Despite technical difficulties, and commotion from passing trains, the Charlatan was able to catch up with Lagwagon frontman Joey Cape.
Formed in Goleta, Calif., Lagwagon’s career has spanned over two decades and they have been a critical element to the progression of punk music. Their new album, Hang, released on Oct. 28, has been met with stellar reviews.
The Charlatan (TC): Hang is the band’s first LP release since 2005, do you think that the time in between recording the record was necessary to the songwriting process and the band as a whole or just something that happened until it was time for another record?
Joey Cape (JC): Relatively speaking it really didn’t take long. Once we started working on the album it was just your standard five to six months of demoing. I probably would be writing for a couple years, concentrated writing towards the goal of that record, lyrics and everything, the lyrics really took a couple years to write because I wanted to do something different.
A lot of bands will make records every year or two and I think a lot of bands force it. The issue with bands I love that make a really great record and then two years later they make another record and it sounds very similar to the last record they made. I feel like, “Well, I guess I’ll just go ahead and keep listening to that last one because it’s a little bit better.”
I feel like it’s worth the wait. You make records you’re proud of and there is a level of integrity involved in it. It’s not great for momentum but it’s good for our retrospective view. I don’t think I’m going to look back on anything I did and not be proud of it.
TC: Do you have any good Canadian tour memories and more specifically in Ottawa?
JC: I feel like I should be keeping a journal so I could just go “Ottawa” flip through the alphabeticals to the page and go, “Okay, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me and this is the five best things that ever happened.”
I’ve always had a good time. I would say Ontario in general is just a really awesome province to play in.
TC: You said a journal. Have you ever thought of creating a Lagwagon documentary?
JC: Well, we’ve been working on one for about three years. The pre-sale package for Hang included a portion of what we’ve been working on.
It is sort of half out of our hands, the guys Mark Hansen, and Trevor Campbell have been making that for years. [Hansen’s] travelled all over the world with us and has tons of footage of us.
One of the things that we decided at the beginning was to be very much not involved because it’s too precious when you do it yourself. It’s better for it to be a perspective of someone else.
I’ve thought a lot about writing books, like memoirs of all these stories that I have. I think if you have been in it as long as me you often find that when you are sharing stories you have five stories for every one story someone else tells you.
It doesn’t even occur to you how crazy some of the shit that’s happened to you, it doesn’t even occur to you how crazy it is until you start telling a story.
Lagwagon has been on an extensive tour with labelmates The Swingin’ Utters and will be at Ritual Nightclub on Nov. 29.
