D4:
Photo by Edan Wilber
Interview By Dave Dillon & Jon Robinson
Dillinger Four: What can you say about
a band like this? Politics, humor, drinking,
and hooks all mixed together to make one of
the most important punk rock bands of the
last ten years. After six years of silence,
Dillinger Four has just released their much
awaited fourth studio record on Fat Wreck
Chords, and has headed out on the road with
NOFX. Jon Robinson and Dave Dillon were able
to catch up with guitarist Erik Funk and bassist
Patrick “Paddy” Costello at the
Baltimore date for their tour with NOFX, Teenage
Bottlerocket, and The Flatliners, and talk
about the new record, the tour, the future
of the band, and more.
Dave: A low fidelity version of your
new record leaked way early. How do you feel
about that, and how important do you think
the anticipation leading up to a release date
is?
Erik: It really didn’t have much to
do with us, I mean, it’s a weird thing
to happen but as far as sales and that kind
of thing, it doesn’t really matter.
But it was a weird thing because the journalist
that leaked it lost his job and it was a big
story or whatever. But yea, it had nothing
to do with us. It doesn’t really matter
to us, were just happy that people wanted
to hear it.
Paddy: The thing about the journalist and
the online leak is we found out about it 10
days later. We live in Minneapolis, nobody
gives a shit. To this day I don’t even
know the guy’s name, and there’s
apparently some drama between him and some
guy from AP.
Erik: That all has nothing to do with us.
It could’ve been anyone’s record.
Paddy: And we don’t have copies of
the new AC/DC record. Do you know how important
we are? We’re opening for NOFX and we
don’t have copies of the new AC/DC record.
How the fuck does that work? And a dude gets
fired from an online fanzine from Phoenix
for leaking our record? Jesus Christ, you’ve
got to be shitting me.
D4: Photo by Edan Wilber
Jon: You guys still have an Angelfire
page as your official band website, but only
recently did you stream your new record on your
Myspace page. What do you think of the post-Angelfire/Myspace
age in comparison to the way people found out
about music before? Do you think that with the
internet you’re opening up your music
to a whole new group of people?
Paddy: Everything’s getting burned.
Erik: You know what’s funny, we were
sitting around doing the art for the first
album that we did, which was like 10 years
ago, and someone said “Whoa, you guys
have a website.” and we said “No
way, we have a website!” and that’s
still our website. Some guy did as a college
project. We’re not the most tech savvy
guys.
Paddy: You know, we’re so DIY that
we write our songs in a basement with only
candle light. You have no idea. There are
people in fucking Canada that know who we
are. Holy shit.
Erik: But yea, I mean there are definitely
people we talk to that are too young to have
been listening to us when we first started,
and they probably know us from the internet.
Paddy live in Bmore: Photos by Jon Robinson
Dave: That’s like both Jon and
myself, I mean, I was 8 years old when Midwestern
Songs of the Americas came out.
Paddy: But back to the internet thing, everything’s
getting burned. They don‘t have the
artwork and they don‘t have a complete
image of everything that‘s going on.
It’s gotten worse and it’s only
going to keep getting worse.
Dave: I know, I hate it. I don’t
like it at all. I didn’t even hear the
leak. I heard the record for the first time
two days ago when it came in the mail.
Paddy: Well the leak sounds shitty. And even
if we just did three songs on a 7-inch, it
wouldn’t have mattered. It still would’ve
happened.
Jon: The record has great packaging
and you seem to think that it’s an important
part of the album. You don’t want people
to just have a flimsy little insert.
Paddy: We talked about it a lot. The big
debate was the lettering…
Erik: Yea, we chose not to have our name
anywhere on it. But we have a great artist
in Minneapolis who does a lot of cool work,
but he’s never done an album cover,
and Paddy’s known him for years so we
had him do it.
Paddy: We were originally
going to have the lettering go across the
top, and then I asked him why he went with
the penguins. I didn‘t even tell him
that, no one in the band mentioned it. So
I asked him why he went with the penguins,
and it’s because they’re the only
animals on the face of the planet who can
only recognize each other by vocal recognition.
I was like “Holy shit, go with that.”
