When anarchist-friendly, DIY punk band Against Me! signed to Warner Bros., a major label, there was a big backlash. Fans were accusing you of selling out. Has that calmed down at all?

I don't know. We knew that making the move to a major label was going to be something that certain people had a problem with, and regardless of the record we made, even if it was the best record ever made, some people were going to hate it because of the label. A lot of those people who feel most adamantly about stuff like that are specifically confined to the internet. If we want to go on the internet and really see some people who hate us, we can always find that. If we ever feel like we need to be humbled, then we go to whatever website and get chopped right down to size. [Laughs] It's always going to be out there, but it's nothing new. And it's not a very creative thing to say to a band. We were joking about it the other night, talking about maybe making a list of popular myths of being in a band. Number one: The record label does not pay for the tour bus. The band pays for the tour bus.

What else would be on that list?

We get lots of e-mails from people being like, "Did you get to choose to tour with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists?" or whatever opening band we have out with us. Yes, of course we chose who we went on tour with. That's the way it fucking works, you know? People have this misconception that the record label is this all-encompassing, all-powerful thing that totally controls every aspect of a band, and you sign this contract in a dark room, in your blood, and they suck out your soul real quick and then give you a pile of cash and control every aspect of your career. There are bands like that, but those bands are boy bands. We're not the Backstreet Boys. We're a real band.

So the label had no input whatsoever on the final outcome of your major-label debut, New Wave?

[Laughs] Oh, they wrote all the lyrics!

But people assume that, though! That the label tells you how you should record a record.

Yeah, people assume that. And people will throw out comments like, "It's so overproduced," thinking that somehow by signing to a major label your sound changed, and that it had something to do with the label, when it just had to do with the fact that you used different microphones. This record sounds different from this record because I played a different guitar through a different amplifier recorded with a different microphone in a different room.

In "Reinventing Axl Rose," you sing, "We want a band that plays loud and hard every night/That doesn't care how many people are counted at the door/That would travel one million miles and ask for nothing more than a plate of food." For so long, people seemed to hold Against Me! up to those standards, and you were how old when you wrote those lyrics?

Yeah, I was 18 when I wrote those lyrics, and I'll be 28 in a couple weeks.

I wouldn't want anyone to hold what I wrote when I was 18 up to me now and insist that it is still a representation of me. Is it annoying for people to say, "You said you wanted the music to be free!" and hold you to standards you created when you were a teenager?

Oh yeah, totally. To be honest, though, with that song in particular, the most annoying part is that the song was talking about an ideal that we should all strive for, but it wasn't a one-sided thing—it wasn't like, "We'll be this band, and you as an audience have to do nothing." It was talking about certain ideals that were two-sided and had to be upheld by both ends.

When we were much younger, we were very much trying to live up to those ideals—and still not living up to them—and when we started to make some choices that people disagreed with and they expressed that to us, we realized that we weren't in it together. Things weren't how they seemed, and it wasn't so much of a community as we originally thought. When you have someone slash your tires because you decided to put out a record on fucking Fat Wreck Chords with the guy you idolized when you were 14, or you have someone pick up a brick to throw at your head because they think you're a sellout, or someone writes in a magazine that they should stop your shows at all costs and pour bleach on your merchandise just because they disagree with bands you tour with or something like that, you realize things are really different. My mind has been changed in a lot of ways, and I see things a lot differently than when I was 18.

You have a solo record coming out soon that's inspired a lot by current political events, right?

Yeah. I was originally writing for the next Against Me! record. I didn't really intend on releasing it under my own name, but as things progressed, it just felt more and more like that was the thing to do. We didn't have time to practice them together as a band—I felt like the songs had a timely nature to the lyrics, and I wanted to get them out sooner than later. There's one song in particular that's specifically about John McCain. [Laughs] I'm hoping he won't win, and if he doesn't win then the song is going to be pretty irrelevant pretty quick.

Well, at least history will remember him as a maverick.

He's such a maverick. [Laughs] I'm winking at you right now.

What do you think of Sarah Palin?

[Laughs] I think she's grating! She's obviously a cheap ploy on McCain's part to appeal to a certain voter, and it's insulting. She really gets under my skin.

We don't have to talk about her anymore.

Oh good.

Against Me! play Fri Oct 24, Showbox at the Market, 8 pm, $21 adv/ $24 DOS, all ages. With Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and Future of the Left.