don’t know if they even do all ages stuff for Punk Rock Bowling which is generally a deal breaker for me.
b. The likelihood is very low! Laura Stevenson is gonna be playing with us and she already has to wrap her head around like 25 new songs!! She rocks!!!
What do you think of how popular you’ve become? For example, the Jeff Rosenstock Post-Posting group on Facebook has over 1 thousand people in it, and there’s even an offshoot page for LGBTQ+ fans of yours. Some of my friends and I even get targeted “Jeff Rosenstock” ads on our phones now.
a. Not sure if you’ve ever seen what exactly goes on in the Post-posting group, but there’s a bit of “hero-worship” that goes on sometimes- which I’m sure you’ve experienced on social media, in person at shows, etc. Does that kind of thing ever weird you out?
It feels nice that people care and it’s especially nice to see strong support from the LGBTQ+ community. Sometimes it’s a challenge for me though, because I don’t view myself as a person up on a pedestal. I’m still the high school band geek, the drunk mistake making twenty-year-old and the thirty-year-old who gave up on all of this. I’m a person who’s in a shitty mood sometimes. I’m a person who has kinda traversed the ups and downs of social anxiety and depression since I was a kid. So when people talk to me like I’m hot shit, I try to just be a normal person because that’s what I’ve always wanted to feel like. It’s taken all long to finally be okay with all those different parts of me, to understand that I can be a normal person even though I have my shit. And yeah, when things can’t go down like that, it feels weird because I don’t feel like myself and I’m just imitating what I think I should be acting like or some shit… but it’s cool. I’m a fan of bands too, and I’m a fan of our fans. I know it’s hard to talk to strangers when you know so much about each other already. I don’t think I’ve learned how to adjust to it all yet, and my fifteen minutes will likely be up by the time I do.
It seems like you need a lot of alone time to write music, and just alone time in general… How do you and Christine do the whole “you locking yourself away in the mountains to write/record music” thing? Is it this kind of pseudo-long-distance thing or something else entirely?
I mean, I wasn’t gone for super long. Compared to the amount of touring that I used to do, that’s not really a big deal and at least I’m not makin’ a racket and being a fucking weirdo in the apartment.
How does the songwriting process for Craig of the Creek differ from writing stuff for yourself? With CotC there’s already a plot, characters, etc. At what point do you come in and write music for each episode?
COTC feels a lot like rediscovering writing for me and at its best it feels like being part of magic. It’s such a good show, it’s so funny and everyone there is all really supportive of the music that I make. Once I started getting the hang of things (in my opinion, “Too Many Treasures”), they haven’t tried to steer me too hard in any direction which is awesome. I get so many fun new challenges every episode.
It works like this: Ben [Levin] and I will talk on the phone, I’ll usually ask a general vibe question, because we both want the show to feel cinematic and I think having a whole feeling for the episode brings that together. Then we watch the thing and he’s like “the music should go here ‘cause these people feel like this.” And the longer the show goes on, the more I understand the characters and their individual languages and the language of the creek as a whole. As a music dork I really like diving into that and I’m really proud of a lot of the stuff I’ve done, there’s a lot of freedom to working really hard on something but not being front and center. Ben fucking saw Bomb! play a house show in 2007 and that’s what got me the gig for the pilot, and I feel really lucky that I not only got picked up to do the show but that it turned out to be something that I feel is truly special. Big fan.
Here’s a (hopefully!) more fun one: You’ve gotten so busy, especially over the past year or so, with all of your different projects going on. What are some of your favorite ways to relax and unwind?
I don’t do that a lot. Spending time with my tourmates on tour is really special, nights off where we can go to a bar or a movie or get dinner or something. Hanging with my nieces and nephew when I get the chance. I’ve kinda lost track of how to relax and unwind at home, but usually it involves getting dinner/seeing a movie/hanging out with Christine or meeting up with some friends. I watch a lot of basketball and listen to a lot of records but that shit kinda borders on obsession at this point so I don’t know if it counts as relaxing! Any chance I get to go a beach and just lay down on the sand for a while is my shit. I also read graphic novels and manga more than I expected I would at this age, an odd time to get into that.
I was a rude kid in high school (does that part of you ever really go away, though?), so I’ve gotta ask: top 3 ska bands of all time?
Instinct response:
1. The Specials
2. Operation Ivy
3. Peak-era Suicide Machines/Peak-era Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Any recommendations for smaller/DIY bands still playing little gigs?
My recommendation for smaller bands is that music is fun, so be nice to everyone as best as you can and there’s no point in taking yourself too seriously, so don’t.
As someone who goes to university in Reno, I was super excited to see that POST-‘s cover was a photo of the Circus Circus in Reno. Has Circus Circus contacted you about that, and are you worried about copyright issues?
Yo, shut up.
