BAND: Pennywise
INTERVIEWER: Shawna Vogeltanz
DATE OF INTERVIEW: 03.17.10

BAND MEMBERS:
Zoli Téglás – Vocals
Fletcher Dragge - Guitar
Randy Bradbury - Bass
Byron McMackin – Drums

Shawna: Before choosing Zoli, who else where you considering to replace Jim?

Fletcher: We tried out Jason from Authority Zero; Jay from The Suicide Machines; Efren from Death by Stereo. We almost tried out the singer from Lit, which is kind of weird, AJ. We were talking to Jay from Strung Out a little bit. He was in the process, we never actually heard him. A bunch of random kids and random people from all over the world sent us demo tapes and recorded songs. We kind of had a music bed that we sent out to people. We tried out a bunch of people and we heard a lot of CD’s and songs and some of them were pretty good.

Shawna: How did the interview process go? Did you actually have them come in?

Fletcher: The only one that actually came into the studio was Jason from Authority Zero. He came into our studio and recorded with. But the rest of them, we would just send them music. We already knew a bunch of these guys personally so it wasn’t about personality or something like that. We already knew them or else we wouldn’t have talked to them. We would just send them the music and they would go into the recording studio and record a couple of songs and send it back to us. We’d all listen to it and they were all really good. Maybe Zoli was better in some aspects…and then worse in others (laughs).

Shawna: Zoli, with Ignite, you did some songs that addressed humanitarian and environmental issues. Are you going to bring some of that to Pennywise?

Zoli: It’s not just because I was in Ignite. The guys in the band weren’t environmentalists or anything like that. As a singer, writing songs and lyrics, Ignite became a way to reach the public in a pretty cool way and reach kids that are charged and energized by doing good stuff for the world. The lyrics that I’ll be writing…we write totally different as Pennywise. It’ll be more of collaboration when it comes to environmental and political movements. I want to keep writing about positive things and I want to of course bring my environmental message to the people with Pennywise. We have a lot of surfer and action sport fan base that are environmental conscious. For this new album, I have tinges of environmental causes for sure.

Shawna: Randy and Zoli, how is the first show with the band after replacing such a key player?

Randy: Well, it’s pretty huge. With Jason, I didn’t think too much about his role in the band. I was just really focused on just going out there and doing the best that I could do. I had played in the band and was a fan of the band too, so I kind of knew what he did. I thought if I went out there and did the best I could do it would be okay. In my situation, I never felt like I was replacing Jason. He is such a huge part of why the band got as big as it did and was as good as it was. Even to this day, it is hard to match and write songs as good as he did.

Fletcher: What about you Zoli? She’ll ask you again since you weren’t paying attention.

Zoli: (He looks up from writing on an oversized notepad) I’m writing lyrics as well (he claims to Fletcher). It’s such a big deal to replace a singer. Some people say “They shouldn’t call themselves Pennywise,” but Black Flag did it really well. They replaced their singer. AC/DC did it. A lot of bands have done it: Iron Maiden, Dropkick Murphy’s. It’s an uphill struggle at first but what it’s all about is the new album. You have to prove yourself to the fans. I think the only way right now I can prove myself to the fans is put on a good live show because we aren’t finished with the new album. So you give it a 110% on stage and they see that. The fans want to see a singer of Pennywise that really cares about the stage show and cares about how the crowd is doing and cares about the songs. I think I’ll be portraying that pretty good. There is a lot of pressure on my shoulders. At the same time, I have to perform really well and keep in mind that the crowd is what’s most important.

Shawna: What can we expect from this album?

Fletcher: I would say it’s going back to the roots. I know bands always say that and we’ve said it over the last 3-4 albums. In the early days of Pennywise, it was fresh so nobody was worried about making anyone mad. You could say your piece and if someone didn’t like it, it was like, “too bad, fuck off, let’s keep working.” Them you get twenty years into it, you know that if you say something to someone and they have a break-down, then you’re not going on tour and you’re going to be penalized in some way. So everyone walks on eggshells a little bit. The relationship becomes super unhealthy. Now we’re back to a clean slate with Zoli. We know the mistakes we made with Jim by letting things go and not talking about things and not having what he would call “an argument.” I don’t want to have an argument, but to get stuff out and clear the air to move forward, sometimes you have to argue or have a debate. Half of the time we wouldn’t come to a solution and it would just be swept under the rug and then there would be bad blood. With Zoli, we can pretty much tell him whatever we want and we’re going to keep it that way. (Randy/Zoli laugh)

Zoli: We pretty much scream and yell at each other and then after the yelling match is over, it’s like “what’d you think about that part?” It’s really meaning. It’s cutting. It’s never really about the songs. It’s about what you look like and your physical flaws.

