New Jersey outfit The Gaslight Anthem make their long awaited return to Irish shores on June 17th and 18th at the Olympia in Dublin. After extensive worldwide touring of their new album ‘Handwritten’, Niall caught up with drummer Benny Horowitz to talk about everything from blogging and Dave Grohl to Nickelback and parachuting royalty.
Hey Benny, how are ya?
I’m doing well thanks.
These two shows in Dublin in June are the first time you’ve played in Ireland in over two years. What’s taken so long?
Well, really it’s just scheduling. I mean it’s no kind of aversion to going to Ireland. I think the last two tours, apparently the availability of the places people wanted us to play were no good. That’s about as much as I know about it.
You do enjoy playing here so…
Oh yeah yeah [laughs]. We’ve always had remarkable shows in Ireland. We like the country, the people, the shows. But there’s a lot of places in the world, you know. I mean if it’s any consolation I’ve probably spent as much time in Ireland lately as I have in New Jersey.
Is it hard to keep motivated out on the road or would you like to spend more time at home?
It’s a double-edged sword you know what I mean? It’s one of those things where you’re afforded an opportunity to go do something that’s really great and fantastic and cool. Beyond that most people only have a short window where people actually give a fuck about the music they’re making so when you have this window and it’s open and people actually want to listen to your band and come to your shows you’d be kind of a fool not to take it. And on top of that, we love playing shows so they’re all good problems to have.
It does take its toll at home though, if you’re only at home 3 or 4 months a year. If you have any kind of real adult responsibilities at home it’s pretty hard to maintain them. It’s difficult to maintain relationships, you lose touch with a lot of people and you miss weddings and births and anniversaries and deaths and things like that. You have to make a real effort when you come home to put yourself back into the place you came from or you’ll end up getting lost.
Has the new material gone down well with the audiences in its live form?
Oh yeah man I mean right now everything is bigger than we ever thought it’d be, it’s been pretty wild. People seem to like the new record when playing it live and yeah all’s good man.
‘Handwritten’ was your first record under a major label. Did you feel any extra pressure when recording or was it business as usual?
Yeah it was pretty easy man. I’m a bit of a pessimist, I was expecting to have some sort of horror story to tell people afterwards. Fighting about this and that. I think the upside of being where we were at in our careers by the time we signed with a label is that there wasn’t really anything to change. We do our thing, we know what we’re doing and what we like to do and any label that was interested in us didn’t want to change us and if anybody did I don’t think we’d have had any interest in them so luckily we were able to write ourselves a deal that had total creative control and we could do anything we wanted. That said, you’re working with people so you’re kind of an asshole if you’re not willing to hear any input cause these people are working hard on your record and if they have some kind of opinion, fair enough. It doesn’t mean you have to do it but it does mean you have to listen to it or you’d be a bit of a jerk. All that being said, it’s been a really easy experience, there was very little chatter.
I saw recently that you and Kevin Slack wrote a short film called Words Are Handwritten. Was film-making something you’ve always wanted to do?
I mean no, not really… I mean maybe in some sort of dream scenario but I’ve never really done anything legitimate to kind of educate or train myself to do it beside watching a shit tonne of movies. I’m a real cinephile and I love film and pay a lot of attention to it. I also like to write, I’m a bit of an aspiring writer. We had this opportunity cause I had an idea for a video for Handwritten, about the life of the record. I pitched it initially as a video and got Kevin involved but once we were flexing that, Kevin and I were like this could turn into a really cool short film. When we were shooting the video we ended up shooting the short film and cutting it down to a video and once the video was up we had time to sit down and work on the film. Yeah it took a few months, we had some issues with the music. Towards the end of the project we were trying to score it and I wasn’t really digging a lot of what I was hearing. We gave it to Alex Rosamilia and our friend Wax and they did an amazing job with it. We shot a few extra scenes and put it out. It’s been a really cool experience man, that I’m really proud of.
You said in a recent interview that you’d love to write a feature film? Is that just another dream or is it a legitimate goal?
I like to mix any dream with a heavy sense of reality. It is the dream and I have started working on it and started writing it with Kevin, getting some ideas for it. It’d be hard to talk about some grand aspirations before we even have our feet totally in it you know. But that is the goal and we have started working on it and we have the story. It’s nice when you’re in a gigantic group scenario with the band where everything is a discussion it’s kinda cool to have an outlet to bounce ideas off. It’s fun, it’s difficult and challenging and I’m enjoying it. I feel like a fucking loser if I don’t feel challenged.
You recently quoted Frank Zappa on your Twitter account when he said that “Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.” I felt quite nervous ahead of this interview as a result…
[Laughs] Yeah well I like that quote cause I think it’s equally offensive to the journalist, the fan and the band member. What I thought about it is that I feel I see so much entitlement from people in bands, from journalists and even from kids where everyone thinks they’re smarter than everyone else and knows something that you don’t. And I like that quote cause it’s kinda like hey everyone relax, we’re all idiots. We kinda just fell into something and plenty of people are good at plenty of things and it’s important not to take yourself too seriously.
