Interview: PUP at Rockstar Energy Open in Portland, OR

Congratulations on the Polaris Music Prize award that you guys got nominated for recently. I love seeing punk bands get recognition for that type of stuff. I know you guys started off as four friends playing in a basement and now you've turned into a globally touring act. Do you ever have creative differences now that things are more complex?

Stefan: Constantly. I would say we can be four very opinionated individuals, and four people who have come to understand that this band is the four of us fighting. That's what makes it special. It's not one person writing the songs and everyone following or two people. It's like you need all four people to be engaged and involved for the songs to be good, and so it's kind of a bit of a catch 22 of like if we're not arguing and fighting, we're not writing our best stuff, and when we are arguing and fighting, it's usually because we're all very passionate about something.

For a punk band rooted in DIY energy, I know growing can be a delicate tightrope. How do you push boundaries and experiment with new textures and structures without losing the core identity that your audience first fell in love with?

Steve: I think it kind of speaks to what Stefan was saying, like the sort of flip side of there being tension in terms of the creative process. Knowing that the band is the four of us, I think it it allows for us to kind of do whatever we want, like you know, in terms of experimenting with textures and different songwriting structures or whatever, I think realizing that we are two guitars, a bass and drums and voices. Like within that, yeah we've added synths here and there, and you know, found ways to make the guitars kind of sound gnarly or whatever. And I think just knowing that between the four of us, we're always going to figure out a way to try and play it live as the four of us like. It allows for a lot of freedom of creative expression and just sort of experimenting and I think maybe in the past we thought it always had to be heavy guitar music and some element of that is always going to remain but yeah it's the four of us kind of following creative impulses and just kind of going with where that energy kind of takes us.

I know you've played countless sweaty basements and massive festivals. What's the single most disastrous show you've survived and at what point did you realize you just had go and lean into the chaos?

Stefan: There's been so many disasters. This band is built on that kind of thing. I'm trying to think… one that comes to mind is our first headline show in Manchester that sold out. Very excited. We get on stage, and somebody walks through during the first song with the biggest trash can I've ever seen, filled with cans and garbage, and just chucks it right at me, and it hits me, and bottles break all over the stage. Like I'm, you know, two three minutes into our hour and a half long headline set, and it just all the pedals, the power goes out because the beer spilt, like beer from the garbage spilled into the electronics, so you know we're only three minutes in. It's a fucking disaster. You know we got through it. Yeah, we had to stop and we cleaned up the stage. What about a month ago in London? You want to talk about that?

Steve: Oh sure, yeah. We were in London. Why is it always the UK? Anyway, we're playing this brewery in like where the vats of the beer are kind of like surrounding the stage. The stage was shitty. I think they would be fine with us saying that. It was basically like a bunch of risers, like lashed together, like with you know whatever. And there was a crowd rush, and they hit kind of the front of the stage and knocked it back about half a foot. And one of the legs buckled and cracked a concrete barrier that the stage was up against, like that was sort of the force of it. And so we kind of stood there for a bit and played a few more songs. And Dan, who's just over there, was like, "You can't keep playing. Like you can't do this. The stage is going to collapse."

So you know, I think in the past probably something like that would have really flustered us. But having gone through all kinds of different disasters and having played, you know, in this band for 13 plus years or whatever it is, we just played on the floor, you know. So I think the thing about having done this enough now is like very few things phase us, which is kind of a nice place to be in. We can kind of think in the moment and kind of be quicker on our feet, so to speak, more than maybe we could have been back in the day.

Stefan: We played every kind of show that you can imagine. We played huge shows where people loved us, huge shows where people no one knew who the fuck we were. We played to nobody. We played tiny shows that were crazy. We played tiny shows to nobody.

So after this many years of touring, what still makes the show feel like it's going to be a great night? Like, how do you know it's just going to be a great night?

Stefan: I mean, for me, it's mostly the crowd, just like you can sense by the third song, like what kind of what the vibe is in the room. Not even if it's a big crowd or small crowd. It's just like if people seem happy, it's gonna be a great night because it's not always like that. Sometimes people seem violent or sad or whatever the situation may be. The world's a tough place, but when you see, like you know, for me, when I see strangers screaming lyrics in each other's faces and giving high fives and crowd surfing, you know taking care of each other, picking each other up in the pit. That's when I know, like, it's going to be a great night. And it is. We're lucky enough that we have the kind of fans that that is most nights, and that's incredible. But also, it's not every night and you know, by that third song, it's kind of clear to me what kind of night it's gonna be, and and usually is very positive.

So this question is for Stefan. I see on Instagram that you've been you've been skating more, right? Which is kind of fitting for this event. What inspired you to start shredding and all that at this point?

Stefan: Yeah, I would love to talk about this. I skated a little bit as a teenager, but not really. I knew I could ollie, that's it. But you know, I knew how to stand on a board, and then I, I ate it. Just some things you just feel like you grow out of. You just leave behind whatever, and I didn't step on a board from the time I was like about 15 until 35.

And when I was 35 this girl I was dating, who will eventually become my wife. Yeah, she liked to skate, but like very like you know she wasn't doing all. She was just going to a skate park and rolling around, and it was something fun for her to do. And I started doing it with her, and I got completely obsessed with it, I don't know what it's like, for like these 18-year-olds who are fucking crushing it, but for me, I wasn't doing anything crazy.

