Jeff Rosenstock is playing the Asian Man 20th Anniversary Party, June 15 – June 19 at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, California. But first, the singer/songwriter/producer stopped in Las Vegas during his West Coast tour with Upset, and I was lucky enough to interview him after the show at 11th Street Records. We talked about the Arrogant Sons of Bitches, why he skipped Vegas for so many years, and we even got a little existential.
You guys skipped over Vegas for a lot of years, but have consistently stopped here on the last few tours. What’s changed your mind about Vegas?
The reason we skipped over Las Vegas is because it was incredibly hard to find all-ages places, so we just couldn’t play here. Even that first show, the only show that Bomb the Music Industry truly played here – we tried to book a show at Yayo Taco, and they canceled on us, like two weeks beforehand, because they were like “oh yeah, we forgot a local band wanted to play that day.” And I was just like “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not like an 18 year old kid, I’m a person in a real band, who is planning my life around your word, like how dare you?”
But then [my friend] TJ helped me set up this show at a house and a bunch of people showed up and we were just like “Oh fuck, alright, let’s try next time.” And Steven [Matview, Punks in Vegas] had us at the house [of Wonk] last time and now our friend Greg who’s booking for us talked to [Pulsar] this time. So we’re just always happy that we can come through here because I know when I was trying to book shows myself, all-ages in Las Vegas, it was incredibly hard.
But the reason we keep coming back is because everybody’s really friendly here. There’s a good vibe at the shows, like everybody wants to be there. I don’t know why that seems special because that’s what shows are supposed to be about. But there was something about that first house show that we played. When we left, everybody came out of the house and waved us off, which isn’t something that happens, and that always stuck out to me. People in Las Vegas are really fuckin’ friendly and really happy to have you there.
I think part of it is that everyone loves DIY here. The house show scene is ridiculous.
We were looking for that 10 years ago, and couldn’t find it, so that’s rad that it’s happening now. I think every band should come through Las Vegas. It’s silly not to.
You’ve been playing music for a long time. Looking at the crowds, you’ve been doing it since before a lot of them were alive, like me. Not to call you old! But you know.
Well, I think… Wait, what year were you born?
‘97.
Shit, yeah. That’s fucking crazy! That’s fucking insane.
Doing this for as long as you have been, it doesn’t seem like you’ve hit a point of feeling washed out.
If I did, I wouldn’t do it, you know? This is awesome, I love playing music, I love touring. But it’s not like it’s fucking easy on the wallet or easy on the rest of my life. If I didn’t have the urge to make music, I just wouldn’t do it. I don’t wanna put bullshit out in the world and I don’t think the world needs any fake art, you know? So I guess that’s it. I don’t know why I haven’t gotten it out of my system.
Nobody’s complaining!
I hear a song in my head and I’m like “I gotta write this down, oh fuck,” like that still happens to me. So as long as that still happens to me, I’m gonna probably keep doing it.
There’s always been such low expectations that there’s not ever a point where I’m like “oh this record is doing worse than the last record!” No record’s really done good, so it’s fine, you know?
You went from this kind of spunky, sort of larger band, the Arrogant Sons of Bitches, and then you did a medium-sized music collective with Bomb the Music Industry! How was that transition?
Oh, well, ASOB wasn’t a big band. It seems bigger now. It didn’t feel important [at the time].
I mean, stylistically, though, how is it different?
Stylistically, I’m just writing the next thing. Obviously I wouldn’t have been able to write what I wrote if not informed by the experiences of both of those bands, Bomb and ASOB. That first Bomb album was like half songs for the next ASOB record. I Look Like Shit was like half songs that were meant for the next Bomb record.
Yeah, I Look Like Shit definitely seemed less cohesive than We Cool?.
Which is cool, because I feel like, especially, the next record is a whole fuckin thing. And I’m glad that I Look Like Shit was the first one, because I’m generally not a person that does not have a fully formed thing. I love fully formed pieces, but I also love records that are just kind of mixtapes. That’s what I Look Like Shit Was, what I was hoping to do with that. You know, put some cover songs on there, like an acoustic song on there. Low pressure, low-risk stuff.
