Interview with Dan Andriano
Photos: Nicole Kibert
You just got back from the UK Revival Tour last week, how did you get involved with that tour?
Basically I’ve known Chuck (Ragan) for a long time and we’ve talked about doing some stuff together and getting me involved in some sort of Revival Tour capacity for a couple years now. He called me last winter, while I was in the middle of making my new record and basically said “Next fall we’re going to the UK/Europe, are you in?” I was totally excited. The timing was right and I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time, so I was really stoked he called.
How was your experience on that tour?
Amazing! I’ve known Chuck, Brian Fallon and Dave Hause for years and to be able to go out and be on tour with them, sharing a bus, it was great. It was kind of like being in a different band for a few weeks. It was fun and different. I had a really good time. Getting a chance to play different kinds of music with different people, it kind of keeps you on your toes and all that. It’s very exciting.
Did everyone have their own sets or did everyone play on each other’s songs?
It kind of works like this: The show starts with everybody on stage. Chuck has his band, which is like a bass player and a fiddle player, so there is six if us on stage and then we would do a mini set, like four or five songs, one of each persons songs, like a collaboration and then everybody would kind of peel off. On this particular run, Dave would stay up there and he would start his set, but people are constantly coming on and off to do a song. Like I would stay up there and sing little parts with Dave or we would do a couple different covers. We were doing a Joe Strummer tune, we did a Replacements tune one night, Ryan Adams tune. Basically it’s just kind of a non-stop show. I would go up and do some tunes with Dave, then Chuck would do some tunes with Dave. Then at the end of Dave’s set, Chuck would end up there and just stay up there and Dave would leave and Chuck would begin his set. The same kind of thing would continue. It’s like a three and a half hour non-stop show. It’s really awesome! Very different. It gives someone an alternative to the standard type punk rock show where 3 or 4 bands would each play a set and it’s over.
It sounds like people get their money’s worth with that long of show?
Yeah it was great, The set-list was hilarious. We had like a 52 song set-list.
Is there a big difference in touring the UK than there is touring the US?
Only in geography I suppose. Once the show starts it’s very similar. Waking up and getting to play everyday, meeting people, doing different stuff, living in some place, it’s obviously different for certain reasons, but people that go to rock shows are the same all over you know, it’s cool. They’re very welcoming. Alkaline Trio has always had a really good time in the UK and we’ve always been well received over there. It was nice to go over there in a different capacity for sure.
As someone who has a wife and a kid, is it harder to tour overseas for a couple weeks at a time than it is to tour the US for a couple weeks at a time?
Yeah, absolutely! Doing 2 weeks over there kind of feels like doing a month over here. It’s harder to communicate, the time difference is one thing that makes it tougher. The expense of using the phones. I can’t just wake up and call home, I mean I could, but I don’t have that kind of scratch. I’ll wake up and wait for a good internet connection so I can talk. Fortunately technology has caught up and I have Skype on my phone. As long as I have a good internet connection I can call as much as I want, but it’s not always that easy. There are still certain parts of Europe and places that for whatever reason the internet doesn’t work the same as it does here. The have things set up differently, different kinds of networks.
Is there anything you try to do for your family to make up for lost time when you return from tours?
Not really. I mean, I basically miss my family so much that I just come home and try to get right back into the normal home type of routine. I want to spend as much time with my daughter as possible, but I’d kind of be doing that if I never left. I’m not bringing home extravagant gifts or anything to say I’m sorry. This is what I do and I miss them greatly. When I get home I just try to get back into their lives. If I’m gone for twelve weeks and I come home, I don’t want it to feel like I’m still gone for a few days just because I’m on a weird schedule.
You’ve got a pretty busy life with Alkaline Trio and your solo stuff, how does one successfully balance family life and a musical career?
It’s just what I do I guess. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been touring and what I’ve been doing since I was like 16 years old. I’ve been married for 9 years. I guess it’s just kind of worked itself out. It’s not always easy, it’s hard. This summer I moved into a new house while I was on tour and that put a lot of stress on my wife and everything to get that move handled. It’s just not easy, but you got to try and relax and not get overly stressed out about certain things. I’m very fortunate that this is my job, but this is my job and this is what I have to do. I would never complain about it and I would never switch jobs with anybody. It’s hard, it’s hard to leave your family. I have to remember this is what I do and this is how I try and support us and all that stuff.
