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I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my life. Before the pandemic, and also back when I lived a lot closer to NYC, my friends Joe and Brian and myself used to go to perhaps dozens of shows per year. When you go to that many shows, it’s easy to forget the details or even that they happened at all. Evenings spent in sweaty mosh-pits, empty (sometimes) cans of Pabst Blue Ribbons crunching (exploding) under our feet, listening to some of our favorite bands. I’ve got a lot of awesome memories of incredible shows. I’ve seen The Breeders, Jawbreaker, Joyce Manor and more in Brooklyn. I remember seeing Less Than Jake and Mustard Plug in Amityville. The list goes on, but two shows that vividly stick out in my mind are the two times we saw Jeff Rosenstock.

The first time we saw Jeff was while he was on tour for WORRY., and the second he was while he was touring for POST. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that those two shows were the most Punk-as-fuck shows I’ve ever been to, and not just because of the music, the mosh-pits or the crushed beer cans. No, it was because of the message- Jeff’s message. His ability to shine a light on the disenfranchised, the beaten down and the grizzled, bloody underbelly of a society, sucking on the tit of capitalism, all the while being slowly and sadly defined by police brutality, systematic racism and general shit-spewing hate. Hearing Jeff’s words, and seeing those shows was a game-changer for me.

Jeff has an uncanny ability to tap into what makes himself tick, and in doing so, he becomes instantly relatable, because isn’t it nice to know that we all feel kinda fucked up sometimes? Doesn’t mean we actually are fucked up, it’s just that we’re human and part of that condition is a full range of emotions ranging from overjoyed elation all the way to bottom of the pit self-doubt and everything in between. The pendulum swings back and forth for all of us, and no better has that been illustrated in recent years than in the music of Jeff Rosenstock. Don’t get it? That’s cool. Head over to Jeff’s Bandcamp to see what his music is all about. The link is right here. You won’t regret it. Trust me. Unless you don’t like Punk music, or emotional stuff. Then maybe you won’t. What do I know anyway? What I do know, is that this interview is awesome. Enjoy it. Cheers.

Andrew:
Jeff, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. You’re a fellow Long Islander, right? What have you been doing to pass the time?

Jeff:
Yes, I was born and raised in Baldwin! I moved to the city for school in 2000 and haven’t really lived in Long Island since 2005. Lived mostly in Brooklyn, a lil Queens, some Manhattan, and a year in Georgia. Honestly living in a van most of the time so I don’t know where I’m from anymore haha. I live in LA right now and I’ve been passing the time by writing and recording music at home, reading books, playing video games and running a couple of miles every day. The majority of my time I am composing music for the very good cartoon Craig of the Creek which is on Cartoon Network.

Andrew:
Long Island has a great DIY Punk scene, which you came up in, right? What are your thoughts regarding the scene on Long Island? How has it changed over the years? Anyone carrying the torch these days that we need to be looking out for?

Jeff:
Long Island had a really great DIY scene out East with bands like Latterman leading the charge, the kids that ran the Free Space. We didn’t cross paths all that much as kids. I was more of a part of the Ska scene – which wasn’t really all Ska bands, mostly just all the weirdos and geeks running around having fun and causing anxiety for whatever kind foolish soul agreed to let us use their VFW/bar/catering hall/etc for an all-ages show that day. I am eternally grateful for the spaces that let us have all-ages shows. I don’t know that I would have survived high school without them. Having a space to goof off with other kids who were consumed by music instead of say, sports, seemingly every Friday, Saturday and Sunday is what that scene was all about. Eventually, some more legitimate venues opened up and less halls would trust rowdy kids to have shows there. And then those legitimate venues closed too. Long Island has kind of bounced back with Amityville Music Hall providing a space, but honestly it’s been so long since I’ve lived there I’d be a dang liar if I pretended to know what is going on with the scene there anymore.

Andrew:
Following up on my last question. How did the Long Island Punk scene shape your sound, style, and lyrics, if at all?

