CONTRIBUTORS
LINKS
INFO
Against Me!
At Vans Warped Tour, with numerous others (see list online). Vinoy Park, St. Petersburg, 11 a.m., Fri., July 11, $31.99.
It's a Monday afternoon and Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel paces under the summer sun across the cracked concrete of a motel parking lot in the middle of the barren flatlands of rural Kansas. He has a cellphone jammed to his ear while the band's bus driver sleeps.
It's a rare day off for the folkie-turned-punk-turned-rock-star, and he's been doing phone interviews all day to promote upcoming dates for the Vans Warped Tour. Against Me! is coheadlining the punk/rock circus that returns to St. Pete's Vinoy Park on Friday. (See Music Week, p. 40.)
Many of the answers Gabel gives me sound canned, rehearsed. But when I mention Tampa, and especially St. Pete, he drops his guard, perks up. You can hear the enthusiasm in his voice as he spits out recollections at a rapid clip. Gabel, who penned the modern rock smash "Thrash Unreal," from the band's latest record, New Wave, grew up in Naples, and Against Me! took off while he lived in Gainesville. He has much love for the 'Burg and its most vaunted venue.
"This past August or November, I can't quite remember, it's all a blur at this point; we played at Jannus Landing and it meant so much to me to have that huge acceptance there," Gabel says. "I mean, I grew up going to shows there, and I look out at the crowd and it's like, 'Holy crap, I saw NOFX and Rancid here. I used come here all the time and now here I am on stage.'"
Playing to a packed house.
"Yeah," Gabel says.
The past year has been momentous for Against Me!. The Gainesville-based quartet went from a respected punk/political rock band recording for independent Fat Wreck Chords to a Sire/Warner Bros. recording artist. "Thrash Unreal" reached No. 11 on Billboard's Modern Rock survey and still enjoys airplay on commercial radio stations such as Tampa Bay's 97X. New Wave has been both a commercial and critical success. It's rife with brawny guitar riffs and Gabel's mannish growl, which commands attention at every turn, whether he's chronicling the fall of a wild child in "Thrash Unreal" or protesting protest songs in "White People for Peace."
The mainstream press has heaped plaudits on New Wave. "[The band's Sire debut] was produced by alt-rock veteran Butch Vig [Nirvana's Nevermind], but it's still a short, sharp shock: 10 songs, with no shortage of vehemence," reads a glowing review in The New York Times. Rolling Stone's Robert Christgau four-starred the disc, noting, "You're not supposed to sing lines like 'Similar trends in camera technique and editing' or 'Protest songs in response to military aggression.' They're stiff, Latinate, artistically self-conscious. But on a major-label debut following a breakthrough album all too rich in intelligent angst, they're also ballsy, and with help from name producer Butch Vig, Tom Gabel's emo-hardcore band makes them rock."
In May, Rolling Stone chose Against Me! as the music world's "Best punk band."
Yeah, at the moment Gabel and company are the Sunshine State's greatest musical export. Sure beats the days when we were known for peddling Creed and Matchbox 20, bands that sold shit tons of CDs to lowest-common-denominator fans the world over. Against Me! is a smart Florida rock band that all Florida rock fans should be proud of, even if Gabel was actually born in Georgia.
"Fort Benning," Gabel says with a tinge of apology, "but raised in Naples."
Against Me!'s one-sheet reads: "A decade ago, Tom Gabel began his music career as a 17-year-old solo acoustic act known as Against Me!, belting out songs of rebellion in laundromats and any other venue that would have him." One of those "other venues" was in St. Petersburg: The Refuge, a stageless tomb that was run by a Christian group and generally hosted underground hardcore bands. "Shit, technically, the first show I ever played there was in my old band called Upper Crust at The Refuge in 1994," Gabel says, "or maybe even before that."