If you had chosen a different career path besides a musician, what do you think you’d be doing?
Oh goodness, I don’t know. Cooking food. Maybe I’d be a sports analyst. At this point I think I could… You know I’m actually gonna change my answer. I used to think I would be a chef. You know it’s fun, I’m still like a little kid, I still think about what I want to do when I grow up. So I’m changing my answer from a chef to a sports analyst. Maybe an ESPN anchor. I would’ve just had to study a lot more when I was a kid. I’m kind of obsessed. The baseball game last night, I’ve been up all late drunk. It’s very exciting. Even though I hate the Cardinals, it’s very exciting.
A lot of the songs on Hurricane Season are about situations involving your family, do you always use personal experiences when writing?
Pretty much. I’ve tried to write about other situations before and it never seems as good or as comfortable. I’ve always written about things that are close to me. Anything that I’ve felt confident about or good about is usually something that relates to me personally in some way or at least relates to someone I know closely. Hurricane Season, it just kind of came together. I started writing some of those songs not long after my daughter was born and I didn’t even realize it at the time that there is definitely a theme to the album. I’m happy with it. After it was done I realized I could sequence the album to really make it more thematic than I even intended.
Did you approach the writing for Hurricane Season differently than you would’ve for an Alkaline Trio album?
Absolutely. Mainly in the sense that, when I write a song for Alkaline Trio, I write it knowing that Matt and Derek are going to put their two cents in and change things around. Derek might have a total different interpretation of what the rhythm of the songs should be, so he does his thing. He also is really good with arrangements. Matt is a very different guitar player than me stylistically so naturally that’s going to make me different. When I was writing Hurricane Season, it was kind of like me just knowing that this is it. It’s just me. It’s just me recording the songs. It’s just me tweaking and producing. I kind of keep it simple and not over think the songs, at least when writing. I got a little neurotic when it came to recording them. When it came to writing them, if I wrote a song fairly quickly, I would take that as a good sign I should just leave it alone.
What was the biggest challenge you had while working on Hurricane Season?
That same thing. Not having anyone to bounce ideas off of. Not having anyone to tell me if a part was good and I should leave it alone or if a part was not good and should fix it. It kind of drove me nuts not knowing. I would write songs in my little studio and I would be happy with them, but it’s a tricky thing. I’ve always been very interested in that, in the studio, and very hands on with my sound and with the sounds of the album in general. But I’ve always had other people there to help me along, help me work, and help with the gear. I would just say things in the studio, like lighten this up, clean this up, make this more dirty or whatever and they do it and I’d be like, yeah that’s good. It’s a learning process and it’s something I really enjoyed, but I was doing it myself and it was very taxing actually.
For future solo recordings, is there anything that you will do differently than what you did on
Hurricane Season?
Yes, I will do it with someone else! Most likely I will get someone’s help because I was home for like two months, I was working on the record for pretty much two months off and on. Alkaline Trio went to record Damnesia in the middle of me making Hurricane Season and I came home from that recording session and kind of went right back to work, kind of re-doing stuff, like little tricks I learned while we were recording Damnesia. It took a long time, I was home, but I was not really available for my family as much. I think if I did it with some other people, one, I’d want to record with other musicians and have it be more like a band. I don’t want to play everything. I want other people’s input and other people’s styles. One would be that and two, I’d like to record it with at least another person. I’ve got some resources down here in St. Augustine. I’m trying to get together with some folks and have some fun and make some songs.
You’re originally from the Chicago area, why did you move from there and what drew you to St. Augustine, FL?
I’ve lived in Chicago from an early age and my wife lived up there with me for a while, like 7 years. She’s from Florida originally, she’s not from where we live now, but from the state. After we had our daughter, it was actually me, which I surprised myself even, but I wanted to get out of the city. We planned on being there for a while after my daughter was born but I really didn’t want to deal with winter, and a baby and leaving town and all that. We came down to Florida to visit my wife’s folks who were just so helpful and hands on with our daughter, which is one little reason. Then we just started driving up the coast from where they live and started looking at towns and checking places out. When we got to St. Augustine, that was it. We stopped looking. It was like, all right, I could definitely live here. It’s fucking paradise. It is. It’s a very mellow, laid back town. It’s the oldest city in America. They have a lot of neat cultural aspects to the downtown and over where I live near the beach, it’s a lot of surf shops, restaurants, and yoga studios. It’s really nice to come home here. It’s very different than what I was used to in Chicago, but it’s very relaxing and rewarding.
