On August 20th, the bizillion band and skater frothing fest, known as the Warped tour hit N. Tonawanda, NY. One of the bands that joined the tour was the Swinging Utters from San Francisco. While I held conversations with various band members during our few hour reunion, it was Max who was relegated to the unenviable task of speaking with me on tape. So it was on this stiffling hot day, that we wondered back and forth between topics to bring you this conversation.

TOM: Have you enjoyed this thing with all the types of bands? All of these hardcore bands?

MAX: Yah, it's been a great time. I love it when a change to go out and do stuff with a mixed up assortment of bands. You get hardcore bands, different kinds of music, and I think it's really important for the scene. It keeps it all healthy. It keeps everything diverse. I think that its important that people get to check out all the different styles of music. Punk kids will come and see hardcore bands. Hardcore kids will come and see punk bands. You'll see them playing together and getting along together and it'll keep the seen unified.

TOM: Ya, and its an important thing.

MAX: It's been a long time since I've heard that, but Dwid, who's the lead singer of Integrity. I don't know if you know them, but they're one of the big hardcore bands from Cleveland. Yet at one of their recent shows, he said punk and hardcore kids have to stick together, the scene's not large enough, and we're kind of out for the same thing, so we really do have to stick together.

TOM: Now how long's this thing going to be going on? This is like the fourth stop on the tour right?

MAX: Well, it's our fifth stop, but the tour has been going on for two weeks now and it's going to go on for about two more weeks. So it's about a month altogether. We've got, I don't know, about 8 more shows I think, then we're going to fly over to London, England to hook up with Rancid for their European tour.

TOM: Yah, that's totally awesome. That sort of came out of the clear blue, right?

MAX: Exactly, it came out the of the clear blue. Literally, I mean one, we are on the road. Two, they tell us about a month before we are supposed to be in London. Like hey, do you guys want to go? Of course we want to go! But that means we have loads to do. One of us doesn't have a passport. We gotta get tickets. We have to do all this shit, excuse me, I don't think we can say this on the radio.

TOM: No that's not a bad one, there's a couple of words you can't say, but....

MAX: I think I know the ones. At any rate. We have to take care of all this stuff and we're on the road and it's really difficult, but we're going to do it. I'm putting one hundred and ten percent into taking care of all of the arrangements, but its difficult. We've never been to Europe before and I've never tried to book a European tour, but we're getting a lot of help other people.

TOM: You guys are on New Red Archives, who has Nicki, who was kind of one of the founding fathers/mothers of the UK Subs, wasn't he?

MAX: Yah, he was one of the founding fathers of the Subs and one of the founding fathers of punk. I mean, legend has it that Nicki was the guy who started the spikes on the leather jacket trend. He got it from some bikers that were doing it. Then he started doing it. Then all of the kids that were going to Sub shows in '77 saw him wearing the spikes. They started wearing the spikes. Now you go over there and ask any of the old punks who started it and they all say Nicki Garrett. The guy's a living legend. He's also really cool. I mean he's really modest, really down to earth, runs the label to the best of his ability. Puts one hundred percent into the label. It's not a hobby for him. Its his career. I mean he also has his music, but the label's where its at.

TOM: He's starting to put different types of sounds together. He has you guys with the '77 sound and Jack Killed Jill is kind of '77, Avengers type of thing.

MAX: Yah, Yah San Francisco style.

TOM: and, uh, then there's the new release of Social Unrest, some old school hardcore.

MAX: Yah, we just played with Social Unrest for our record release party. It was also Jack Killed Jill's record release party and the Nukes, who are also our label, record release party, and Social Unrest record release party, as they're going to be putting out a new record. It was an amazing show. NRA has a lot of great bands. It's a small label and they're growing daily and we're trying to help the whole process. We're out doing as much as we can to help (damn auto sensing tape. It stopped).

TOM: As I suggested when we were coming over here to do this thing, I was going to mish mash this together and try to do a lot of different things with it. You guys have been out on the road for about a month and one-half now, you just sort of dovetailed in with the Warped tour last week. Did you book this tour yourself and what's it like, oh hell you don't have to tell me whether you booked the tour, but what's it like with five of you guys, one van, a little trailer in the back to handle your equipment, how's the pressures of a close interpersonal relationship and all that when you're on the road.