Jeff:
I think the anything-goes nature of the Ska scene, and also the amount of Hardcore, Punk, Oi!, Emo, Indie, I guess, and uncategorizable bands playing every weekend imbued me with an eclectic music taste that was still firmly rooted in Punk Punk Punk and nothing else. Where I’m at now, I think no matter what music I’m making it comes from the heart and that is very Long Island to me. I don’t ever find myself beholden to a specific style or genre. I think if I grew up somewhere else, or even if I grew up in Long Island a few years later when Emo was really popular, I would approach things a lot differently. I realize that I was lucky to grow up when there were literally hundreds of bands on Long Island, all doing their own thing, and lots of kids going to shows and going nuts. Because of the parkways, Long Island is a pain in the ass for a touring band to get to and it can seem pointless because the city is so close, but so many bands would go out of their way back then because the trip was worth it. Seeing those bands like Less Than Jake play with our friends was so sick.

Andrew:
When you think back on your earlier work with The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry!, how do you feel it compares with your solo output? Do those older songs still hold meaning to you, or is there a through line?

Jeff:
I always think whatever record I’m putting out is the best record I’ve made, otherwise I feel like I didn’t do a good job. Looking back on ASOB, I think it’s rad that we were playing very fast on Three Cheers for Disappointment with pretty diverse instrumentation at a time when a lot of our peers were trying to do something more mid-tempo and safer. Looking back on Bomb, I feel like that’s when I started to build confidence in writing songs on my own. It didn’t start like that. I was kinda just panic vomiting some shit out into the void while trying to make good full albums that I would want to listen to, but the growing positive response to it made me feel a lot less alone in my feelings of depression and anxiety, and that encouraged me to remain brutally honest in my approach and not think about how it would be received by anyone. The music in both bands can be pretty manic, and I have tried to hold onto that feeling ‘cause I think it’s a positive place for it to go and it feels energizing to listen to.

I have a hard time with ASOB though because I wrote those lyrics when I was 13-20 years old and some of the language in it is problematic. I appreciate that it was coming from an unfiltered place, I just wish I could have done that without being an idiot so I could look back more fondly. I’ll always feel very deeply connected to Bomb – the early records were so raw and were made with no thoughts that anyone other than some straggler fans on the ASOB message board would hear them.

Andrew:
You began your solo career in 2012 and released your first solo record, We Cool? In 2015. What do you remember about the recording of your first solo record?

Jeff:
That felt like the cataclysmic event of my life. I was going to release the version I played by myself and recorded in my apartment, but got a confidence boost after those last Bomb shows and wanted to do it “for real.” So I asked two friends, Mike and Kevin, who I thought were great musicians and John who played in Bomb and ASOB to make it with me. I worked up the courage to cold-call Jack Shirley, an engineer whose records I really liked, to record it. John and I flew out to the Bay Area, practiced at Shinobu’s practice space for four long days, then went to the studio. Jack convinced to try recording it live in the same room to two-inch tape, no headphones on. I’ll never forget the feeling of listening back to the first take like, holy shit, is it that easy? Or hearing the sound of Jack’s Hammond organ through his Leslie. I think it blew us all away. We recorded it in five days, I did a few harmonies at home, Laura and Mike recorded some stuff at home too, Jack mixed it, and then it was done. We’ve recorded every record the same way since, same band, same engineer, sometimes different environments.

I was so scared to record my voice in front of anyone else at that time, I had less than zero confidence about that shit, but I also was like, “Don’t blow it in front of Jack!” We ate a lot of Cheezit Grooves, I got the same spinach egg-white wrap from Starbucks every morning and then we’d get burritos at night. We found two very nice people to play clarinet and cello on the record through a Tumblr post and I conducted with a boxcutter because it was funny.

Andrew:
Earlier in your career, your sound was a little more polished and produced, but that really changed with the release of your 2016 record, WORRY. I’ve seen you live a few times, and I feel like WORRY. finally captured the raw Punk edge of your live shows. How did you finally harness your sound on WORRY.?