Fast forward to early this decade -- Gabel's in Gainesville, and Against Me!'s a band building a solid rep on the indie/punk scene with the full-lengths Reinventing Axl Rose (No Idea, 2002), As the Eternal Cowboy (Fat Wreck Chords, 2003) and Searching for a Former Clarity (Fat Wreck Chords, 2005); the latter hit No. 9 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart and put Gabel in a position to plunge into the major-label ranks. He says he had no concerns about backlash from indie die-hards when it came time to ink the deal with Sire. "That's not anything we really care about," Gabel says. "We were just concerned about what would be best for us as a band to ensure we could keep making music. Fat Wreck Chords was awesome, and we really appreciate all that they did for us, but we the hit ceiling with them. We needed a larger label with more resources. It was the right decision at the right time for us to grow as a band.
"I called up [Fat Wreck Chords owner] Fat Mike and told him about the offer from Sire," he recalls. "He said, 'Do what's best for your band.' We still work with various people from Fat Wreck Chords. You know, after we left they kinda began to dissolve, fired half its staff. Fat Mike's not as interested in it as he was in the past. It was the right move for us to make."
The move to Sire dovetailed with the decision to use an outside producer for the first time. Gabel decided on Vig, the man responsible for taking Nirvana from indie faves to world-dominating rock stars. The singer/songwriter makes no apologies for aspiring to the same fame as his musical heroes. "I was a fan of a ton of records Butch produced," Gabel says. "I'm a huge Nirvana fan, Smashing Pumpkins, L7, Sonic Youth. A lot of bands he worked with were in similar situations as us: indie bands playing shit clubs [laughs] who made the decision to sign to major labels.
"Butch did a great job of staying true to the identity of the band but grew and developed our sound -- it still feels like a real band, not like a Britney Spears record. That's what he did with Nevermind."
And New Wave.
Granted the album hasn't obliterated one genre and started a fresh one, but it has transformed Against Me! from playing "shit clubs" to doing a recent arena tour with Foo Fighters and performing in sports arenas such as St. Pete Times Forum and the 20,000-capacity Ford Amphitheatre, events that would likely not have happened if Gabel had pulled an Ani DiFranco and shot down the major-label deal. But having a company like Sire/Warner Bros. on your side only equates to stardom if you have the songs, songs that Gabel delivered.
Take New Wave's first and biggest single "Thrash Unreal." Over a razor-sharp guitar hook, it tells the tale of a Gainesville girl who succumbs to the college town's party scene. Having lived in Gainesville in 1996-97, at the same time Gabel roamed the streets of University and College avenues, I saw many a not-so-young woman akin to the heroine of Against Me!'s most famous number. "You know the downtown club scene ain't nothing like it used to be," Gabel sings. "You reach a point where there's not a lie in the world that you could use to make the boys believe you're still in your 20s."
I tell Gabel that "Thrash Unreal" is a vivid portrait of about five girls I knew when I lived in Gainesville. Was it written about a specific person or is it a composite?
"More of a composite," he says. "There are tons of girls who fit that profile in Gainesville, and guys, too. Kids who moved to Gainesville for school and went down that path. Gainesville is an easy town to find a job in kitchen work, work a couple days and then you can party all night long. It's real easy to get stuck. There is a ton of people who never get out."
Gabel got out, big time. And he isn't sure if he'll return when he gets off the road. Not to Gator Country, at least. "Technically, right now I don't have a home," he says. "All my stuff is in storage."
"You're homeless?" I ask.
"Yeah," he says with a laugh. "I don't have a fucking house. I got married this past December, and we were renting a house in Gainesville but now we're doing a lot of touring -- more than 200 dates last year -- and I haven't had time to find a place."
I ask him where he's going to look for lodging when he finally gets off the road. Now that he's reached this level of success and is touring globally, it seems New York or Los Angles might be a better fit than Gainesville.
"I don't know," Gabel says. "Sometimes I think of moving to the beach. I love Florida. It's where I want to stay."
