Against Me! exploded onto the punk community in 2002 with the release of its first full-length, "Reinventing Axl Rose" on No Idea Records. With a reputation for intensely emotional live shows - that have gone from squats to 1200-person plus venues, and from solo artist to four-person band - Against Me! has made a name for itself through hard work and staying true to its ethics.
Tom Gabel - vocalist, lyricist, lead strummer (he doesn't get the hot licks though) and T-shirt/album artwork designer - started Against Me! as a solo project after he dropped out of high school. He sat down with The Eagle on last Thursday to discuss Against Me!'s new record "As the Eternal Cowboy," its new label and life in general.
The Eagle: You open "As the Eternal Cowboy" on a downer, relating life to dying. Do you think that is an odd way to start something like a CD, and why did you choose to go that way?
Tom Gabel: I meant the lyrics to kind of have a flow on the record. I felt the lyrics on the last record we did ["Reinventing Axl Rose"] was kind of heavy on the choruses, and each song was an individual thing, together they weren't really coherent ... That ["T.S.R."] originally wasn't what we were going to use for the first song. We originally wanted to have "A Brief Yet Triumphant Intermission" to be the first song and then "Clich?" ["Clich? Guevara"] and have it all flow together, but it just didn't feel right when we listened to it and we'd just skip ahead to the next song.
Eagle: Why did you decide to sign with Fat Wreck Chords?
Gabel: At first we didn't, we just planned on releasing the next release on No Idea, and then when we got asked, they first asked if we wanted to do a seven-inch and we were just like we want to do the full-length and they went "Sure." They're an awesome label and everything, very well run. I grew up listening to NOFX, and Swinggin' Utters is one of my favorite bands.
Eagle: You're lyrics are very political. Why did you choose to go that way as opposed to writing pop-punk songs like the Decedents and the Dickies?
Gabel: I think it is because of the bands that I grew up listening to that were punk bands. I was really heavily influenced by like Crass and all the '80s Peacepunk bands like Omega Tribe. Then I got really into the Minneapolis punk scene ... also, my background in Florida with my friends, like we were involved in Food Not Bombs and things like that.
Eagle: Do you miss Gainsville and No Idea records at all?
Gable: It's weird. Before we'd go away [on tour] and come back and your friends would be like "Hey, what's up," and be really excited to see you and everything would pick up right where it left off. Now it's at a point that we're gone so long that everybody has just sort of moved on. They're still happy to see you, but you're out of the loop, and you don't know what's going on ... It's sort of disorienting going home, I don't know what to do with myself, cause it's not like I have to go back to work, we're doing this for a living now so it's like, "What do I do?"
Eagle: What are your two favorite books?
Gabel: This book "Trinity" by Leon Uris and "Les Mis?rables" by Victor Hugo. I haven't seen it live yet but the book is amazing.
