 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
Interview wiith Tim and Joe of Rise Against
by Dave DeSloover on 2004-10-25 |
With a new guitarist and a new album, Rise Against are spreading their ‘Siren Song’ of awareness and involvement across America. Dave DeSloover from Mammoth Press was able to get a group interview with vocalist Tim McIlrath and bassist Joe Principe, along with radio stations WHFR, CJAM, and a rep from Victory Records at the Detroit stop of the Warped Tour.
WHFR: Were you on last year’s Warped tour and what do you think of the differences this year?
Tim: Well obviously there are different bands, but a lot of it’s the same too, a lot of great punk rock bands out here. Not as many heavy bands out here as there was last year; Poison the Well, Glassjaw, and this year you have a lot more of the real fun punk rock bands like Flogging Molly, Bouncing Souls, and NOFX, but it’s still a great group of bands.
CJAM: Why are you so mad at George Bush when he gives you so much material?
Tim: (laughs) I think that politics and shitty presidents have always been so good for punk rock. And like people like Ronald Reagan, like, started punk, you know what I mean, just by being president. But in that respect, the fact is it’s taken someone like George Bush, someone as terrible at his job as he is to really kind of wake the rest of the world up. Until things got that bad, people weren’t really maintaining any sort of awareness of what went on in their country, and he’s just made so many mistakes with his administration that people who don’t normally get themselves involved with politics are waking up, like “Wait a minute. Who’s that running things, and how did he get there? Oh, it’s ‘cause I didn’t vote. I better vote this time.”
Joe: Well, he bought an election. He’s got all the money. I’m not sure he’d be good at anything actually. He wouldn’t be good at working at McDonald’s.
Tim: Maybe digging ditches somewhere. He’d probably screw that up.
MP: What bands influenced you guys mostly? Were you influenced mostly by punk bands or socially conscious bands or a combination of both? For instance, I like Rage Against the Machine, but they’re not considered punk.
Joe: For me, punk bands were my main influence, my main source of, like, songwriting influences, stuff like that. Bands like early DC scene, like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Government Issue, and even west coast stuff like Bad Religion, Seven Seconds.
Tim: Yeah, a lot of the same bands influenced me, like Black Flag, Jawbreaker, the bands that Joe mentioned. We’re all deeply involved in the socially conscious punk scene. It definitely sort of resonates in Rise Against.
CJAM: If someone screwed up, and if you got to speak at the Republican National Convention, what would you say?
Tim: There would be so many things….
CJAM: Appropriate
Tim: (laughs) without swearing? I think that one of the most important and one of the most overlooked things in the Bush administration is the reason why we’re at war. There were three main reasons: the weapons of mass destruction, there was that we were liberating the Iraqis, and there was the link to Al Qaeda. And so far there’s no weapons of mass destruction, 98% of Iraqis believe the US is an occupying force, not liberators, and you know we pretty much are. There’s no link to Al Qaeda at all. And these are the reasons we went to war, and they’ve all fallen through. But we’re still at war, and we’re still occupying this country, we still turn down the help of the United Nations, broken laws of the Geneva Convention, these things are insane. If you would’ve told this to America five years ago, it would have been preposterous to even think about it. I don’t understand how the Republicans can just overlook that huge, huge fact of why we’re at war right now. That’s just crazy and I would love to see the people that are voting in support of the Bush administration, what they would have to say in response to that.
CJAM: Any other country there would be a revolution by now probably.
Tim: It’s really insane, but Bush has done a good job of using fear and propaganda to convince us that this is what’s right. He played on emotions of our country in the post 9/11 situation, when obviously the country was deeply affected by that tragedy and he used fear to convince us that we should go to war. And it was a successful campaign, we’re at war. People believe that we’re at war against the people who bombed the World Trade Center but we’re not, we’re at war with Iraq, and it’s completely different.
MP: With all your touring and recording and stuff like that, how do you guys keep up with current events, and figure out what’s going on, or do research. You have statistics you know, so how do you find that stuff out?
