Hey, Rick, thanks for
talking to me – can you tell me how Continental got started and your decision
to get back into music?
I had kinda been taking some time off and had started up a
project called Everybody Out! – we had put out a couple of records for two or
three years and then the band imploded.
The lead singer and I hated each other, which just kind of happens. I was talking to Frank Black one day – I was
painting his house – and he said the same thing! (laughs) It’s probably equally
my fault as much as his, and it’s just like any other kind of relationship,
sometimes things just don’t work out.
When you are in such close quarters, it just seems inevitable that a
couple of the guys are going to end up not liking each other. It’s a brutal existence being in a touring
band. We’re out on tour and there are 6
of us in this tiny little van, and every little thing everyone does can get
annoying and that gets amplified as several days turn into several months and
no one really knows how to handle it.
So, that band disbanded and I decided I wasn’t going to tour
again on that level – it’s just brutal and you don’t make any money
anyway. You end up losing tons of money
to end up having friends become enemies.
My son had heard me playing some songs – I had been approached to become
a songwriter for other people and get into production – and he said, “You gotta
play those!” And I’m like, “Well, who’s
going to be the band?” He brought me in
to play with his friends, and they’re all 18 year old kids. It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but I
figured we’d give it a shot. I went down
there and they were all really incredible musicians, the thing hit right
away. I love playing with my son, and
the next thing I know we had a dozen songs together and I said we need to take
this thing on the road. That was a little over three years ago and the original
guys in the band, they kind of went into shock and couldn’t do it. So I had to go and find two new guys and they
were young kids too, friends of me and my son.
We did our first full US tour,
started in September 2010 and the rest is history as they say.
Has working with guys
your son’s age affected the way you write? Or is this simply the right guys for
your songs?
You always have to be adapting, not only year to year but
day to day, so that’s an interesting question.
At first, it was more that I would bring in the songs and tell them to
play them the way I wanted them to, but now the band is so incredible – I mean,
we just learned a brand new song yesterday – they take what I bring in and just
bring it to the next level. The drummer
is incredibly creative and I just let them go to town. The next thing I know,
they are coaching ME on when to come in singing and changing my phrasing. They are all naturally gifted musicians, and
sometimes I’m like “I’m not sure I want to sing it like that.” [laughs] But I defer to their knowledge of music. I
mean, if they wanted me to sing a disco song, I might have to draw the line
[laughs] but as long as it sticks to my intent, I am willing to let them take
the song where they think it needs to go and it’s been working out incredibly
well. They get excited coming up with
chord changes and accents, so I don’t want to take that experience away from
them. That is the essence of making
music and being in a band, creating a song and hearing it come to fruition from
the raw structure on the acoustic guitar.
Is that how you do
it, you just work it up on an acoustic?
Oh yeah, every song.
For example, I was working on that new song in my camper this
morning. The band will get the song in
one night, and then I have to go back and practice for three days because I am
just not a natural musician. What I have
is some kind of bizarre gift that enables me to have a song come through my
body and it’s a phenomenal thing. I come
up with some great shit that I have no idea where it comes from. Working on that new song today, suddenly I
found myself turning these three chords around and I am on to another song – it
gives me chills up and down my spine to do that! I’m 52 years old, and this phenomenon happens
to me on a regular basis. All my peers,
guys who are far superior to me musically – guys who I worship like Frank Black
and Paul Westerberg – most of my peers wrote their best stuff in their twenties
and have steadily gone downhill. I’m not
sure if they are just experiencing life differently or what, but they aren’t
able to draw from the same inspiration as they once did. Most artists do their best work when they are
younger, but in my case I really think that I am writing better every day. It just blows me away. I really, honestly think my best material is
still to come.
You can see a
difference even between the Continental stuff and the stuff you did with the Shadowblasters
– it’s leagues better and more mature.
The songs have a swagger and confidence
- you seem to be very confident in your writing right now.
Oh yeah, I am. I am
very lucky. We’re about to turn the
corner and have people start to recognize us…it’s beginning to happen for us
now. This is where I really have to be
careful, because we are actually starting to get popular. It’s a very slow process, acquiring fans. Now these songs that I write are actually
going to be heard by people. It’s fun,
though, to know that your songs are going to be heard.
So what’s the endgame
with the next release from Continental – do you have something in place
label-wise or are you shopping it?
We have a label in Europe and one here – these are small
labels, they don’t give you any money or anything. We pay for the recording and everything
ourselves – labels aren’t what they used to be and everybody’s poor in the
music business. I think we’re going to
do a couple of singles sometime soon and those singles will be the lead-in for
an album we are going to record right after we get back from Europe in
December. We’re kind of old school,
where bands would release a single or two and then you’d have to wait for the
album to come out. And it’s not even the
plan because we are copying the past – it’s for financial reasons. We can only afford to do singles right
now. We had to put up a lot of money to
go to Europe but we’re pretty sure we’re going to get most of that back and we
are going to invest all of that money into recording an album. That’s the way you have to do it – you have
to put every dime you make back into the music, even the stuff you make from
your day job. A lot of people are
afraid to do that, and I understand that fear because I am often reticent to
throw all my money into music but at the end of the day I do it every
time. I get down to the last hundred
bucks to eat for the week, but everything else goes to the music.
