I knew that this was going to be a great interview when I called Thomas from Strike Anywhere due to the appreciation that he showed just because I was going to their show (it should be noted that I was getting in for free). He is one of the most sincere people that I have ever met and is able to look at the positive side of even the most negative events. From what I've heard, the rest of Strike Anywhere are the same way and you can tell just by listening to the honesty that breaks through in their songs.

PL: State your name.

SA: I'm Thomas from Strike Anywhere.

PL: How has music effected you as a person?

SA: Its pretty amazing. Its nurushing. It teaches you about yourself and at the same time, gets you out of your ego for a little bit. The best music gives you this moment of quiet from your ego and elevates your consciousness. Its always done that for me. It also makes you dance around a room and mosh.

PL: Explain the effects that touring has on both you and your family and friends.

SA: I tour with some of my friends in the band so its good to see those guys a lot, but we also become kind of a family. We takes jobs, divide labor, strengthen our relationships on all different levels. Outside of the band, each of our significant others, girlfriends, spouses, whatever we have deal with it as well as they can. They're also really supportive and they see the greater good and hopefully we'll live up to that and we've had nothing but kindness from them. And all of our families come out whenever we play; hometowns or even home states, they'll drive for hours just to come and see us. I'm lucky to have cousins scattered all over the world from Sidney, Australia to London to Florida, so whenver we play there, my cousins come out. I'm an only child so seeing them is like seeing siblings so I love them. And even if they're not totally into punk rock and they don't understand anything about it, they try to learn about it and I'm so greatful for that interest and the level of relationships that we have.

PL: Can you point out both the negatives and positives of touring?

SA: Yeah, you change and your friends and family change at different rates. You're not growing together anymore. You are catching up on different experiences. When you're older, you don't have to have that everyday contact as much. Whole clicks don't change. Since I'm 30, a lot of my friends have families themselves so nothing in their lives change that rapidly so I can come back in after being away for five months and be "How are You?" What I do miss is the city, Richmond; it changes so much. And I have a lot of pets and animals and they change and they grow really fast because they have shorter lives. And because you can't really talk to them on the phone, you miss your dogs and cats.

PL: Do you still have animals now even though you're touring?

SA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a wife who takes care of them while she goes to school.

PL: Do any of you guys have kids?

SA: No.

PL: So that must make it a lot easier.

SA: Yeah, we're friends with Avail and its harder for them to tour for long periods. They do a great job of touring and having kids. In fact, Tim and Joe coach Joe's son's soccer team when they were home from the tour. Its really cool to have that; punk rock dads or punk rock uncles.

PL: How do politics fit into the music world?

SA: I think a lot of hardcore/punk music comes out of other social and critical aspects. Start out with society, start out with distractions, prejudice, betrayalisms, greed. Those are the main foundations that punk and hardcore are built on and things like straight edge evolved out of that. All of us are questioning institutions in our society that are critical. Punk rock kids are usually outcasts and clever and want to find a reason why they're so frustrated. And there is a reason; its not just that we're human or its human nature. Thats a bunch of crap. It just keeps us working jobs we hate; working for greedy businessmen and living unfufilled half lives. We wrote songs exactly about that. Thats our prospective: its bigger than having a political agenda; its bigger than the politics. Its more like changing society and realizing that we need to demand more out of our government. We need to be more involved. Its like developing language with a criticized society. Its something that can't get taught in school and you don't get taught at your jobs. And this is one aspect of culture, punk music, that is unafraid and is about positive criticism. Whether its about yourself and your own hangups or society in general.

PL: Are there any instances that you can think of where you've thought that a band has crossed a line or gone too far? This is more lyrically speaking.

