Interview with
Anti-Flag's Pat Thetic

On tour in support of Anti-Flag's new album, For Blood and Empire, drummer Pat Thetic talks about the band's switch to RCA, some issues concerning The War (military recruiting in high schools and depleted uranium), and the lost days of beer can collecting.

By Murphy Lynch

Anti-Flag has been one of my favorite bands for the last couple years so when the opportunity to interview them came across the CITIZINE desk, I yelled, "Mine!" kicking over furniture and knocking people out of the way to get to the e-mail first. The band said to type up my questions and e-mail them over. Yeah, right! I wasn't going to let this chance get by me. Throwing around a little CITIZINE weight, I told them we'd really need to do this face-to-face, preferably backstage at a show. For some strange reason, they actually agreed! And I got tickets and full-access passes for their show at the House Of Blues in O.C.!  Sweet!

What follows is a very fun interview I had with Pat, their drummer. He was very gracious, indulging my sometimes serious, sometimes downright strange questions. But we had fun and I learned a lot from him, and I hope you do too!

My questions are in bold; his answers are in plain text.

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So obviously you guys must have voted for Bush?
Yes, I voted for Bush numerous times actually. (laughing)
It's the third year anniversary of the war in Iraq. I don't even have a question, it's just such an awesome statement (not in a good way) that I thought I'd open it up to you.
Everybody needs to be aware that Bush just went back to Congress to look for more money. And the money that he's spending on this war to pay people like Halliburton and Bechtel, I think it came out to like $30,000 for every man woman and child in the U.S. And it makes no sense. Who's gaining from this and what is
the purpose of this war? I think that he should be held as a war criminal, or he should be sent to the Hague for war crimes. Waging aggressive war on lies. And, um, yeah, it's just a mess.
Yeah, the whole thing was pretty much set up as a retirement plan for his family.
Yeah, yeah. (laughing and shaking his head is disbelief)
Then there's the Dubai ports deal, what do you think about that? What do you think about that?
Well, I think the questions that need to be asked more than "Who owns the ports?" is, why does anybody other than the American people own the ports? I believe that, for things that are vital to the American culture and way of life, that the American people should own them.
Absolutely. Okay, so first let me set this up by saying that I thought it was cool when you guys signed to RCA because uh --
(laughing) Good!
It wasn't like you needed them at this point in your career and I'm sure you were able to dictate your own terms...
We were. Which is sort of funny that we were.
So allow me to play devil's advocate here for a moment and say, Why haven't you sold out?! Why isn't this a sellout move?!
It is a sellout move, we just did it for the cash!
Damn! That's not the answer I wanted!
Yeah, with RCA, like you said, we didn't need them. We just had dinner with Fat Mike yesterday. We are very happy with the people at Fat Wreck Chords -- thought they did an amazing job with our records. We felt as though we had an opportunity at this time to try and speak to more people and see if that type of thing would work. It may work, it may not. We'll see. We are in a very good position where we have our own record company, we have other avenues of record production. So if it doesn't work, we'll just go back to putting our records out ourselves or on Fat. You know, a lot of other bands are not in that position that they can do that. So we are able to take a risk and see what happens. We had in the contract, they said, "You will have complete control over your artwork, your lyrics, your music." And we were like, well, you know, let's give it a shot, and see how it goes.
Yeah, that's not too bad. And do you get to still own your music I assume, or?
Yeah, we always, the only thing that they have ownership of is the songs on this record. We still own all of our back catalog. And actually A-F Records has a lot of back catalog.
And I assume at some point this album reverts to your ownership as well?
(Nodding) Yeah. Well, it all, well, this album will be theirs. But if in six months they drop us, you know, we'll just go and write another record. It's not, you know -- the songs that we record we feel are for, we're in favor of people working, covering them and doing other things. It's not like these are our precious possessions. What our goal is to have other people have access to them, so ...
Right, okay, so are you guys gonna put out the vinyl or are they [RCA] putting out the vinyl?
We are putting out the vinyl on A-F Records. It's actually being manufactured right now. And it's gonna be a picture disc, which is gonna be really fuckin' cool.
Nice, is it gonna be limited or?
It'll be limited to however many people have record players who want them! (laughing) So, it's not really limited. Most people don't want vinyl these days, but we just thought it'd be neat to do a picture disc and do something fun with it.
Oh yeah, well there's a huge collector market for the vinyl, sort of a niche market actually.
Yeah, it's just sort of a fun thing to have.
So the Steelers won the Super Bowl this year didn't they?
They did, but I was watching Puppy Bowl, did you watch Puppy Bowl?
Huh uh, uh --
Puppy Bowl is on the Animal Planet. I don't know if you ever...
Oh! I think I did hear about that.
...there's all these puppies in a makeshift stadium and they just run around and play with toys and stuff. So I watched that for most of the day!
