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(Summer 2004) by George Dionne
Tired of the negativity that consumed the Chicago punk rock scene, Rise
Against frontman Tim McIlrath and bassist Joe Principe decided to put a new
spin on things and focused on a more positive, high-energy output. Rise Against
was founded in late 1999, and it wasn't long until McIlrath and company were
signed to the mega-indie Fat Wreck Chords label. After two indie releases,
and thousands of hours and miles on the road, the big leagues came knocking.
In 2003, Rise Against were singed to DreamWorks Records to compose their
third release Siren Songs for the Counter Culture; scheduled
to drop August
2004.
RIL: Where are you calling from?
TM: Bozeman, Montana.
RIL: Is there anything to do there when you’re not playing?
TM: Not really. Not that we have any time to do anything. The Warped Tour
is a pretty busy and hectic schedule.
RIL: Do you go on early or later in the day?
TM: It’s decided around 10:30am each day before the show. You’ll
never know in advance. They’ll say that you’re on in an hour,
or you’re on in eight hours.
RIL: Is it chaotic backstage with all those bands?
TM: For the amount of people that are on this tour,
and that amounts to six or seven hundred people, it actually stays fairly
well organized. They’ve
been doing this for ten years now and they’ve got a system down.
RIL: Your band has been described as “an alternative to the oft and
dreary disenchanted aura that engulf most punk bands”. Why did you
decide to go positive when the genre is known for being negative?
TM: For that exact reason, it was like counter-inspiration
from a lot of the bands around us. We’re from Chicago and a lot of the bands from
Chicago have a really dreary sound. I think there’s a place for it.
Every now and then you want to put in a CD that really dreary and sad; I
have some of those CDs. I think the balance of bands like that and bands
like us was so skewed. When we were outing the band together, we wanted to
make sure we were the type of band that you could go to the show and go crazy,
jump around, and sing along. I grew up going to those types of shows. As
I got older I found myself at shows where people are just sitting there stuck
in their shoes. That bummed me out, so I wanted to have a band that was about
having a good time.
RIL: Your new album Siren Song for the Counter Culture is your first for
major label DreamWorks, what is the difference making an album on a major
label and making an album on an indie label?
TM: So far there’s been no difference, besides the fact that I’m
calling someone else. It’s been about the same. We were allowed to
spend a little more time on it, because we had a bigger budget to work with.
It’s nice for us as musicians because it takes the added pressure off
the writing process and the recording process. We get to try everything that
we want to try. We also had resources at our fingertips where we could just
make a call and say, we want to do this. We did our record with no interference
from the label; they never sent us back, or changed anything. We just did
what we do, and they were into it.
RIL: Does the new CD differ any from your indie records?
TM: I don’t think it’s drastically different than anything that
we’ve done in the past. On our first record we were still finding ourselves
as a band, and it was a pretty raw sound. On the second record we collaborated
a little more, kind of found out who we were. We had two years of touring
under our belts. This third record is just a continuation of that. We haven’t
done anything drastically different; you won’t find drum machines or
techno, or anything like that. I think we added a cello somewhere on the
record, but you really can’t tell.
RIL: Are there any songs that stand out to you on the new CD?
TM: Yeah, there’s a song called “Dancing for Rain” that’s
one of my favorites right now. There’s a song called “Blood to
Bleed” that I really like too. “Give it All” which was
also on the Rock Against Bush Vol.1 compilation is one of my favorites. When
we play these songs live is when I’m going to figure out whether I
love them or hate them.
RIL: Rise Against supports a number of causes, one of them being fighting
against racism in punk rock; is this a big problem?
TM: I don’t think that’s something that we specifically go out
to do, but I think its part of the punk rock genre to be against that. You
probably read that because we did shows for the ARA (Anti-Racist Action).
We have donated songs to other anti-racist organizations as well. I don’t
think that there really is a problem, but I think it’s good to keep
that awareness around.
RIL: Another cause that you support is PunkVoter.com; tell me a little about
that.
TM: It’s a campaign to get kids in the 18-24 yr. demographic to get
out to the polls and vote. It hasn’t been a very strong voting demographic
in the past. Fat Mike of Fat Wreck Chords & NOFX started it, and he figured
out one day that he had access to millions of voters that listened to his
band and read his interviews. I think he was sick of talking about fart jokes
and beer, so he thought he could use his opportunities to tell kids what
he thinks. Punk Voter is a way that kids can register to vote at shows and
online. It’s also a way they can get the information they need to make
that vote. There’s a lot of information about the candidates on the
website. As sad as it is, these kids aren’t reading the newspapers
everyday or watching the news. They should be, and we encourage that. Punk
Voter is a good place to get the news, because the mainstream news can be
so skewed because some corporation owns them.
RIL: Was there a specific event that President Bush was involved in that
caused you to jump on this ship?
TM: Almost every single thing he’s done has caused me to jump on this
ship. Granted, politics have been screwed up way before the Bush administration
took control, and I hope that the punk voters that are being educated about
this realize it’s not just Bush. If we get Bush out of office these
problems aren’t going to change. The chain of the events that led up
to the war was a factor for me as well. It’s right out of a bad book
that you’ve read. America is bombed by a terrorist that’s Saudi
Arabian, so we go bomb Afghanistan and kill 10,000 civilians. Somehow the
chain of events evolved into the war in Iraq. These countries have nothing
to do with each other, and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I think that
David Cross said it best, “Fighting a war on terrorism is like fighting
a war on selfishness”. It’s just something you can’t fight
a war on. I think that we are perpetuating the situation. I think these wars
are creating generations of angry, angry people in the Middle East. When
I think about what’s going on in Iraq, I think of a seven year old
kid over there watching his parents get burned up in a bombing. Then I picture
this kid growing up with this deep seeded anger for Americans. 9/11 was a
terrible, terrible incident, but it was the result of shady American policy.
People don’t realize that.
RIL: Let me paint a hypothetical for you; the Bush administration
is leading this campaign to fight indecency on TV, the radio, HBO, and
adult entertainment.
Let’s say he wins the election, aren’t you afraid that he’s
going to go after the punk rock community and shut them down for rallying
against him?
TM: For sure! It’s definitely a concern. I have a lot of concerns from
the war to censorship to the environmental policy. If he has the power to
appoint a Supreme Court judge, what’s to stop them from overturning
Roe v. Wade? Those things are all a problem that would affect us.
RIL: What’s up for Rise Against after the Warped Tour?
TM: We finish the Warped Tour in August, and then we’ll hike back to
Chicago to do a five-day mid-west record release tour.
After that, we’re
gonna take a few weeks off, play a festival in Seattle, then hit the road
again in October. We’re looking at a few bands that want to take us
out with them, but if that doesn’t happen we’ll head out on our
own. We’ll be in South Africa in November doing a show to promote AIDS
awareness, and the UK in December.
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