Episode 001: Max Bemis of Say Anything

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Interview Transcript

Introduction:

Madi: Today, we’re going Beyond The Barricade with Max Bemis from Say Anything! We are on opening night of the 20th anniversary tour of ‘Is A Real Boy’. That’s insane. How are you?

Max: It is insane… It is, I’m doing great. I’m really doing great. Very surreal, but not because of a 20th anniversary, just because I am like, a dad. I’m spending most of my time doing that. And the band kind of broke up, fake broke up for a while. So this is the first proper tour we’ve done in, I think, in seven years, six years. My reality is just very different than this. Obviously, I still play music for a living, so I’m always recording or dealing with something involving music, but it’s really different to step out as it was surreal to play those festivals we played When We were Young and Riot Fest. So. Just surreal.

Lor: That’s a perfect way to put it. It’s like you never left music. It’s never left your life.

Max: Not really, no. Technically, it never left my daily life. I mean, I still listen to music constantly. It’s really important to me. Then making it took over. We were making our record, the newer record that’s coming out, for a long time, and I produced it mostly. It was like me alone in a room. But still, it’s almost a cushy… I don’t want to sound… For some bands, that’s not the case, but when you’ve been a band for 25 years, hopefully, unless you’re fully, whatever, the band Anvil, you do get some cushy elements coming into play, just with people working for you.

To me, that’s the most surreal element is people like handing me my in-ears, and saying “put these in. They’re for you. It’s for you.” I’m like, I’m not getting someone’s cereal right now?! That’s the weird thing, and that is really different than even working in a studio. It’s certainly hard work, but it’s an entitled privileged hard It is.

What song can you listen to years later and still know every word to?

Lor: I want to just bring us back really quick to 2006. I am walking in the hallways of middle school with my iPod video. We are dating it here. I’m with my best friend, and we are getting in trouble for blasting ‘Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too’. And I think that it’s so catchy because then again, in 2011, I was able to pick up the song, and I still know it. We pulled some comments people have left saying that:

• “honestly, there’s a clear apprehensive and indecisive theme to this entire song that’s simultaneously relatable and anxiety-inducing.”
• “My brain cells decided that they wanted the song after five years of not hearing it, trying to find this based off of a melody, and I finally found it, Nostalgia at its finest.”
• “Haven’t heard this song in years, and all of a sudden, I wake up and it’s stuck in my head, so here I am.”
• Then one of our favorites was, “It’s so awesome how you can go years without even thinking about a song, and then you hear it and you still know all the lyrics.”

Max: Oh. Yeah, same.

Lor: Two decades later, and it’s still happening, was there a certain song for you while you were making this? Or even now that you’re just like, I can go back and hear a song and I’m there. I know it by heart.

Max: Yeah. I mean, a lot of hip hop songs for me are like that. The first song I think I ever learned all the lyrics to that wasn’t a Jewish prayer I was made to learn in school was a Tupac song, ‘Hit ‘Em Up’. To this day I know all the words. I’ll put it on, and it just makes my kids really uncomfortable.

Yeah, they get it a little more when it’s Kendrick Lamar or something. They’re still uncomfortable. But when it’s something like, Tupac, they’re like, first of all, what is this sound of ’90s West Coast G-Funk? Secondly, why do you know all of it? Thirdly, why are you acting like you know his struggle in any way?

I’m like, I do. I was 12. It was hard. I was on the west side. Ride til I die.

What were your major musical influences during the making of ‘Is A Real Boy’?

Madi: To piggyback off of that idea, we were also really curious as to, going back 20 years when you were in the process of making ‘Is A Real Boy’, what were your major musical influences during that time? And did they have an impact on how you created the record?

Max: Yeah, they were. I think up to ‘Is A Real Boy’, I always liked a lot of… I liked a variety of music. But up to the point of making the record, we were really honed in on punk rock, and the punk rock bands we were listening to at the time and wanted to sort of be and go on tour with and idolizing them. I always loved everything. Queen was a big influence before we made the record, and always in my life. So even compared more so on my music than something like… whatever, any punk band I was listening to at the time.

But when we went in to make the record, both producers were very insistent, and in a good way, because I was down. When I told them what I wanted to do, they were like, don’t compare yourself to Blink-182. Even if they’re good or you really love them, listen to Bowie, listen to the Replacements, and listen to this stuff that is more of a stretch so that when you go in there, you’re competing with stuff that’s all over the place, and you’re not just trying to create a career for yourself because of what’s working right now, necessarily.

I think it’s a good strategy. I think if you go in as a musician or any creative, and you just look at the people around you who are doing well, not because they’re doing well, even if it’s just because you love it. If you’re a director and you’re just looking at your… Then you overlook Kubrick movies. You have to really be like, I can compete with Stanley Kubrick. If you’re a director because even if you’re not objectively or in the eyes of the public, it really does help. He wouldn’t have gotten anywhere or Spielberg wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if he wasn’t trying to compete with his heroes.

Lor: Yeah, you practice up!

Max: Yeah, you practice up. Exactly. You have to assume you might be better than anyone. You just don’t know. I tell this to my kids all the time because they’re like, Oh, it’s so cringy, everything I do. I’m like, You don’t know. You’re not the judge of you. You may say, I don’t like this, that I did, and that’s your right. But give yourself the grace that you’re going to be your hardest critic, and you may not know all the fun ways you could take your creativity.

What is different for you going into this tour?

