Rise Against
Photo by Shayne Kaye
I always love speaking with Tim McIlrath from Rise Against… he’s definitely a intelligent, creative, thoughtful, optimistic soul… my kinda punk rocker.
Where in the world are you and what’s happening there?
We are in Chicago right now. We’re actually home for six weeks or so until the time we come over to Australia, one of the few breaks that we’ve had all year.
Rise Against were in the UK recently?
Yes we were just at Reading and Leeds festival. Last weekend or two weekends ago in England we did that and had a great time with Bad Religion and Anti-Flag and then prior to that we were headlining the East Coast of the United States with From Autumn To Ashes, The Loved Ones and Comeback Kid. It was a two week tour. We’ve been home now for a week or so.
What’s a typical day like for you when you’re at home?
A typical day includes waking up nice and late, eating some breakfast and walking my dog and hanging out with my family pretty much.
How about a typical day on tour?
Waking up way too early, waking for your turn to take a shower and then getting in some van with six other really cranky dudes and driving for about eight hours in the middle of nowhere; eating gas station fast food all day and then showing up to a show nice and early for soundcheck and trying to recuperate from your morning the rest of the day.
You’re all vegetarian, do you find it hard to eat on tour?
Definitely sometimes. It depends where you are. If we’re in New York City, LA or Chicago we eat great, there are amazing vegetarian restaurants in the bigger cities. We’ve toured enough and played in these cities enough times to the point where we know where the restaurants are but, when we’re driving across somewhere like Nebraska or Texas or Kansas then you’re really down to like Taco Bell and Burger King and gas station food and crappy food, just to eat something as an alternate to starving – that’s never fun.
So it’s nice to be home and have home cooked meals?
Exactly, it’s great to be home and be in your own environment. You don’t have to go out to restaurants at all you just stay at home and make your own food.
Do you get to see much of the sites while on tour?
From time to time. We try to book days off in cool cities like New York or Amsterdam or Los Angeles but a lot of times you find yourself driving past things like the Effiel Tower and thinking ‘Man let’s go there but I don’t have any time’. Obviously being on tour costs a lot of money and every time you take a day off your just lose a lot of money. We try to enjoy ourselves and still make it feasible to be on the road.
What’s something that you’ve seen on tour on the road that will stay with you forever?
I’ve seen so many things on tour. I’ve seen a house burn down in Lawrence, Kansas. I’ve seen a riot in Berlin. I’ve seen insane crackheads in Vancouver. I’ve seen celebrities in Hollywood and Los Angeles. You name you see it. You kind of just see it all on tour.
I know that Minor Threat, the Bad Brains and Black Flag had a big impact on you guys, what was it about each band that resonated with you? Was there a common thread running through them?
I think at the time I was getting into punk rock, the early ’90s, those were the bands that just spoke to me so closely. The messages that Minor Threat and Black Flag had, that raw punk rock sound and the lyrics just spoke to me as I was growing up and not really finding myself fitting into the rest of the world and trying to find out where I did fit in. At one point I was feeling very alone and finding bands like that, and a whole punk rock community, I found somewhere I really belonged.
Those were the bands that spoke to me, bands with a message. Bands that had something to say, bands that weren’t out to make money or even out to just entertain just to out to really put their emotions into the songs – how they felt about themselves or the world around them or the people around them. It was just that sincerity and the reality that they were putting down into songs that really spoke to me.
Obviously you try to do that with Rise Against?
Yes exactly. Those bands were such a huge influence on me that all I’m going to do with Rise Against is just carrying on that legacy that they passed on to people like me because at one point, I was that kid in the front row watching some of those bands on stage. They were changing who I was as a person. Now I’m the person on that stage and someone has given me the opportunity to talk to kids. I feel like I have a responsibility to pass on what these bands have taught me.
Rise Against appear in Lords Of Dogtown as Black Flag…
Yes!
Tell me about it.