All the American flags on the front, he actually
stitched them together himself and actually
painted the art onto the flags. I’ll
be honest with you, I think it looks better
on the LP cause you can see the penguins and
the stars better. Punk rockers tell us the
cover looks like the cover of an emo record.
That’s what I’m into.
Photo by Jon Robinson
Jon: There’s all kinds of fests
right now, The Fest in Gainesville, Insubordination
Fest, et cetera. Would you ever play the Warped
Tour?
Erik: We’ve said no every time we’ve
been asked because it looks terrible, and
now we’re just not asked anymore.
Paddy: With Insubordination Fest, the only
reason we’ve ever said no is because
of scheduling.
Erik: Yea, it’s always been at terrible
times for us. We would’ve done it both
the times we’ve been asked.
Paddy: Yup, purely scheduling. With Warped
Tour, we’ve always said no because it’s
corny as fuck. We’ll never do it.
Erik: Not in a million years.
Paddy: And the South Carolina Block Party,
we’ll never play that. Because Dave
Matthews fucking sucks.
Dave: Going back to the new record,
the first release date was for October 2004.
If the record had come out then would we have
heard the same songs?
Erik: No. Not at all. The whole new record,
everything that’s on it, is maybe at
the oldest two years old.
Jon: Will the leftover stuff end
up on some 7-inches maybe?
Erik: We’ve got some stuff like that
planned that we want to put out this year
but I mean, there’s stuff that we rewrote
that ended up on the record, and we’ve
got a bunch of new stuff that we want to put
out, and we didn’t want to make a record
out of songs that were five years old but
just recorded recently. We wanted to make
a new record of songs that we wrote within
the last couple of years. And honestly, most
of the record was written within the last
year.
Dave: The album is dominated by your
vocals, with less Paddy and Billy in the mix.
Was there less collaboration on this record?
Erik: Paddy and I both write our own stuff
and never really collaborate much. If I write
it then I’ll sing it, and if Paddy writes
it then he’ll sing it. And for whatever
reason this time, when we had to get the record
done… I don’t know, I just had
a lot of shit going on and I was interested
in writing songs and that’s just kind
of the way it happened. Paddy’s got
plenty of songs that didn’t get on this
record that will be on our next thing, so
it’ll balance out in the end. Like for
our second record, he only sang one song on
that. It was the same thing, just timing or
whatever.
Jon: A question I’ve always
wondered is how you come up with the sound
clips that you use on your records? It seems
to flow so well.
Erik: Yea, that’s kind
of Billy’s thing. He does a really good
job at that. He’s the one that comes
in with a bunch of crazy records and weird
shit that he finds laying around. The last
record was kind of weird because on Fat we
weren’t sure what the liabilities involved
with that kind of stuff would be. Like on
our first record, we sampled Otis Redding
and I’m not sure that that would be
OK to do that on Fat. But yea, Billy’s
kind of the master at that stuff.
Dave: Do you feel that you can relax
now that the record is out? Or are you already
planning a whole bunch of new things?
Erik: I totally feel like I can relax, like
we’ve got at least a year before we
have to make any new music.
Jon: Are you going to put out those
7-inches through Fat?
Erik: Well I don’t know if it’s
going to be 7-inches or what. We just re-released
the first two records that were with Hopeless
on vinyl, and the 7-inch with Mutant Pop.
We’ve talked for years about doing something
with No Idea, and that’s the most likely
home for whatever it is we do. 7-inches or
10-inches or whatever.
Jon: Do you think it’ll be
mostly B sides from the new record?
Erik: They aren’t really B sides, it’s
mostly just stuff that wasn’t quite
ready yet, you know? Could be better, could
be worse. I don’t know.
Dave: What are the best and worst
things you’ve heard or read about the
new record? If any, I mean, it’s still
pretty early in the game.
Erik: It sounds stupid but I don’t
pay attention to it. We try not to really.
It goes back to what you were saying about
the internet, really. It used to be that there
were reviewers that had some type of credentials,
whatever they may be, that allowed them to
make comments on records, but now with the
fucking internet any idiot can get up and
talk. I think that in some ways that’s
cool, but it also makes me less interested
in looking into it. But in person I’ve
heard people say very nice things. And I’ve
heard people say that Paddy sounds crazy.
