Fastball – Interview

Location: erie, pa – usa
Venue: warner theatre
Time: roughly 5:25 pm (EST)
Mission: fastball

Part of the pain of interviewing is travel, but I enjoy the long drives. I fill up the car with cds, snacks, and pop, and hit the road. From the minute I left, I was excited about my final destination.

My destination was a meeting with the boys in Fastball. Everybody knows the song “The Way”, right? Of course.

So I estimated my drive to be about an hour and a half and, well, I was wrong. We were supposed to meet at 5 p.m., but I rolled into Erie, Pennsylvania at around 5:20 p.m. I still had a good ten-minute drive through the small city. I came around 7th Street and saw the three huge tour buses.

I pulled up to the venue and found a place to park. I started to sort my gear when this crazy old lady walked over to my car and knocked on the window.

“Hello?” she yelled trying to peer into my tinted windows.

I reluctantly rolled down the window and asked, “Yes?”

“I tried to get tickets to the show, but they were all sold-out.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“I know. I wanted to see the show.”

“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said, hoping that she’d let me get out. Then suddenly she was on her way and still talking, to who, I don’t know.

I threw on my backpack and prayed that the rest of my day wasn’t going to continue on this downhill path. I was already pretty late and I knew that this could mean my drive would be for nothing. I walked past the tour buses and entered the back door by the stage. A rent-a-cop put his hand out.

“Who are you with?” he asked.

“Well, I’m here to meet with Fastball.”

“And you are?”

I gave him my information and he was gone. He made his way up to the second floor to talk with Fastball’s tour manager.

He came back with news that all journalists dread, “They never heard of you.”

“What?” I replied. Of course I hoped this wasn’t true, but now I was second-guessing.

“I don’t know. He said wait and he’d be down in a minute.”

About ten minutes later he came down to greet me. I guess he told the rent-a-cop that he’d never heard of me to bust my balls because I was so late. He obviously didn’t appreciate it. Oops.

“Charlie?” he asked as he approached me.

“Yeah.”

“What’s up? You were supposed to be here at five,” I could tell from his voice that he was a bit angry. I’d screwed up his schedule.

“Sorry. I didn’t expect such a long drive.”

“Well, if you want to wait, you can interview them after sound check.”

“Okay.” I was lucky this time.

Their manager left and a few minutes later Fastball took the stage and began their sound check. I stepped outside alongside a small crowd made up of mostly young girls. Johnny Rzeznik, lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls, stepped out beside me and made way for his tour bus that sat about ten feet away. The girls shrieked as he faded from their view. For one fleeting moment they caught a glimpse of what they really came there to see.

Robbie Takac, the Goo’s bassist, didn’t have such luck. He wasn’t as mobile since he was on crutches after hurting his knee from a fall from a stage a few days before. But he was a trooper and would play that night sitting.

I continued to sit outside, absorbing the rays when I heard my name called. The band was walking behind their manager.

“Charlie, this is Tony, Miles, and Joey,” he said.

We quickly exchanged pleasantries.

I followed them onto their tour bus and took a seat on the plush leather couch. My first impression was jealousy. Their ride was nice. I wondered why bands always seem to bitch about riding their buses from city to city while on tour.

“You ready to do this?” Miles asked.

“Sure,” I replied

Tony walked back from the bunks and asked, “You guys wanna eat? Are you hungry?” he asked me.

“Yeah. I haven’t eaten in a few hours,” I remarked.

“Cool. I’ll pay,” said Tony. He scooped up two bottles of wine and we made our way to the restaurant.

We walked around the block where we could see the front of the theater. Fifty or more people, mostly girls, were already forming a pretty impressive line outside, even though the show didn’t start for hours. We quickly crossed the street out of their range of view and tried to go incognito as we passed them from across the street. We hung a left where we spotted an ambulance and fire truck parked in front of the restaurant. Luckily, their business was elsewhere.

We went inside and sat down. The band’s aura was apparent to the patrons who nudged those that didn’t know better. A young girl sitting directly across from me whispered to her brother and he told their parents. They all began to slyly stare at us, as if we were zoo animals.

Tony poured wine all around. Joey opted for an iced tea.

We all ordered. I got the Ziti. We began shooting the shit when Miles asked, “You wanna do it now?”