It was amazing and weird all at the same time. It was cool. You know Hollywood is not the place for Rise Against, it’s not really the place for punk rock in general but we were approached by this movie and initially we were like ‘No we don’t want to do a movie this is ridiculous. We don’t want to be the band playing the prom in Scary Movie 5. We don’t want to be that’. They were like ‘We’re doing Lords Of Dogtown it’s a continuation of Dogtown And Z-Boys’. We were all familiar with Dogtown and Z-Boys and we were all skateboarders back in the day – that was such a legend in skateboarding and such a great documentary that we were like ‘Alright you’ve perked our ears. What do you want us to do?’ They were like ‘Oh we just want you actually to play some Black Flag songs in the video’. That was all they needed to say. We were like ‘Count us in! This is awesome, let’s do this’. It was a lot of fun. It was done very well, very tastefully. They had us dress up as Black Flag they were using pictures from Glen E Freidman’s Fuck You Heroes book. It was a really good time. In the end we’re just this tiny little blip in the movie. If you blink you’ll miss it. It was a cool, fun experience.
We have a song on the soundtrack, our cover of Nervous Breakdown is right next to Social Distortion’s cover of Death Or Glory by The Clash. We were able to record the song with Bill Stephenson who is from The Descendents, Black Flag and All – he also did our second record. We’d jump at any opportunity to be around Bill. We love Bill.
I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a band that doesn’t love Bill!
Oh God you gotta love Bill [laughs]
I heard that they actually surveyed a whole bunch of kids and asked ‘Who would be the best band to play Black Flag?’ and they voted for you guys.
That’s what they told us. They had a few bands in mind and the kids picked us so obviously that makes it even more worthy that we weren’t picked by some members of the board like at some commercial meeting looking a pie charts and graphs – we were actually picked by punk rock kids in California. That makes it more validating.
Who did you play?
Technically I was Keith Morris. I think I pull off a better Keith Morris than Henry Rollins [laughs] not saying I pull off either one of them but Keith Morris is a little more feasible.
Are you worried what those guys will think of it?
A little bit. Doing the song with Bill made us a little more comfortable he actually at one point during the recording was talking to Keith Morris on the phone, so Keith knew about it. I felt like we at least had a little bit of credibility going on there. I’ve never actually talked to anyone else in the band about what we’ve done – if they hated it or loved it? I can only imagine that the opinions must be pretty diverse.
Who would you have picked to play BF?
Oh man that’s a tough one. I think I’d pick either a band like, The Bronx – they have a total Black Flag style under them. Either them or I love the band Against Me!
How do Rise Against manage to voice your opinions yet still remain so positive?
I think that that’s a big part of Rise Against because it’s easy just to complain about what’s going on in the world and just really create this whole image of despair and that everything is going wrong and is bad but, what we want to do when we present these problems is to let people know that change can happen. You can make a difference. We want to encourage people to remain hopeful because hope is what’s going to change the world – people caring about these things are going to change the world.
What we do as a band is more or less present these problems and these issues and get people thinking about them and making sure that they walk away from it with the feeling that I can do something to change this instead of the feeling of ‘This sucks, life sucks, I give up!’ We don’t want people to walk away from our shows with a giving up feeling, we want them to walk away with a hopeful and a positive feeling. I think those are really hand in hand.
What do you think is one of the biggest misconceptions about Rise Against?
There’s probably a few. A) that we’re a straight edge band. Granted I am straight edge and so are two of the other guys but one of our guys isn’t and it’s not a big thing we’ve ever pushed with this band. I’m really proud of the fact that I call myself straight edge but we’re not a straight edge band.
It’s more just a personal thing.
Yeah exactly. I don’t want to go out there and be known as a straightedge band, it’s misleading. Another misconception, I guess you run into a lot of kids that come to your shows and think that you’re absolutely loaded, that you’re a millionaire all because you do this band and because ‘I have the CD and my friends have your CD you must be so fucking rich’. It could just not be further from the truth. We’re all making ends meet as a band and there are some years that are better than other years but none of us are by any means living in mansions. That’s not how it goes and that’s not who we are. I always get a kick out of the people that think we’re giant rock stars.
Does it make you really proud you can support your family doing what you love and making a positive change?
Oh god, to no end. It’s unbelievable and overwhelms me to no end – I pinch myself all the time. I can’t believe that someone is actually still letting me get away with doing this as a living. It’s an extension of my adolescents. I’m waiting for the curtain, I’m waiting for someone to pull the plug and say ‘Alright dude you got to grow up and you got to do something real with your life’. My friends are all people that have gone to college and have real jobs and have families and stuff like that and I feel left behind in that whole world but at the same time, I’m doing this and I’m still getting away with it. It makes me feel pretty good and it’s pretty rewarding.