Nice! So my question, going back to the Steelers is, do you remember Iron City Beer back in the '70s when the Steelers were on their huge dynasty?
For sure. We used to collect the beer cans!
With photo pictures of all the Steelers.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So you were probably what, 5 or 10 years old at the time?
I have no idea how old I was. But I remember them and I remember that I probably still have some. 'Cause that was a big thing back then was to collect beer cans. And I have probably a hundred, two hundred beer cans in my parents' attic because that's what you would collect. Yeah, that's so weird because nobody knows about beer can collecting but it was a big thing back then.
Yeah, it was. So were you a boozeaholic back then, is that why you don't drink now?
Yeah, I did a lot of, I mostly did crack, mostly. But you couldn't collect crack vials, so they weren't as much of a collector's item as beer cans.
Cool, yeah. I have a huge beer can collection from that era.
Yeah, yeah. That's so weird.
Did you have Billie Beer? [Named after the President Carter's brother]
I never had Billie Beer because I wasn't that socially aware to know what Billie Beer was all about. I was just, you know, the Pittsburgh Steelers beer cans and that type of stuff. 'Cause obviously, if you're from Pittsburgh, that's the type of stuff you get when you're a kid.
All right, here's another one. I always liked that you guys include notes about the subject matter that inspired the song after the lyrics in the liner notes, much like Anthrax did back in the '80s ...
Did Anthrax do that too? Wow! (Laughing)
Yeah, they did this on their Among the Living album, mainly citing Stephen King books and such that influenced them. So my question to you in this long drawn out thing is -- who influenced you more, Anthrax or Stephen King?
Uh, you know what, I was never that big of an Anthrax fan. But Anthrax has sorta come back around from being a cheesy metal band to having sort of like a cult following. And Stephen King, I never cared for him much, so I would say Anthrax. Now when you talk about Anthrax, people are really excited about it and you know, I have to agree -- I like Anthrax.
Yeah. So that was actually a set up for a more serious question, which was getting to the song "Exodus" on the new album [For Blood and Empire].
Yes. It's actually called "Émigré" now. Same song.
Oh, okay.
It's gone through about five different names.
Okay, well I have the advance copy which calls it "Exodus." So now it's called "Émigré," and man, that fuckin' song rocks.
Well, the interesting thing about the advanced copy also, I'll take you on a little tangent here, they put the wrong version of "One Trillion Dollars" on it. Instead of "fuck 'em all" it's "kill 'em all" I think. And when you go back and listen to it, you'll be able to see that there's a different version of the song. But you like the song "Exodus" or "Émigré"?
Yeah, so now I'm really excited my promo copy's gonna be rare and worth bucks so Ebay here I come!
Yeah, worth at least fifty cents!
Yeah, but the song "Émigré," it's just, my God, I love it. The chorus, the way it slingshots into it. I listen to a lot of Anti-Flag, and it's sort of a new style of chorus for you guys, I thought.
We did a little bit of that with a song called "Culture Revolution." It has a sort of similar feel to "Culture Revolution" which was on Underground Network, I think. You'll find that I have two drum beats, and most of the time I really only have one drum beat. But that is the second of the drum beats, so we recycle that for different songs. And we use that drum beat in that song.
All right, well, cool, at least you have two!
Yeah! Usually I only have one. But that's the second one, it only comes out on rare, rare occasions.
So in particular about that song, and this goes back to the Anthrax question of the liner notes -- Was this the same genocide that was also chronicled in the movie Hotel Rwanda?
Uh, well, that song is talking about, it's trying to tie those things together. And you're very smart to catch that. There was the Rwandan genocide; right now there's genocide going on in Darfur. There's also genocide, obviously we're talking about genocide because we're using the quote from World War II of the uh... is it a priest, minister, some religious figure that is the, "when they came for the Communists," that gentleman's quote. And what we're trying to do is say that we look back at these other genocides and we're like, this was horrible, but that same thing is going on right now today and we're not paying attention to it. And Rwanda was going on 8-10 years ago and people are going, "That was horrible, I can't believe we let that happen." But we're letting the genocide happen right now too. So we're just trying to tie all those different elements together.
Yeah, I just wanted to mention the Hotel Rwanda thing because I thought that it was a real easy way for anybody to see...
To understand ...
... and bringing in a big Hollywood movie with big stars makes it very easily accessible. And then, when you actually read the lyrics as you're listening to your album and it just slingshots into it and it's very powerful and it brings back all the images from the movie.
Yeah, exactly. And that is an amazing example of, you are very correct, of people having access, to be able to understand these things are going on in the world. If you didn't have a movie like that, people wouldn't have the language to be able to talk about genocide on that level. And uh yeah, I think it's a great, that movie was a great thing and I think it's definitely interesting to tackle those, or bring those ideas all together.