SA: It depends. We're really good friends with a lot of bands who share our same conscousness, but they approach their lyric writing a little different. And its cool; a lot of them have slogans; cliches, but its really kind of attractive to super young kids and it takes time for them to mold their own opinions, so they'll soak in what they can. I'm not saying that thats good or bad, but if its a gateway drug. Music that has a little more sense of character and detail about the politics, then more power to them. I think that as long as bands are speaking their mind and giving people courage to speak out themselves, whether they do it in this simple Seseme Street world or if they do it in this really complex way. Just as long as its not elitist, its still just as strong. I can't name a band right now that doesn't do a good job at what they're doing. I mean, I don't believe in the fascist bands and I think some bands are really sloppy and macho and I don't like bands that are really macho and nationalist. Obviously, I think that thats kind of a played out frame of mind. I think that its pretty irresponsible to encourage kids because thats just the status quo. You know, especially right now in America, like the way things are heating up and its rough and bands have an obligation to try to establish this sense of consciousness, courage and criticism.

PL: This is something that has happened to me before, which is where I'm getting the basis of this question. Do you guys do this full time?

SA: Uh..yeah..well, we work when we're home. The band doesn't pay for our lives or anything. It breaks even sometimes, but on this tour our van blew up and fixing it...its the most high overhead thing you can do with your life. You barely make any money and thats okay because we sell our records cheap at our shows and we try not to play (expensive shows), I mean unless we're guests like we were tonight (they played with the Bouncing Souls). Our own shows are usually $7 and we try to play all ages clubs. And all of our music is free on the internet so people can download it and all that stuff, so, what was your question.

PL: This doesn't pertain to you at all, but a friend and I were discussing this. When do you think a band goes from playing basements for free to having gaurantees? Obviously, they need money to live, but one time there was a band that would have sent me to an ATM machine if I didn't have the money in my pocket.

SA: Bands should never do that. Thats just bad, but guarantees are important. Promoters should not say...people have got to talk. Our booking agency, which is the same one the Bouncing Souls have, is like a Union of bands that look out for each other and if a promoter screws over a band, then the rest of the bands will boycott that promoter so they don't get hurt and its like a way of having information about it. And Mark and Tyler from Do It are really cool and really compassionate and they'll talk about whats fair for Strike Anywhere to play Indianapolis on a Wednesday night in July, and they'll be like "how many people do you think will come out;" "can you do a lot of promotion" and they'll talk about their ideas. Their job is to defend us and to try to get us money and its good, so that we can get to the next show and to pay insurance and those are really important things when its really hard to have a job when you're touring a lot. When it comes to touring, you have to have money to do it. And I think that bands aren't doing it right when they're in a situation where a show was so badly promoted or the band thought that they were really popular when they actually weren't and its nobody's fault. They need to get more information before they start sticking you up with money. But people need to realize that bands are five human beings that need to eat food and have vehicles that need repairing. They're not just gonna roll into your town and act like dudes who just want to party. Lots of people think that bands are just this cartoon and not people and thats just irresponsible. And its probably the rock industry's fault for showing you these big label bands and you're like "these guys are WOW," but for this scene, its all about your peers, not fans, not employees, its just people who are friends that are trying to help each other out.

PL: Have you seen bands that are in music for the money aspect instead of the art? For example, a band like Thursday gets big and all of a sudden a lot of similar bands pop up and sign to major labels.

SA: I don't know; I'd have to meet people to find out. I don't want to make any judgements. Obviously there are going to be bands whose integrity and relationship to art are different than mine and I think there's a lot of people that are on major labels and have people write songs for them, but they still record the songs and they think they're a band and thats cool and they are. Technically, they're a band, but it all depends on what you want out of it. We wouldn't want to support people who we don't know where they're coming from. There's so many different ways of being in a band and having the use of all that stuff.

PL: I've been reading that you guys are really into your community. Not just musically, but your whole town; you guys are friends with everybody. Compare that community to the music community.

SA: Its hard to compare them because Richmond has so many diverse groups of people. Its almost like any town in the US. Like we'll have a show we played where we talked about a peace march the next day and a lot of our fans and friends knew about it, but a lot of them didn't and they came and brought their owns brothers and sisters and parents and that was this weird mix of both our music community and then our community at large doing something that was productive and counter-cultural and made a difference. That march made it in both of the town's newspapers: the liberal, democratic newspaper that shows a compassionate balance and the wacko extreme, conservative newspaper, which is ridiculous. Things like that happen where we get to learn a lot about the dynamics of what makes our city, what makes every city work and not work and work against itself. And so that was a day when music, the message and people who weren't even at the show got together and it was really inspiring. A lot of times we go to City Hall and clog up the City Hall session with the Coalition for Living Wage so a bill could be passed which would make Richmond a living wage city which would mean that workers subcontracted by the city to big corporations could get paid more than minimum wage. And we need to look at things like that more. And thats an example, even though I'm not too sure if its a comparison.

