HH: First off thanks for deferring this interview until today...

DAVE: Hey no, it was a really nice thing for me too, so it was no problem.

It's given me a chance to listen to your new album "Last of The Sharp Shooters", which I must say I really liked.

Oh cool, thanks man.

I spun it a couple of times last night and I love all those harmonised vocals and overdubbed guitar melodies which work so well...

Great, thanks. Yeah we really had a... you know sometimes albums are harder to make and sometimes they're easier to make and this one has seemed pretty easy, you know and everything fell into place really well and no one had to spend like a lot of time fixing mistakes or anything like that. Everyone had like a handle on it you know and that was a really good thing.

Right, I like the tracks like Question Marks and Periods which are like a bit different..

I really have to say, to the disappointment of some of our fans I suppose, that Down By Law is not a hardcore band. Certainly we are a punk band but we have a lot of pop sensibilities, by that I don't mean pop-punk you know like...

Yeah, I know what you're saying.

I mean pop like classic pop with song structures and things. I grew up on a lot of music, actually a lot of English music that's very near and dear to me you know. Starting from the Who going up through the Clash or what ever and a lot of the stuff like Nick Lowe.

Yeah, I'd say that they comes across especially the Clash on tracks like Guns of 96.

Oh Guns of 96 yeah that's very Clash.

So you're you pleased with the way it's all come out ?

Yeah really pleased and it's kinda dangerous for me to say that because this is the first time I've produced our albums so err.. you know it's a little bit egotistical if I say it's great - so I shouldn't say it's good. But I really think we got what we wanted out of it and I think that's really the struggle in making a record. So the vibe and energy and everything was really great with it ,yeah.

With you producing it did you feel that it gave you more control ?

Well I co-produced it with another fellow named Paul Dugre - he's one of the guys who produced Recipe For Hate for Bad Religion, he's done a lot of the stuff with Cracker and things like that. He has a lot more of the technical studio experience so as far as control he would handle alot of the sonic like mic-ing and things like that. Where I came in, was like in performances and in overall direction. You know I'd sort of say like "hey, that sound is not the right one what can we do to make it sound more warm" things like this and then he would like adjust things technically. So we actually had a really good combination - you know one was kinda ideas and one was more technical and it really worked well.

Yeah right, so did it feel good that you could just say "oh like I'd like that a certain way" and he'd just like flip the switch and you got that sound you wanted ?

Yeah, I do know certain things like if it's too cold you can take off some high end or things like this and I do know enough about the studio to do those kinda things. But when you've got somebody who's really expert at it, like Paul is or any good producer or engineer who really knows their stuff then it's really helpful.

Since Down By Law's first album your sound has changed somewhat and like you've said yourself more away from hardcore and more towards pop. Yeah that's right. Is this due to line up changes or are you more inclined to experiment with your music now ?

Well it really doesn't have anything to do with line up changes because we have had so many - although for the last three or four years it has been pretty consistent. What has really changed is our drummers, and the drummers are important but in our band they tend to be the member that changes every year. So we always get a great drummer and then it he explodes like in Spinal Tap and so it hasn't really had anything to do with the line up changes. I think what it basically has to do with is that I've grown a lot as a person and as a songwriter. I used to really hate that term "singer-songwriter" but now I really kinda realise why it exists because you know song writing is an art just like a good painter or great writer or anything that involves a craft that you create from your mind. Song writing is an art and it takes dedication and effort and skill hopefully to make a good song. I really feel like that's why the songs have changed because I've worked and become a better song writer, grow and hopefully getting better all the time - that's what I'm trying to do. I feel like I have and I really feel confident about my songs now. It's kind of refreshing because when I first started writing songs for Punk Rock Academy that's the first time I ever said "well I'm not going to worry about whether or not this sounds punk. I'm just going to write songs that really I want to write" and consequently I think that was our best record to date at that point.

Yeah, definitely.

Ever since then it's kinda been the same mentality you know - down the torpedoes, full speed ahead kinda thing. (Laughter)

It's funny because I interviewed Wayne Kramer about a month and a half ago...

Yeah I love Wayne.

He said exactly the same thing. Apart from being really interesting to talk to, he was talking so much about the advancement of his own music and how important it was to just do your own thing and I found him so inspirational to talk to ?