MAX: It's horrible. (laughter) Nah, it works out really well. You'd think under the conditions we're in, we'd all be at each others throats by now, but we're all pretty even keeled. We just go out and take everything in stride and nobody trys to sweat anybody out about minor details. If things start to get hairy, we just all get our distance. Even though it's a small van, we'll just shut up, or sleep, or read or whatever it takes to ease up on the arguments. We get along really well, it's amazing. I wouldn't think that we'd get along this well, but we're going to be out for two months before its done. Actually, with the European tour, it'll be three months by the time its done. It's a really long tour and its us all the time. We're always with each other and we're different people you know. We don't all have the same interests.

TOM: This isn't rock star stuff.

MAX: No, not at all. There's a van and a trailer and six of us in there. It doesn't sleep six. All bands have to go through this and we know this. We're not going to let anyone take advantage of us, but at the same time we realize we're not expecting to make millions. The tour is turning out really well. Its a lot of fun. The key is getting out there and getting exposure. It's not about making money right now. We just to make enough money to live. Our long term goals are to continue to expand as a band.

TOM: Well this is your second time around. Is the reception better this time around?

MAX: Definately. Lot more recognition in towns, especially in places where we haven't been before. What we're trying to accomplish with this tour is to go to all of these small towns, playing kids basements, houses, and skateparks where you play in front of 20 people, as well as doing shows like this, where you play in front of 5,000 people. Constantly mixing it up and playing in front of all different types of crowds, so we can get across to everybody. We don't want to get into who we play in front of. It's punk rock. We're punks. We like seeing punks at our shows, but we want everybody to get into the music. We feel that the music has alot to say and we want to accomplish something with our music, besides just the immediate entertainment value.

TOM: You're kind of old school in the thoughts on that, it's more than just music. It's a little bit of everything, isn't it?

MAX: Totally. It's a lifestyle. It's a political movement. It's everything. It's a total mix. It's whatever it is that you want to do, but everybody that pretty much gets into punk rock are doing so cause they're not happy with the way mainstream society is. Of course, there's going to be kids, now with punk getting really big, that are just going to get into it cause its trendy or whatever. The hardcore kids that are out there the reason that they're getting into punk and the reason that they're starting punk bands, fanzines, radio shows or whatever is because they are sick of what they see and hear on a regular basis. They want to hear an alternative, something different.

TOM: You guys have been together since about '88, '89. Somebody told me that you guys were like a party band back then...

MAX: Ya, sort of '89 I guess, but really '90 is what we consider the year of the conception of the band. In '90 Darius joined the band. Started writing original music and '92 I joined the band and really from there, everything started to gel. Even until '94, we were just mostly working all the time, making money to live and stuff, and the band was just a side project. It was for fun. We'd go out. We went out and wrote music cause we liked to play music. Then we said to ourselves, what do we really want to do for the rest of our lives? Do we want to be bartenders or waiters? Or do we want to be musicians? So we made the commitment. We quite our jobs and moved to San Francisco all together.

TOM: Where were you before that?

MAX: Santa Cruz, California. And before that, I was from Washington DC. I moved out to Santa Cruz and met the band.

TOM: So you're out of Fugazi land and all that kind of stuff.

MAX: Exactly.

TOM: From looking at the new record. Uh, what's the name of it?

MAX: Streets of San Francisco.

TOM: Yah, I knew that folks, but I wanted him to say it.

MAX: Like a TV show. (laugh)

TOM: Yah, This is Your Life. (laugh) It looks like everybody at least writes some of the lyrics and does some of the music...

MAX: On this last record its been a lot of Darius (other guitarist). Mainly its because he's been a prolific writer. He writes a lot of great stuff and we've had a lot of backlog. We've been waiting to record this album for awhile, so we've had this music that we've been working on for awhile. We didn't want to get too crazy. We wanted to make sure that we were going to get the chance to record these songs, before we got into new material. The next record I think you're gonna see a much wider variety of writing. Like different band members writing music. I'm gonna write a lot. I've been writing material and saving it all along for this next record. I think that the next record's going to be amazing. We've learned a lot from the last recording session. We did it with this guy Andy Ernst in San Francisco. It's a digital studio. We loved Andy and we loved the album, but since then we've recorded on analog. And analog is just far superior. We're not going to do digital again. Digital has some bonuses, but analog is where its at. The next record will have a lot more power, a lot more beef.

TOM: What's been the most memorable show so far on the tour?

MAX: It's kind of hard to say, but there's places like Chicago and Minneapolis, and then most of the east coast are real strong places for us. Minneapolis is always amazing, like we headlined a show and it was really fantastic. The kids there are incredible. A really cool scene and really unified, tight knit, and organized scene. So its always fun to go through those places.