Okay; here's something else. We were in San Fransisco last week on this tour. The Bouncing Souls are on Epitaph and we are on Jade Tree, Tsunami Bomb are on Kung Fu Records and there was another opening band called Vision. Anyway, we played in San Fransisco and all of the dudes from Fat Wreck Chords came out. They came out to hang out and we stayed with them and played ping pong in their warehouse and they gave us shirts and whenever we come to town they always come out, but they came out to support the whole tour. None of the bands are Fat bands. And then theres the whole Punk Against Bush tour and compilation CD and television commercials. Basically the punk rock millionaires who get criticized by the deeper underground for not being activist enough. In the past 10 years, people look at NOFX and Green Day as bands who write silly, sappy love songs and joke songs about diapers and pervert nurses or whatever. Meanwhile, they made tons of money and now more important than any elitist grassroots activist group, or even non elitist grassroots activist group, these punk rock millionaires are gonna start a pendgulam swing where everyone from the deep underground to the middle and up to the very top are going to be participating in overthrowing our regime and educating people to vote and bringing grassroots democracy. And its not about record labels, its not about promoting bands, its about consciousness and starting with the very top who have the resources to do this. And when he asked us about the compilation, I was like, and I never thought I'd hear this coming out of my mouth, but "Fat Mike, we are at your service; anything you want us to do" because he was so passionate and so inspired and I think that for every month of this election year, there needs to be a game plan, and its gonna be this amazing punk rock, grassroots democracy awareness drive. Its gonna happen with the multimedia on many levels and that is an example of the music community.

PL: A lot of punk rock kids are over 18, but the majority is under 18, so do you think that this compilation will reach enough people who are old enough to vote Bush out of office? I think Bush is in a lot of turmoil from everybody...

SA: But that will prove to a lot of people...if people's voices are so strong and yet he is still in power; thats gonna be an issue. And his own success will be his downfall. At this point its getting so ridiculous, he can't disguise all the lies and all the deceptions and how everything revolves around money and big corporations and national wealth is defining history instead of people's lives and that needs to change right now. Thats what we write songs about and thats what everbody's realizing. And thats what complicates this compilation. Especially ourselves, we don't have that young of a following; its not like older, but 17-24 and those people will be able to vote. And I think also, just kids being pissed, they'll still be pissed two years from now and they'll have resources available to them. And I also think that a lot of punk kids are 18 and up too. We meet a lot of people that are our age, 30.

PL: I agree with it, I just wanted to know what your views on it.

SA: Yeah, and on this tour especially, a lot of the Souls fans are older.

PL: Yeah, I noticed that. I've been going to see them since I was 15 and I'm 23 now.

SA: And you're still rolling.

PL: Yeah, I felt like I was 15 again.

PL: Back to the community thing. I read in Alternative Press that your car got broken into and you had a notebook stolen from you.

SA: Three notebooks.

PL: That had all of your lyrics and some other-

SA: And my microphone.

PL: Writings in there.

SA: Yeah, it had songs, lyrics, travel journals, pictures of my grandmother, all that kind of stuff; you know, really setimental. Like the stuff out of anything in the world that you don't want stolen from you got stolen from me.

PL: That would kill me.

SA: It was hard. Friends of mine took time off from their jobs to help me search for it. My bandmates were really supportive and we pulled the last pieces of the record together collectively and they said this really cool thing to me: "It came out of you, so it must be in there somewhere." It must be in your subconscous. You're talking about 2,500 different songs, prose pieces, pieces of writing. I think I've been writing since I was 18, so its devastating for sure, but in the end its still just stuff. I mean its ideas, which is bigger than stuff, but like my bandmates said, its still there, its still in me. It was kind of hard to get through that, but it made the record stronger, I think.