“Okay.” I reached into my backpack and pulled out my notebook and old-school tape recorder, the kind that you had in elementary school with the little handle and one speaker. The interview, although lasting about fifteen minutes, covered as much about Fastball as it did about music in general. (If you’d like to read the full transcription, click here )

Our food came and we continued to bullshit back and forth about music and their lives as musicians, mostly off the record since we now had a chance to get to know one and another.

The food was amazing. If you ever find your way into Erie, check out Tapas Bodega, on 9th street I believe. I figured this would be the end of the road as we made our way back to the bus.

I asked Tony if he would make sure I was on the guest list. We entered the bus and Tony asked their manager. To my dismay, I found out that I wasn’t guest listed. Little did I know, that would end up being the best thing that would happen; they informed me that I would be watching the show from the side of the stage and, better yet, I would have to stay on the bus and enter with the band. We had about an hour and a half to burn so Tony started to sort through his cds. He popped in Lucinda Williams’ record, Happy Women Blues I believe it was. It was wonderful. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard it before. This would be only one of many albums that Tony would introduce me to as he gave me a crash course on his favorite artists.

We also checked out a couple of artists that I was familiar with: Stereolab, Supergrass, and Elliott Smith. Although I hadn’t had a chance to absorb Smith’s major label debut, Xo, I was familiar with his amazing previous album, Either/Or .

“You wanna hear some real bizarre shit?” Tony asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

He came back with a cassette and popped it in the stereo that sat above the couch across from me.

“I recorded this on my 8-track,” he explained.

“Really. Do you record one track at a time?”

“Yeah.”

He went on to tell me how he liked to use his ‘cheap’ Casio keyboard to lay the bass for the song and then lay down the rest. If my memory serves me right, Tony had five new tracks, but it was the last one, “International”, that struck me. Every track was good, but “International” was great. The demo was raw, just Tony and an acoustic guitar with a simple keyboard bass bouncing throughout to add tempo.

I could tell how excited he was to test the songs out on me. I was actually more excited to hear them.

With little time left before the show, their manager came on the bus and yelled, “Ten minutes!” Tony was all ready to rock. The band had discussed their set earlier, so there was nothing more to do but wait for their manager to come and lead them to the stage.

We made our way into the backstage. Fastball grabbed their instruments and tore right into “Fire Escape”. We could barely hear the vocals in the theater. I was standing with two girls that Miles had met over coffee earlier in the afternoon. Then I heard some people behind me and I looked back and noticed Johnny from the Goos following a large group of people out the door. He seemed quite pleasant and it was apparent that the group was quite happy to see him. From the number of Buffalo Sabre’s jerseys and hats, I thought maybe it was some of his family. Then Robbie Takac swung up beside me on his crutches.

Fastball’s forty-minute set tore by quickly and we were instructed to head for the door as they finished. We made our way to the bus and waited at the door for the band. From inside, I could see a dozen or so young girls standing outside the bus looking for the band. They weren’t quite sure which bus was which, but Miles grabbed a sharpie and went outside to sign arms, legs, shirts, and if someone was lucky enough to have a piece of paper, he’d sign that too.

Miles came back and said something to Tony and Andy Blunda, Fastball’s tour guitarist. All three proceeded to the back of the bus and came back with acoustic guitars in tow. Miles had his electric and a little amp that was the size of a couple of cds stuck together. They broke into song, but Tony told Miles to grab an acoustic guitar instead. Miles went back, grabbed the acoustic, and then they once again broke into song. Right off, they covered some Beatles’ songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Something”, and then they did a little “Jealous Guy”, from John Lennon’s solo years. The highlights might have been them covering songs by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again”.

They stopped to choose the next songs when Andy Blunda started to strum the intro to “Drugs Don’t Work” by the Verve. Then Miles sang a sweet version of “She’s Electric” with a mock brit accent and a certain cockiness that you might expect if you were hanging with Oasis.

They jammed for an hour but you wouldn’t know it as we all sang along like we were attending a rousing campfire jamboree. The impromptu jam session ended when Miles realized that he was missing the Goo’s set. Miles and the two girls left and Tony, Andy Blunda, and myself stayed behind to listen to some more old-school bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and the Stooges.

Unfortunately, the evening had to end. My energy began to fade, and with a long drive ahead of me I said my goodbyes and hit the road. The excitement of the evening kept me running for the drive home and all I could think about was how their normalcy was refreshing. Good luck to one of the most underrated rock groups today. And some damn good guys, too.

