DiSCORDER: About Time is the name of your latest album. Why did you name it that and what's with the cover art?
Jim: We were in the studio trying to come up with a name for the title and a friend of ours walked in when it was down to the wire. We said, "What should we call the title?", and he said, "Well, its about time you guys put something out!" We were like, ‘Well, it's been two years and that's cool, 'cause a lot of the songs are about how you spend your time and not wasting time. So it was kind of a metaphor for a lot of the songs on the album. As far as the cover art goes, we were trying to come up with how time is slowly ticking at all times. It's kind of like looking at your life with that kind of urgency all the time.

You've been doing this a long time but you're still quite young. How old are you guys now? How about when you started?
We started in '89 and I'm 29 now. Me and Fletcher are both 29, Byron's 25, I think Jason's 27.

Was Pennywise the first real band for you?
Yeah. We were mostly in backyard party bands, nothing serious. When we got together we never did cover songs or anything, it was all our own music. We've been doing it that way ever since.

Why did you guys get into music?
Where we grew up in Hermosa Beach there is a really strong punk tradition. Black Flag, The Circle Jerks, The Descendants - all coming from this one circle mile town with all of them going to the same high school and seeing them around town. Punk rock has always been really huge in Southern California, especially in the surf/skate crowd. So it was just part of growing up for me. We've all been playing since we were sixteen.

You graduated from UCLA and Fletcher's an electrician - how about Jason and Byron?
They just sit around and play music.

When did you start to think of music as a career and not just fun?
Probably since we signed to Epitaph we started taking it a lot more seriously, and taking song-writing more seriously. When it got to the point where we could make money doing it - I mean, we're not millionaires or anything, but when you can make a living doing something you love, that's the ultimate success for anyone, I think.

What's life like in Hermosa Beach?
It's great! It's really cool. It's like a suburb of L.A. right at the beach. Huntington Beach and Malibu are the ones that get all the glitz and glamour of being L.A. beaches, but really Hermosa and Manhattan are the ones that are more tucked away and have a more local vibe. It's cool. A lot of rowdy kids.

Did you know each other growing up?
Yeah. Jason lived on the next street over from me, so I've known him since I was a little squirt. And I've known Fletcher since I was real young too. Byron grew up more in Redonda Beach, but we all knew of each other. We knew we all played in bands and we finally all just got together and started playing.

In high school, were you guys the geeks or were you cool?
Growing up in Hermosa everyone did everything. Everyone went to parties, there was no classification. We've all just been little surf-skate punks!

Where was there to hang out before you were 21?
At the beach. That's always the place to go 'cause there's a big boardwalk where people skate and hang out. You could just live at the beach, go down at ten in the morning and not leave till after sunset every day.

How'd the cops treat you?
They chased us around a lot! But now these days they're really cool. It's funny 'cause they used to break up all our parties and raise hell, but now they're really cool about it. It's nice, but they still won't let us play there.

Why not?
Just 'cause when we play there's automatically a crowd of 500 people and it turns ugly!

In past interviews you've talked about being drunk - is that a big part of being in Pennywise?
No, it's not. It's just the idea of doing whatever you want. We have a lot of really positive lyrics to our music, but we don't want to say, "Don't drink" and tell people what to do. We want people to do whatever they want. A lot of Fletcher doing what he wants is having a twelve pack of Budweiser (ha ha). I don't drink that much at all. Once in a while when we play I'll have a beer to take the edge off, you know? But I usually save it for the weekends every once in a while.

Do you find straight-edge kids listening to your music?
Yeah. I think judging from some of the letters we get, the movement is still pretty strong. It's a positive movement and I think it's really cool. I think a lot of drugs and drinking leads to further abuse, but if you can handle it and not go over the edge it's no big deal. At the same time, people who do drink, I don't want to say they're dicks. That's been a problem with straight edge, it was like a holier-than-thou type scene - "We're cool 'cause we don't drink." Well, it's just the opposite of other people.

Your messages are always positive and not preachy. I'm sure a lot of people appreciate that.
It has a lot to do with where we grew up. We've had friends die at an early age and it galvanizes your resolve to get through things and get over situations, whether they be drug problems or friends with drug problems. I had a friend who had a really bad drug problem. He had his whole life ahead of him and he was two weeks away from graduating from a great college, but he ended up killing himself just because he had a mental thing going with cocaine. When you have something like that happen to someone you really care about, it makes you take a step back and firm up your resolve to get over things like that. It makes you look at your own life and say, ‘Whoa, am I smoking too much bud? Am I drinking too much? What am I doing?’