Oh great, you know he's major musical force in my world too. He's... Inspiration is definitely a good word. He and I actually have real nice talks when we see each other, you know I think that there's a mutual respect there between us which is kinda refreshing. Probably because he's like a bit older than me and I'm a lot older than most 16 year olds too, so we have a lot in common in terms that we're in this world of rock 'n' roll which is populated by very young people sometimes but at the same time we've really come along and developed at our own speed. Definitely the new Wayne Kramer record is outstanding.

Yeah, I thought it was. I actually had to do the interview without hearing the CD and then when it came through a couple of days later I thought is was absolutely excellent. He's not doing it like "I want this to be punk rock" he's doing what he wants to do and so it sounds like Wayne Kramer and not punk rock.

Exactly, that's how we are and as Brett says to us you're my only pop band and like I take that as a compliment. (Laughter)

Yeah, that's cool. I really like the variations you have on the new album like on Urban Napalm which has a real Stiff Little Fingers reggae feel to it?

Yeah, that's definitely white boy reggae, you know I don't think that a white punk rock guy from Virginia can ever hope to sound truly soulful and black, it's just not in the genes literally. But I definitely have been influenced by a lot of reggae, when I was growing up I saw Peter Tosh and a bunch of things like that and you know the punk mixed with the reggae sound is like very powerful one I think. So I really enjoy writing songs like that, there's a real nice energy to them.

Definitely, I know it's pretty difficult to pin down influences over the years and obviously you said about a lot of early English music stuff in there. But what influences you these days ?

For these days err.. Well I'll probably create a storm of controversy by saying this, but I really like the Cranberries - I think she has a beautiful voice. I'm also a big fan of another female singer Juliana Hatfield, she's got a great voice and really kinda fightful lyrics from a female perspective on the world not as bitter as Alanis Morriesette but more sincere and I really like her voice a lot. Lately I've really been into the Lambrettas and the Cords, I got a Best of the Lambrettas CD while we were playing a festival in Spain recently and I hadn't really got the chance to hear them that much when I was growing up but they're really cool. I really like a lot of that Mod revival stuff.

I was just gonna say, you've mentioned the Who and that sort of thing so do you have a bit of an affinity to some of the Mod sounds ?

Very much so even a little bit towards the fashions, I mean Angry John and I are both very influenced by that you know. I wear Fred Perrys and these kind of things all the time and I'm probably quite disappointing a lot of the hardcore fans with all these discussions.

Oh no, I'm glad you're doing that.

I'm definitely into the Mod music, attitude and style it's very cool thing.

Yeah, I like a lot of 60s and 70s music.

Yeah, I think diversity is the key to good musical taste. The thing is it's really nice you saying that actually, because people who love Down By Law tend to be fans who tend to be really musical hip you know and know a lot of things. The people who just listen to just Epitaph bands are really the, you know, normal Down By Law fans. Where as real Down by Law fans will listen to Down By Law and then listen to something completely different and then something else because they have broad musical tastes.

Well that's right, if you open your mind to plenty of other things you are going to experience the best of everything. You have to experience everything or else how can you say what's better than anything else and you become so one tracked.

Yeah definitely, I mean I'll put on the Undertones followed by the Buzzcocks followed by Generation X and then I'll put on the Who and then Beethoven or something to clear my head, so I think diversity is very important.

It's also important if you're a song writer because it gives you more influences to draw from and it gives you a way to shape your actual way of writing as well.

Oh yeah, I agree. You know my father is very much a Classical music expert and growing up I heard a lot of that stuff and I really think that it helped me to learn the cadence and swell of that particular part of a song and how that then quietens down into another part. Down By Law songs certainly have a lot of cadence and swell, up and down and I think a lot of that comes from the influences of Classical music. You know when you have this Orchestra that builds to this huge crescendo and then cuts off to a single violin doing a note for the next ten measures or something then I think that it really affects the way you view how music can be and it definitely had an affect on me.

Yeah, so just finishing off on the influences, did you like the Jam then ?

Oh yeah...

...because with the Mod thing in the 60s and then the Jam in the 70s which was a sort of a Mod - punk cross type of thing.

Yeah well that's how I'd view us too - we're Pods! (laughter) (you heard it first hear folks - Ed) Absolutely I love the Jam, I have a tattoo of the Jam. One of my nicest moments was meeting Paul Weller and Bruce Foxton at a different time when he was playing with Stiff Little Fingers. Both extremely nice guys by the way, very cool.

I mean Paul Weller's still doing stuff today, he's never seemed to have stopped. No, his new stuff is very different and I'm definitely more a fan of his earlier stuff but give the man credit for continuing.

