Great interview with Markus from The Slackers. Punk-It.net.
The Slackers - they've been around for so long that they're an institution all by themselves. As the years have gone by, I've found myself listening to less and less ska music, yet one of those few bands whose records continue to grace my CD player is The Slackers. I recently had the opportunity to sit down for 45 minutes with longtime Slackers bassist, Marcus Geard. I want to thank Alexis at Epitaph for setting this up, and obviously to Marcus for taking the time to do this. This interview took place on July 25, 2004, right outside the Middle East in a little bench in Mass Ave. in Cambridge, MA.
Sev: The Slackers have almost always been a band that tours on their own rather than going on larger tours as openers. You usually get out there and play with mostly local bands. What is it about touring by yourselves that you guys seem to cherish so much?
Marcus: Well, obviously headlining is more fun that opening for someone. You get to play a nice long set, you get to go on at a better time, you get the pick of equipment, you get to soundcheck, etc. It's much better to headline. But by the same token, it's also better to headline bigger places. We're not necessarily playing the largest venues in your town but we probably are going to play your town. So there's a chance that you'll get an opportunity to see The Slackers.
Sev: I think tonight will be my tenth time seeing you, and out of all those times, maybe only 2 or 3 times that I've seen you opening. Off the top of my head I can think of Flogging Molly, Rancid, and Joe Strummer.
Marcus: Yea, I think that's also been deliberate on our part. If we're going to do an opening tour, it's really got to be worth our while - not to be too capitalist about it, but it kind of comes down to that. We've been around for so long and we've been doing this ourselves for so long that we can't necessarily do an opening tour where they're going to pay us a third or a fifth of what we would get from playing by ourselves. It's a double-edged sword: do you go and play to the larger audiences and get the better promotion but not make any money, or do you make some money but not really expand the size of your audience so much. You can either continue doing what you're doing, but it just doesn't get much bigger, or you take the risk that you might bankrupt yourself and have to stop, in an effort to make it bigger than it is today. So, I don't know. We like to play though. Every now and again we do an opening one. We like to do festival shows in Europe which give us the same kind of exposure as an opening tour, but we have been really picky about our opening tours. I'm sure we'd take one if it was for a band like a Rancid-size that was doing multi-thousand seat venues - then it would be worth doing. So we probably would have to do that, but we love playing. For us, if we can do a show by ourselves and play for an hour and a half to two hours, that's much better to us. As Dave Hillyard, our saxophone player, is fond of saying, "this time we spend on stage is the highlight of our day." The time we spend on stage is what makes up for the 6 hours in the van that we drove 400 miles in 6 hours through rain and snow to get to a gig. We don't want to do the gig in 20 minutes and be done with it. We want to savor this. We live to play, so we want to be able to play, and headlining avails us that opportunity.
Sev: The other thing is, when you have so many albums out, playing for 20-30 minutes, you can barely hit 6 or 7 songs.
Marcus: Oh totally. Every night somebody comes up to me and says, "Oh, you didn't play this or that." Look, I don't mean to break your balls, but we've got 6 or 7 albums out. We have 100-something songs to choose from, and we simply can't play them. Trust me, it takes too many hours and I don't have the endurance to play 5 hours worth of material just to make sure everybody heard their song.
Sev: Maybe one day you'll do that 6 hour show.
Marcus: We do weird things. Occasionally we'll do a whole album. We played The Question recently, and we're talking about playing Redlight or Better Late than Never, just in its entirety all in a row. You basically come to a show and we play that record. Hope you like that record because that's what we're playing.
Sev: Do you announce things like that in advance?
Marcus: No, we usually just do it on a whim.
Sev: Are we going to see anything like that tonight?
Marcus: No, haha. Tonight is going to be a fairly normal Slackers show.
Sev: I guess several members are now family men.
Marcus: Yes, that is true. Q-Maxx has children, T.J. has children, Ara has children, and Dave has a child. That one is actually fairly recent. Dave and Ara just had children in the last couple of months.
