GREG BARNETT of THE MENZINGERS: A Greater Degree of Realism
An interview by Bridget Herlihy.
Just two years shy of celebrating two decades together as a band, The Menzingers are considered an American institution in punk rock history. Hailing from Scranton, Pennsylvania, the quartet of Greg Barnett (vocals/guitar), Tom May (vocals/guitar), Eric Keen (bass) and Joe Godino (drums) have spent much on the last 18 years on the road or in the studio recording. Now, with eight studio albums and countless tours under their collective belt, The Menzingers entered a new era with the release of their latest album ‘Some Of It Was True’ last October, with critics calling it the band’s most pivotal and brightest era yet.
In addition to taking a new and uncharted approach to their writing and recording process under the guidance of Producer Brad Cook (The War On Drugs, Bon Iver) for each of the LP’s tracks, the band is about to travel to unexplored territories for the first time.
After almost making it to Aotearoa four years ago, The Menzingers are finally set to play their first ever shows in New Zealand this August, something that the band and fans have been eagerly, and very patiently awaiting. In fact, demand has been so high that both the Wellington and Auckland shows have had venue upgrades. The band will also have the honour of being the first international band to play at one of Auckland’s newest venues, Double Whammy.
Recently chatting with vocalist and guitarist Greg Barnett, who had just arrived home to Philadelphia after wrapping up a tour across the States, his excitement about the band’s imminent arrival in New Zealand was absolutely palpable…
Kia ora, how did your recent US tour go?
It was incredible! It was actually really fun. The tour was about three and a half weeks, and I think we did about 20 dates. We’ve made a habit out of touring the US in the winter months…I don’t know why, but its always been snowy and hard weather conditions to travel in, so travelling in our summer, we were just like “why don’t we do this more often?!” It was really, really fun. On the off days we got to go swimming, and we were surrounded by with really good people, and the shows were really good, so it was a good time.
By the time the band arrives in the Southern Hemisphere we will be emerging from winter, so hopefully it won’t take you long to acclimatise.
Yes! I’m very excited about that!
This tour has been a long time coming, given that you had tour dates in New Zealand scheduled for March 2020, and then everything came to a grinding halt.
It feels like unfinished business. We have talked about it so much, because we were in Australia and we were scheduled to fly [to New Zealand], and everything was just starting to happen in the States. Our families were like “you guys have got to get home”. While we were in Australia it was interesting because no one really seemed to care, and we didn’t really see what was going on because everything was happening so fast. But by the last Australian show, that’s when New Zealand closed the border, and we were like “wow, we have to go”. Then we flew home immediately and it was chaos. But we are so, so excited to make it back over and it’s something that we have been looking forward to for a while.
Clearly your fans down under are as excited as you are to arrive in New Zealand, as you have had venue upgrades for both of your shows in Auckland and Wellington.
It is fantastic! It’s really exciting. It’s even more exciting because Eric’s wife is from Auckland, and he spends a lot of time in New Zealand. He goes over about once a year for a month or so, and the rest of us have never been. So it’s this thing; we see all these pictures and we hear about the country so much. We were so close in 2020 to being able to come. At the end of this tour actually, after the Auckland date we are going to stay for five days and just have a bit of a holiday, so we are all really excited.
Have you got any plans for those five days?
I’m not exactly sure… I know that there are some Lord of the Rings fans, so they are going to go and do that. There is an island that has a bunch of wineries, that’s kind of more my vibe [laughs]. I may take a trip over there. We were also talking about getting a beach house, so yeah, we have some ideas. Everyone is pitching in and we are going to figure it out.
I have been listening to your latest album ‘Some Of It Was True’, which I am thoroughly enjoying. There has been mention that there was an expansion of the band’s approach to song writing during the recording of the album?
I think that every album that we do… every album is an experience, and we are very into the idea of growth in our song writing, which takes a path that we never really understand until we are in it. This one in particular was a really fun creative journey, and it was by far the most collaborative experience that I felt between the four of us. We have always been a very collaborative band, but this time we were able to touch on something even more than that, which was really exciting. We didn’t really talk through things as much; we just kind of let them organically happen. And our producer Brad Cook really helped us find that. At the time I’m not really sure that we knew how to do that. We were looking for new experiences; we were looking for things that put us outside of the box. Say…me or Tom comes in with an acoustic guitar, and here’s a verse, here’s this… and we kind of just put some music to it. We wanted something more challenging than that.
Brad really helped us find and create art in the moment. And that was a new thing for us, where we usually refine things so much, and then we go into the studio and its like “okay, the job’s done, all we have to do is track it”. This was the opposite, where we were like “no, let’s paint in the studio. We are only going to do this once, so let whatever happens be done, and let’s not edit it. Let’s not change everything. Let’s not nit-pick”. And it became really organic, and it’s scary to do things in less takes, because that’s essentially what it is, right? We would play live, and we would do a couple of takes, as opposed to constantly refining and editing and things like that. We kind of just trusted each other a little bit more. It was challenging at first, but it paid off. It was a really enjoyable experience to have a general idea of what the artistic direction of the song should be, but it let it happen in the moment instead of dictating and talking it through before doing it, if that makes sense?