TOM: It helps when you've got Profane and so much happening. There's so many types of music coming out of Minneapolis. You've got Am Rep and Felix Havoc from Havoc records.

MAX: And they've got a long history of punk rock bands coming out of there too. So that helps. It helps put them on the map and once you do that, its easier to keep the scene going. They've done a good job. But we like the small towns too. Like Erie and North Dakota...

TOM: Have you played Minot?

MAX: Ya, It was great. It was really cool. It's fun to go to those places, though it's a pain in the ass to get there. It's great to go out there and play, cause a lot of bands won't go, you know. We really want to get out to everybody. Give everybody a chance to see us live. Playing live is like fifty percent, if not more, of the reason for playing in a band. A lot of bands are studio this and studio that, but playing live is where its at. That's what it's all about.

TOM: That's where you know if the message is getting across or if you're saying anything to anybody.

MAX: That's who you're doing it for. You go into the studio to make records for these people to listen to you and get more familiar with you and to hear how the songs are meant to sound, but the live shows is what's it all about.

TOM: When did your CD officially come out?

MAX: March.

TOM: So it sounds like you're gonna finish up this tour, then go back into the studios?

MAX: We're gonna finish up this tour, come back in October for about a month and releax a little bit. In October, I'm just gonna write. Starting in February, we're really going to concentrate on the new album. Then it'll come out in the summer of '96, ideally.

TOM: For those bands that are probably gonna be going on a tour for the first time, what's life like on the road? What's a typical day like for the Swinging Utters?

MAX: It's a lot of fun. It's rough, don't get me wrong. It takes a lot of work. Don't let anybody kid you, being in a band isn't easy. From every aspect, from playing live to booking shows to what ever it takes. You just have to stick with it. I can't imagine a funner way to live your life than being out on the road, traveling around meeting people, performing live, having people come to check out what your doing with your band. It's something that you've done on your own. It's not some product that you're selling for someone else. You've made your own product, you're marketing it yourself, and you're being your own businessman. You're running your own life, being your own boss. There's no better way to live your life. There's a lot of work and there's a lot of personality conflicts, but you have to go out and be level headed and be accepting of everybody elses deal and instead of blowing up at each other. If something goes wrong, right when you see something going wrong, you just pull the other person aside and say look, I don't like how this is going and lets try and change this, but be diplomatic about stuff and it'll work out. You can go on the road forever. We have to be on the road all the time, because this is how we pay our bills. It's funny cause, I go on the road to pay rent, so I have a place to live, but I'm always on the road and I never get to go to my apartment.

TOM: Do you guys live together?

MAX: Darius and I, the two guitar players live together. The bass and drummer live together, and the singer lives with his girlfriend on his own.

TOM: It's not a cheap place to live, I wouldn't think?

MAX: No, it's just like what people say about Japan being expensive. If you go there and live like a San Franciscan, it's not that bad. It's cheap, you can live cheaply. If you go over there and say whatever and you don't use too much of your brain, then you might be spending a lot of your money. It's just like any other city, you can live cheap in New York, you can live cheap in Chicago, and you can live cheap in San Francisco.

TOM: We here in the midwest or mideast probably don't know a heck of a lot about what's going on out in San Francisco, unless we read a lot of zines. What's going on out there? Is it pretty dynamic right now, pretty exciting?

MAX: I think things have picked up a lot in the last year. Its improved tremendously. For awhile it was pretty stagnant and pretty dead. Now there's a lot of new, young bands. It's getting stronger and stronger. There's all kinds of music. There's hardcore, there's rap...

TOM: Do they get along? Do people look at it as a unified scene, where you might see, just to mention a name, Billy Joel coming to a show to see the Swinging Utters, The Swinging Utters going to see a Lookout band?

MAX: Not, not as much as I'd like it to be. I think that there's still a lot of room for improvement in that respect. I think that a lot of bands don't know each other, don't spend enough time with each other. Although in the specific scenes, like the '77 style bands know each other very well. We try to break out and play with everybody. I think our band trys our best to unite all the different styles of music and different bands and get everybody to play together, as much as we can. There's a lot of other bands that are dong that too. Also, the east and west bays are getting along. There's a lot less competition you know. There really was for awhile where the east bay was really competitive with the the west bay, when there wasn't really anything to be competitive with. There wasn't a west bay scene. Now there are really strong scenes on both sides of the bay. There's always going to be a stronger scene on the east side, just because it has much more of a history for young new bands and they have much more of a history for all ages venues. In that respect its going to be stronger. San Francisco, though, for the next year will have more bands coming out of the bay area.