I mean the man has his own demons and his own fires inside that continue to make him create so I give him all the credit in the world for that.

OK I'd just like to run a couple of questions by you relating to your past. I'm generally into living in the present, but because you've had such an interesting past so far, I can't resist but ask you a couple of questions which pertain to some of my favourite bands.

Hey, no problem.

Despite the short time that you were with both Dagnasty and All they are the periods which the bands are most famous for. Would you say that you're particularly lucky or that you just have a knack of linking up with great bands ?

Well definitely there's a lot of luck in there with Dagnasty, I was lucky that I was their roadie because I'd moved back down from Boston, back home to Virginia. I was roadie-ing for the band and they were having a falling out with their singer...

Yeah that was Shawn, right ?

Yeah and they weren't happy with how he was singing and this and that. I was like in the right place at the right time and they said here's our roadie and he's a singer why don't we just get him. So I was definitely very lucky in that respect. I don't think that it's ever been the credit of me being such a brilliant guy it's more that I was with great musicians, hopefully I'd like to think that I've become a better singer over the years and that I put in as much to the bands as I got out of it.

I think you must have because people specifically remember those eras.

Yeah it's true they really do and you know especially with Dagnasty and ALL they were real special times and we sensed it. It's interesting because I really feel like that now with Down by Law. I really feel like with this album almost like I did when Can I Say came out you know, we knew when we made that record and everybody knew that this was something really special. I remember I was singing, this is one of my stories that I've probably said a 1,000 times before but anyway I was singing one of the songs and Ian, who produced the album, was like in the other room - the control room and he was like shaking his head. So after I'd done, I went in and I said "What's wrong ? Didn't you like it ? Do you want me to try it again ?" and he said "No, I was just thinking this is the most awesome record Dischord has ever made". To hear Ian Mackaye say that to you when you're in the recording studio is a pretty big deal so I always remember that moment.

Yeah right.

It's the same kind of feeling that I have now and when we made the second ALL record, Allroy For Prez I really felt like that also. Like this record is really good and I wouldn't change a thing about it, that's how I felt then and that's pretty much how I feel right now with Down By Law. I feel we are like at a brand new peak that we haven't reached before and I'm really excited.

That's good because I think if you can feel like that and you can then look back on what you've done and say "I wouldn't change anything" then that is an ideal situation to be in.

Yeah and I'm a pretty harsh critic of myself and the work I've done. I remember, I think it was Robert Roschenburg the painter and he decided that he hated a bunch of his paintings that he done and keep in mind that his paintings sell for like many thousands of dollars and he burned them all in a fire. About a million dollars worth of work and put the ashes in a brownie mix and made brownies with it... (laughter) ...then he had some friends over and proceeded to eat his artwork and sometimes you know I feel like doing that with the recordings of the second DYS record or even parts of the first Down By Law album that I wished I'd done a little differently. Then I'd really like to burn all the master tapes and eat them. But with this record I haven't felt this way and that's a really feeling.

That's good. I know ALL are renowned for gruelling tour schedules, how did touring for months on end affect you ?

To be honest it wasn't that bad for me ever until I joined ALL because with Dagnasty we did some tours which were just like three weeks or so, mostly on the east coast and we never actually went on a national tour when I was in the band. But with ALL I was on the road for about 91/2 months out of the year and I still tried to attempt, pathetically to have a girlfriend in Los Angeles and all these kinda things and it was a tough time you know.

I can imagine.

You know those guys are absolute road veterans, you know - they didn't even blink! I felt like er.. what do you guys call it a nancy boy ?! (laughter) By the end of like the 7th month of touring I was just a shell. So that part was tough, so I've never really gone back to all that. The first Down By Law tour was like 9 weeks long and that was a really gruelling thing but now I've kinda said I don't want to tour for more than like a month you know. I don't want to be away from my wife and from my family so we just stick to month long tours. That's a lot more refreshing and that way the people at the end of the tour, like we're still fully charged and you still get the same energy as you would have gotten from the very first night, probably a little better with the practise and if the groove is there. To do it anymore than that would be to dilute our cohesiveness and our energies so I think the month long tours is what you'll see from us from now on. I think that's sometimes better because there's nothing worse than when you're getting on stage and thinking "When's this finishing". Yeah and I see bands that are on the road a lot and I have to say I've seen punk bands do this. Where they all jump at the same point of every song and you know they say the same thing in between the songs. You know to me then that becomes a job or something like this and that's never why I wanted to create art. I want to create art because it's art and it's beautiful and it energises us as human beings and I certainly never wanted it to become a matter of routine.