As much as it didn’t feel huge or anything, ASOB did seem to have a following, at least locally in New York.
Yeah, in Long Island, and New Jersey, and Connecticut, but that was also because it was our band when we were in high school and college.
Like all your friends, going out and seeing you?
That was the thing. I think the biggest advantage I’ve ever had as a musician, which is why I learned how to do it, is that our friends never saw us when we were in high school. We were our friends. We were also in other bands, with other people, and those people had friends, and those people’s friends would see them. But in high school, our friends were like, “No, we don’t fuckin’ wanna see your punk band.” So because of that, we had to be good enough to get people to like us, because we didn’t have our friends come and see us, you know?
And then we just kinda branched out and played close places, like Connecticut and Jersey, and we did really well there, but we never played, for example, a show in Chicago. We never played a show in Las Vegas. I don’t believe we ever played a show in LA. But we played like eight shows in Florida. So it was a weird band. It wasn’t a thing. We wanted it to be thing. If it was a thing, that band probably would’ve survived. But it wasn’t, and I think just starting fresh every time was the hard thing. Deciding, you know, I just went through a huge heartbreak and I’m gonna get back into it again. That’s what happened both times.
The band has your name attached to it, but when you come out and play, it’s not just you and your guitar on a little stool. It’s not “Acoustic Night with Jeff.” How do you create that dynamic with the band? The material seems to be written to be much more personal, perhaps, than your older stuff, so how do you do that with other people? How do you let them into that?
I think the first time that started happening was with the last Bomb the Music Industry! record, Vacation. I didn’t show anyone in the band any of those songs for a really long time. We’d played a Weezer cover set at a college where they gave us like $3,000, or it might have been $5,000, but it was a crazy amount of money. And we were like, “Fuck, awesome! We just lost a crazy amount of money on this trip to Europe, now we’re going to be able to pay it back, this is great,” and we were driving home, and I was like, “Alright. Guys, I wrote a whole album… You know those four songs you know? There are like 11 other songs. I think they’re kinda weird.” And they were like “Jeff, you should send these to us.” It took a little bit of getting over, but…
With this band in particular, those guys are just so fucking good. I’ve been playing with John [DeDomenici] forever. I feel like he’s almost unsung sometimes, because he’s so fucking good. And I’m just used to playing with the best bass player ever. Kevin [Higuchi] is insane at the drums, and Mike [Huguenor] is my favorite guitar player in a band right now. And he’s in my band, too. He plays in Hard Girls, and he plays in Shinobu. When I’m playing guitar, I try to play like Mike, and now Mike’s in my band. It’s fucking awesome. I trust those dudes, and I know they’re not gonna give me any shit about it. John’s known me forever, and Kevin and Mike are really open and accepting people, and we’ve shared a lot of experiences together.
Your songwriting style and the detail and the emotion have definitely evolved. I think this may just be because you were really young with ASOB– that stuff was very biting and sarcastic, very “fuck you!” and this stuff, the new stuff, is more introspective and self-reflective. Is that just a result of growing and living, or…?
I think that’s a give and take. I feel like the next record is a lot more angry at the world than the last record, which was very centered around depression. I think when you’re younger, it’s a lot easier to write that stuff and not worry about what seems dumb, what seems stupid. And when you’re older and there’s any expectation whatsoever, it could be hard to shake that. Now, it’s impossible for me to hear something that I’m writing and not be like “This is fuckin’ dumb.” I tried to stop thinking about whether or not something is dumb and whether something’s honest. So that’s the difference in the writing.
That last ASOB record is really self-hating. There’s a lot of dark, sad shit in that. I think I was just more flippant about it. And I think that I write better now, but I do always miss not giving a fuck. If there’s one thing, the lack of expectations with ASOB made it really freeing. It doesn’t matter. Don’t even think about it; just get fucking raw and dumb and don’t think about ever defending it because nobody’s gonna give a shit about your record.
It’s trying to not seem dumb now, and back then I didn’t care about seeming dumb because I was young and I thought I was smarter.
I think there’s this disillusionment with growing up that We Cool? has, and it’s ironic to me that people can relate to that who are really young, like myself, even though I don’t pay bills or any of that.