Sev: Yea, I saw that on your website.
Marcus: Ara just had a baby last week.
Sev: How does this affect The Slackers in terms of long term and touring commitments?
Marcus: Well, it's made us commit stronger actually. It's forced us to focus on what we're doing and to take it seriously because - ladies and gentlemen of Boston, I've just witnessed your tax dollars in the most amazing display of efficiency I believe humanity has ever encountered.
Sev: Haha. How much do you think that person is getting paid right now?
Marcus: I imagine he's getting paid $10-15 an hour. He's raking the sidewalk kind of haphazardly because his rake is actually upside-down. It's very limited in raking to have your rake be in that position, but that's what happens when you don't properly train your workers. Don't just assume that everyone knows how to use a rake.
Sev: I certainly don't know how to use a rake very well.
Marcus: And apparently you're not alone. Haha.
Sev: Ok, so a couple of times I've seen you guys Q-Maxx has not been there, sometimes other people aren't there...
Marcus: This does occasionally happen. When you got 7 guys that have lives and you got a band that's been around for so long, you come to the realization that you cannot make every show at the sacrifice of your family and other important things. So sometimes folks just can't make a show, which I'm sorry if you came and your favorite player wasn't there, but we endeavor to put on a good show every night. Tonight, for instances, Agent J is substituting for T.J. Scanlon on guitar.
Sev: What if Vic is not there? Do you still play?
Marcus: Oh yea, we do that all the time. We've done two European tours without Vic. It just happens, and it just means that we do more tunes featuring Glen and Q as lead vocals, maybe another instrumental, but it's not what you would think. It's not like, "Oh my god, we're desperate; what are we doing to do?" There's lots of stuff we can do. Q and Glen do a whole bunch of tunes - if it's a 3-piece harmony song we'll just do that and they'll do it as a 2-piece harmony. There's about half a dozen songs that Glen sings, half a dozen that Q sings, that's in which each of them do the lead. Then you have about half a dozen songs that they sing together, and that's 18 tunes right there, throw in a couple of instrumentals and that's 20 songs - my god, we'll be playing for 2 hours. So we really don't have any trouble filling space with material.
Sev: Well now that we're talking about this later, but it now seems like a good time to ask. A lot of ska bands have a constantly revolving lineup. This may be because they're usually bigger bands than having just a 3-4 piece punk rock band.
Marcus: I think that's part of it. It's just that much harder to keep larger groups totally together. You've also got to be realistic: you have to keep doing the show, and you can't just not do the show just because somebody can't make it. Frequently it's not a situation where it's somebody who is pivotal to the band. To a lot of bands, if their equivalent of Vic weren't able to make it, they would be completely screwed, but we have 3 lead vocalists. So if we lose one, or if we're down a horn player, it just kind of means that somebody else has to fill in the solos or cover that ground. It leaves a vacuum and that vacuum is filled. It's not that it leaves a hole and you can't just operate with that hole. It leaves a space and that vacuum will draw something in to fill it, and if that's a substitute person, so be it, or if it's a different arrangement, so be it.
Sev: I guess it would be different if someone were to see Rancid and Tim Armstrong wasn't there.
Marcus: That would probably be more of a problem. But by the same token, if Brett or Matt Freeman couldn't make it, it probably wouldn't break everybody's hearts.
Sev: Man, but who is going to play Matt's bass lines?
Marcus: Yea, Matt might be a little hard to replace. No offense to Brett, who is a fine drummer, but big props to Matt because he really is a top, top-rate bass player. I personally couldn't sub for him, I'm sure some people could, but he would be hard to replace. But just to be realistic, the big issue would be if Tim didn't show up. They could get another guitar player, but I'd imagine a lot of fans would be really angry and disappointed. If they got a sub for Matt or Brett, I don't think the fans would be as disappointed.
Sev: I would agree. You guys have a new EP out - International War Criminal.
Marcus: We do. It's true.
Sev: I have not heard this myself.
Marcus: It's got new songs on it. Haha.
