Brendan Kelly, bassist and co-singer (along with guitarist Chris McCaughan) for superlative Chicago punk trio The Lawrence Arms, says what he thinks.
"Talking shit has long been The Lawrence Arms calling card," says the band's bio, and longtime fans are well acquainted with the members' outspokenness. Hip America at large got its own small, out-of-context taste of it last June on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; Kelly, a vocal critic of the Bush administration, appeared in a bit about political conservatives in the punk scene.
But a phone conversation with the songwriter quickly drives home the point that he and his bandmates' famously unchecked mouths are less about provocative identity than they are about strong opinions and little tolerance for bullshit.
For instance, when asked if he grappled with the question of whether or not it was "his place" as a musician to talk about politics before agreeing to do the Daily Show piece, Kelly's answer is both colorfully profane, and considered:
"I never really thought about it much," he says. "But I'll tell you this, anybody who tells me it's not my place to do something can eat my balls.
"Having said that, though, I don't think I have any special authority or insights [about politics]. I'm no more qualified than anyone else, I'm just another armchair political theorist. But if things upset you, you should let people know."
Kelly and McCaughan formed The Lawrence Arms in '99 with drummer Neil Hennessey following the breakup of the two singers' former band: the semi-legendary Windy City outfit The Broadways. Since then, the trio has built a well-deserved reputation as one of the increasingly homogenized national punk scene's true originals by, well, by just being themselves.
The Lawrence Arms is a complex machine because it's a very human one, a band that looks no further than its members' interests, experiences and emotions for its personality.
And sure, you could say something like that about most bands. Most savvy bands, particularly those interested in being associated with punk or emo, are certainly quick to say it about themselves. But most savvy bands are full of shit to at least some degree.
Whether they realize it or not, they streamline, they water down, they generalize and filter their inspirations, out of fear of sounding preachy or dumb or complicated or self-absorbed or downright incomprehensible, or out of an ambition to resonate with the largest possible number of people. Being complex means demanding more of your listeners, which almost always means appealing to less of them.
"Uh, yeah. To some extent, I've got a lot of experience with that," says Kelly with a laugh. "But at the end of the day, I like [our] records, and people I respect like them … that's what's important to me. That's why I do it in the first place, not to be misunderstood or make a lot of money. I'd figure something else out if that was the case."
Kelly and his bandmates' attitudes toward and beliefs about what music should be have been unalterably shaped by their early experiences in the punk scene — the outsiderdom, the do-it-yourself-ness. Rather than being trapped by the sonic and behavioral dogma of '80s and '90s punk, though, they found in it the freedom to write and play what they wanted. The Lawrence Arms don't just remember a time when punk could be funny AND smart AND eccentric AND critical AND contrary — they perpetuate it. And the substantial musical and lyrical results of those convictions have endeared The Lawrence Arms to a thoughtful and diverse fanbase that appreciates the band's individuality.
Of course, not everybody appreciates individuality, particularly when it's paired with the kind of unrestrained opinion-spouting that's become as much a Larry Arms trademark as pop-culture references and innovative arrangements; not even everybody in the supposedly open-minded punk community does.
The Lawrence Arms were tossed off the 2002 Warped Tour for bashing the event from its own stages, and a scathing, countrified bonus track on the band's forthcoming CD, Oh! Calcutta!, ensures the threesome won't be asked back.
"It's called 'Warped Summer Extravaganza Major Excellent,' or something," says Kelly. "But it's not about [us being booted off the tour].
"When I was a kid, when I first started playing and touring, in the summertime everybody would jump in their van and go out on the road. And 50 big punk rock bands would each bring three or four support bands on tour, and have local openers, keeping local clubs alive and supporting this network. All the kids had shows to go to every night, and soundmen and club owners and kids had jobs.
"Now, all those bands play the Warped Tour, and a bunch of small bands get paid next to nothing to play at the same time as the big bands and get seen by nobody. What's wrong with that is, it dictates the economy of music. It's the Wal-Mart of rock shows, and that sucks. If I wanted to pay 35 bucks to stand in a dusty bandshell and drink $8 Mountain Dews, I'd go to OzzFest. Didn't we start punk to have an alternative to that?"
Oh! Calcutta!, the group's sixth proper full-length (and third for revered punk stable Fat Wreck Chords), will be released on March 7. It's The Lawrence Arms' best record to date. It's also one of the best punk releases in years, and an important one — though the men who made it would likely rather not hear that weighty word attached to it. The album is important, though, because it's not just funny AND smart AND eccentric AND critical AND contrary. It's about being those things, too, celebrating it and why it matters.
"We wanted to make a record that got back to the idea of what made us fall in love with punk rock in the first place," Kelly says. "We sat around and said, 'here are some themes: friendship, keeping it together, not letting the state get you down, music, fun, unity.' These are the things that excited us when we were first figuring out what made music interesting. And we said, 'let's make that record.'"
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2006.