(Originally appeared in Mutant Renegade Zine #5, 1995)
The first time I met craig was on a frantic journey to see The Damned in NYC. My crew of friends and I stayed for four beautiful crazy days with Craig and Nathan Larson (Guitar, STT). At that time Nathan had just joined the band.
Now it's November 1994 as I'm driving down to Sudsy Malones in Cincy trying to think up some witty questions and decided on a more viable option of just chatting. So I'll just leave it to Craig, myself (wired to the gills on coffee) and the tape recorder. Now easedrop on me and one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.
Ben - I didn't want to do an interview, interview. So I'll tape if that's cool?
Craig - That's cool... just hang.
Ben - But, I do have a few questions.
C - That's fine... yeah, so like after when I graduated, I moved out on that fabulous apartment. Remeber how wonderful it was?
Ben - Well, it was one of the first times I'd been out to New York, and I looked a total tourist.
C - I look like a tourist and I lived there for ages. It's like... you gawk. New York makes you gawk. It's just the fuckin' place.
Ben - I love it, I don't know if I could live there.
C - Yeah, well it's insane, like I was going out with ***** at the time. But we broke up in March while we were recording our most recent album, but after I was living in that most amazing apartment. I graduated from college and doing this full time and trying to live in NYC as much as possible and ***** had this beautiful apartment and I could pay some of the rent and live there. And when we broke up, the band was based in DC, but I didn't want to move out of NYC. I have this place I'm hardly at, but I love it.
Ben - I've been staying with my folks. They know I have a fucked up schedule.
C - That's cool. When I'm in DC, I stay with my dad which turns out to be about half the time. Living at home is really cool... it's great.
Ben - I don't think it's an uncommon thing with bands. It would be nice to have my own place, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
C - Well, it makes sense. It's just practical, totally. I'm just hoping our record does well enough that I can pay rent right now.
Ben - Well, here it comes, the stupid question part. The major label jump, and the reasoning behind it? (with a mouthful of pastry)
C - For me, dispite the fact that we were on Dischord. We were never like... politically indie minded. This is the best place to make our music... you know. Who ever will make our music, support us, and get out there. Who we have a good relationship with, and won't get in our way creatively, great! And that was Dischord for years, our relationship with Dischord is still great. But after a while we were like... when alternative music exploded...
Ben - It's weird.
C - Yeah, it's gross but you can reap the benefits from it, and labels started sniffing around. We really didn't think that we could find the right chemistry with anybody else, where we were going to leave Dischord. It had to be exactly for the right thing and somehow the timing and the relationship we had with the A&R guy from Epic. And the way they really seemed to get what we were doing, and encourage us to go out on as many limbs as we wanted.
Ben - So full creative control?
C - Yeah, totally. We thought it's a good opportunity.
Ben - Was it the same for Jawbox?
C- I don't know, I haven't talked to them since...
Ben - Majors have been courting you for a while.
C - I know but our relationship with Dischord, Ian and the guys in Fugazi are such that we were totally into talking about it. As hard as it was talking to Ian about it, was like first and foremost, he's a friend and a respected friend. So it was important to have the courage to be like, "Ian, we gott tell you, we're talking to some labels and thinking of moving" You know, he was just like, "It will make me really sad, but know that you will always have a home here. If you want to put out records, you can always count on us." So it was fine.
Ben - The Oxymorons played with Fugazi and the Grifters in Indianapolis and Ian was an incredibly nice guy.
C - He's one of the nicest, most straight-up, fucking human beings. He's just a fucking beautiful man. He just seems to defy every rule. I just happen to think that he's a little insane to be so hardcore maniac about everything. But, that's what's so important to him, which is so much of his charm. It's like, "Ian, dude, you don't have to drive all night, you can sleep in a bed, you can... He's always like "No dude, that's not how we do it."
So we'd be on tour or whatever and we'd say "We're going to a hotel, so we don't have to sleep on someones peanut butter ass floor, which we did for years." And Guy and Brenden would sort of look at us and be like "You can do that?" and yes, and so can you. It doesn't occur to them, which is fucking beautiful. I fucking love that. They fucking rock. They are one of my favorite bands to tour with. Touring with the Smashing Pumpkins is great too, but Fugazi is family. The Pumpkins are more and more, the more they get to know us. But Fugazi is such a homespun thing. It's so grassroots, it's like going on an adventure with your friends.
Ben - The Oxy's stayed in the same house in Madison with the Smashing Pumpkins. It was for two or three days. Billy and I didn't get on very well, but I did with JJ. He was cool.
C - Actually, we just played with them last night in Chicago. I imagine he could be a difficult person to get along with particularly if he's in a bad mood.
Ben - Yeah, well I don't know what the deal was.
C - Billy's probably chilled since then, I didn't know him... like we have a nice relationship. Billy got turned onto our music and really dug it. He came to a show we played at the Jabberjaw in LA. I'd never seen them before and there was this guy who showed up and said "Hi,... I'm... Billy." And I was like "Hi... Billy... I'm... Craig." I didn't really recognize hime, and he said "I'm in the Smashing Pumpkins and we want to do shows with you." I thing we got along because...
Ben - Mutual respect?
C - Yeah, I imagine him an aloof person to people he doesn't know but since he had the reference part of our music and admiration. It was sweet. They took us under their wing, much like Fugazi did. It's like, we like what you do and we want you to come with us. It's really cool.
Ben - You guys always struck me as far off from Dischords normal sound. Kind of apart.
C - Yeah, musically we just do what we do and when we first joined Dischord, they were still shedding their hardcore image. But then, like Jawbos, us, Fugazi, Holy Rollers, Nation of Ulysses... and it was like just and art label, a good music label.
Ben - Do you think on Dischord there were things expected out of you, because being a Dischord band?
C - Yeah, actually I think on the new record (Pony Express) we just dropped alot of that, we didn't feel like we had to be punk, or rock, or punkrock, or... We just had these songs and they were just all over the road. I mean we were going to record those songs for Dischord. I think it was more of like, jsut growing up.
Ben - Are you going to play "Red House" tonight?
C - Totally. Yes.
Ben - Candyass has done a cover of it. I love it.
C - Really? That's cool. I'm glad. I would love to hear that. We play it every night, it's a sure thing. SOme of our new stuff is weirder and harder to get into and "Red House" is like two chords and it's a sure thing. You know, da kids dig it!!
Ben - I saw a picture of you in AP playing butt naked on stage. What's the story?
C - Just had to take me cloths off and play the rock in the raw. My family was really thrilled. My mom said, "I haven't seen your ass since you were ten."
Ben - Alot hairier (Laughter)
C - Yeah, she said it's alot harier. No, but we were on tour with the Pumpkins and it was like a lame scene show and we didn't get a soundcheck. It was in this big airplane hanger and Smashing Pumpkins were being recorded for Westward One or something...
Ben - You guys were getting shafted?
C - Not by Smashing Pumpkins, but by the people organizing the whole thing. And we were like, Fuck this is going to be a sucky show.
Ben - Did someone try to sue you or something?
C - THis girls mother tried to file a lawsuit against us but... Apparently it never came to fruition. Probably because the woman was an idiot.