Do the opinions of music journalists not matter to you so?
No you know I definitely read something that seems someone has put a lot of work into and really listened to it. I think it’d be obtuse to not be wiling to hear what someone had to say especially people who are familiar your earlier stuff and aren’t looking at it in a really critical way. I’m very serious about what people have to say but I’m not going to put thought into anything if nobody else has put thought into it. I do read it, the good and the bad and it doesn’t really bum me out. I kinda stalk our fan message board sometimes after we do a show or put out a record cause I’m like alright what do the real fans think about it. I wonder what they’re saying and what they’re attitude towards it is cause that means something to me. I can’t do this if nobody likes it anymore. If someone sees something happening that maybe we can’t see ‘cause we’re on the inside it’s OK to hear it and consider it.
On the subject of message boards and fan interaction, you have your own personal blog. I read your post about people who don’t lift the toilet seat in public toilets and it was hysterical. Do you think the introduction of blogs and social media as communication tools between the band and its fans is an important development?
[laughs] That’s definitely one of my great pet peeves of the world. But yeah, I guess it’s important for me personally, I almost think it’s funny cause my blog is essentially what my journal used to be and I found it funny yet cool that for whatever reasons, the fact that I play drums in a band means that people want to read what I write. Like the two things don’t even have anything to fucking do with each other. A good drummer can make a bad writer as I’m sure has happened many times before. I actually question the literacy of some of my peers at this point. I think it’s funny that people are interested and I dunno why I feel the need to share it I mean it might just be my own sense of ego and narcissism. Why do you feel the need to make your personal thoughts public? But that’s probably part of a bigger question about modern sociology I mean everyone is their own narcissistic entity but it is something I enjoy and enjoy getting the feedback but it’s not something I’m trying to get anything out of.
We hear a lot about Brian and the influence Bruce Springsteen has had on him, but as a drummer, who has inspired you personally?
I’m hugely influenced by John Bonham, Led Zeppelin and probably early Dave Grohl, Nirvana days. Those are probably my two biggest influences. Two guys who represent that perfect mix of power and skill and they both play rock and roll the way I think it should be played, you know heavy and hard with a lot of groove. I also have a lot of influence from some 90’s punk & hardcore stuff, that I grew up listening to like Bill Stevenson of the Suspenders and Chris Daly who played in a band called 108 and Texas is The
I know it’s pretty ironic for me to ask this but do you ever get tired of the comparisons with Springsteen?
Nah I mean sometimes you look at something and you’re like ok there’s so many people you could be getting compared to and we happen to get compared to a really great artist who’s had a great career and life and seems like a good guy. If that’s the impression that people are getting of us then fuck man that’s fine, who cares. I think we’re from New Jersey and we do the singer songwriter thing so I can see why people would make the comparison. But you have to put in your own years and make your own record and your own identity. We didn’t do anything to cultivate it ourselves it just kind of exists, at least it’s not comparing us to someone we hate.
That’s true! Actually I saw a few of your band mates discussing bands you wish never existed. Was it you that said Dave Matthews Band?
Yeah Dave Mathews Band was a pretty popular one in that conversation, I was more leaning towards the “bro-rock” thing like Creed and Nickelback. I could do without those two personally. At least in Dave Matthew’s Band those guys are talented with their own instruments and can play. But y’know I don’t really like to play those kind of games. Opinions on music and all that shit are so arbitrary and yeah I don’t wanna get involved.
Do you know anything about Jogging, the band supporting you in Dublin?
Well I do now, not just from this interview but from hearing they’re playing with us and I’ve listened to it so yeah it’ll be cool, I’ve never seen them live but I’m looking forward to it. And I’m really glad that we got an Irish band to open the shows, it’s a good thing. Yeah I’d like to see that happen more often actually.
And finally, being the eagle-eyed journalist that I am, I noticed that Bruce has two days off between shows in London and Glasgow whilst you’re in Dublin. Any chance you could convince him to travel to Dublin!?
[laughs] Yeah I dunno, this has been happening a lot lately. Anytime we play in New Jersey and Bruce isn’t on tour people automatically look at the schedules and make the rumours. I heard one last summer that he was apparently going to parachute on to stage with us like the queen of England did at the Olympics. You think it’ll help your article if we say that Bruce is going to parachute into the Dublin show? ’cause fuck man I’ll just say it.
Yeah Bruce and Nickelback to parachute in together.
Yeah yeah! From their own private jet with a bedroom in it. Yeah I’ve seen a lot of things but I haven’t seen that so I’m down, I’d appreciate if you did that for us.
I’ll see what I can do!
Tickets for The Gaslight Anthem’s Tuesday show on June 18th are still available priced at €27.90 from Ticketmaster outlets nationwide and from www.ticketmaster.ie