I mean, I dropped in for the first time at the tender age of 35, and it was one of the greatest feelings I ever had. It's like there's this mind-body connection that I felt with it, where, you know, I have a lot of mental health problems, and I found like when I was skating, I was only thinking about not hurting myself. I was like so focused and engaged, and my body felt good, and it was fun, and also because I'm so bad at it, it was like one of those things where it's like a hobby that I could never monetize.

Most of the time, I start doing the hobby, like I started drawing a while ago, and somehow it just turned into part of my job, and then I stopped liking it. You know, I stopped. I fell out of love with it, and skating was a thing that, like man, I’m not that far from it, but if I ever land a kickflip, it will be the best day of my life.

And you know what? For me, being really bad at something, being really bad at a hobby that you love and you're excited to learn and do more and more and slowly get better, and you don't care that you're bad and no one around you cares that you're bad. There's something so fucking beautiful about that. So effortless and stress-free and wonderful, whereas you're literally doing it for your own enjoyment and nothing more. And you know, yeah, it was a beautiful year.

Steve: I was so bad at skateboarding it convinced me to start playing the guitar. I like I tried to ollie, I fell on my ass. All my friends laughed at me, and I was like, "Fuck this!" And then I started playing the guitar. And then when all those guys got sick of skateboarding, they started learning guitar. So I feel like I was just kind of a little bit ahead of them.

Stefan: Can I actually talk about that for a second? Because you know, like Steve said, he ollied, he fell on his ass, and everyone laughed at him. That was the culture that we all grew up in. I had a skate park near my house. I'd go there, and I would be too intimidated to do anything because people were fucking dicks in the late '90s, early 2000s.

There was a hierarchy. It was clique-y. To me skateboarding then, from my perspective, was not a safe, fun sport to be a part of. And when I say safe, I don't mean physically dangerous. I mean like it didn't feel like a safe space to be a part of.

And part of me falling in love with it again at 35 is how incredibly supportive and welcoming I found the whole skate community. People are whipping around, and you you know that they're aware that that you're not as good, and they take care of you. Like they make sure that that you don't feel like you're in their way. They encourage you, you know, like they're board taps.

I think part of it is that like some of the best skaters in the world are nine-year-old girls? So like, how are these 19-year-old dudes gonna make fun of people anymore? Yeah, you can't gatekeep it anymore. And I've really found the community everywhere I go to be so kind and supportive.

Strangers don’t care about your skill level, they just care about being encouraging, like happy that people are involved in a in a sport that they love.

Do you guys have it like when you finally get like a break from touring? Do you have any other like hobbies or anything that's just keeps you feeling like normal human being?

Steve: Cooking. I like cooking and reading,

Stefan: He’s a good cook. I’m not even making fun of him.

Steve: Yeah, I like to cook. It is one of those things that I've realized as soon as I get home, because obviously when you're traveling, whether that's on tour, like even if you're on vacation or something, you're eating every meal out, right? For the most part, whether that's like, you know, going to restaurants or getting takeout or whatever, and part of that is just like that's just kind of how it is, especially on tour. Like it's not like we have anywhere to really cook.

So when I get home, that's like a big thing that kind of like gets me back into the flow of just being in the space of my own apartment or whatever, right? I'm like, oh yeah, I can actually hang out and make food for my wife and I. That's just like a nice way to get kind of back into domestic bliss.

Yeah, I don't know, sports, reading. I'm pretty boring.

Stefan: Yeah I do a lot of outdoor stuff, Hiking and sports, and I've been recently getting really into like construction-y projects. I’m learning about house building and stuff like that. My grandpa built the house that my dad grew up in, and that kind of inspired me to kind of finding that out. You know, it's like, man, I don't even know how to swing a fucking hammer. I should learn something. So, yeah, I'm getting pretty good at it. I'm enjoying myself.

I love how you guys say that you're boring and yet you're touring all over the world, playing in this awesome punk band. Would you guys give any advice to someone who's trying to get into music or trying to learn how to play?

Stefan: We probably both have a lot to say about this, but I'd say you just gotta love it. Like if you love it and you're listening to music and feeling a deep connection with bands and artists that you listen to, and you want to do it, just pick it up and start.

If you love it, you'll keep going, and if you keep going, you will get good at it.

I've said to so many people in young bands or who have bands, and you know they ask us like you know how did you do it? My answer is like we cared more than everyone, we loved it more than everyone. We worked at it harder and longer than everyone. We stayed in the game a long time, you know.

Like we're in our mid and late 30s, and we should like by all rights we could have and should have given up a decade ago when things were really tough and there wasn't any money, and things were really hard, and we didn't because we love it, and we were persistent, and it's just about doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it again and again and again, and you get better like with anything.

Steve: Yeah, and then I think the other thing is just you don't realize. I think, or at least I didn't initially, how important it is to be a good hang.

Stefan: oh, I'm not.

Steve: Ah, you're fine. But you know, the more you allow yourself to be open-minded in terms of other people's Perspectives, and you know, saying yes to collaborating or doing cool stuff or trying new things as a musician, as an artist, whatever the case may be. That's all important.

But if you have a massive amount of talent and aren't a good hang or can't just be a decent person. That's the kind of shit that people don't forget.

So, you know, being dedicated and caring, and just trying your best to be cool, I think really goes a long way.

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