While recently touring the UK, Faye sat down with Madball frontman, Freddy Madball, in Leeds, where they discussed: the band’s longevity, whether “Growing up in New York doesn’t mean shit anymore.”, Madball’s next record, Freddy’s hip-hop career, religion, and a whole lot more. Here’s what went down…
Faye: You’re in the middle of a UK, how’s it been going?
Freddy: So far, so good. We haven’t done a proper UK tour in a little while, and I think it’s going well. We’ve had a few sold out shows, for the UK and for hardcore, I think that’s a good thing, so, so far, it’s going as planned.
Faye: You’ve had some drummer issues, I understand Ben Dussault (ex-Throwdown) has been your drummer for a while now?
Freddy: Yeah, Ben from Throwdown is our drummer, at the moment, and we’re just trying to feel things out, you know? He came to help us out, before him, we had Mackie from Cro-Mags, he’s a dear friend, but he got a little bit busy with Cro-Mags, so we had to go our separate ways just because it was getting a bit too much with the schedules, but he’s my boy. Ben came into the mix, and he’s been very helpful, so we’ll see where we’ll go from there.
Faye: So, he’s not a permanent member?
Freddy: It’s hard to say, I mean, Mackie has gotten super busy with the Cro-Mags, so I don’t really see that happening again, but Ben has been helping us, I don’t know if it’s going to be permanent . He’s a fan of the band and he was drumming for Throwdown for years, so he knows what he’s doing, it’s been good for us.
Faye: Madball has been together as a band for 20-years and still going strong, touring pretty much non-stop, why is it that most modern hardcore bands don’t seem to last more than a few years?
Freddy: It must be something. [laughs] Something that keeps us around. I don’t know, I guess, it’s been 20-years, but when the band first came about and was born, so to speak, I was, personally, very, very young and so we weren’t actively touring until probably the early nineties, but ever since then we’ve been actively touring. We had a little hiatus in 2000-ish, for a year-and-half to two-years, but I guess you can say we’ve been pretty much active for that amount of time. I don’t know, our music is sincere, that’s the only thing I can attribute to it and our style is unique, that’s only really the thing I can think of. We didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but we definitely did our own brand of hardcore and maybe the fact that it’s unique in that way and that we’ve stuck with it, and we’re honest with our music and, I guess, we put on a decent live show, I guess all those factors have given us that longevity. We’re still fairly young, all things considered [laughs], we’re like the young veterans, I guess you can say, we’re like the younger batch of the veteran bands that are still around doing it.
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