So, you’re in the Presidents of the United States of
America.
Right. My popular, twice Grammy-nominated musical group.
Were you embarrassed by the name when Bush came into
office?
That’s an interesting way to ask that. I will say there was a
certain jauntiness to the title when we started during the middle of
the Clinton era that became this sort of somberness when the present
guy got in. I dare say we wouldn’t have chosen that name had we started
in the Bush era.
So why haven’t you played any presidential campaign events
now that you’re making your comeback during the biggest election in
decades? You were asked to play an Obama fundraiser, no?
We were asked to play the previous Obama fundraiser at Showbox Sodo
back in October. Frankly, I felt like it was a little early. I hadn’t
made up my mind. I like the guy, I’m in his camp now, but it was an
eight-person field then, and, honestly, I wasn’t ready. We were given
12 hours to decide.
But the end of this story is that for the recent event, the one at
KeyArena, we actually called his people and said we could do it if they
needed us. I think they were interested, but the production realities
of adding a full band to a last-minute event like that were too much.
We got what we deserved.
Your last four records have all been released in election
years.
A journalist asked about that for the first time this morning! Wait
a minute, the last four?
Yeah!
Oh my God! All this time I’ve only been thinking about the last two.
But you’re right, all four… that is incredible. I don’t know if I
want to admit to not having thought of that yet. Actually, no, I’ll
admit to it. I’m a jackass.
When I was in high school, I had a goldfish named
Lump.
That’s awesome. How old are you now?
I’m 27. I saw you guys play Bumbershoot with Sweet Water in
1995.
You were there to see Sweet Water, weren’t you? And you accidentally
saw us.
No, no. I knew the songs! I took my sister’s copy of the
first album. I’m the bratty little sister.
Chris has a theory about that, actually—about why there are so
many young people at our shows, and not just here, but all over the
world. His theory is that it’s younger siblings stealing [the old
record] from their older siblings.
I feel like our self-titled ’95 record is sort of like the Violent
Femmes’ self-titled record—not as killer of course—but it’s
the record. That’s my goal, to be thought of as the guys who
maybe just have the record and then maybe some other records,
too. The record kind of exists outside of time; it’s this
undated classic. I’m not saying our record is a classic, but it’s more
timeless than the Dishwalla record that came out in ’95 or the Joan
Osborne record or whatever.
So even now, it’s still young people at your
shows?
Yeah. People think that we’re Dishwalla or Candlebox or something;
we can’t get them to come to the show where it’s thousands of the same
kids who are going to go to the next Death Cab show.
We show up somewhere—and it can be here, Europe, or
wherever—and there are 1,000 people who are our fans, and there
are 30,000 people who buy everything we put out there, and it’s not
because of Sony or some huge radio festival. These people have sought
us out, and I think that’s a nice thing.
We’re just trying to keep it standing, in fits and starts. We’re not
really into being road dogs; we’re too lazy. Although we actually
worked quite a bit on Love Everybody—between February
2005 and 2006 we went to Europe seven times.
That’s surprising, because we don’t hear about
it.
We don’t do well in the print media. We never have.
The first year, while we were playing shows in Seattle, before the
record, we became sort of organically this huge club draw—this is
before your time. These crowds were really maniacally doing what we’re
talking about here—jumping and smiling and singing and stuff. But
at the earlier shows, when the places were only two-thirds full, I
remember looking out and seeing music-scene friends of mine with their
arms folded like, “Jason, what are you doing with these clowns?”
And we’re not even that funny! We’re a rock band, we get up and play
rock songs, a lot of them are about animals and frogs and stuff. Chris
jumps around a lot. We do some dance moves, we do some sing-alongs…
does that make us hilarious? I don’t know.
I honestly don’t care where people end up slotting us. The obstacle
I find these days is that print media in particular just don’t write
anything at all. They don’t even do the “I hate these guys” thing that
they used to.
You’d rather we be mean? You want to be Jack
Johnson?
Well, we know how to cope with that, because it’s been a thing as
long as we’ve been out there. We were thrust upon an unsuspecting world
all at once in the summer of ’95, and that upset a lot of people. But
it’s like… Creed is part of the problem. We’re not part of
the problem, but we get treated like it sometimes.
Because you were big in the “grunge” years?
Yeah, it’s because we sold a bunch of records in the 1990s. And I
apologize for that, and—my God—I would drive around and
take all five million records back one by one, door to door…
If it meant you were a more legitimate band today, instead
of…
Fuck no, I would not do that! [Laughs]
The Presidents of the United States of America play on Sat March
15 with U.S.E and Pleaseeasaur, Paramount, 8 pm, $23 adv/$25 DOS, all
ages.