Sev: Well, it seems kind of obvious that it's directed towards Bush and his administration.
Marcus: You know, we've only made politically based tunes and socially conscious music. This time, we packaged it all as an EP because we wanted to get it out in time for this election. We didn't think it made sense to do a lot of protest music and then release it months after the actual election. So that's why we put out an EP as opposed to a record. We're working on a record and it's very close to being finished, but we figured the record will come out around November, and that's too late to affect the election - not that we think we're going to affect the election, just that if you're going to make a relevant point you've got to make it when it's still relevant. They're five brand new tunes, and they're good solid tunes. Like I said, we will flesh it out and put out a complete record within the next 6 months, but right now we just wanted to make sure that those tunes got out so that the message would be heard. Don't ask me the next question about jumping on the bandwagon with this political music stuff, because like I said, we've been doing that since we started.
Sev: In Close My Eyes, you guys didn't move away from your sound, but there was definitely more reggae, the songs were a little slower, and a lot of the songs were more reflexive. I don't want to say serious, but they were more contemplative and less light-hearted than much of your earlier material.
Marcus: They go back and forth. I think a lot of times we play major chord kind of upbeat music with heavy lyrics - that is something we like to work with. It's not necessarily happy music just because you can dance to it. I can see your point though. With Close My Eyes we did less of the upbeat ska and did more of the more traditional reggae. Like I said, we've always done all these things. In 6 months you could be asking me the question, "Your new record is so much more ska and more upbeat influences than Close My Eyes. Why is that?" And I don't know, it's just what we're doing now. The new record is going to have some more Latin stuff, more soul, more pop, and all sorts of more stuff. It's going to have less reggae only it's not going to be half reggae, but it's still going to have reggae on it. It's still going to be a Slackers record.
Sev: Right, but would you agree that lyrically Close My Eyes had a darker tone than your previous stuff?
Marcus: I think we're getting a little more self-reflective. It's definitely maturity that's having a part to play in this. And also, significant things are happening in our lives. Things have been a lot more, I don't want to use the word serious but I'm going to, since 9/11, and it's not just the impact that it had on the city and the society in general, but at the same time things are happening in our own lives that's affecting the way we're looking at the world and at ourselves. You get older, you get a little more self-reflective; you're not having new experiences doing things you've already done before. When you're 20 it's like, "Oh my god, this is so fabulous and new," but when you're 25 and you've been doing it for 5 years, you're not as impressed every day. So I think that's essentially what's happening. So we're on the road a lot, big woof. We used to be blown away by this like, "oh my god, we get to be musicians," but we know better now. I don't think that it's being jaded, you just get used to it. It's not that we don't respect it and value it because we definitely do, but at the same time this is my day to day existence and I can't freak out every 5 seconds because I'm on stage. We're not rock stars, and that's what the Slackers are very much about. We're not rock stars; we don't approve of the rock star attitude within the Slackers organization. We're just a bunch of guys who like to play music, and we're blessed in that we get to play music. That's truthfully how we all look at this - that we are just blessed to be able to show up and play for people and actually have them come out and pay their hard earned money to see us play is amazing to me. Every day is amazing to me that I get to do this.
Sev: Has that ever been a problem before, having a member with a little more rock star attitude than others?
Marcus: No, because the quality of talent in the band-I should say the quantity of talent-is so high, not necessarily in my own person but in other members of the band, that there's not anybody who is really allowed to have their ego get the best of them. As fantastic as they may think they are, the moment you say something, and people do say it like, "Man, I had such a great song. I'm such a genius." Man, are you going to get it! Wow, you just fucking opened yourself up for a barrage of insults that may last days or even weeks. If you're going shoot your mouth off and be like, "Man, I killed that solo," you better have killed that solo, because people aren't comparing you to the band that went on before us, people compare each other to professional musicians - the legends that they love and adore. That's what people are aiming for - they're not aiming to be the fanciest player or the fastest, they know who they think is good and that's who they're hoping to be at that level with. They want to be peers with the greats, so that keeps everybody's ego in check.