Yeah. I noticed out in the lobby at the merch table, you guys have someone set up that's doing political signings and there's some pamphlets for various organizations.
Different petitions, we have the Military Free Zone Petition, and then we have the Depleted Uranium Petition. Military Free Zone is about students in the "No Child Left Behind"[education legislation], Justin will speak about it a little bit tonight. In No Child Left Behind, there is a provision that says military recruiters, if you get federal funding, have to have access to the students' personal records. So we set up a program to try and keep military recruiters from having access to that for two reasons. One, because it's a privacy issue. We don't think that people should have access to your private records. And two, because we feel as though that when you militarize the schools like that, you have a culture that is only focusing on military and not focusing on peace. And we think that's always a bad thing.
Absolutely. And that actually would be a good segue to another question about your ideals. Let's see, hold on a sec. (shuffling of paper)
You got a lot of questions there.
Yeah, and I'm really organized here! Oh, okay. Violence. Which is, always seems to be a major theme in your work. That fighting is bad and you typically espouse a non-violent ethic for change and life in general based on your stance of various issues. But is there ever a situation where, I mean, I know sometimes violence is necessary for self-defense situations, but is there ever a situation that I could provoke you to violence with just mere words?
Violence in our culture I associate with alcoholism. It is always there underneath the surface and people have tendencies to violence. And everyday is a struggle to try and keep you from, or at least myself, from being violent. And some days you fail and you resort to violence. Much like some days alcoholics fail and they go back to drinking. But, you know, I try the best I can to stay away from violence.
     And yeah, the other day, there was a young gentleman who was filming me while I was on the phone talking to my girlfriend. And it annoyed me. And I didn't, I obviously wasn't violent, but it made me more angry than I thought it really should. So I went over and apologized to him later. But, yeah, it would take a whole lot for you to say something to make me become violent. I've been spit on, I've been punched, not that I encourage people to do those things, but there's worse things in life than those things. And you try an accept it and move on. Because I'm in favor of disagreement. I'm in favor of discussion because I think all those things are good. I think that we all lose when it goes to violence. Because once it goes to violence, then there's no goal, nothing being gained by it at that point.
Absolutely. All right, well then, being as we just talked about violence, the next thing we should talk about is sex.
Yes!
And so that leads me to your drumming style.
Yes.
I noticed, I've seen some live tape of you playing when I was watching the pre-game setup to make sure that I knew all of your plays.
Yeah ...
And I noticed that you really play with sort of an "oh" face though.
YES!
Do you have a different face when you're having sex or is this the same one?
I don't know. That's a good question. Uh, I'll give you my girlfriend's number, you can ask her! (laughing)
Now obviously you guys have a reputation for being very serious, very political...
Yeah, we're not funny at all.
Have you guys ever written a song that you wrote to try and specifically provoke a politician or group of people, because you wanted a reaction? And you thought that you guys were big enough that it might get heard, someone might hear it and ...
No, we actually haven't. That's an interesting question -- maybe we should do that. We've written songs about issues, but we've never actually specifically written a song about a person. But, we have a song called, uh, what the fuck is that one called? And it talks about Clinton getting head. And it was about when Clinton was bombing in Iraq right when the Monica Lewinsky scandal came out. [Editor's note: Pres. Clinton directed the U.S. military to bomb Iraq more heavily in December 1998 during impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives.] And we were like, oh yeah, here we go again. You're getting your dick sucked and you gotta divert attention so you're gonna start bombing a country in the Middle East. But we never actually wrote a song about a particular person to try and get them to do anything. I don't think we have that kind of power. We don't fantasize, we don't kid ourselves into thinking that we have that kind of power.
If you could in an ideal world? If you could pick one of your songs, all of your songs already have a theme?
And if I could in an ideal world. If I picked a song, uh...
I mean "Émigré," right there...
Yeah, but it's not about a specific person. So it would be like "George Bush, pull out, or don't pull out of the Nuclear Proliferation Agreement"-like song. Maybe we'll work on that. I don't know, we'll have to try that. I don't think he'll listen.
Yeah, I don't think so either. Just come up with something that is inflammatory enough that catches their attention and get them to try and react. Then you get the press.
Yeah, the problem with the President and Dick Cheney and things like that -- you have to be very careful what you say about them. Because any type of insinuation, or even a very covered-up insinuation of violence towards any of those people can get you into a lot of trouble. So, we stay away from all of that. We don't want to get involved in any of that.
Oh man, all right. I notice on a lot of your albums, because I buy most of your stuff on vinyl ...