So, how is it playing with the Goo Goo Dolls?

Tony: They’re a great bunch of guys.

Miles: I had a chance to hang out with Robbie, and hung out with Johnny today actually. We are still trying to adjust to the whole new schedule. We are used to going on at midnight and now we are going on at around nine. We had it down to a science; we’d go on around midnight, the party starts around two, and go to bed around six. We’d wake up around three in the afternoon. But now that everything is earlier, we are done around ten. If we start partying around ten or earlier then it makes for a long night.

Don’t you get more time to have fun now?

Tony: Actually, it’s dangerous.

Too much time on your hands?

Tony: It’s dangerous.

You guys actually have a lot in common with the Goo Goo Dolls. They scored big with the song “Name” and you guys obviously scored big with “The Way”. Both of you were around for many years before the world caught on and people think you are like this new band.

Tony: Yeah, but we are starting to build a pretty good fan base nationwide. Now more than last year people are gonna know our material because I see people singing many of the songs, as much as those singing “The Way”. So I can tell a lot of people know the stuff. We kinda don’t sound like a new band anyway. We don’t have that attitude at all. I feel like our veteran-hood. (laughs) Our veteran-hood? Is that a word? Well, it shows in the way that we carry ourselves, so I think people are getting the point that we are not some new alternative band that wrote a song and ‘see you later’.

Miles: I think we will build a pretty good following through touring. Radio has been good to us too, but most

magazines don’t write about us because they probably think we are some one-hit-wonder or something. Or maybe we’re not cute enough.

Tony: We’re not as cute as the Goo Goo Dolls. (everyone laughs)

Miles: Well, you know what is weird is that the Goo Goo Dolls haven’t been on the cover of anything. There are a lot of bands that sell millions of albums and don’t get on the cover of anything because they don’t want to write about a band that is kicking ass and playing music. They need some sort of story. And the only people they put on the cover is fuckin’ Marilyn Manson. They’ll put Mark McGrath (lead-singer of Sugar Ray) on the cover because he is really good looking. Like Rolling Stone and Spin very begrudgingly put Dave Matthews on the cover.

Tony: I know the Spin was a horrible photo.

Miles: You can’t tell me that there weren’t better pictures than that one. It seemed like they were like, ‘Well, fuck, we’ve got to write about this guy cause he can sell out Giants Stadium in an hour.’ But they don’t want to because he’s just a normal guy that writes great songs.

Tony: He’s not interesting enough for them.

Miles: If Dave Matthews suddenly started dating some famous actress, then it would be newsworthy.

We get so many albums that are fabulous, like Jason Falkner’s last album, and we’re like, ‘Why isn’t this guy huge?’

Tony: That has been happening for like the last thirty years.

Miles: That guy is good looking though. If he gets something going, like a song on the radio, he’ll be all over the place.

Tony: He looks too much like Jon Bon Jovi. (everyone laughs) That’s a problem.

Well, even with your album. I keep reading these articles that say you only have like two good singles, but I don’t get where they only see two. Where do they draw the line?

Tony: Record companies generally decide that stuff, and they aren’t musicians. They work in an office behind a desk.

Miles: But the other thing is that if a song really has it, then it will cut through. Unless your record company is completely inadequate.

Tony: Yeah. That is true.

Were you guys worried at first about Hollywood Records when they started having troubles?

Miles: Well, they had a new president come in, but, I mean, the point is that if a song has something special, the promotion department will pick up on it. And if a radio station plays it and the phones start ringing, forget about it, game over, you win. Because you are getting through. You’re registering and that is all they care about. People want to hear a fucking song. I mean, a ten-year-old will sit around and wait for it.

Tony: I used to wait for “Cat Scratch Fever”

I used to wait around for Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock N’ Roll”. I used to sit there with a tape in the recorder waiting for the station to play it and I’d be like, ‘They have to play it, they’ve got to play it’. I loved that song.

Tony: Because you couldn’t afford to buy the album.

Yeah.

Miles: I used to wait for “Love Is Like Oxygen”, that song from Sweet.

Tony: I love that song. (Tony begins to make drum sounds mimicking the song’s intro)

Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” was another song that I used to love and had to hear all of the time.