It makes absolute sense. I used to have a preconceived notion about what it was like for a band to record in a studio. And when I witnessed the process first-hand, with all of the tracking and editing of parts that occurred there was almost no ‘magic’ to the experience at all. It seemed like an arduous, regimented and very repedititive process. It was like painting by numbers. Taking the more organic approach that you have described injects that magic back into the recording experience.
Yes, yes! It was really great because we went in and we wanted to have an album that sounded classic, like the albums that we grew up on. And it’s funny, we have always wanted that…The Replacements, the Clash, Hüsker Dü… all these bands that kind of just went into the studio and did it live and tracked it. But we had never really allowed ourselves to do that. I think that there was a fear; this idea that modern music isn’t necessarily created that way anymore; can we do that? I don’t know… I guess we were a little afraid of it. And then Brad really helped us, and [said] “you guys are a really tight band. Trust yourselves!” And we did.
And it was really fun to just have this general idea of what a song should sound like and go do it. And in the moment this weird thing happened, you know? We were like “okay, do we like that? Yeah, let’s do it”. And then you don’t second-guess it, you just move on and enjoy it. I really enjoyed singing on the album this time around. A lot of times singing can be pretty labour intensive; we can do five hour sessions for one song. This time it was just go in and sing it a couple of times and let that be it. And it felt really natural for me to just sing like how I would sing at a live show.
There seems to be a greater degree of realism and authenticity from recording that way too. Do you think the band will take this same approach to recording in the future?
You know, you learn something new with every single album, and I think we are obsessed with growth; finding in whatever way it is. We did a lot of things like it was a band writing their first album, because we have fine-tuned things so much to the point where we were like “maybe we are a little too fine-tuned”. We wanted to step back and find the more organic nature of a band just discovering the magic of being in the studio. I think that discovery is something that will stick with us forever. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the next album; how we want to approach it, how we want to do all that, but we learned so much from Brad and from this experience, as much as we have learned from previous albums, you take those bits and you continue to grow and use them when you need them.
When you have got an album or recording that is overly polished, how do you go about replicating that sound on stage?
It’s certainly a challenge [laughs]. I personally feel that a lot of bands get a little too caught up in that. I’m more of a fan of letting the music be live. Do what you want on the studio album, but I like a live-sounding band; I don’t need a zillion things going on. I like to hear the band as they are. There is definitely a balance. You can get carried away by putting a full string section or horn section on the album when you don’t have that on stage, and then you’re like “what do we do in this part?!” I’m a fan of a band having two sounds; they can experiment in the studio and have a studio recording, and then when they go and play live they don’t have to pretend that they have to be that. I like chaos in a live show. All of the live shows that I have moved me the most have been the most organic and they have made me feel part of the art that they are creating, where there is that connection between the band and the audience.
You have previously said that The Menzingers have had the liberty of our fans growing with us now?
It’s amazing; it seems that our fans have been with us so long, and our fans have grown up with the band. The band started when I was 17; I’m two years younger than the rest of the guys. The growth of my life has been so connected with the band, and it seems like so many fans have grown with the band as well through our albums. One of the greatest things you could hear as an artist is fans saying things like “it seems like the band is at the same point in life that I’m at”. ‘On The Impossible Past’ is the chaos of your early twenties to growing up, and ‘After The Party’ you are turning 30 and you are figuring out that part of your life, and then into ‘Hello Exile’ and ‘Some Of It Was True’, it seems there’s fans that have progressed in their life in a similar way to ours through our lyrics. It’s a really inspiring and awesome thing to hear. On the last tour we noticed a lot of fans now have children and they are bringing their kids to the shows, which is really exciting.
There is a crazy thing that happened with our song ‘After The Party’ where it seems it has become a wedding anthem. We get tagged in so many videos of people getting married and that’s their song. The band has been through these really big experiences, life-changing experiences for people, and so I think we have grown with them. We’ve been able to share in that moment with them. It’s amazing.
The fans are your extended family.
Yeah! It’s a really great community that we’re just so lucky to be part of.
The Menzingers will be performing two shows in New Zealand this month, one at Wellington’s San Fran on the 20th August and the other at the all new Double Whammy in Auckland on the 21st August. Tickets to both shows are still available via Under The Radar, but get in quick as they’re selling fast!
The Menzingers have also recently released a deluxe edition of their latest album “Some Of It Was True” via Epitaph Records. We have two copies to give away on vinyl, so head on over to our Facebook page and answer the skill question to be in to win!
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