Fletcher: And how small your penis is. It’s about what kind of medication he (Zoli) is on. It’s actually pretty healthy. I would say that Randy and I, with our song writing with Pennywise, we lean more towards the hardcore, fast stuff. Jim was leaning towards the mellower stuff where he didn’t have to sing quite as hard because his voice wasn’t the same as it was when he was twenty years old. Now with Zoli, having the whole octave-higher vocal abilities, we can go back to really hardcore, more aggressive stuff. When we write a super fast, gnarly, hardcore song, Zoli is like “hell yeah” where Jim would have said, “You should sell this to a hardcore song.” Not to bag on Jim….

Randy: It’s hard to talk about what went on. We don’t want to sound like sour grapes. There was a lot of good stuff that went on. But to really talk about the truth in the matter, he did leave the band. Obviously there are some ugly things that could be discussed. We don’t want to…sound negative.

Fletcher: It’s hard to tell the story with out sounding negative. We’re not trying to sound negative. It’s just that writing a Pennywise song with Jim was a total nightmare. With Randy, it’s a nightmare. I say, “Randy, I’m gonna (sic) help you fix your song” and he yells, “You’re gonna (sic) fix MY song.” And it’s a nightmare with me. We’re all a nightmare. Then you give it to Byron and then Byron’s a nightmare. So here’s what happens, you get rid of Jim, who was a nightmare and add Zoli, who’s probably the biggest nightmare on the planet as far as writing with. It’s maddening. I almost beat him up, and that’s true story. I almost killed him the other day. The good thing is, the songs we’re coming up with have a lot of passion. It feels like the old Pennywise, where there’s a lot of yelling and screaming. Byron doesn’t like that and no one really likes that. It’s not really healthy but it means that everyone is fighting for what they believe in. That’s what Pennywise was always about, it’s a democracy and everyone getting in there and brawling until there was a song that we liked. That went by the waste side because no one wanted to fight except me, but then no one wanted to listen to me yell. It feels fresh and good and I guarantee that people will be really surprised when they hear the new album.

Shawna: Fletcher, you mentioned that as Jim aged, his voice changed and strained. Do you think that happens to singers in general?

Fletcher: Well, Jim only smoked a bunch of cigarettes, drank all the time and didn’t do vocal exercises that much. Nah…I’m just kidding. No, it definitely happens as you get older.

Zoli: It’s called “vocal thickening” You have three phases in your life as a man. (Fletcher: he doesn’t know about singing, you shouldn’t listen to him). Around 40, you hit your second one (phase). Around 60, you hit your third one (phase). You have to really work on keeping you vocal chords real stretched out and in good shape.

Shawna: How do you do that?

Fletcher: I had the best line for that! The best come back! (Randy laughs)

Zoli: Di, di, di, di, di, di, di….

Fletcher: He’s got an Uncle Frank that helps him for that.

Zoli: To stretch out my vocal chords….Well you do what you gotta (sic) do for the singing.

Fletcher: That was so gross. I just thought about that and got totally grossed out. Yeah, so Randy and I would write a song and it would be totally out of Jim’s range. He’d be like, “This is out of my range. It’s too high for me to sing”

Zoli: I’m trying to get them to step the guitars half way up because it would be more in my range. It’s pretty low.

Randy: Jim told me that part of his voice changing, as he felt, would be like playing a guitar but you lost a couple of fingers. How fun would that be? Something like that…I don’t think that was the exact analogy. He said that was a struggle for him and didn’t enjoy it as much because he couldn’t sing like he used to. He even went through periods of time where his voice was basically forced and it wasn’t working very well.

Shawna: Is he retired now?

Randy: No, I don’t know what he’s doing actually. He said he didn’t want to go on tour. That was part of the reason he couldn’t play with us. Now he’s got his own band started and he has a manager. We don’t really know what the story is.

Shawna: You guys aren’t really “hang out buddies” since he left the band.

Randy: No, not really. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge as the years have gone by. This didn’t happen over night.

Fletcher: Well it did and it didn’t.

Randy: Well it did, and it didn’t. The things that lead up to it...He knew. He knew for a while that he didn’t want to be playing.

Fletcher: He was looking for a way out for a while. We felt like he was looking for a way out but he didn’t give us much warning. He just said in an alternative press interview that I just read that it was almost a cliché. It was a struggle to keep democracy and it was three votes against his one so he was forced to be an asshole. That pretty much tells the story. There became a point where we wanted to tour and do certain things that he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to be away from his family, and we respect that but our favorite thing to do is go play live. When you’ve never been to Russia and they have been asking you to go for nine years, you want to go. We’ve never been to Mexico City or Indonesia and all these opportunities. All these kids that want to see you play, and you can’t do it because one guy doesn’t want to do it. We finally got fed up with it and said, “Listen, this is a democracy. This is what this band is about. This is what we sing about and we need to abide by that.”

Shawna: What do you think of the current Socal punk scene? Are there any bands that stand out to you?

Fletcher: There’s a shortage of new punk bands. They’re so extremely underground. You’ve really got to dig to find them. There’s such a shortage of indie labels and indie record stores. The Darlings are really good. They’re touring with us. They’re from Hermosa. The STD’s are another really good band from Hermosa.

For more official information on Pennywise, please log onto:
http://www.pennywisdom.com
http://www.myspace.com/pennywise

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