Few artists have been as vocal in their dislike of the Vans Warped Tour as Brendan Kelly, bassist of The Lawrence Arms. The band spent just a week on Warped in 2004 before getting kicked out for good. Kelly calls it “the antithesis of what punk rock was about.”
Before the Warped Tour, the US was “enjoying a really nice culture of DIY,” with large bands supported by smaller bands gigging in small clubs throughout the summer. However, with the advent of Warped, the large bands opted to play the Warped Tour instead, reaping the financial benefits of consistently huge audiences wherever they travelled.
“So, small bands couldn’t fucking tour,” Kelly exclaims, “and Warped Tour would be like, ‘we’re super punk rock!’ You’re punk rock? You’re destroying the DIY economy! Just tearing it down, right in front of my face, I’m watching it happen.”
In that light, it seems odd that they’re coming to Australia for the massive Soundwave Festival, arguably the Warped Tour of Down Under.
Kelly disagrees vehemently: “We don’t have an infrastructure in Australia and a lot of bands would never go to Australia if it wasn’t for something like Soundwave. There’s not a lot of promoters making us offers to do small club shows in Australia. If there were, we would do them!”
He sees Soundwave as an opportunity, as opposed to Vans’ epic music event, which is “an eliminator of opportunity”. Some have then likened the festivals to “chalk and cheese” – an idiom that doesn’t quite suit Kelly: “They’re like severed dicks and baseball bats… we don’t have that [chalk and cheese] phrase here,” he adds, somewhat superfluously.
In any case, if The Lawrence Arms are getting a chance to visit Australia, they’re taking it, and no Warped Tour-style criticism is coming out of Kelly’s mouth. “If someone’s going to give us the opportunity to come down there, what can we do but be thankful? I’m definitely not going to say something bad about someone who’s making the effort to bring us down.”
The Warped debacle is one of the more obvious examples of The Lawrence Arms’ belief in the 90s punk DIY ethic. The band members started off as a few friends that could play instruments, and became a band by accident, not by design. Kelly would go to drummer Neil Hennessy’s house to play songs he had written. One day, he dragged now-guitarist Chris McCaughan along, and The Lawrence Arms were born.
They’ve lost none of their fire or conviction over a decade later, but Kelly admits that they would be vastly different if they’d formed in 2012.
“Our sound wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting,” he muses, recalling one of the first festivals they ever played at, in Massachusetts. It was right at the beginning of the 90s “emo explosion”, with bands such as Thursday also on the lineup.
The Lawrence Arms emerged, long-haired and bearded, and in the middle of their opening song, the crowd started laughing at them, “because we had the gall to do a guitar solo in such a serious time in music.” Kelly remembers thinking, “you know what, we may not be popular, but we’re doing something right.”
In 2012, almost anything goes in music. Muse can be Skrillex-inspired and Rick Astley can make a comeback via YouTube. “So, if we started right now, I don’t know if we’d have that luxury (of needing to work hard), I think different music is pretty well embraced now. So, I don’t know if we’d have ever been so angry and strived so hard.”
They’ve remained a tight-knit group, and Kelly cites their band’s fundamental values as a factor. A lot of their fans are exclusively The Lawrence Arms-listeners, and he believes, “there’s a pretty good loyalty, family issue that is part and parcel of our band.”
The Lawrence Arms have been pretty quiet since 2009, when they last released new material, the studio EP Buttsweat and Tears, but things are happening, and the three are in the midst of a new record that should be written by the time Soundwave 2013 rolls around.
The last thing they recorded before that studio EP in 2009 was a contribution to the compilation album, Rock Against Bush in 2004, and with election day approaching again in the United States, there’s plenty to rock against – and talk about.
“I wish the whole world ran on the same system,” Kelly says sardonically. Although he claims, “I’m not that smart and I don’t know shit about anything,” he has some interesting thoughts: “The political system in America is so fucked, and it’s very simple why. There are lobbyists and there’s big money from specialist groups that completely paralyses the whole thing.”
There are plenty of musicians espousing their political views on stage and in print, but few as succinctly and rationally as Kelly. “People in America get tricked into believing it’s like the religious right versus the douchey liberal left, but it’s not! It’s oil versus… just bizarre battles you don’t even know are being fought.”
As to whether he’s voting: “Yeah, I’ll vote for Barack Obama.”
No word on whether American politics are better than Australian politics at the moment, but Kelly has no particular thoughts on Gillard or Abbott. As long as The Lawrence Arms can tour, Kelly doesn’t mind. Every musician that talks to the Australian press professes a love for Australia, and Kelly is no different, albeit a little more blunt. “We love the fans, we love the country, we’re just huge fans. I can’t wait to see all you guys… and fucking drink beer with every one of you.”
The Lawrence Arms play Soundwave 2013 in February around the nation. Full dates and details here.