Now that you’re not in Chicago anymore, do you ever miss the snow?
I miss it for my daughter. I’ve lived it, so I don’t miss it that much. I miss it around the holidays and stuff, like Michigan Avenue and Lincoln Park, when the snow is all fresh and pretty, yeah that’s great, but when it’s February and it’s been freezing for four months and it just keeps snowing and getting colder…God, I don’t even want to think about it. I travel so much so I see Chicago in the winter. I’ll be there this winter, visiting friends and family and doing stuff. I’m very fortunate that I get to go around and see Chicago in the winter, see New York City in the winter. I am very lucky in that regard, so I don’t miss it at all.
A lot of influential bands came out of the Chicago area in the 90s, why do you think that was?
Things like that just happen. It was a good scene in the suburbs, it was a good scene downtown that was very different. Like that big alternative rock scene downtown with the Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, and Urge Overkill and bands that were a little more mainstream and bigger. The city had so much to offer with all kinds of scenes. You had a big indie rock scene with bands like Tortoise and Juno 44, bands that migrated to Chicago from other parts of the midwest, southeast and stuff. It’s a really nice big city. I think a lot of people gravitated towards there and people want entrainment. I was from out in the suburbs and we would put on our own shows. We would have shows wherever, whenever, in like VFW halls and crap like that. Then go down to the city and try to play shows. A friend of ours from Elgin started the Fireside Bowl. That way bands from all over the suburbs had one central place to play and it was just really great. It’s crazy and hard to say, but we’re all friends and we’re all in different kinds of bands. We all like each other as people and respected each others bands. I was in like a ska/punk band that would play with a band like Oblivion and Sidekick Kato, it’s like three bands that couldn’t be more different but we were playing the same shows and having the best time. It was everyone doing their own thing and being young, getting drunk, and it was really fun. But the same thing happens in big cities. Big things happen in Seattle, big things happen in Gainsville, Florida, big things happen in Louisville, Kentucky, Washington DC, everyone kind of gets their turn.
You’ve been playing music for many years,
including the 15 years with Alkaline Trio, what keeps you playing music?
Probably the same thing that got me into it, I like it. I’m not the best guitar player in the world, I’m not the best bass player, but I really like challenging myself. I like writing songs, writing songs that kind of make me happy or are therapeutic for me in a way. I like traveling. The best part about being in Slapstick and Tuesday, and those bands I was in when I was much younger, was just the aspect of getting out and seeing the world. We weren’t like those kids that constantly bitched about where they lived, we liked where we lived, but we liked going other places too.
What’s next for you, new Alkaline Trio album, new solo album, more touring?
Alkaline Trio is going to finish up touring on that Damnesia record. We’re probably going to go to the UK and Europe. I’m going to do a little more solo touring, hopefully fingers crossed, some sort of Revival Tour in the US and Canada. Alkaline Trio is going to get back in the studio sometime about the middle of next year and make another record and keep doing what we do.
How is Heart and Skulls going? Is it just an imprint for you guys to do your music on or will you eventually sign bands to it?
It kind of has that option, but none of us are that motivated to go out and find bands. We have friend’s bands that we would love to work with, but at the same time, working with your friend’s bands is a recipe for disaster. I don’t want to deal with bands, bands are a pain in the ass. We all are. It’s something we’re definitely open to doing and we have the option to do, but none of us are dying to become a label. I don’t really want to run a label. We just mainly wanted to have more control over our band than we had before. Not because we’re all control freaks, or we think we can do it better than big labels, we just wanted to make sure that certain things weren’t happening more than certain things are happening, if that makes sense. There are certain things that labels do that I personally feel are unnecessary or don’t help bands. For us at this point, they weren’t really helping us so we cut those things out of the equation. We have a really good relationship with the people at Epitaph that pretty much do everything. We don’t really do anything, it’s more of a way for us to keep a head on what’s actually happening.