PL: You guys have had the name of your album for awhile now, right?

SA: Yes.

PL: Do you find it ironic about the title you gave your album and what happened to you guys (not being able to get into Japan)?

SA: We were too focused at the reality at hand. To us, its more of a transformation of conscousness; realizing that our history is of inheritance of colonialism and that the U.S. has done nothing but refine it and give it a more prosperous disguise. In this particular case, I think we were kicked out because we were Americans. This was the case of us not having VISAS and maybe poor planning on the part of the Japanese promoter, who otherwise is a really good guy. But we were held up at gun point two years ago in Italy. The police robbed us at gun point.

PL: Why did they rob you?

SA: They said to us: "We are the Italian Police." When you go to Europe, you get a quick education in how different things are. In Italy, no one in the community calls the police. If you get a flat tire, I guess you're supposed to pull off the road and hide yourself while you change it because if you linger on the lines for too long, the police will come up and they will mess with you. And if you're a foreigner, they'll rob you. They have all the power. So an 18 year old kid was putting an automatic rifle in my face for four hours while they smoked, drank and ran drug dogs through our van numbers of times; found no drugs and eventually they just gave up and went through all of our bags and took all of our money, which wasn't very much, but then they took our CDs and T Shirts. Why? I don't know. They were the only things that we had to sell. It was rough. Our Chech driver screamed at them, which we didn't understand because we had guns pointed at our faces. He was like: "You stupid idiots, I'll stab you," and thats when they went to him and said: "Joseph, we are the Italian Police." We've been through some rough times and that was more primarily because we were Americans. That'd be more like an Exit English, as you said. But we view it more as an exiting Babylon, which is an old Apoctolyptic, rastafarian idea of changing your conscousness and not being destroyed and perverted by the continous Apocolypse of modern society.

PL: What is your most memorable life experience?

SA: There's too many, but I'll just pick one out of many other equals. Me and my wife, we were in Russia and we got to experience the other side of globalization. As Americans, we were in Russia and we stayed there for so long that we changed our money into rubles, and the IMF defaulted on their loan to bolster the Russian currency, and the ruble crashed, so one ruble went from six U.S. dollars to 22 in one day. This happened in Argentina recently and it just destroyed their economy. So we saw the rest of Russia, but we experienced such kindness; people helping each other out. People were selling boiled potatos out of jars on street corners. We met a lot of punk rockers and hardcore kids in the area that go to shows and being embraced by this culture that I had never even understood and what it meant. The same thing with the rest of Europe and when we were in Austrialia. This summer, as a band, Strike Anywhere was in Austrialia and Austrialia rescued the four of us. We didn't have any money and nowhere to go and we had just got kicked out of Japan and they were just like: "We'll cook food for you." It was total hospitality that Austrialians are known for having. It was a great time.

PL: Who's been your biggest influence in life, and what would you do or what have you done to show your appreciation?

SA: My father, and I haven't done anything properly to show my appreciation. I don't even know where to begin, but as far as...just like keeping in touch with him. Its a little strange when its family because thats just what it means to be family. My dad saw my band for the first time a couple days ago and it was really cool.

PL: How'd that make you feel?

SA: It meant a lot to all of us. I think I'd also say Richmond as a whole. Like the guys in the band Avail and an older band called Four Walls Falling and all of the other punk and hardcore bands and people in Richmond. We've played shows and hung out and done benefits for organizations that we've supported and were given a forum as a band that draws a good amount of people in our hometown. We were given time and space and attention to help out these causes that meant the world to us.

PL: Do you want to say anything about the album?

SA: We love the record a lot. Its probably a more well rounded punk record on some levels and there's a lot of sing a longs. Our transformations are pretty natural. They all come from the same platforms and have the same elements to it. We just wanted more of everything and we achieved it. The fastest song we've ever written is on the record and the slowest song that we've ever written is on the record. The heaviest moshes and thats just what happens. The album feels like a whole from the first note to the last. And that makes me proud.

Interviewed by RF

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