JOEYCAPE

WITHIN PUNK ZINEINTERVIEW WITH

JOEY CAPE BY PHONE

SEPTEMBER 14 ,2015COURTESY OF

MELANIE KAYE PRHey it’s JB from Within Punk Zine, sitting here talking with the legendary Joey Cape, how’s it going?JOEY: Good!(Rain in the background)J.B: So last time I caught up with you, we were at Pouzza Fest and you were talking about your crazy schedule and we were standing there in the rain and mentioned that the rain in Japanese culture purifies the soul so that’s always a good thing…How do you find the scheduling, any conflict with Stitch Puppy coming out?JOEY: It’s ok now, I think at the time I was torn with Lagwagon and touring in-between plus I was working on the album and I think I had two other things going on in my life, so it was a bit crazy at that time. I felt like every other day I was on a plane or having to be somewhere and things have calmed down quite a bit. I’m touring a lot now, I’m on tour right now actually, but it’s more relaxed, it’s just touring. J.B: Yeah you have the Lagwagon tour be-hind you with the Fat Wreck 24th year tour

“There’s a metaphor there for how we all gain wisdom to try and stitch ourselves back together”.

JOEY CAPE / PHOTO J.B

that just went by, which was amazing by the way.JOEY: Yeah that was great! We have a bunch of tours coming up, we usually do a couple of years of touring when we put a record out. I’m pretty much on tour until Christ-mas, but for somebody who has toured, it’s not a big issue for me. I’ve been doing it so long, it’s almost when I’m most relaxed is when I’m on tour. When you have to be on stage for sound check and then do a show, that’s about as easy as any job there was you know?J.B: Yeah! You mentioned that the reason you like to record in a week is so you don’t go back to it, you don’t play around with it too much. Is that how you approached Stitch Puppy?JOEY: Definitely. I had been doing all these one week records and they were more like sessions than actual records. And I just got really attached to the idea and when I updated my house I got rid of any ability to tune vocals and it’s more about the perfor-mance than it’s about a math equation and I really like that so I tried to give it a shot with the Stitch Puppy thing and tried to do more live stuff and do full takes of vocals and things like that and I just try to keep it really raw and I didn’t do a lot of editing, I let a lot of things fly against my judgement. Which was tough to do but there’s a benefit to that.J.B: You did mention the one week records, which is unusual because this time you’re not self-releasing, you were released through

Fat.JOEY: I think originally there was some plan that the thing I was gear-ing up for I was writing was just going to be a one week record and I had mixed feeling about it, I thought it was too soon because I’m trying to establish a session label for people that I want to introduce to others

JOEY CAPE / PHOTO J.B

and doing my own record on it just seemed a little premature, maybe a few years down the road. So I ended up recording some covers and I just made that record free and that seemed like a better idea. Not to mention I hadn’t had a record with them for about five years, so it seemed better to release a record with Fat that way.J.B: So the character of Stitch Puppy, you describe him as your daughter’s Victorian doll?JOEY: She made it for me with my wife a couple of years ago when she was about 8 or 9 years old and it’s sort of based on the idea of a Victorian mourning doll and it came out of her mind, she has this amazing ability to lack inhibition and they are able to do all these creative things and they paint or whatever they do and I just brought it with me, it’s just an amazing doll, it means so much to me and when I look at it, it’s so inspiring. It’s good to have some sort of muse, somewhat of a conceptual center that you use to write for a record and I used it as a muse for the album. I probably read into it a little more than I could have but that doll is my favourite possession. The name is the thing, it’s got stitches for eyes and the mouth and it looks like it’s dead but it also has this look of wisdom and suffering and it looks like it’s been through a lot and yet he’s holding these flow-ers, this guy that’s stood up by something, life in general…and the name “Stitch Puppy” is so good, there’s a metaphor there for how we all gain wisdom to try and stitch ourselves back together.J.B: On the last one, ‘Doesn’t Play With Others’, you started that jour-ney, it sounds kind of very like Stitch Puppy carries on with “Who’ve We Become” with the lyrics on that one …’everyone finds someone, maybe I’ve found you…’ and then in Stitch Puppy I found it to be that same type of carrying on almost like an emotional score and then it comes in really bright at the end with “Moral Compass” so is that the way you planned it?JOEY: Well I don’t know that I had a plan, I’m not great at being calcu-lated. There was more of a plan when we were doing Lagwagon ‘Hang’