Jeff:
That’s an interesting thought to me because I think the records were pretty rough until We Cool? since most of them were either self-recorded or recorded in Tom from Bomb’s practice space. After that, the process has stayed largely the same: practice for a few days and record with Jack somewhere. Maybe part of that Punk edge is that I recorded the lead vocals for WORRY. after leading 100 people singing the group vocals on that record, and afterwards playing a show for an hour, so my voice was fucking shot! What was I thinking?! WORRY. was the most bougie shit we’d ever done though, for real. We did a lot of it at the Panorama House in Stinson Beach, which is a beautiful huge house on a cliff overlooking a beach that’s been outfitted as a recording studio. When we walked in, I felt like I was in the Red Hot Chili Peppers or some shit. I had my usual psycho shit of having a list of five hundred tracks to record, and then re-record through an echo chamber of some sort, but the whole experience was a surreal trip. I hope we record again there some day.

Andrew:
I’d like to talk about WORRY. a bit more. It’s become a landmark modern day Punk classic, especially the 5 songs that run into each other on the second side. In a sense, it sort of reminds me of an updated Punk version of Abbey Road, if that makes sense. What was the inspiration for the structure of WORRY.? 

Well, I had a bunch of songs that felt unfinished but every time I started expanding on them, it felt like too much. Some songs were kinda blending into each other and the outro for ‘While You’re Alive’ felt like it was taking on a life of its own. I was thinking this through with my friend and early drummer in the band Tim Ruggeri at a New Year’s Eve party and he said, “You should just Abbey Road it” and in an instant, all the pieces clicked together, other bits I was writing started making sense, it felt it was immediately done and all I had to do was demo it. I didn’t think it would WORK necessarily, but I knew that the b-side of the record could blend together, and I thought it was a cool idea since the record was already conceptual. I had never heard Abbey Road before though, and I listened to it one time just to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding what Tim was saying. I sent it to the band like, “I did a weird thing” and they were like, “No, it’s good” and I was like, “OK, thanks, record’s done.”

Andrew:
In May of 2020, you released your new record. What was the inspiration behind No Dream? Pretty fitting title for 2020. I really enjoyed this record. What can you tell us about the recording of the album? What inspired the lyrical content for No Dream?

Jeff:
The songs I was writing immediately after POST- was done were very inspired by what I consider to be the golden era of Pop-Punk, bands like The Muffs, The Mr. T Experience, earlier Green Day, Sicko, The Ergs…shit like that. And also Japanese Punk, Rock, Indie, whatever I was absorbing from touring there with Bruce Lee Band and spending hours at the listening stations at Tower Records in Tokyo. POST- was an intentionally woozy hungover-feeling affair and I wanted this one to feel like a sugar rush.

Lyrically, I was trying to be very open about my faults, pull no punches in self-reflection. I was having a lot of social anxiety when we’d tour around the last two records. People would talk to me like I was an important person. I didn’t feel like that’s who I was. I started to feel like I didn’t know who I was anymore; I should have had all this confidence but I was just feeling worse and worse about every word I said to anyone being the wrong thing. We had put out these two political-leaning records and suddenly I was a voice to be listened to instead of kinda chilling in the lower middle, being ignored where I felt comfortable. I’m grateful for all of it, but I still couldn’t feel good. So to me, although there are political and anti-capitalist sentiments through it all, this record was very much my way of coming out of the gates and saying I’m a fuckup, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve grown but I still feel fucked up and I don’t know what to do. I am not saying that’s ok, I’m just saying that’s how I feel. And hoping that towards the end of the record, and the end of writing it, I can grow into a person that I can be okay with.

Completely bizarre to me that a majority of people talking about it felt it was so connected to the feelings of the pandemic, but after the confusion wore off, that made me feel really good. I’d like to be able to write things where the takeaway isn’t specifically what I’m saying but more of a mood to get wrapped up in. That’s a way I’d like to grow as a writer. I’ve always really liked specificity and honesty, but I wanna open this shit up a little bit, you know? So it was cool that all it took was for everyone to start feeling massively depressed to take away their own message from this one.