Lor: I think we touched upon this before. I forget if we were recording or not, but the last time you headlined a tour, played a proper tour, it was maybe six, seven years ago. Do you have any thoughts or anything different, even from that long ago I know that is… I mean, everything is different, I feel like, from then.

Max: Everything’s different, yeah, because my eldest is 11. Sorry to just be the guy who always talks about his kids. But I thought my life was different after having two, and that was where I was when we did our last big tour. And it was. I was vastly different after having even my first kid. It was the immediate transformation. But I have five. So it’s… A little different. It’s full chaos. I’m a very different person. Then also the world changed so fucking much. I mean, even just the things that you were kind enough to read out from the message board or from comments.

Lor: YouTube!

Max: I love how message board, jut dates me a little bit. Yeah. But I think even those biomes have changed so much, and I purposefully unplugged. That’s something that I never really let myself do. ‘I’m going to take a break from Instagram for seven weeks.’ Boom. Bye. You know. But I really didn’t even say anything. I just did it because I found that it was unhealthy for me for a minute, and I enjoy it. I don’t think social media is some gross thing.

But at the same time, I would say that the Trump era was quite dark for a lot of people, and I was one of those people. I don’t think it was as dark for him. I’ll say he probably enjoyed the shit out of it. So it was a difficult time, and that’s regardless of my extremely leftist beliefs. I just mean that, personally, the world changed really and was really intense. I’m sure it was like that for everyone on the spectrum of belief.

Lor: I don’t think we were meant to have so many voices given to us at once.

Max: Maybe not. how old are you?

Lor: I’m 31!

Max: Yeah, there you go. I think my kids, my 11-year-old or my 9-year-old, they don’t care. They’ll see Trump on trial or something, and they’re like, whatever. He’s yellow. Whatever. It doesn’t… They’re bred to not care about it. I was bred in an AOL chat room at the most intense time.

What are you hoping the fans get out of this tour?

Madi: With that in mind, I know tonight, it’s opening night of tour. We’re celebrating 20 years. You’ve got a lot of fans that are going to be in the crowd that have been with you for 20 years. Obviously, your life has changed, their life has changed. Is there anything that hoping the fans get out of this tour or you’re hopeful that this show will bring?

Max: I’m hoping that there’s a message of resilience. Because the fact that I’m even able to step onto the stage at this point, I’ve been through a lot in my life, especially in this time that we were just discussing. It’s really funny because I think there’s a notion or some notion among the people who know my music, whether they like it or not, and especially for the people who do like it, I have been more private for a while. Weird things have leaked out, but at the same time, very inaccurate to the actual experience I’ve had. And it’s been really difficult.

It’s actually been the most trying few years of my life. And that includes this record that was written about being hospitalized and all these dark, dramatic… But I was 19. So even if not everyone’s been hospitalized, a lot of people have mental health concerns. A lot of people go through rehab or abuse or recovery. Still, the past few years were really the worst in terms of just the effect on me and the fact that I’m able to step on stage and do this. And not just that, but really enjoy it.

I hope that people who have found something in my music that gives them the message I can get through it, too, can be like, Okay, I can see in this guy’s eyes, he’s seeing some fucking shit. Excuse my French.

I hope it just radiates off me as much as it does the joy of being here and that I really don’t take it for granted, that I don’t take their passion and what they’ve put into it for granted at all. So if you can live that way, and I don’t always live that way at all, you’re going to find more peace.

Was there a certain artist, interaction, or moment in your life that flipped that switch and made you want to become an artist yourself?

Lor: Wrapping it up, last question here. The whole heart and premise of Backing The Barricade from everything we do, we go and we talk to fans before shows about artists that they have these intense bonds and connections with. Then we talk to artists and talk about their point of view as a fan. We keep in mind that at some point in our lives, we’re fans first and artist second.

Knowing that, we just wanted to ask you, was there a certain moment for you as a fan watching a performance or learning a song or meeting one of your band idles, anything, that really stuck with you? Something that flipped the switch where you were like, I want to do that. I want to play up to their level.

Max: Yeah, there’s so many. It still happens. It never stops happening. But the first time it probably happened was seeing Saves of Day at the Troubadour. I was 15. It was just because I had gone to shows before. My first show was Metallica, and it was amazing. But I didn’t see myself doing it, A. at that point, or B. looking at them playing this giant arena like, I can do this. That has happened since then. You know what I mean?

I’ve seen bands play really big shows and been like, I want to do that. But with Save the Day, I was like, these guys are three or four years older than me. They’re in this club that’s… It’s not tiny and it’s not huge. Bands do this. There are people who are basically teenagers. All they did was work really hard and be good. And that’s it. And love it. I was like, I think I might be able to pull this off…

Madi: It feels a little more accessible.

Max: Yeah, exactly. It’s not a diss… It’s not for anyone.

Now it looks very different. It’s harder to be a touring band and all these things. But if you’re just a random person anywhere in the world watching this, I mean, that career path or even just putting a song on SoundCloud, suddenly it’s like Girl in Red or whatever. You’re just then become the biggest artist of the year or Lorde or Billie Eilish. I think if that still exists, it’ll always exist, is that without human beings to some degree, you’re not going to have art being made at that level. If there’s someone you’re looking at, you’re like, Oh, yeah, I can never be… I see my kids like that. I’m like, No, no. She was once you. You were them. You’re the same. It’s vital…

Episode Show Notes

Follow Max:

https://www.instagram.com/maxbemis

Follow Say Anything:

https://www.instagram.com/sayanything