BRIAN WAHLSTROM/ PHOTO J.B

we spent a lot of time thinking about what we wanted to do. I just wrote the songs and recorded them almost immediately, with the exception fo a couple songs. I just wanted to do something different, I didn’t want to be bashful about doing things that I like to do musically with songs in the past that I thought well that’s sounds like some-thing I would do. Songs on the album in particu-lar, for example….ohh I can’t remember the name of my own songs right now!...J.B: Me the Witness?JOEY: No, well that one’s a little tricky, but that’s still kind of very me I think. The third song on the record is called Gone Baby Gone. First of all, I steered pretty clear of putting the word ‘baby’ in any song that I write and that song sounds more like a Midwest song, which is something I love and I’ve written a lot of songs that sound like that but never really recorded – so I was like, if it comes out of me I’m just going to record it and not think about it and just see what happens. And if there were any plans that was it, just to not worry about things, just make a record.J.B: I describe it as an emotional journey from despair to hope and it’s going to touch base with a lot of people that feel that way. Right off the start with ‘Me the Witness’ and then right into the up-beat track ‘Life is strange’. Did you write is more of a piano score, the way it flows like a pianist’s

track?JOEY: Yeah I’ve been playing with Brian Walhstrom now for years, it’s definitely had an effect on the music. Brian and I have been writing partners, we worked on his record together and he on this record and playing with a piano player for a long time has opened up my songwrit-ing because there’s something about dimension and hearing tones that

“There’s something about dimension and hearing tones that I think lead to a more interesting composition”

BRIAN WAHLSTROM/ PHOTO J.B

I think lead to a more interesting composition.J.B: And then you have the heavy cello and mandolin work from Sele-na Chang.JOEY: She plays in Brian Walstrom’s band, I met her through him and we hit it off right away and in the past I had a friend named Angus Kirk play cello and I thought it might be nice to change it up, I really like Selena and I asked her and she did it. But she’s from the tech industry, I think that pretty much absorbs her life, she‘s successful there and a really amazing musician. J.B: You also have duets with Chris Creswell ‘Spill my guts’.JOEY: Yeah that was fun, he was just blasting through San Francis-co and he needed a place to stay and I said sure, can you sing on my record and he was into it which was awesome and we played together a lot, that guy is just so talented and so good it was just great to have him on the record. And then Yotam from Useless ID were in town and I asked them to come by and sing a little bit and lucky me they both did it.JB: And then you have the major track ‘Moral Compass’.JOEY: Yeah I play the mandolin on that, I’m not much of a mandolin player, I sort of go by sound and figure out what sounds good, but I’ve played mandolin on a few of my records and I’m sure my friends that are actual mandolin players would be ashamed of my playing but I manage to hit the notes.J.B: On ‘Life is strange’, when I listen to it, it has that Tori Amos feel. Not too many people like Tori Amos but she’s…JOEY: I was a big fan! I say was because I haven’t listened to her in a long time but you make me want to, yeah I was a big fan, I used to go see her when I could. I was super into the records that I had, she’s ab-solutely incredible, just amazing. I’ve never heard that before, so thank you. J.B: And the video is good too. Is that Erin Burkett that you walk by on the road?JOEY: Yep it is. I had an idea for a video and got a friend to help me and we did it in two days. We were about halfway through shooting and both of us are friends with Erin and we decided to get her for a cameo and it was perfect because she played the part. And yeah she did it well looking disgusted by me!J.B: Talking about the makeup and the costumes of Stitch is there any plans of actually doing that on tour because that would be awesome?JOEY: Nah! It’s all just all inspired by the doll that my daughter made

me which was a bit of a muse for the record and I just like the contrast I thought it would be fun to dress up as the Stitch Puppy Doll for the album cover. And when I was in the make up for the first time which was for that photo shoot I thought boy I wish I could just stay in this and make the videos, but you know that really didn’t work out and then I still had the stuff and then I got a couple of my buddies to play some instruments to kind of mimic what was being played on the re-cord and just be in the video and it was fun. I mean it took a couple of days and you know no pressure I think we shot it in the order that it is you know. We were just taking shots and I was putting them into my computer into the timeline and ya it was a quick fun little project and the stop motion stuff I did with my daughter which was also fun.J.B: Sweet she did an awesome job that’s for sure. I also noticed “Stitch” is reading a John Irving book?JOEY: Oh ya ! I was reading “A Prayer for Owen Meany” (1989) which is kind of funny you know because I have this verse in the song that I kind of wrote about my father who has some serious dementia and problems in the later parts of his life here. And that song was inspired by that as well and so this part where we were talking about the kind of mundane things that you kind of do in a house that you don’t be-long and he’s very old you know so imagine his house you know and at one point I kind of said something about reading or painting and I didn’t want to be completely literal but I couldn’t pass an opportunity to hold one of my favorite books in my hands so (Laughing).You know I’m a fan of his work and that particular book really strikes deep with me it’s one of my favorites.J.B: So the One Week Records Tour is coming up and you did that dual interview with K.J Jansen on “The Punk Site” that was pretty fantastic also?JOEY: Thanks!J.B: But you did lose Laura Mardon off the tour over the border issues with the work visa?JOEY: Yeah Laura Mardon, very sad, we lost Laura it’s a shame. We had a petition for her basically to come and work for me with the work visa thing you know and there’s a bunch of ways that you can do that but at the end of the day it is the U.S you know and you have to get permission from them for the work visa and there was no problem with Canada immigration at all though. But they’re really just goug-ing really, the whole process took so long that by that time we were asked for more money to start a new process which was really too late