Recording it, yikes. We stayed at the studio. I didn’t sleep the first night because I was in agonizing tooth pain. I texted everyone I knew in the area asking about dentists. We almost cancelled the day to try so I could get a root canal but I took a ton of Advil and the pain subsided enough that day and never really got higher than an eight for the rest of the week. We went out to see Mustard Plug one of the nights and hung in the green room with these friends I hadn’t seen in years and I was like, a shell of myself. I came home to do some overdubs, I got a root canal from a new dentist and the novocaine didn’t work. So much pain, so funny in hindsight. Then I went back up to mix. When No Dream was done, I told everyone I did not want to talk about this at all, I didn’t want this to be my “root canal record” but lucky for me, once the artwork was submitted, the pandemic happened.

Andrew:
As time has gone on, you’ve incorporated more political topics and social commentary into your lyrics. What went into the decision to do that? Do you feel a sort of social responsibility to get the message out there?

Jeff:
We Cool? was the first album I made where I was doing a lot of interviews. Writing about my mental health and emotional struggles as a therapeutic release is one thing, but dissecting it afterwards repeatedly kinda made me feel like I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Looking back, maybe I just didn’t NEED to talk about it anymore. Another record of that at that time would have felt like well-worn territory to me.

But still when I’m writing lyrics, I’m often trying to empty things that are making me feel overloaded with anxiety out of my head. When Darren Wilson was not indicted for murdering Michael Brown, when Eric Garner was choked to death for selling loosies, when I was watching gentrification rapidly ruin any path for a non-rich person in my city (BROOKLYYYYN), these things were consuming my thoughts at all times. Obviously even more shit bubbled to the surface after the 2016 election. In the past, I had felt some shame trying to address political issues in songs because I felt inarticulate and stupid, but I wanted to challenge myself and grow as a writer. And I needed to talk about it. 

Also WORRY., which is where that shift started, was the first record I was recording knowing it would have a larger audience because of SideOneDummy, so I didn’t want to be a lame-ass. I wanted to scream some Punk shit. I wanted to be brutally truthful about my feelings on violence – in America, the world at large, and that which is the byproduct of a capitalist system. 

Andrew:
Let’s talk about the state of music, in general, a bit. There are a lot of artists out there whom are fantastic, but get stuck in the underground, while others go on to great success. What is it about our culture that causes this to happen? Do think the general public is truly listening?

Jeff:
I’m not really sure. My view of success is whether or not you are happy and/or creatively fulfilled. I never really looked at the underground as a place to be stuck – sure, it means you still have to work for a living but I always loved the strong sense of community and that starts to vanish when you stop playing and staying at each other’s houses. I think in order to play to more people there’s this misconception that you have to go down a traditional path, but that’s not really true. I think it’s just a matter of luck and what connects with people. Touring with Modern Baseball really opened my eyes in that regard – they were playing these huge rooms and kids were going off like they were Nirvana, but they were still putting out records on their friends’ labels, had no manager that I know of, and did most of the work themselves or within their squad of buds. You can see a similar thing with AJJ, who for years have been playing these big cathartic shows where every night hundreds of people leave with their hearts full of joy. Still, never any love from the mainstream music press. But people keep coming back ‘cause they’re emotionally resonant. I think you gotta have that, you have to play with energy, playing well helps a lot too, and when you have some luck you gotta try your best not to fuck up the chance too bad.

Andrew:
In the world we live in today, we are more or less dominated by capitalism and the never-ending barrage of social media. How has this affected music as an artform? Is an artist’s ability to get their music out there hindered by all this, or helped?

Jeff:
It’s a double-edged sword. In one way it’s really great. You don’t need a record label the way you did at the beginning of the century, where getting your record in stores was a huge hurdle that could prevent smaller bands from reaching more people. Now everyone has access to all the music, and people choose what they want to listen to, which is great. However, it also means that you are judged by the way you present yourself on social media platforms where you have to be both authentic and frequently jamming your work down people’s eyes. It’s a high-pressure tight rope act where everything can come crashing down in an instant. It’s not a healthy place to spend your time, but it is a free way to promote your music without external control. It’s easy to feel conflicted about it all.

Andrew:
Who are a few artists, past or present that are criminally unknown, but mean a lot to you?