The flipside of the
coin, though, is that you own it and don’t have any other master telling you
how it needs to sound or what single needs to be released. You’re in control.
Yeah. That’s
definitely the good part.
Tell me a little bit
about FM359, the project you and Mike McColgan (Street Dogs, ex-Dropkick
Murphys) are working on.
I tried calling Mike and I was talking to Jonny (Rioux,
Street Dogs bassist) and I think it’s coming out sometime in November or
December and then we might do a one-off tour and see how it goes. There is really no definitive plan. I mean, I think the stuff doesn’t sound the
best, sonically, but the other guys are really into it.
I know that you
aren’t probably one to cash in on nostalgia, but I am sure that there are a
bunch of people who are interested in that because of the connections you guys
have from the Murphys days and from the Street Dogs. Do you think the connection is going to help
raise the profile of Continental?
I don’t think it will, actually. Nowadays, I don’t think people research and
do a back history on the bands they like.
It did happen and it was still happening through the 90’s, but I don’t
think people really care about that anymore.
They just want to know what’s happening right now. I can tell you, me being an ex-member of the
Dropkick Murphys has done almost NOTHING for Continental. We might get one or two fans a night who were
my old fans from the Dropkick days, but that’s it. They don’t come out. People don’t come out in general to see new
bands. They’re going to go to Warped
Tour and Riot Fest – anything that’s a big event. Or if some legendary band from England comes
over like Cocksparrer or someone, people are going to go to that but people
aren’t seeking out new music live. They
just click on it on the internet - click, dismiss, click, dismiss. They don’t have to put any work into finding
out about bands. They might just go to some live clip that sounds like crap and
go “They suck” and move on. It’s a hard
sell if you’re an underground, original, unknown band.
We’re playing a show in our hometown on Saturday and we have
this campaign blitz of giving away free CDs and shirts, I have been doing
personal invites on Facebook to practically every person I know, flooding
social media like crazy – and after three weeks of this campaign we are up to
about 60 tickets pre-sold, and the Middle East (the club) have said that that
is a PHENOMENAL number. The venue holds
190 people and we are probably going to end up putting 150 people in that
room. That’s our hometown and it’s
because of constant vigilance and working our asses off. Back in my day, in the early 80s, 150 people
would come out on Monday night to see two bands at Cantone’s or the Rat and
they wouldn’t even know who they were. That’s
just what people did. That’s where
people socialized and now people socialize from their bedroom. There’s a huge divide. The tour we were just on, after we left
Buffalo – Buffalo we had a good crowd, I think that there were about 70 people
there – after that we played SEVERAL rooms where there were only one or two
people and that was it. I’m not even exaggerating. I made my mind up, at least we can get people
out in Boston, but you would think with our networking we could fill a much
bigger room. And I have promoters who
caught wind of my promotion and they want us to do this same thing in Canada…I’m
like, “I’ll go completely broke giving away our merchandise”, but you know what
I’ll do it. The guy in Montreal, the
promoter, I told him “Free t-shirts and CDs”.
We’re not going to make any money that night, even if people come. But that’s the name of the game…I’m willing
to lose money to get people into the room to hear the music. I have no retirement account or
anything. I am a painter and work in the
trades, so I do this because it’s what’s in my soul. I am not and will never be a rich man, and I
had to pay a lot to get out from underneath the Murphys, so this is it.
Is that mercenary, “take
no prisoners” approach to getting people in the room what you attribute your
growth to? The album is great, but
seeing you play live is really what sold me on the band…
That’s the point. It doesn’t
matter what it takes, getting warm bodies in the room is the goal. I posted on Facebook recently that I would
rather make people happy than make money, so that’s it.
You’ve got the tour
coming up, the album after that – what’s your plan long term? You seem to be hitting a late stride
songwriting-wise…are you focusing on the band or do you plan to do more
production gigs and farm your songs out to other performers?
I’m putting all my eggs in one basket and really work this
Continental thing until I can go no longer.
If somebody asks me for a song, of course I will try to do that, but I don’t
want to work with musicians [laughs]
Have you thought about
working with some of the people who are your heroes – Frank Black,
Westerberg? Is that something that would
be a viable option for you in your golden years?
Those two guys, they’re a lot like me and they write on their
own, so I don’t really see that working [laughs]. Collaboration isn’t for me, it’s just
not. I do it with the Street Dogs and
Mike, but he doesn’t play an instrument so it’s different and I like bringing
stuff to him to see where he takes it. We
were going to cover a song of mine that we did with on the Street Dogs’ last
album (“Poor Poor Jimmy”) about the old Rat in Kenmore Square and the owner
there. But Mike just hits it out of the
ballpark, and we were trying to practice it last night and I’m like, “Dude, I
suck at my own song…we can’t do this!”
As for others, I would be in too much awe to work with those other guys
you mentioned, but I kinda like to be the lead guy. That’s just my ego or something.
Is that what brought
you back in front of the mike?
I got tired of having lead singers and having to deal with
that….I thought, I could probably do all this myself. It might not sound as good as I want it to,
but there is more sincerity when the guy who wrote the song is singing it. I’ve had other people sing my songs in the
past because I didn’t have confidence in my voice, but now I have learned to
sing and feel like I can do this.
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