Do you get letters from people or talk to people who say they relate to what you're saying?
Yeah, unbelievably. It sounds like a rock cliché, but I've had a lot of kids come up to me and say, ‘Your music really inspires me and it helped me through a hard time when I really wanted to kill myself. Listening to your lyrics I realized I could get over something like this!’ There are other bands who say that's the worst thing, having some kid say that their music helped them out, but for me, that was one of the best feelings I ever had. When this kid from New Jersey came up to see me I could tell that he was honest, that he had really deep psychological problems that he needed to get over, and I guess our music was there.

You've maintained a socially conscious, positive attitude in you music which is so rare to find in today's punk rock.
Yeah, it's really rare. There's a lot of whining and snotty attitudes in the new punk. It's like, ‘Lets say asshole a hundred times and talk about how I screwed your mother's dog!’ They just want to be real shocking.

Your lyrics are always positive. You must have bad days when you don't feel like writing about happy stuff...
Yeah, totally. I think it's just an extension of our personalities. Jason and I have always liked writing that way. There are so many people with a lot of cynicism and negativity. The whole punk thing came out of a combination of rage and fear at society and the way the world was. The music and the lyrics reflected that and it was healthy at the time. But now I think we've come to a time when we've all complained and we know how screwed up [the world] is. Now I think we can make some music that's about turning the corner and making things better. Instead of complaining that our parents have given us this crappy world to inherit, lets show them, ‘Well fuck you! You gave us this shitty car and we're gonna clean it up and make it a bitchin' ride! We're gonna cut off the top, make it a low rider, and look good in it!’

Has your success been a steady climb?
Yeah, it was definitely a steady climb. We've never been a band that was trying to pull one over on the audience by just playing the cool chords and writing the cool catchy phrases without anything underneath. So I think it's our honesty in our approach to music that people have caught on to.

You didn't have help from MTV or much radio play, so how did you get so popular?
I think it was just the CD getting out. That and we also play on surf and skate videos. When people hear a soundtrack that they like they seek it out.

How's life with Epitaph?
It's fucking great, no matter what people say about the label. You just have to go in there and talk to these people. It's so down to earth. There are some great bands on the label as well as the people in the bands. We're great friends with all of them.

Since you guys are doing so well, is there any pressure?
There's always pressure as a song writer to put out your best music, but that's pressure you put on yourself to make sure you give your listeners what they want. But as far as any pressure to get a gold record or a lot of airplay, that was never anything we worried about. We just looked at Black Flag's Damaged, which sold 40,000 copies, or Jealous Again, which sold probably a quarter of that, and they didn't get played on the radio, probably never will, and they're great.

Was it a joy making this album?
No. The best part for me is when we're writing a song and I come up with the lyrics for it and I'm like, ‘Yeah, this is gonna come together.’ That's the only time it's happy time for me. Immediately after that we argue about little parts of the song, and then we bring it into the studio and we're just not a studio band. When that red light turns on, we just freak!

What can people expect from About Time?
We wanted to remain true to our roots and do the kind of music we've always been doing so that people can relate to us. With every album we don't just want it to be a replay of the last one, we try and keep it fresh and keep it different.

Are you involved in the production?
Yeah, we co-produce. Brett (Gurewitz) and Jerry Finn will be the first to tell you nothing is done without Fletcher's approval, whether it's buying a chili dog or turning up the EQ. It's his world; we're just in it.

By now you must have played with or met a lot of people that you admired for years...
Oh yeah! This tour it's just sick. I talked to Jack from TSOL, and he was a huge hero of mine. Now I'm on tour with him and we're talking every night and shooting the shit, and I'm like, ‘This is Jack from TSOL.’ I've met a lot of other people, too, and it's not a sick thing where you idolize them, but it's really cool. You get to meet these people and find out where they're coming from.

Are you spending more time on the road?
It's getting more and more. This year we're doing almost a hundred days and next year it'll be more. We're different though, 'cause when we're at home it's like Pennywise is gone. I talk to other bands that go home and practice five days a week and start writing new songs. We all go off and do our own thing. I think it makes it better so we have experiences to write about.

You're married, right?
Yes. Fletch's engaged, too.

So life is good with Pennywise? You're all getting along after all these years?
The thing with us is we never ever hold a grudge. We can give each other tons of shit and say the worst stuff to each other, like, ‘Fuck you! You're so ugly and fat, I hate everything about you! Now let's go do sound check and get something to eat.’ That's how it is.