Jeff:
There’s a few. I wouldn’t call them criminally unknown but both Laura Stevenson and The Sidekicks have put out a constant stream of great records over the last decade and I think they should be fuckin’ rich as fuck off their music at this point. I think both Roar and Diners are really great bands. There’s a bunch of bands from San Jose – Shinobu, Hard Girls & Pteradon – who kinda kicked off this scrappy, noodly punk sound that would inspire a lot of bands later on, but I think they were so ahead of their time they never got their due. I’d say Good Luck, but they’re not criminally unknown, they just stopped playing shows.

Andrew:
Aside from music, what else are you most passionate about and why? How do your other passions inform and inspire your music?  

Jeff:
I’m not really passionate about anything else the way I am about music. I guess graphic design would come in second place, ‘cause I could sit in front of Photoshop for hours and fuck around with something, but it’s still mostly in the context of album artwork or something like that. I like movies and cartoons and I read a bit. I’m definitely inspired by the momentum of certain movies when I’m making records, maybe even more so than other music. Movies have the same tension-and-release of music that I like, but it happens over a longer period of time instead of over the course of a three-minute song. I think about that stuff when I’m working on albums, the sequencing, and all that.

Andrew:
As an artist, are you hopeful for the future? Where do you see yourself heading musically as you move forward?

Jeff:
I feel very lucky to be in the spot I am in but it’s very hard to be hopeful about the future. The consolidation of power is increasingly weighted towards the super-rich who are watching the working class die from a pandemic as they profit. Racism, bigotry, homophobia, and intolerance have been empowered by the people in power and everyone is treating each other like shit. In America, we are all aware of the police murdering black and brown people without repercussions; when we protested, gangs of militarized police officers tear-gassed us. Little to no justice was ever served. America is 4% of the world’s population but 22% of the imprisoned population is right here. And when we protest this, we do so at the risk of getting gassed, hit with sonic weapons, and beaten with knight sticks by a militarized police gang. I see small glimmers of hope when someone like Jackie Lacey gets voted out of office in LA, or someone like Emily Gallagher unseats the incumbent assemblyman in North Brooklyn, but it can feel like shooting a water pistol at a tidal wave.

Musically, I don’t know. I’m kinda always just trying to follow the sounds I hear in my head so it’s hard to tell where that’s gonna go. I’m trying to learn how to sing better quietly so I can be more dynamic. I’d like to feel less embarrassed of my voice when I’m not screaming. The songs I’ve been writing recently are longer and a little more locked onto a mood or groove than the propulsion of N O D R E A M, but whenever I get to spaces like that, my instinct is to simultaneously pull it to a harsher and louder place so it doesn’t dip in energy from the last record. So I have no idea how it’ll end up.

In particular, I’d like to write words that feel a little more poetic and abstract, cast a little bit of a wider net around the subject to leave some space for interpretation. Some of the things I’m talking about can be incredibly specific and I always wanna dig deeper into what the big crux of it all is, you know? I’ve also been challenging myself to write some songs that feel more comforting instead of only articulating anxiety. Trying to find that hope within myself somewhere. We experience a lot of feelings simultaneously, so I’m forever looking for ways to try to speak to it all at once. I’m not sure why, maybe I’m just always pushing myself to do something different so I don’t get bored with words and so my songs don’t sound like a watered-down version of the original thought. And it’s very possible it never sounds different to anyone but me.

Andrew:
Are you into vinyl? Tapes? CDs? Or are you all digital now? Where do you like to shop for music?

Jeff:
I like records! I like ‘em! I’ve got a bunch. It is my preferred way to listen to music. I have had the benefit in my life to be a touring musician which means I get to go to record stores everywhere. When I lived in Brooklyn, I really adored Academy. Their used section was always out-of-control and really fairly priced for a while. It was a great place to kill some time. I also loved Wuxtry in Athens when I lived there. There was a shop called Armageddon in Boston where I came across some good stuff. Some place in London where I found basically every Billy Bragg and Jam record for £3-5 each. I’m always looking for cheap used shit. I’m always digging through the Reggae/Caribbean sections, looking for cheap records with cool album covers. I definitely prefer scoring a random pressing of a great record for $6 than I do finding a first pressing for a bloated price.

