The band from Buffalo, whose megahits “Name” and “Iris” put them not just on the map, but on the frickin’ planet, comes to Evansville this month for a solid gig with The Rocket Summer on May 5.
A quarter-century after first jamming with bassist and good friend Robby Takac, Johnny Rzeznik is still a hometown guy at heart. Uninspired by the LA scene, when it comes time to write and record, Rzeznik, Takac and drummer Mike Malinin (who has been a Goo Goo Doll since 1995) head east to upstate New York, where the familiarity of the environment, and a tight circle of friends and family keep the creative juices flowing.
And flow they have. The band’s new album, Something for the Rest of Us, is slated for release late this spring (Rzeznik couldn’t confirm an exact release date). Rzeznik’s themes on the new record are very much of the current times, where the struggles of the middle class are front and center, all while the self-confessed “tone hunter” continues to rock.
But enough exposition; let’s let Rzeznik tell it like it is:
N4U: What’s going on, man?
JR: I’m good; what’s goin’ on?
Just hanging out in the office – so you’re in North Carolina tonight.
Yeah, Wilmington.
How’s the tour so far?
It’s been really, really fun. I mean, we’ve only done two shows, but they’re great; they’re outdoor shows. We played at the Final Four, which was huge, and then we played at the Masters. I’m like, ‘Why are we doing all these sporting events? This is kind of interesting.’
I saw on your Twitter feed something about that. Did you actually play on the golf course?
I don’t think it was on the course where they play the Masters; I think it was on a practice course… a thing called the First Tee. It was us and LL Cool J, who I highly recommend you go see if you get a chance.
That would be an incredibly awesome show.
It was awesome. It was him and two DJs and a microphone on an enormous gold microphone stand.
So how is this tour both similar and different from tours of yours in the past?
This one seems to be a bit more mellow. There’s not as much craziness, not as much boozin’ and carousin’ as in previous tours. We’re getting a little too old to be acting like idiots.
Everybody remembers their very first guitar; what was yours?
My first guitar was a Kay guitar; it was an SG copy. There was always an acoustic guitar around the house that had been passed down from four sisters to me. So by the time I got it, it was destroyed. It had like three strings on it, and none of ‘em were in tune… which is probably why I play like I do (laughs).
So you learned on an electric, then.
Yeah. I took some lessons from a guy.
Do you remember the first time you jammed with Robby?
Yeah, actually I was in a band with his cousin. We were in this hardcore, sort of 2/4 kind of band. Then he [Takac] came over and played bass; he was in a metal band. It was kind of funny; he and I got together and really just enjoyed hanging out with each other, playing music.
What were those early practices like?
We were all like 19, and it was in Buffalo. And we had a friend – an older guy – who was hanging around with musicians and stuff, you know, being around bands and that, he had this building downtown that was more or less abandoned, but his family owned it. So we used to play in there. It was more like a party; at the beginning there wasn’t any real serious kind of rehearsal going on; we were just making noise and having parties.
Can you pinpoint a time when your songwriting took on elements of what you might call craftsmanship?
We actually got a record deal just messing around. And then we met up with this guy, Armand Petri. He was a local guy who was a producer. He was the guy that said, ‘You gotta sit down and really write some songs and think about what you’re saying.’ He got me to sing, and it was interesting, man.
So you had sort of a mentor.
Yeah. We’ve always had some sort of guardian angel around.
What were your very first feelings when you went from the Metal Blade label over to Warner Bros.?
Relief (laughs)… probably the biggest feeling. We were like, ‘Wow, we’re on a real record label now; this is really cool.’ At the time, Warner Bros. was very, very artist-friendly and very much into nurturing bands through the course of a few albums, you know? If you came out of the box and you didn’t sell a million records, they didn’t drop you immediately. And there were some really classic, old-school music guys still there. They’re like, ‘Hey, we’ll get ‘em next time, and we have faith in you guys. Let’s do another record.’ They really nurtured us along.
That’s something that really makes me feel bad for a lot of young artists now. There’s not a lot of mentoring going on; there isn’t a lot of faith in developing artists.
I hear that a lot from artists that have been in the business for a while.
We had people who came before us helping us – that was a really big thing. Now it’s like, a lot of these kids who’ve got so much potential, they go out there and they wind up orphans. It seems like the record industry is just cannibalizing itself trying to survive. There’s an awful lot of gross incompetence at the top.
To what do you owe your longevity? You and Robby are in league with few bands that have been together for so long.
Somewhere along the line we had to learn to respect each other’s boundaries, sort of try to understand what other people in the situation need. It is very much like a family or a marriage.
Give and take…
Give and take… and learn when to shut up (laughs).
I was reading some things you said about [2006’s] Let Love In, about going back to Buffalo and how your hometown sort of served as a muse, so to speak. Was there a similar driving force behind the writing and recording of Something for the Rest of Us?
Yeah. Robby and I went in and got this old recording studio he and I worked in when we were kids, and it was falling apart; it was in pretty bad shape. And we rebuilt it from the ground up. We were like kids in a candy store – it was ours – we could do whatever we wanted to. When we were kids, working there, they would let us record up there after midnight, from like midnight till eight in the morning. Then it was ours; it was really fun.