Interesting ...
And I noticed that the mastering on it, the [volume] level seems to be slightly lower than that of all your contemporaries. Whereas most people, when they master it these days, they try to just blast it out and make it as loud as possible, and I was wondering if this was a conscious choice?
Huh, we should fire our mastering guy.
No, it's actually a good thing, by mastering at a lower level, you actually have a fatter sound and more of the tones can come through. So I'm wondering if that was something you did on purpose?
You got me on that one. You're clearly more knowledgeable about that than I am. I don't know anything about it.
All right, is Anti-Flag still D.I.Y.?
Yes, actually we are. Unfortunately, to our own detriment, we are. We have people around us who help us, and they complain all the time because we stick our noses into places that they are capable of handling. And we always want to know what's going on. It's very difficult, because the interesting thing about Anti-Flag is most bands, you have one dude who runs the show. We are literally a democracy; when anything, there's a discussion that needs to happen, we sit down and all talk about it. And it makes for very long, involved discussions that -- for things like whether it's going to be a blue t-shirt or a brown t-shirt. Things that don't really matter. But yes, we are very D.I.Y. Even, we are D.I.Y. probably to the place where it's bad for us.
Really? So will I find you down in the mail order department stuffing envelopes?
Um, you will not, but I do know how to do it. And I sit next to the woman who is doing it. So, yeah, I guess there's different levels of D.I.Y. I am not actually stuffing the mail, but I'm sitting next to the woman, and she's being paid more than I am. (laughing) So, yeah, it's a, I guess, that here, so what you're saying, yeah, let me define this. We have a community of people who we work with. And we do everything with those people. Like for the RCA record, Dave [Romano], who does press at A-F Records, did press for this record. So in that sense we're D.I.Y. While I'm not actually doing the press myself, 'cause I don't have time to do that. But I'm very much, our people are involved in it. So I guess I was lying a little bit in saying we are D.I.Y. We are D.I.Y, our community is D.I.Y., if I could define it that way.
Sure. What would you say was Anti-Flag's breakthrough moment, when you suddenly realized, that holy crap -- we're going to be able to make a living doing this, I don't have to have a day job anymore, thank God!?
You know what -- and that's a very interesting question 'cause a lot of people see it as a change. But being in the band, it hasn't changed in ten years.
But there had to have been a moment, even ten years ago ...
There was a moment. Yeah, there was a moment, but it wasn't 'cause of the band so much as that we had our record company. And we started working at the record company, so we had money coming in from that. And doing other things, so it wasn't actually the band. So there was never a time where the band was like, okay, the band's making enough money. It was always like, there's a little bit of money coming from here, there's a little bit of money coming from there. We can sort of, 'cause I just started working at the record company. And then the Head (Chris) was working at a pizza shop and 2 (Chris #2) was working. And then they're like, okay, well, now we can, now you can do the artwork at the record company and make everything. And then so there was never a point that we said okay, this is working.
So what would you say to new bands that are out there now trying to get to the point where you are?
Well, that's the problem, and that's the most difficult part for bands, because you're not making enough money to survive on. But you've got to be on tour all the time, so you're living in these shitty places. And it's interesting because every band goes through this. And when you're going through it, you're like -- this sucks, my girlfriend dumped me, everything's horrible. But, the reality is, is every band has to go through this unless you're a major label band, which I don't care about. But you just have to accept that it's gonna suck, and hopefully sooner or later you're gonna be able to make a living and pay your own rent. And be able to live your life. (speaking to his assistant Jesse) You've got another gentleman, okay. (back to me) Do you have any other questions in there? Those are all very good questions.
Is there anything else that you wanted to say to wrap it up?
We are putting something together for depleted uranium. A petition to make sure that people are aware that depleted uranium is an issue. It's used on armaments to make it hard so it goes through tanks. But what happens is, when it explodes, it puts dust all over the area and it's obviously radioactive because it's depleted uranium. And it makes all war zones become hazardous waste dumps, and the U.S. is using these things. So the idea that Iraq is gonna be habitable for anybody is a lie. And the people coming back from the war are all poisoned, much like they were with Agent Orange. So what we're trying to do is get people to study the effects of depleted uranium and accept that it should no longer be used. That's another thing that we're trying to put together.
And I assume there's links for all this on your web site which is ...?
Go to our web site and its, afterdowningstreet.org is another place where they're doing some stuff with that. And Anti-Flag.com
Okay, thanks.
Cool, very good questions.

March 20, 2006.

Pat Thetic has seen the
CITIZINE print edition.
Photo by Murphy Lynch.

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