Sev: So there's a healthy competition amongst the members of the Slackers?
Marcus: Oh yea; it's not always healthy - sometimes it's a little vicious. But there's definitely competition...what...did you just hear that? Haha. That's your Boston police at work. You should stream this because that is funny. Motorcycle cops are riding by and honking out tunes on their horns.
Sev: Are you saying that this doesn't take place in New York?
Marcus: I haven't seen it too frequently I have to say.
Sev: Well, you've seen some pretty interesting stuff in the time we've been here thus far.
Marcus: Tonight I've seen some interesting stuff here on Mass Ave.
Sev: You guys have spent almost your entire span as a band with Hellcat Records.
Marcus: Yea, we did the first record on Moon. We've done a couple of records on our own label, Special Potato.
Sev: Do you see your relationship with Epitaph ever ending?
Marcus: I mean, anything is possible. Epitaph is not going to last forever necessarily. Who knows? They may lose interest in us or they may run out of me. I really couldn't tell you.
Sev: Have you flirted with other labels, or just explored the idea that there may be something different or better out there?
Marcus: Yea, of course. We're not idiots. Epitaph has a lot of positive qualities to it, but it's not perfect. But like I said, they do have a lot of positive qualities, so if you're planning on shopping around, you have to be realistic in so much that Epitaph really does have a lot going for you. But you'd be foolish to sign with one company for your entire life and never look anywhere else. So if someone were to come down the highway and offer us a really respectable deal, we would have to consider it. But like I just said, Epitaph has very significant positive on their side. They do ok by us.
Sev: As a band, what are some of your biggest internal disagreements?
Marcus: I have so many facetious comments running through my head right now, haha, but let's see. We fight over a bunch of stuff. We fight over music a lot, more like arrangements. We'll be playing a song and I'll want to play it one way while someone else will want to play it another way. That's always a popular one and the fallout that comes from that like, "he's an asshole, I hate him, he never lets me do what I want," that kind of stuff. That's always a positive thing. There was a fight this evening over stage banter. Q, Vic, and Glen were discussing things like insulting each other on stage and not cursing so much. We're trying not to do those two things.
Sev: You guys want the cursing toned down a little bit?
Marcus: Well, it doesn't have to be gratuitous. We've never wanted to be a party band. We do have a good time, we do have a party, but we don't want to be like a frat-rock party band - that's just not what we do. We've always felt that one of the unfortunate albatrosses that ska bands have to bear is this perception that ska is this circus, carnival, party music, and it's not. It's real serious music made by real serious musicians. We've always felt that we've had to overcome this, and we may have made greater efforts to not comply with that stereotype, just because we were really hell bent for not being perceived that way. Even though we are kind of having a party in there at our show, and we do that every night, it's not a party band thing. We expect our audience to be somewhat literate, politically aware, socially aware, and things like that. We're not an intellectual band, but there is a degree of at least average intelligence that we hope to exhibit. We don't want to be a bunch of cretins. Not to bring up all issues, but when we started doing this 10+ years ago, a lot of people were saying, "Oh, there's a lot of skinheads in ska music," and there was a real problem that that had to be differentiated, that skinhead did not necessarily mean Nazi. There was a lot of room in that category, and people needed to understand that. It's a lot easier to brush something under the carpet than it is to educate people, and in this case that's pretty much what happened. We've kind of downplayed it, we don't like that kind of cretinous thug mentality - we're not about that. You want to get drunk and beat up your buddies, then that's great and have a good time, just don't come around me and do it because I don't want to be a part of that.
Sev: Did you get a lot of people coming at your shows with that type of attitude?