because it was like a week ago. And it was just too late and to start again knowing we would spend a whole lot more money to get denied. So you know we are going to do a tour in Australia where she lives and do a tour in Europe and share together and we have some other plans so it’s not a complete heart break but I definitely was upset because she’s really amaz-ing and she’s one of the people I do One Week Records with. I did one with her and she’s one of those people I first saw her perform we did this contest well I wouldn’t call it a contest but people submitted ideas on You Tube and everywhere Brian and I went on tour we would pick somebody from their home town to come up on stage during the set you know. And about three quarters through the highlight of the set we would bring a local up and you know her or him is amazing check them out. And it turned out to be a really good idea and really fun and you know in their hometown maybe they would get heard or whatever but it gave them a more of an audience to show what they can do. And when we played with her in her hometown in Australia and she started to sing it was just wow! And she does that thing you know when she sings and ya! I pretty sure people will strike fear not getting to see her on this tour and that makes me excited and down the road you know it’s a learning experience maybe next time we will just sneak her in (Laughing). You know it’s a lot of border crossings and crossing in general and there’s tension there and I’ve seen you know people get pulled out of vans and sent to an airport in Toronto with their own bags and on their own dime you know and that’s something we just didn’t want to risk with Australia it was just too far away. J.B: But then you still got K.J Jansen!JOEY: Yeah that’s right! J.B: I asked him at the Bovine how he felt about the upcoming tour he said scared because it brings you out front as a true lyricist and it’s just yourself and you don’t have a band to fall back on right?JOEY: That’s true! But K.J on his own is such an amazing lyricist and songwriter in general and I love his songs you know. And his guys have always been super cool about him doing his thing beside ChixDiggit you know. And they even had that more acoustic vibe at that time so I think it totally works and I think K.J is going to be totally amazing. And even after the shows he’s the type of guy that you want to hang out you know and for me that’s just a win right! But I think that’s he’s going to be great.J.B: So that post Lifer for Fat that you are my friend?JOEY: (Laughing) Thanks I wrote that song about when you’re passionate about something regardless of what it gives back to you, not that I would give up music but it’s about passion and if you do it you do it for life you

know! And that’s pretty much it and I like people like that you know I like when people follow their passion even its momentary. It’s something that I’m still drawn to and that Fat Wreck Chords song basically is what it’s about and the people that mean something to me you know and I hope it’s the same feeling back you know (Laughing) but really it’s cool that they feel that way also but I think it was also a mean consciousness to promote that record also but then I realized after you know that we decided to do it that most means are really negative (Laughing) and we were like at this Fat workshop you know so what songs do you like and “I was like I don’t like any of them they’re so mean” (Laughing) they should be called “Means”.J.B: So we always end with a famous book or quote that inspired your life what do you got for me today?JOEY: “Oh sure put me on the spot huh” I’ve got nothing my mind is drawing a blank! God I can never think of anything! I’m so tired I’ve slept about 2 hours in about 24 hours because we are getting ready for the tour. We actually driving up to Portland and are out in front of a Walmart or someplace like that picking up some stuff and I couldn’t tell you where we are I think California but it just looks like any other Suburbia just like in any town or any other place ( Laughing) but parking lots is where it’s at!J.B: But Portland up through the West Coast and then across Canada then back down through the central States and then back up the East coast and then back down and across again ending in San Fran?JOEY: Yeah we decided to do a tour this time around and get it more pol-ished and end on a refreshed note so it’s wraping up in San Francisco. J.B: Check the One Week Records Tour Dates for a date near you!

AVAILABLE NOW AT

www.fatwreck.com