He was throwing up for 30 hours the day before
we had to record so yea, he does sound a little
crazy.
Jon: You used autotune and all kinds
of better equipment when recording this time?
Erik: Yea. The plan was to record to tape,
but the first day we were going to record
the studio’s tape machine broke. It
ended up not being an option. But what was
cool was we’ve always done the records
in the same studio with the same people, and
we got to go do the vocals in a basement studio.
We got to spend a lot more time on them that
way, because we were saving money and were
able to put it into the fancy studio. We spent
three times as many days on vocals on this
record than we ever have. It was great, I
loved it.
Dave: What are your biggest likes
and dislikes about touring with NOFX that
isn’t true about your own tours?
Erik: Well we’ve done a few shows on
our own recently, like in the last 15 days
we’ve done three. But as far as touring
with NOFX, it’s nice to have everything
scheduled and to know what time you’re
going on stage. To not have to worry about
who’s coming and the business side of
things, you know, to have everything prearranged.
We don’t have a booking agent, we don’t
have a tour manager, we don’t have anything.
It’s just us. We don’t have that
layer of people taking care of us, so it’s
nice to get out and not have to worry as much.
But because of our experiences we’re
every bit as capable as anyone we would pay
to do those jobs. So, you know, they don’t
have skills we don’t have so it’s
stupid to fucking pay someone to do something
you can do yourself. But the dislikes are
maybe like, we haven’t been able to
get out on our own much, and it’s a
real bummer to know that when we play on a
NOFX show there are people that would like
to come out but can’t come see us because
it’s not their thing, it’s expensive,
whatever. We knew that it’d be a problem,
but we’re also hoping to do more in
the next year so maybe we’ll kind of
make up for that. But there’s a little
bit of a guilt factor. It’s really showed
on the nights that we’ve played on our
own because those shows have been fucking
fantastic and we know that there’s people
that want to come see the band in that kind
of setting, and that this isn’t their
gig. And I understand that, that’s the
down side of it.
Dave: What current bands are you
most excited about?
Erik: I don’t know, I mean, I have
a club in Minneapolis and we book a ton of
bands there. This is probably a better one
for Paddy, he lives fucking underground music,
I mean he lives it. He buys tons and tons
of records and it’s just what he cares
about. For me it’s a little less like
that, I’ve withdrawn more into stuff
I loved when I was younger. But that being
said, I love the newer wave of the poppy punk
rock bands that are doing really well and
aren’t sanitized and generic, like Off
With Their Heads from Minneapolis. And you’re
wearing the shirt, the fucking Ergs, like
I know they’re done but what a fucking
band, you know? Those bands I’m excited
about.
Jon: How does it feel to be a huge
influence on this new wave of bands that are
stepping up and taking cues from your records?
Have you ever imagined things would get this
big?
Erik: No I didn’t, it’s real
cool. We never had any ambition beyond playing
parties, I mean we only played parties and
we were called the Ted Kennedys. So yea, it’s
really cool and it feels great. It’s
surreal sometimes, to see people take more
from it then you even feel like you’re
giving to it.
Dave: What does the future of the
band look like at this point.
Erik: Dodgy. The immediate future of the
band is looking very dodgy (laughs). But if
we make it until the morning, then we have
one more show, then The Fest, and then we’re
kind of done for the year. Our drummer has
a new baby being born in the beginning of
next year and then for the rest of 2009, hopefully
Europe, Japan, the west coast, the Midwest,
and then hopefully at the end of all of that,
back here again on the east coast.
Dave: Are you headlining those?
Erik: Yea, we’re headlining. We actually
turned down three support slots just this
week. We wouldn’t do it for most bands.
Honestly, the fact that we’re sitting
in NOFX’s backstage room while they’re
playing, that doesn’t happen with any
“big” punk bands. Even the ones
that you think are “cooler” or
less commercial than NOFX, it just doesn’t
happen. The NOFX guys are that laid back.
We thought it’d be fun to do this thing
with them, since it’s not normally what
we do. Pretty much everything we do, we do
it on our own. That’s the way we like
it.
You can find Dillinger Four online here
and here.