Marcus: Not for the last 5 years or so, but it's there. I wouldn't say it was a problem; I would just say it's an element within the ska community, and for the most part it's under control, but occasionally it rears its ugly head. We always just want to play that down - it's not our scene, it's not the way we want things to go. We're not playing it down by preaching, but leading by example is how we want to do it. We just want to offer a better positive example, one in which we try to act respectful towards women, like intelligent gentlemen, and we hope that everyone will do the same. If they do, we'll all have a good time. There are bands that become famous for saying things like, "Show me your boobs," and I may find them entertaining. It doesn't mean I want to do that, you know what I'm saying. I don't mind that occasionally, I find it funny, so that's fantastic - not every day and not every time. It's just not my cup of tea.
Sev: Looking back at your older material and all your major full lengths, can you just give a brief description of what your thoughts are looking at them now and what do you mean to you now?
Marcus: That's a lot of material. I definitely see some growth and some maturity over the years - I definitely see some changes. Some are less subtle and others more subtle. I find the records more listenable as we go along. I don't really listen to Better Late Than Never.
Sev: You find that record annoying?
Marcus: No, it's just not really my style anymore - that kind of upbeat ska thing is not really what I'm listening to. We still play a lot of those songs, and we even write them to be honest with you, but it's not necessarily what I listen to when I go home and put on a record. That's usually not what I'm listening to - it's more like maybe classic Jamaican music than it is some new American interpretation of classic Jamaican music.
Sev: Out of all your records, which one is your favorite so far?
Marcus: I'm still a big fan of Wasted Days. I think Wasted Days is probably my favorite. It's a different record for us. It's got more production on it and it's a little more polished. It also reflects more different approaches to the production. It's not as cohesive a record as a statement as is Redlight, but I like the songs on it. It's got really good songs. I think there are some really solid songs in there, and it could have had some great singles. I don't know why it wasn't promoted that way. I thought that record had some hits on it, but what are you going to do?
Sev: Interestingly, one of my favorite lines in any Slackers song is the very first line on "Marcus's Song," when Vic sings, "What have I done wrong, that I should be sorry."
Marcus: That's a great line. I wrote that line, and that's why I think that it's so fucking good! Haha.
Sev: Ok, here's a question I'm sure you get at every single interview but I'll ask it anyways. The Slackers are one of the few bands from the mid to late 90's that survived the downfall of ska.
Marcus: Yea, it kind of collapsed on us. We didn't get hurt by it because we weren't anywhere when it collapse.
Sev: But your first record came out in 1996.
Marcus: Yea, and that's the birth of the death of ska. That's when our first record came out.
Sev: But I think that even in 1996, 1997, and even part of 1998, there were still a lot of big ska bands in major labels, etc...
Marcus: Sorry to interrupt, but I have to say this. Once again, amazing efficiency. A street cleaner just went by us, and there's a pile of crap two feet long, one foot wide, and about four inches high sitting right there in the street where the street cleaner actually drove past it. Ladies and gentlemen, you should see the marks that this guy left on the road to avoid the only discernible filth on the street, but he did a great job.
Sev: Haha, it appears to be a dead rat.
Marcus: It's a dead rat apparently. The kind of thing you want to leave lying around.
Sev: But getting back to the topic at hand, what do you think it is about your music that has made you endure where so many others have failed?
Marcus: Well, we're sleazy but sensitive. And that's the kind of thing people like. They like sensitive but that gets boring, so that's where the sleazy comes in handy. And then they like sleazy, but that can be a little over the top, so you want to temper it with something like a little bit of sensitivity. That's where the Slackers come in. Sleazy, but sensitive. Sensitive, but sleazy.
Sev: To your recollection what has been the best compliment you've ever gotten from a fan?
Marcus: The ones I like are the real meaningful ones. "We conceived that first child to your music," that was one of my favorites. Another one that I really liked was a guy I met about six months ago. He came up to me and said, "If it wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't be walking. Your music got me through physical therapy." He was in a really bad car accident, got hit by a truck, and both his legs were shattered. Apparently he was listening to Slackers when doing his physical therapy, and he said that we gave him the inspiration to walk again. That was really cool. That was a cool one.
Sev: What about the worst diss?