Did you go in with a lot of the songs?
We did most of the writing in Buffalo. And since we’d built this recording studio that’s just amazing, we spent a lot of time just messin’ around. ‘Cuz for the first time in our career, the clock wasn’t running, the meter wasn’t running, so to speak. We weren’t paying some guy two thousand dollars a day. So it was a lot of fun – we could experiment with anything we wanted.
So when you’re in Buffalo are you more comfortable? Can you be more creative?
Yeah. It keeps me in touch with who I am, where I’m from, what I’m about. You can’t be from a place like Buffalo and not have it really be in your DNA. I mean, I am of that place. I’m part of that place, whether I’m there or not. I just find it really important for me to be there, to be closer to who I am at the core of my being.
You have family still there?
Yeah, my whole family still lives there.
Having people around you can trust is good, considering…
Yeah, my friends in Buffalo, it’s like, I know exactly where I stand with them, as a person. Same as it was before I moved away.
What are some of the themes on the new album? Were they conceived in advance of the recording, did they evolve, or a little bit of both?
It kind of evolved as it went along. You start to write about what you’re feeling. This album, to me, addresses the more emotional aspects of living in a really uncertain, angst-ridden time. There’s two wars going on; the economy’s in the toilet and people are scared and insecure. It’s affecting people psychologically pretty deeply. And I see that – in people I know, just watching them work their asses off just trying to make it. It was something that moved me when I listened to people and talked to people about their situation.
Ancient Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times…’
Yeah, yeah… I think we’re living in very interesting times.
What’re you listening to? What’s in your play rotation right now?
I’ve been listening to Tegan and Sara; I really love that record The Con. That’s really good. I like the Silversun Pickups a lot. Gosh… sheesh… I can’t stand this song, but for some reason, every time I hear it, I can’t turn the station… that Kesha song!
Damn you, Johnny. Now it’s stuck in my head.
I know! And it’s like, ‘I wanna hit myself in the head with a hammer… Stop!’ It won’t go away. Which is kind of fun, because I hate this song but I can’t stop listening (laughs).
I feel that way about Lady Gaga. Like, ‘I shouldn’t like this, but I can’t help it.’
There’s something about her. There’s something more than all the crazy, weird surface stuff. Like I don’t know why I get that feeling, but I get the feeling that she’s going to be around for a while.
I get the same feeling. She knows exactly what she’s doing with everything.
She’s very Madonna-like in that way. I would imagine that she’s very shrewd and very calculated about her image and all that.
For the guitar geeks out there, what’s in your guitar rig?
I use a Dr. Z and an amp called a Maz 38. And then a Bad Cat Hot Cat for the dirty tones. And then I have my pedals, gosh, I got all kinds of weird T-Rex effects pedals and Big Muff, and a couple of different delays and Keeley compressors, and an old Ross compressor. An old VB-2, which is a vibrato pedal, and a Memory Man, and you know, there’s all kinds of crazy stuff going on there. There’s this guy, Analog Man – are you familiar with that guy?
No, no… I’m not.
He makes pedals, and he makes this double compression pedal that’s insane. I could get really wonky about all this stuff…
We’ve got some wonky people in our crowd…
For my acoustics, I use the Taylor Acoustics with the Expression Systems in them. And I use Chandler – this guy out of Iowa makes all this amazing studio gear. I use a Chandler LTD-1, and it’s like a mic pre- and EQ. Basically, like a Neve 1073; it’s like his version of a Neve 1073. I use that, and I use his EMI compressor on it. It sounds fat.
That all sounds really cool. You’re not just slappin’ stuff together.
No, no… man, I’m a geek; I’m a tone hunter. I have like 50 guitar amps and a couple of hundred pedals at home. I’m just looking for that perfect tone, man. What I’ve found really crucial right now in my guitar rig are the microphones that we’re using to mic up the amps. I went from using sealed-back cabinets to open-back cabinets. The way they breathe against the microphones is completely different. I started using these Heil microphones, which are basically broadcast microphones. But for some reason, they just capture the tone of the guitar so well, it’s amazing. You know that guy Art Bell?
The crazy guy on at night?
He’s one of their endorsers. Yeah, yeah, the crazy conspiracy guy.
Way outta left field question: I have friend who saw you play with a band called the Trash Brats in Detroit many years ago…
Oh my God, yeah. Wow.
… and there was something about an ambulance showing up.
I think that was at St. Andrews. I can’t be sure. I think a guy jumped off the stage and smacked his head on the ground. I vaguely remember it. It was a long time ago.
That was then, and this is now… Johnny’s one of the good people for sure. We chatted some more about a bunch of other stuff, so you should probably go to news4uonline.com and listen the whole interview.
To hear those tones he talks about, check out the Goo Goo Dolls May 5 at The Centre with The Rocket Summer opening. Tickets are available at the box office at The Centre and Roberts Stadium, all Ticketmaster outlets, online at ticketmaster.com and by phone at 1-800-745-3000.
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Credit Warner Bros.