TOM: I have a listing of shows going on in the bay area. It's a humongous list, comes out on a weekly basis, and it seems like every night there's not only one show going on, but there could be two or three shows. You got places like the Bottom of the Hill and Gilman, just to name a few, though there seems like tons of venues. It seemed like that before you guys went on this tour, you guys were playing out tons and tons and tons.

MAX: This has all been happening to us over the last year and one-half, since we've been a serious, committed band. We're trying to saturate the bay area and let everybody know who we were and get familiar with our style of music, which is really critical for any band when they first go out. Play whatever you can get. We're not a finicky band. We play with anybody, anytime for whatever money. We just want to play. Now we've done that. Now we've done a lot of shows, then you get to a point where you have to slow down, play less frequently, just so you don't overkill. Get people tired of hearing your band. Now when we go back, we're going to do more selective shows, play less frequently, and be on the road more is what we're concerned with now. We've done the bay area, now were concerned about getting out and doing the US, Europe, Japan, South America, Canada, and everywhere. We played a lot and don't want to wear out our welcome, though now we've been on the road three months, its cool to go back do a some shows, take a break, and then go out on the road again, then come back a do a few shows.. We love playing to our home crowd, it's the best.

TOM: Yah, familiarity breeds contempt in some cases and in other cases, and in other cases if you over saturate, then people say, oh ya they're playing tonight, but they'll be playing next week too. Then all of sudden they're not going to see you as frequently as before because they'll say next week, next week.

MAX: Right, right. It becomes pointless. We're just concerned about doing quality shows in the bay area. That's what we're focusing on. We're gonna do a show that's well organized.

TOM: There was a whole new direction I wanted to go, but it sort of flew to the wind, sort of like I do sometimes, but you got this record out on New Red Archives, I think the No Eager Men came out on NRA.

MAX: No, actually, that came out on Quality of Life.

TOM: Is your next release going to be out on NRA?

MAX: The next full length lp?

TOM: Yep.

MAX: I have no idea. We really haven't thought about it. We had a one record deal with New Red and we're going to live up to our end of that bargin, which is going out there and doing support for the record, which we've done tons of and we're still going to do la lot more of. And they're doing their end of the bargin and we're both really happy with each other. I don't know, maybe we'll do another record with New Red Archives and maybe we'll move on. Our major concern is that we continually move up and move forward. So whatever that means. I don't want you to get the wrong impression, we're not looking to get on a major label, but we're looking to do this on independents. I think it can be done on an independent. There's nothing wrong with bands that want to sign with a major label, so long as they're not changing their style of music to get there. But, if you can do it on an independent label, got for it. That's the way to go, because you keep the money in the punk scene as much as you can.

TOM: That kind of is the thing....

MAX: Your friends. You work through your friends tee shirt companies and you work through your friends sticker company and you do it all that way. In turn, they hire other punks to work there, cause their business is expanding. You hire punks and your friends to be your road crew and drivers and the next thing you know, everyone is working and making money and they're all doing it in something they love. It's great that way. You don't want to go to something that's like you sign to a major and they want a professional road crew, a professional this and that. Like they went to four years of college to learn how to do shit that you don't need four years of college to learn how to do.

TOM: It sort of takes the fun out of it when you go and have someone do everything for you and it's not a personal thing anymore.

MAX: Yah, to some extent you want some of the stuff to be taken off of your shoulders. Some of the burden to be lifted from you, so you can think about the music, instead of the management, accounting, booking, and that stuff. It's not that much fun, to be honest. It's a good thing to know, because you'll always have that business smart. People won't be able to take you for a ride down the road. I think every band should go through that phase. It's important to work your way up in that respect. Take everything in stride and learn. Your band will be built to last. It won't be a one hit wonder. We're trying to make sure that our band is going to be around forever. We want to be playing for a million years.

TOM: Or as old as me, which ever comes later. (laugh) I've been reading a lot of reviews of the record and they've all been really, really good reviews. It's kind of funny, because some of the bay zines seem like they were just hit over the head with a baseball bat and it's a new encounter. All of a sudden it's the Swinging Utters. They liken you to Stiff Little Fingers in sound, and actually, my thing is that Johnny Peabucks, sometimes vocally sounds like old Social Distortion in his voice. I guess you can go and take whatever you want out of it, but who were the influences of the band, who were the people you grew up on?