Tim: It’s actually really hard to find that stuff out while touring. We don’t normally tour on a bus, but we’re in a bus on Warped Tour and we have a TV on the bus so we can watch the news channels and stuff like that. But it’s funny because you’ll be on tour and there will be huge things that happen and you don’t know about it. We try and get a newspaper in the morning, but we’re definitely not the most up to date minute to minute, but you can catch up on what’s going on. I wish there was an easier way to do it, like there was some person that brought you news at every show, highlight what’s going on.
CJAM: How did you end up going first today?
Tim: Totally random
CJAM: Do they pull it out of a hat? It happened last year.
Tim: It did happen last year, I know.
MP: I missed you in Cleveland actually, 11:20 AM you guys were on
Tim: That was really early. That was a week where we had early days the whole week. It’s totally random every day. Obviously, someone’s got to play first.
MP: Is the goal of you guys’ music to try and convince people of one point of view or do you guys just try to get people’s minds open and say this is stuff that you need to be thinking about, kind of like what you said earlier…
Joe: It’s about awareness…
Tim: That’s exactly what it is. As a band we encourage people to make up their own mind about what’s going on. You know, we’re all living in America, a country that just bombards you with media telling you what to believe and what to buy, how to live, and this and that, and we definitely don’t want to be another one of those forces telling people and shoving ideas down their throat. So it’s like the message of Rise Against is a message of standing up for yourself and believing in yourself and making decisions on your own and not letting anybody else, even us, tell you what to do. And I think so far that’s been a really good message that most kids are understanding and most kids understand it anyway. They don’t want to be another one of those people out there trying to sell you something or tell you something or make you believe…whereas in the same respect, if you believe that, I also believe I should be telling people what I think, not to push you into anything, but it’s like “I’m standing for this. I believe in this. That’s what this song is about, that’s what this is about…” We stand for things like PETA, Take Action Plea for Peace, we stand for certain things that we put our names behind.
WHFR: About a year ago, you guys got a new guitar player…
Tim: Actually only about six months ago.
WHFR: Six months? Okay. How’s that going?
Tim: Really good. Chris was in a band called Reach the Sky on Victory Records, and we toured with him before he was in Reach the Sky, we toured with him for a long time and so when we needed a new guitar player we called him and we wasn’t doing much…
WHFR: Easy fit?
Tim: Yeah, it’s been really good so far, he’s been with us through the new record and all of Warped Tour.
Victory: What is your biggest inspiration in life?
Tim: So many different things inspire me. One day I’ll see a band that I’ve never heard of and be like “Wow, that band’s awesome.” And they’ll inspire me. I think the one steady inspiration for me is our fans. I’m glad I’m playing a show. Every day wondering if anyone’s going to be there, if anyone will show up, are they going to like it, are they going to sing along, are they our fans, are they someone else’s fans, are they just waiting for Taking Back Sunday to play, like who’s in front of us, you know what I mean? And when you see those fans, those faces, those people singing along, that’s such an amazing experience, and after riding on a bus all night and being on tour for six weeks, in that moment it makes it all worth it, to see those kids, and know that they’re getting what you do.
MP: Kind of a two part question: Do you like regular touring or the Warped Tour better and what’s your favorite part of being on the Warped Tour?
Joe: I like club tours because they’re a little bit more intimate but I like the ‘hanging out’ aspect of the Warped Tour. I mean, there’s a lot of friends on the tour, and it’s normally people we wouldn’t see unless we’re playing their town, like Only Crime, their drummer Bill’s a friend of ours, he lives in Denver, and we probably see him one day out of the year, when we’re touring in Denver, and now we get to hang out with him, and Bad Religion. It’s like one big party, sort of. We don’t really drink, but we hang out and watch people drink. My favorite part of the tour is that buses travel together, us and Avenged Sevenfold, and when we stop at a gas station, they always buy the weirdest things.
Tim: Beer, beef jerky, and cigars. (laughs)
MP: Well thanks for doing this, it was good to meet you.
Tim: Thank you guys.
Joe: Thank you.
[ VIEW ALL INTERVIEWS ]
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