Miles: Eddy Grant is a great fucking songwriter. Did you know that Eddy Grant wrote “Police On My Back” for The Clash?

No.

Tony: He wrote other hits, too.

Miles: (sings) ‘I’m romancing the stone.’ You’ve got to give that guy props.

I used to really get heavily into the hits that radio played until I heard the Beatles.

Tony: When did you get into the Beatles?

When I was like sixteen. None of my friends listened to them. They were into like Motley Crue, but we were coming home from a trip and I heard “Strawberry Fields” and it blew my mind.

Miles: You know, that is hilarious. I was just telling someone about that the other day. I was saying if “Strawberry Fields” or “I Am The Walrus” were released today, people would go, ‘Who is this band? This is one of the most groundbreaking artists ever.’ And that music is thirty years old. It’s the weirdest, most fucked up music you’ve ever heard.

I like some of their early stuff, but it’s like Revolver, Sgt. Peppers, the White Album, Magical Mystery Tour, those albums are just unreal.

Tony: So, you like the more interesting material.

Miles: Yeah, when drugs began to take hold.

Yeah, and John Lennon is like ‘it’ to me. He is the greatest.

Tony: Plus he’s dead.

That adds to the appeal, right?

Tony: Yeah, but the Beatles did the same thing to me. It was probably about two years after they broke up when I discovered them. It was like everything and anything Beatles, and then I found out that my cousin Jeanie was a Beatles maniac and was nineteen in like ’66 or ’67 and she flew to London and hung out with the Beatles. She was just a fan. They used to sit with their fans once and a while, while they were recording.

Miles: What I used to like about being a Beatles fan was that I knew that when I’d buy the album, I’d take the record home and I’d drop the needle on the record and never have to pick the needle up again. Every song was a winner.

And they were putting out a couple of albums a year.

Miles: They were putting out four a year. One every three months.

I can’t believe how they put out Sgt. Peppers and followed that up with Magical Mystery Tour.

Miles: Did you know that the Beatles in 1964 held the top five spots on the charts?

Tony: One, two, three, four, five, sequentially.

Miles: Yeah.

Tony: That will never happen again for anybody.

Miles: Can you believe that? That will never happen again because bands don’t release singles like that anymore.

Tony: The industry won’t let it happen.

Do you think the problem today is that people are afraid to experiment with music, or they just don’t have the time to?

Miles: Well, it was a new medium back then and there wasn’t all this research. It’s just like movies: any time money starts to creep into the equation and you start to get it down to a science, then all the experimentation starts to drain out. It’s not like bands don’t still do that but back then people didn’t realize that music was big business. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones made it big business. They literally made it possible for guys like us to have a career. Elvis didn’t do that, even though he was an amazing artist. They still weren’t making as much money off of that. When the Beatles came along and sold out Shea’s Stadium, people were like, ‘Wait a minute. More people like this than we ever thought possible.’ And it just kept growing and growing until guys like Zepplin came along. They were making so much money playing rock ‘n’ roll that it became a viable career. You could do that, as you could become a plumber or a lawyer. There are so many people doing it now that some are more like doing it as a career, more than ‘I’m an artist and I want to express myself.’

So, do you think it’s ridiculous for all these people to try and say that Metallica sold out?

Tony: I would never say that Metallica sold out. To me, they had pop appeal right from the very beginning when Kill ‘Em All came out. The reason it was so popular was because it had pop sensibilities in it. You can’t deny it. It’s speed metal, but there are hooks for days on that. They are a rock band and all of their influences are like The Misfits, The Damned, and Thin Lizzy and those guys have always been a pop band.

With heavy guitars.

Tony: Yeah.

It’s just like with Ozzy; he has always said that he loved The Beatles and that they inspired him, but people would never think of that when they hear his music. And he has some great pop melodies.

Tony: Yes, exactly. That was the appeal of Black Sabbath. They were stripped down to the bone with these amazing hooky melodies over this (starts making sound effects for heavy guitars).

Miles: The thing is that people like to simplify shit. Think about how many bands tried to copy Led Zepplin. They do the heavy rock stuff, but what they missed out on is all the folk, celtic, and great acoustic weird tuning shit. All they went for was “Whole Lotta Love”. They figured, ‘I’m gonna have long blonde hair and just shriek until I can’t no more.’ Every album had a couple mind-blowing acoustic numbers with great arrangements and were very musical, and that is what those people missed. I’m talking about bands like Great White.