MAX: All I can tell you is who my influences are, because it really varies from band member to band member. We pretty much all listen to Stiff Little Fingers, we're all big Clash fans, we're all big old style punk bands in general. I grew up on the east coast, so I was listening to more hardcore and more of the harder British stuff and it all mixes together to come out with what we have now. You gotta listen to our album and check out some of our newer stuff. Wait until you hear our next album. I'm not dising on this record. I love this album. I think it's a great album, with 19 songs. But we're still growing.

TOM: Yah, but it's not like Darius' or Johnny's voice are going to change a heck of a lot. And your guitar work and Darius' guitar work are at least gonna hold some things in tact over time...

MAX: Yah, we're still gonna suck. (laugh) We're all working on that too. I haven't been playing guitar all that long. Darius is a better trained musician. He learned classical violin or some shit like that when he was a kid and you can hear it in his style of playing. I just listen to other musicians and I learn alot just by asking. I'll go up to other guitarist in a store, I don't care. I'll ask what do you guys use for strings and picks? I break a lot of strings and what can I do. I'm just trying to learn from them. There's this kid I met in St. Louis. He's talking about starting a fanzine, that I think will be a cool idea, where he'll deal more on the musical level. The musicanship level. He's talking about like, how do you practice, what do you do if you break strings. So that kids that are starting up punk bands, that want to learn more about that, won't have to read RIP magazine to find out how (some person's name I don't know) strings his guitar to whatever. It'll keep it all in the same vein. I think that's cool and I wish that there was something like that when I was first starting out. I went a few years without knowing anything.

TOM: You guys ever get on the internet?

MAX: If you put a computer in front of me, I'd try to stick a burrito in it and try to microwave it.

TOM: It's kind of incredible, I talk to people around the world. A rumor comes and it's like wow somebody's dead before you know it, before the person even knows it.

MAX: You have the screen to protect you, you can say whatever you want. I think that it's cool and that people are communicating, but gossip I can do without.

TOM: It's kind of funny to me, as it seems like we're always looking for enemies within, instead of looking outside. Corporate america is shafting us.

MAX: Yah, we've got plenty of enemies out there, concentrate on them. What's the point of disintegrating the punk scene, when you can spend your time being productive. If you want to criticize somebody and you want to talk shit about somebody, then talk about the corporate level. Go to the government and talk about some of that stuff. Also, get your facts straight. Go out and read stuff and talk with people. Get both sides of the story before you get too critical. They hear one thing, they get it in their head, they get it all mixed up, and then it comes out another way. Then the next guy hears it. And the next thing you know.....

TOM: It's part of the information growth. I could be wrong, but the proliferation of zines and everything else is spurred in part by the music explosion. I see this growth of zines and on the one hand its really good and I always tell kids, yah, whatever it is, say whatever it is you want to say. If people like it, they'll read it, if they don't they won't. I'm certainly no judge, but let your emotions hang out, do a fanzine, do whatever it is you want to do.

MAX: Sure. Speak your mind. It's your magazine, say whatever it is you want to say, but think about what it is you want to say and think about how it affects other people.

TOM: It's the one freedom we have, but it's also the one thing that we can abuse really easily.

MAX: I would never, ever take away the freedom of speech. Across the board, whatever it is you want to say. You've got that right. But I would hope that people would take the time to think about how it affects other people and how it hurts other peoples' feelings. Some magazines are there for the booze and the drugs, and that's cool. Some magazines that are there that are political. Others that are straight edge. I think that it's important that there's a wide variety, but I also think that it's cool that people don't knock each other. Take the time to listen to what other people have to say.

TOM: Yep, I'm changing gears again, but somehow it will all come together. One song that sort of gets me on the new album is Teenage Genocide. It's like what's it all about? What inspired the whole thing?

MAX: You know, I don't know. That would be a question that Darius would have to answer. I think its a great song, has great lyrics, and it's one of my favorite songs that we do. But I don't know. We all get angry sometimes and the anger comes through in the writing sometimes. Darius can be a pretty angry person sometimes, when he's thinking about how the world works. This is just one of the songs where he spouted whatever was on top of his head to let people know what he was thinking. I think it's a great song.

TOM: Cheez, do I have anything else in my great creative mind. I doubt it. I think I've used all two brain cells.

MAX: Same here.

TOM: Thanks a bunch for talking with me.