How does your songwriting for Antarctigo Vespucci differ from writing for “Jeff Rosenstock”? Especially since Chris Farren does most of the main vocals. How about your process for writing with the Bruce Lee Band or helping bands write when you produce records?
a. Maybe you aren’t allowed to comment on it just yet, but can we expect that new Antarctigo Vespucci record this year?
Chris sends me about forty demos, I listen to and pick out a few songs I like and he picks out some songs he thinks are standouts and then we talk about how those songs should feel and sometimes we’ll talk out lyrics together if he feels stuck or if I feel like something can be expressed better. He’s a melody machine and we just work really well together creatively. I think we save each other from our worst impulses and encourage each other to be as freaky as we want. I was surprised that this ended up being a real thing, and I think Chris was too. It kinda feels like we were both just daring each other to make a record together on Twitter when we didn’t know each other super well and I didn’t expect so many records I love so much to have come out of it. We’ll have a record out this year, I start mixing that when we get home from Vegas.
Producing changes from record to record, but I feel like a lot of the strength in my writing is in turning a song into its best self and sequencing a record so it feels like a full piece, hopefully like a living creature. My own songs often end up pretty far away from the initial idea as I think about them and discover them. So with producing, someone else has that initial idea and I get to work with those friends old and new to find the best place that song can end up.
I hope this isn’t too personal or anything, I’m sure you’re used to your privacy being invaded but… What did you find were the best ways to take care of yourself, you know, when you are going through bouts of depression or anxiety and just want to die, and/or are dealing with substance abuse like drinking or drugs? Obviously different things do and don’t work for different people, but I know so many people dealing with these types of things who are also huge fans of yours and I think it would be nice to get your personal perspective on it.
I don’t know. I think my personal perspective generally doesn’t mean shit to anyone going through anything like that, [since] comparatively speaking my stuff is likely mild and I don’t know anyone else’s life. I’m proud that I made it this far and I feel like through a lot of small steps I’ve slowly become less destructive than I used to be in a lot of ways, and probably just became destructive in different ways. It kinda started with drinking more water. Who the fuck knows.
This one’s a bit of a rant, but it’s also the last question! Some people have, you know, 2, 3, 4 copies of like, Worry or We Cool? or even Get Warmer. I guess to me it’s like… What’s the point of having records if you’re not gonna listen to them? You know, like not to be on a fuckin punk moral high horse or anything, but to me that seems to be the opposite of Bomb [the Music Industry!], one of your old projects, and punk in general. I guess that’s a slippery slope because technically Bomb was about not having merch or making money at all, right? But if we’re gonna play the “who’s more punk” game, it’s not “punk” of me to judge how people enjoy music, right? But anyway… How do you feel about people purchasing multiple copies of the same record on vinyl?
a. Side question: I know you’ve been asked about this before, and have said that people shouldn’t buy your records for how much people are selling them for on like Discogs- you know, sometimes over $100- but people still do so. That said: Why are so many of your records out of print? I definitely don’t know anything about making vinyl, but it seems like you could just have someone (cough cough Mike Park? cough cough) press your records indefinitely.
I think people who collect records like collecting records and if it makes them happy then I’m stoked. Even though I don’t buy multiple copies of stuff myself and I’m usually a “hmmmm that used Black Sabbath record costs $15 and that’s too much!!!” kinda guy, I try to do stuff that record collectors would like a lot of the time because I think it’s nice that people want multiple copies. I try to make them look nice. I’ve also accidentally sent out my test/rare presses as normal mail-order one time when I got home from tour and was behind on ordering vinyl, so like, I also do stuff that would probably drive collectors insane.
Our records fall out of print sometimes because I’ve taken on printing some of them myself and I’ve been too busy or broke to do it. Yeah, I could just ask Mike to do it, but I like doing things myself and unfortunately DIY sometimes means things get done a little bit worse! I’m planning to have all the wheels in motion for all the out of print stuff to be back in print by the end of the year, either on my own, through Asian Man, Ernest Jenning or other friends. I don’t like that they’re so expensive on discogs, so hopefully that’ll remedy that and people will be patient. I don’t want to start being a person who has someone else do everything for me though, I feel like the more that happens the less I feel like me, so I guess I’m just clinging onto a failing system at everyone’s expense. FUCK YOU EVERYBODY!!!!
-Julien Boulton
Jeff Rosenstock photos by Aaron Mattern, Emily Matview, Margaret Schmitt and Hunter Wallace
Jeff Rosenstock is playing Emerge Impact + Music April 7, 2018 at the Matt Franco Theatre with Hurray for the Riff Raff, Jena Friedman, Downtown Boys, Kalpulli Ehecatl, Crystál Xochitl Zamora, War on Women, Anis Mojgani, Kat Corbett, grandson and Mercy Music. MOre details for tht show can found here: https://www.emergelv.com/events/2018/4/7/speaking-truth-to-power
Rosenstock’s latest album, Post-, is available now via Polyvinyl.
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