Yeah. So just going back to being with Dagnasty and ALL, did you find that the short time - 6 months or 9 months that you were with them was better to do that than say be with them for 3 years and be thinking I need to get out of this and do something else ?

Err.. I don't know, I mean I definitely think with ALL it was the combination of me being tired from the road and also wanting to finish graduate school. So I think that was the right time for me to leave you know and one of the nice things that happened with both the bands and even with DYS was that it's always been very friendly. Bill was very supportive of me and said like "If you ever need any help from us like just call us" or whatever, so it was very good. With Dagnasty I have to say that when I heard Wig Out At Denkos I was really bummed out, I felt like I could have done it... well I won't say better but differently! I thought that the impact of the first record had not been sustained. I was overseas at the time and it really did hit you know like I'd been kicked in the stomach. So sometimes I've thought about that like whether I left it too soon but the thing about life is that you can never look back on things like that you just have to move right on forward. In hindsight, I was living in the Middle East that year and it permanently affected me and lead me to joining ALL which was when I met my wife while I was in ALL - so things really happen for a reason.

Yeah, I totally agree with that, they do.

You can't really look back too much.

No. OK from the Boston scene and DYS to Down By Law you've had an interesting life to date but what dreams do you still hold ?

Well I really err... A lot of my dreams at this point are very personal and family dreams because I have two girls now, two little babies. So like that really does change you perspective on things.

Yeah it certainly does.

So my dreams right now are that we all have a wonderful family life and that they grow up very happy, creative and productive. So that's my big dreams at the moment and they're not really anything to do with music, just they're my responsibility and of course my wife's too and we want them to be the happiest and the best they possibly can be. So that's kinda a bigger challenge than I've ever actually faced.

Yeah right, I did actually mean on a global basis rather than just music wise. As I think that dreams are very important to your life whether they are through music or personal or as simple as wanting to go places or do certain things - I just think that they're something that keep you going.

Yeah, well definitely having a family really is a whole new source of inspiration for me and it's a very cool thing and I really enjoy being a hip young Dad. It's kinda neat, I don't feel like I'm a Dad who's real stodgy and stuff like that - I'm still really young and I'm screaming into a microphone all around the world. I haven't lost it yet and I hopefully I won't, the fun of being a Dad is coupled with the fun of still being young and having a nice time with it - it's really cool.

That's great, I've been married for over 8 years myself...

Oh that's cool.

...so I know where you're coming from. Relationships really bring out your emotions and you do change as a person and see things from a totally different perspective.

Oh yeah, I mean your wife or girlfriend or whatever female have a profound effect on their male-mates. They have an incredible effect on how you think, breathe, talk and walk - it's great.

OK moving on, Epitaph seem to get a bit of a bad press in the punk scene for being too successful. I personally don't believe that success is indicative of selling out and that it's more of a case of how you conduct your business which in their case is a flag ship to the DIY ethics of punk rock by allowing so many people the chance to make their living doing their own thing. What are you feelings about this ?

I would definitely agree with what you just said. I mean I'm looking around here at Epitaph in Amsterdam and you know this place is as far from a corporate machine as you'll ever find. I mean their conference room here consists of a desk with a computer and some cool posters on the wall and tons of boxes all over the place. It's got nothing to do with the corporate mentality that people probably think they are. Especially Epitaph Europe because that's where I am right now and I can literally just look around and see this joyful chaos. But yet it is extremely efficient and they get their stuff professionally done and they have top notch people working for them. So I think it kinda shows that you can do it. I mean if you get people who love the Clash for instance they forget that they were on the biggest label in England and the Clash were rock stars.

So were most of the early punk bands.

Yeah right, but the Clash's music changed my life and your life and many others, so you can't really hate someone because of their size or the level of success that they attain. But the key is how did they get their and what are they doing with it and as long as Epitaph continues to be the kinda label that we believe in then we'll always stay here.

People seem to forget the roots that Epitaph was just a label Brett set up to release Bad Religion's records and it's just grown from there.