Tony: I think the downfall for bands like Great White, all those hair bands, was in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s, was that they didn’t listen to enough music themselves. They didn’t have a repertoire in their own brains.

Miles: I also think those guys had the notion that there was a formula. All the bands in the ’80’s thought, ‘All I have to do is grow my hair, gets some leather pants, and write songs about chicks and we’re in the money.’

Tony: I’ve got nothing against that either. (laughs) When you are feeling rock ‘n’ roll, you’ve got to have all of the elements and it is a bit formulaic, I think. That’s what is great about it: the simplicity. Sometimes I don’t feel very rock ‘n’ roll; sometimes I feel more expressive on another level, and I’ll listen to Bob Dylan home alone or I’ll listen to hard rock when I’m around people and I want to like (raises his hands and does a mock dance). Ya know? When I’m by myself, it’s about lyrics and finding the literature in songs and getting some personal meaning out of it.

It’s like when I’m rolling up here, I want to hear something like Blur or R.E.M., and I’m by myself, but if I go out, I want to hear The Chemical Brothers.

Tony: Yeah. Exactly. I agree one hundred percent.

Shifting gears a bit. What I wanted to know is what inspires you to write songs, and do they just come out of the blue or do you have an idea and write around that?

Tony: I do sometimes sit down and write something, and sometimes it is successful. But to me the best material seems to, just like you said, come out, and sometimes an idea is substantial enough to take it all of the way. It doesn’t happen all of the time. Shit, I wish it would. Hasn’t happened in a long time and I hope it happens soon.

Miles: I don’t know if I’ve ever written something and it’s all just come out. I had a couple that came out a lot easier than others, and a couple were like root canal, to try and get the damn song to work. But to me it is like a stew. I’ll have songs that I’ll play and I’ll finish and they aren’t very inspiring, and then months later I might just have an experience or something will just happen and lyrics will just come to me and resonate a lot more and become more durable. Also it depends on what sort of songs you are going for. I’ve certainly written songs where I considered the lyrics to be totally stupid, but in a real fun way, like (he sings) ‘we’ll have fun, fun, fun, ’til her daddy takes the t-bird away.’ I mean, it’s hard to argue with that sometimes. That’s a part of rock ‘n’ roll too. It’s not all about Dylan.

Tony: What about the Ramones? They wrote the world’s dumbest lyrics, but they were so, and I don’t want to sound clich and say they were so dumb that they were smart, but they were. They wrote those lyrics deliberately and that is very artistic. “I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement”, that’s the title of a song.

So how do you feel when you get the comparisons to The Beatles because you have two singers/songwriters?

Miles: It’s an easy comparison, but to me they are one of the greatest bands in the world and it’s certainly better then getting compared to whoever, like Eve 6. (laughs)

Do you think that it keeps you guys fresh, having two singers and songwriters?

Tony: Absolutely. And every song has its own personality and the combination of two songwriters adds to that.

Miles: The more that I think about it, the more I think we were just lucky to have met each other. Not a lot of bands have that special alchemy that we’ve got going. I haven’t quite figured it out, but there is no reason to really figure it out. Some people who write about our band try to separate us, but I just know that it just wouldn’t be the same if any one of us split. It would be fundamentally a very different band. I’m a fan of bands that stay in their original incarnation and if the band breaks up, that is it, they break up. You don’t try to get someone else, it just doesn’t work. I’ve never seen a band that I felt were the same when they replaced someone. Like when The Who replaced Keith Moon.

Tony: There were a couple good songs, but it wasn’t The Who anymore. Sorry guys. (laughs)

Miles: Like R.E.M. It’s just not them.

Tony: What about AC/DC?

Miles: Back In Black was a great record.

Tony: The guy died; it’s not like they kicked him out. (laughs) They still retained their style, but, I mean, let’s face it, they are driven by Malcolm and Angus.

Miles: Back In Black I’ve got to say is one of the greatest rock albums ever. I’ve got to give them props for that. I became a huge AC/DC fan and bought all of their records, but Flick Of The Switch sucked. For Those About To Rock We Salute You was amazing too.

Tony: You’ve got to own anything that had Bon Scott on it.

Miles: But if you really want to be knocked out, get either Highway To Hell or If You Want Blood You’ve Got It.

+ charlie craine