I think disillusionment is universal. Like, I can understand what someone’s going through when they have to pay a car payment, even though I don’t have a car. It’s just the idea that you’re sucked into this system where money means something and you’re constantly having to fight and struggle sometimes and your mental health gets caught up in that and you kind of lose sight of relationships and things that are actually important, like the human element of life. When I was in high school, I hated teachers a lot of the time. Not hated them, but it was like, “Fuck these teachers. You’re telling me what to do, you’re not trying to listen to me,” stuff like that, and I feel that way now about bosses and cops.
Some things don’t change.
Yeah, unfortunately. You could get out of one system, but you’re always shoved into another system. Lucky for me, that means that if I write a song when I’m 33 years old, someone who’s not 33 can say, “Okay, I can see something in this.”
There are songs of yours that deal with issues like alcoholism. So it’s weird looking around and thinking, “None of us can legally drink, but we all feel you.”
I don’t even drink that much anymore, to be honest with you. It’s funny, because they always got misinterpreted in Bomb as celebrations of getting drunk, but really any song that I’ve written that’s about drinking is really about loneliness.
I think that’s why people feel that and connect. It’s not just drinking, it’s like, why are you drinking?
It’s like a thinly veiled metaphor.
I wanted to ask you about Quote Unquote Records. How did that come about?
I was kinda tired. The fact that ASOB took four years to make one record killed me. I was like, “I gotta figure out a faster way to do this on my own.” A friend of mine lent me a computer and an M-Box, and I realized, “Oh my god, I can just record.” So I recorded records of my own and put them up for free, because it was like, “okay, I want people to hear it, I’m not trying to sell anything, I’m not trying to make this a thing.” Like with Bomb and this solo shit, neither of them was trying to be a thing, so I just put them up.
Quote Unquote started because of my buddy Matt, from the Matt Kurz One. We were going on tour together, and I wanted people to hear his record because I thought he was fucking awesome. And I thought, “How do I take what I’ve done with Bomb the Music Industry! so far, and put up somebody else’s record?” So I started this thing called Quote Unquote records, put up a PayPal link, and that was it! And then other friends were like “Let’s put stuff out!” and then it grew.
I know you guys just got done recording new material, and that’s what sparked this tour. What are your goals for the band going forward, and life goals for you as a person?
We’re gonna try to get a record out in October. That’s the plan. It’s getting mixed right now. And then hopefully my insane mix notes will be done by the time the deadline is to get the record out in October. That’s going on. And then hopefully other people besides us think it’s good. That’d be nice. If not, we got to do this little run for the last year and a half, with We Cool? That was fun.
I’m producing a record for the Smith Street Band this summer. Yeah, we’re just doing some touring.
Life… I don’t know, just trying to figure out how to turn this into a thing where this is what we are doing with our lives without being super shitty about it and without compromising our feelings about capitalism and art and love while still trying to make a living, which is a hard thing to do.
So that’s kind of the end goal then? To be able to do what you love and just keep doing it?
I don’t know if that’s the end goal, to be honest with you.
I think my end goal is to be happy, which is an ongoing struggle. I think I’m just trying to figure that out, you know? I think for everybody that’s a dynamic thing, and you can’t just put goals on it. If I had a goal, this [what’s happening right now] would’ve been it. Literally the stage we’re at. I’m just excited to see what things I hadn’t thought possible will be possible.
I played bass in Skankin’ Pickle on a tour in Japan with Reel Big Fish and Less than Jake and got my own hotel room in Japan every night. I’ve done well beyond what I ever expected to do. I’m just gonna keep going with it and trying to make good stuff and if this all fizzles out, I’ll just keep trying to make honest stuff on my own while I have a job somewhere, 10 kids somewhere, and it’ll be like “oh yeah this is that guy I heard about that used to sweat a lot.”
Thanks Jeff! You can download ‘We Cool?’ on the Quote Unquote Records website. You can also purchase a physical copy via Side One Dummy. Do it. It’s awesome.
You can also catch Jeff live this weekend as part of the Asian Man 20th Anniversary Party, June 15 – June 19 at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, California.
Jeff Rosenstock photos by Margaret Schmitt
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