Marcus: People come up to me all the time saying they've seen us all these times and don't remember seeing me. People do that all the time. I'll be behind the merch table selling merch, and they don't think I'm in the band. They think I just work for them or something, and they'll say all kinds of shit. "I didn't like this band, or I didn't like that band." I can't remember the worst that we ever got. People have said that they don't like this kind of music because it's boring. I've heard that one, but what are you going to do? I know way back in the day, people used to not stay at the venue if we were playing, and we're talking 10+ years ago. They would see the first band, then go out for a drink while The Slackers play, and then come back for the next band. But I personally never heard something like, "Oh, you guys suck so bad and I just had to get out of here." But I think it was because we played a lot of slow stuff; we played a lot of slow reggae rocksteady, when everybody else was doing the third wave thing or some interpretation of two-tone. We weren't going, "pick it up, pick it up, pick it up ska!" We were doing slow, drawn out love songs, and not everybody likes a love song. But like you were asking before, how the death of ska affects us, the kind of ska that got killed and died didn't really affect us because we weren't doing it. The people were left saying, "Gee, what happened? I really liked that music. It's too bad it went away."
Sev: Well it was the poppy ska, punk with horns that was really doing well in the mainstream anyways. I now remember one of the best shows I've seen you play was here in the Middle East, and there were 4 very different ska bands. It was Bim Skala Bim, The Porkers, and Kicked in the Head.
Marcus: Haha, I remember that show. The guy from The Porkers got so drunk, he was literally spinning around like a lawn-sprinkler on the floor. He had whipped cream and shit everywhere. It was a moment of pride.
Sev: Ok, so on a personal note, I got married two months ago. After the first dance, the first three songs we played were "You Don't Know I," then we played Rancid's "Time Bomb..."
Marcus: Haha, very romantic.
Sev: Exactly. And then we played "Have the Time."
Marcus: Oh wow, that's excellent.
Sev: So my wife is going to be there with me tonight and we wanted to request those songs.
Marcus: Oh man, I don't think "You Don't Know I" is on the setlist, but I believe "Have the Time" might even be the first song of the night. I'm almost positive of that, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to get "You Don't Know I" tonight. Maybe for an encore.
Sev: That's great. She'll be quite excited. Ok, almost done here. What are 3 bands that don't get nearly as much attention as you think they should?
Marcus: There's a lot of really good bands out there that don't get attention that really deserve it. Old 97's is one of my favorite bands for years, and they should get more breaks. They should definitely get more attention. They're great - everyone should go see them. There's a lot of bands I think should get a break, and there's a lot of bands I think shouldn't have gotten a break they got. It's really hard to name names. The 97's, I just love them. Then us, I think we should get a break. I think about that one every now and again. Haha. But I can't think of anyone right now that has blown me away that is just under recognized. I see bands that have really good industry connections, and I can't understand how they got that deal, that tour, and play in that venue when there's nobody there. Most of the bands that are really good get a break up to a certain degree, and then it's a total crack shoot after that. Anti-Flag is something people should be listening to. I'm a big fan of a band called Dry and Heavy - a dub band out of Japan. There's so much good stuff out there that's really hard to pick one thing.
Sev: So after you're done with these shows that you have lined up on the east coast, you're going to Europe, correct?
Marcus: Yea, we're going to Europe on August 17. After Europe we're going to California for a couple of weeks and do some west coast gigs. Then I believe we come back here, we do some east coast gigs, then we go up to Canada for a little bit. We have a new album that we're working on, and we should be going back into the studio any moment now to try and do a couple of tracks for that. We got a dub record that we're pretty close to finishing - that should be coming out in the next 4-6 months. We got a lot going on.
Sev: Well, I don't have anything else. We covered a lot. Anything else I should have asked or you'd like to add?
Marcus: No, you asked so many questions you found me speechless which is amazing. You rendered me speechless with that 3 band question.
Sev: How did you like that tape recorder?
Marcus: Oh it's fine. I enjoy holding it. I'll give it back to you now.
By Sev
sev@punk-it.net
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