Oh yeah exactly, in fact people should give Brett credit rather than dismissing him for being successful because he really did the story of rags to riches, not that he started out in rags as he comes from a nice family and all that. But you know his Dad loaned him a little bit of money and said "here you go" and you know Brett took that and grew the seed in a big tree and he deserve credit for that. I'm sure that success at the level that they have attained can be hard to manage sometimes but overall you have to keep things in perspective and not get carried away. You have to judge people by what they actually do or say and not by artificial things.

Yeah definitely, OK so if you weren't in Down By Law, what would you be doing instead ?

Well I'd probably be doing something in music - solo records or something. I've been writing a lot of Mod songs lately and I've been actually thinking about doing a whole separate side project thing like a Mod band in the United States. So I might do something like that. If I wasn't doing that I'd probably be teaching political science somewhere at some high school level. I did that when I was getting my degrees and the kids really seem to like me a lot and I had a good time doing that.

Right, myself and the majority of the writers of our zine are in the post 25 age group and a prevailing theme recently has been the mid 20s crisis of coming to terms with your changing attitudes and perception to life. What was you experience of your late 20s and the emotional change it had on you ?

Mmmm... that's an interesting question I don't really remember specifics. Certainly that's the point in your life when you start to have to make harder choices about careers and where you are going to go and what you are going to be doing. Your late 20s and early 30s are a critical time because it's a lot harder to change careers when you hit your 40s than in your 30s. I know that was time when I was fighting with myself whether I was going to stay in music or whether I was going to go into something more traditional like teaching or something. I really thought about it and realised that what I think I'm best at is writing songs that people tend to really enjoy and get a lot out of. That's a pretty important thing in my life and I said this is what I'm going to do. So finally I decided once and for all to stop dancing between music and school that was my crisis. What was yours ?

Oh mine was basically about coming to terms with things around me, things to do with my past and about getting older and nearing 30. Basically dealing with the shit so that you can move forward.

Yeah, that's so important..

Yeah, it's just that we'd had this prevailing theme recently you know like the punks with zimmer frames. (laughter)

Oh right, I'm one of them! (more laughter).

So when will Down By Law be touring the UK again ?

Well I guess we'll be at Reading for the Warp tour but that's not really a full tour. I've just been talking to the guys here at Epitaph this morning and they said they'd like us to come before Xmas. I hope we can but it's going to be a little difficult because we've got an American and Canadian tour in October and then we're going to Japan in December. So the only time I can see us doing it is in November but I don't know if the time will present itself properly for that but I hope it does. England is honestly and truly one of the best. The three best countries for concerts are England, Italy and Spain. They tend to be the concerts where the kids are really fully burning with joy - so they're really special times. Our show at the Garage (London) last time was a really nice one, same with Leeds every time...

Yeah well that's the nearest one to us.

Yeah, Leeds was great last time, so if we come to Europe we'll definitely come to England because it's one of our favourite places. When I come to England I feel like I'm coming home in a lot of ways so we'll definitely be there if we possibly can at the end of the year.

So are you having a good time in Amsterdam then ?

Yeah it's nice. It's nice having a good conversation like this because some of the interviews we've been doing have been with people who's English isn't so great and that's not to fault them but you know they have to ask very limited questions. So it can get a bit you know...and no-one seems to understand, outside of English speaking people, the title "Last of The Sharpshooters" which you know you don't really want to make an album based on whether or not people will understand it. (laughter) I still love the title but it's very much an English phrase and it's very interesting that people in Czechoslovakia or other places that just have no concept of what it's talking about.

So has that been the main question you've been asked then ?

Well, it's definitely been the most consistent, yeah I'd have to say. Which it's good that they're curious about it and we can discuss it a little while, which is nice but it's definitely been the most repeated question.

So are you just there for the weekend then ?

Yeah, we're actually in Europe for about a week. I'll be in Amsterdam for a couple of days and then we'll go to Paris and Madrid for one day and Germany for one day. So I'm still feeling fresh, I don't know how I'll feel by the end of the week (laughter) I think you got me at a relatively good time.

Well it's been great speaking to you Dave...

Yeah you too man, it's been really nice. I'm glad we did it today instead of yesterday.

Yeah that's good because it gave me time to prepare more and listen to the record.

I'm really happy that you like the record because I feel it's the best one we've done so far.

Yeah, it's great.

Are you coming to the Warp shows ?

Er I don't' know.

It'd be great to see you there. Have a talk to Chrissie and she'll get you backstage and we can say "Hi" in person.

OK, cheers Dave. Bye.

Bye, speak to you again.