Change The Record

On their recent jaunt of the UK, alongside Pennywise and A Wilhelm Scream, Faye caught up with Thomas Barnett, the socially and politically conscious frontman of punk renegades Strike Anywhere, in Newcastle. They discussed a plethora of topics, including his thoughts on the government, feminism and the recent immigration law of Arizona. Oh, and Cokie The Clown!

Faye: How are you today in Newcastle?
Thomas: Oh, we love Newcastle, we had a really good day. We’ve been walking around, we went to Blackfriers, and saw the wall. Some of my band mates went across the river and we just really like the city a lot, and learning about this area and how different it is – Tyne and Wear, the history of it. To be honest, we love the accent of the North – both the West and the East, and the different feel, it’s kind of less hectic, less metropolitan and the way Englishness manifests itself as well, there’s a little more melodic twist to it. We dig it, it’s really cool.

Faye: Do you usually get a chance to look around the cities you visit?
Thomas: On this tour, especially this part, we drive over night, get to the place in the morning and just walk around all day. So by this time, 6 or whatever, we’ve been walking for miles, trying to outdo each other with how many churches and castles we see, and reading all the plaques, and just being maniacs, so it’s been really fun on this tour and the weather’s been great. In Sheffield, we went to the centre where they have old castles and churches and a giant Ferris wheel actually, like “Woah, there’s a Ferris wheel!”

Faye: You were last over about six months ago in December, what have you been up to since then?
Thomas: Good question, I guess we’ve been touring since then and in between tours, many of us have moved house, which has been crazy. We toured the States and then we toured Japan and Korea, then we went to Florida and played an event with Billy Bragg and many other artists, then we did another benefit, South By Southwest, in Texas – that was also with 7Seconds and Fucked Up. Those were all amazing experiences, and going to Costa Rica, we played two shows there, one acoustic and that was pretty surprising, because 150 people came to a really nice bar that had candles lit, playing acoustic, and then we played a hardcore show the next day for 400-people. Then we went to the beach the next day and went swimming in the Pacific coast of Central America with a whole scene of hardcore kids.

Faye: The line-up for this tour is pretty big – you, Pennywise and A Wilhelm Scream – but this show appears to have been downgraded.
Thomas: Yeah, the size of the venue that we’re playing with Pennywise today is close to the size of a venue we’d expect to play on our own or something like that. We like the intimacy of it, in Europe, the shows are like 1500-2000 people, sold out, in tents – gigantic concerts, but these are a little closer to the community that we relate to, like smaller, sweaty shows.

Faye: Do you find that you generally have a similar fanbase with Pennywise?
Thomas: No, I think what happens is that some of the people like both bands and some of them are some of the people we see every time we come to the UK, and they’re here with another couple hundred people who don’t know us at all, but they’re still receptive and stuff. It’s interesting, maybe tonight will be different, but like last night in Sheffield, there was like 25 people who knew us and the rest were just like, “Hey, I’m trying to drink beer here.” [laughs] But it’s cool, that’s why we do these tours.

Faye: You’ve been going for about 10-years now, are you happy at the level you’re at? Or would you like to get bigger to spread your message to more people?
Thomas: I think if we could continue with how things are, the same level of like, the purity of our mission and the activist groups that we work with, and keep carrying the message that is important to us… I guess at some point, punk bands either decide to make certain operation decisions, which see them go from the underground into the mainstream, then ideas can become diluted, but then certain ideas can affect people on a bigger scale, or you play to the people that you love and community that you understand. I think we’re somewhere in between the two as it is, the future is unwritten, we don’t have to deliver a plan and recession is difficult for artists, so I think every time we come home with less and less money in our pockets to pay the bills that are already waiting for us and having find jobs between tours. These are the realities that we’ve always dealt with, we’ve never lived off the band, it’s never been like a profession, it’s more of a mission, we make up how to survive as we go along. The sad reality is, is that tours will be fewer and fewer, because we won’t be able to afford our homes and families, and then come back with no money, but we’re not resentful about it, these are just the hard facts of life. We don’t want to do anything stupid to become bigger and to play that lottery, and to play that game, other people will hijack their message and aesthetic, but that’s something we’ve never felt comfortable with. The truth is the economics are getting harder and harder every day, every month, every tour, and we’re one of hundreds of punk bands that can say the exact same things. People aren’t buying records any more, at all, so that makes things hard, but, yeah, that’s why we don’t take it for granted, every time we play a song in a different city, that’s tens of thousands of kilometres to wear we live, it might be the last time… But maybe not! We’re coming back for Reading and Leeds festival, so that’ll be fun. Things like that, festivals and stuff that have enough resources, a platform to draw bands to them, we’ll take a week around that to do small independent shows – like here and Scandinavia, for some reason, we’re doing Reading, then Finland, then Leeds, it’s the weirdest routing for a tour ever.

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