Streaming is fine.

Andrew:
In regards to COVID-19, do you feel there will be any significant lasting effects on the industry due to the pandemic?

Jeff:
Yeah, I think so. I think in every industry the big corporations who have the financial cushion to survive such an extended period of time with no income, will tighten their grip on society even more. With music, I think ticket prices will go up, everything’s going to get more expensive when it opens back up. There’s going to be less small options with DIY heart. The pandemic has made it nearly impossible for small businesses to survive and live music is going to be the last thing to open up yet the small amount of financial support hasn’t reflected that. It sucks and it’s scary. But also, I think kids are always gonna throw house shows and basement shows. That will stay the same, and maybe some rad bands from those future scenes will find their people a little easier if that’s the only game in town. I do really feel for musicians who don’t have other jobs because how the hell are they supposed to make money without touring and playing shows? It’s been nice seeing an outpouring of support from music fans, but that can only sustain this whole thing for so long.

Andrew:
Last question. In a world that’s been so confined by the constraints of capitalism, big business and the alienation caused due to the internet age, how do artists find their footing these days? What advice would you have for younger artists?

Jeff:
I don’t know how artists find their footing, but I know how I found mine. I spent a few years really going for it with my first band. It was frustrating. We toured a lot; a lot of shows were small but some were pretty decent and the response was usually great. We worked on a record for years hoping to get signed but we were a Ska band so that wasn’t happening. We trudged along trying to get to that next level to the point where we were all mentally fucking fried by the time the band broke up. I’m so thankful that band broke up. I don’t know that we would have all survived.

After that, I gave up the idea of being a career musician and started recording songs on my own to put out for free. Some friends and I put a collective together around it; we toured when we wanted to and worked when we were home. If someone couldn’t tour because of work, they were always welcome to do the next one they could. I stopped thinking about how to “make it” and just enjoyed existing, traveling, making music with my friends, and even if we were often very very drunk, there was always a magic energy around it. I got better at recording, put out records at a steady pace and we slowly found people who were into what we were doing. We managed to tour the world and come home with rent money. I got over some of my anxieties, learned to talk to people and we felt like one with the audience.

I approached the solo stuff in a similar way, but a fortunate thing happened. When we were done recording We Cool?, I got an e-mail from Christina at SideOneDummy – a big Indie label with some gold records under their belt – letting me know that our screen printer Eric Solomon told her that the demos for We Cool? were awesome. We happened to be on tour, trying to make back the money we spent on recording and were playing LA the day she emailed me. That night, I met with her and Jamie Coletta and we had a fun time talking. That tour ended in Vegas where some of us were attending a friend’s wedding. It was the same weekend as Punk Rock Bowling where the whole staff of SideOne was hanging out. We met and got along. I sent them some of the songs we recorded with Jack and quickly agreed to do records together.

I had a lot of fears and doubts about stepping out of the DIY world I loved so much and mentally push myself by spending a lot of time on the road, but I was encouraged by Mike Park at Asian Man Records (who was initially going to put We Cool? out) to go for it. From that moment on, I was just like, I’m going to go as hard as I can go, I’m going to play as hard as I can, I’m not going to turn my back on the things that are important to me, I’m going to do it all a hundred times harder and hopefully that’ll be good enough that no music business types will try to fuck with me or change what I’m doing. And even though some things have changed, and things have grown since, that’s still the vibe.

So the advice I have for musicians is to make honest music because you’re passionate because you feel compelled to make it. Otherwise, there’s no reason to enter this cruel murky world where you will possibly never see a dime for your art. When possible, don’t think of it as work. Treat people well and some of those people might treat you well. You can help build a scene that helps each other out, instead of fighting to get approval from a businessperson. Learn to do things on your own and you won’t have to answer to anybody. If you get an opportunity, say yes but not at the cost of abandoning yourself. Do everything with all the love in your heart, surround yourself with friends, and push yourself further than you think you can go.

Interested in sampling the music of Jeff Rosenstock? Check out the link below:

Be sure to check out the full archives of VWMusic Interviews, by Andrew Daly, here: www.vwmusicrocks.com/interview