In the spring of 2000, we interviewed Dillinger Four before the release of their milestone album, Versus God. This full-length in particular found the band sharpening their sound and taking their songwriting to a new level. We spoke with singer/guitarist Erik Funk and singer/bassist Patrick Costello before one of their shows at Fireside Bowl. We talked from inside D4’s van about the record, including its lyrics and the motivation behind its title. We also conversed about the band’s relationship with Billie Joe from Green Day, a memorable appearance at South by Southwest, The Triple Rock and more. 

Bill – Tell me about your upcoming album that’s about to be released, Versus God.

Erik – We just finished it a week ago actually. These guys finished the last part of it at 6:00 AM before we left on this tour and it’s good. It was sort of hectic. In the past, or at least on the last record, we sort of did everything broken up. We tracked everything and took some time off, then mixed everything and took some time off. This one we sort of did all in one straight shot, sort of non-stop. That was a little weird, but we did it at the same place that we did our last one, with the same guy we’ve done most of our stuff with. In that sense it was really comfortable and cool.

Bill – What’s the main difference in terms of style or lyrical content between this one and your last album? 

Paddy – The lyrical content is pretty much in the same line. 

Erik – Yeah, lyrical content is definitely along the same lines.

Paddy – Musically I wouldn’t say it’s like a far cry, but I would say in general it’s more mid-tempo than Midwestern Songs…, not like slow though.

Erik – It’s probably a little more melodic overall. Probably song for song it’s a little more melodic than the last one. The production is kind of different, but I don’t really know what the standout difference would be. 

Paddy – I think it sounds cleaner than the last one, but it’s still not polished. With everything we’ve ever recorded, that’s always been our biggest concern is that we don’t want things to sound very polished. We’ve kind of realized with a few of the mistakes we’ve done in the past that maybe a little bit of clean is good, but polished you don’t necessarily need. Nice not fancy, which actually is the real working title of the album. Dillinger Four is nice, but not fancy, (laughs).

Bill – How’d you come up with Versus God as the title for the record?

Paddy – Because we were just really sick and tired of all this God shit actually, (laughs). Literally the first five minutes that we had thought of the words “Dillinger Four versus God,” it was kind of something that we laughed at. Like, “We should call the album ‘Dillinger Four versus God’,” and then we were thinking about it and we were like, “Yeah, fuck it. ‘Dillinger Four versus God.’ Yes.” The whole Christian hardcore and Christian pop thing, and the “No, let’s be open-minded” thing is coming back into vogue again, so we’d rather be the shit in the punchbowl and put out a record called “Dillinger Four versus God.” I have a lot of friends who’ve had abortions and I have a lot of gay friends too, and I’d rather back them up and put out a record that blatantly explains that I’d like to beat up God if I could fight him, (laughs).

Bill – As long as we’re talking about your upcoming releases, I wanted to mention the split with Pinhead Gunpowder. When’s that due out? 

Erik – Less than a month.

Paddy – That’ll be out by the time this interview is. 

Erik – Yeah, middle of April.

Bill – How’d you guys meet up with Billie Joe and Adeline Records?

Erik – Honestly, he just called us out of the blue. I mean, we have some mutual friends. Paddy is in Cleveland Bound Death Sentence with Aaron, who is also in Pinhead Gunpowder. Billie started focusing more and more on Adeline, and I don’t exactly know for sure where he heard us.

Paddy – He actually heard us at Lookout! Records. He went to Lookout! and they were playing it there, and he’s like “Oh, what’s this?” Then he picked it up and he liked it. Aaron had told me for years that supposedly Pinhead Gunpowder ripped-off a Dillinger Four song. I don’t know which one it is, but anyhow he supposedly talked to Aaron at one point and Aaron was like, “Yeah, that’s the band I told you about before.”

Erik – He called us up and asked us to do something on Adeline. He sort of left it up to us and then we said, “Well shit, let’s do a split with Pinhead Gunpowder.”

Paddy – Well actually, he called us up to ask us to do something and then we sat around laughing because we figured somebody prank-called us and told us it was Billie Joe, (laughs). We totally blew him off for like three weeks. 

Bill – I don’t want to offend you guys with this next question… 

Paddy – God damn it, (laughs).

Bill – I’ve heard rumors that after the Versus God album for Hopeless you guys will be free to go to a different label and that your next record will be on Adeline Records or someplace else. 

Paddy – No, the truth is actually that we’re going to Epitaph and we’re on the Warped Tour, (laughs). 

Erik – It’s true that we only had to do two records with Hopeless, but I mean you can see how long it took us to do a second record after our first, so we have a long time before we do anything. Hopeless has been awesome. There’s no reason we’d leave. 

Bill – I heard some interesting things about your recent performance at SXSW. Tell me how that show went in your own words.

Paddy – You’ve probably heard more about it than we have. I was pretty loaded. I don’t want to completely bag on the show we did, because it wasn’t one of those things where we got to the show and were like, “Oh, this sucks. This is totally music industry.” People could pay individually to get into the show, it wasn’t crazy expensive and it was a really big bill that we played. I think it was a six or seven band bill, so I mean that was all cool. But it was just one of those things where you’re kind of hanging around and there’s so many people walking around with the corny laminates around their necks. And guys walking around with portable DAT machines with boom mics getting stupid quotes off of other assholes about stupid shit that no one should really care about. And the next thing you know, you’ve been sitting there for like five hours taking shots because someone told you that you had to be there to load-in at 9:00 AM, even though you’re not playing till midnight. I think we were way more in-tune with most people who were there for the show than probably most of the industry people. I can’t even say all the industry people, because there were even industry people I saw who were coked-up and drunk out of their minds and fuckin’ doing karate chops and shit. But I don’t know, I don’t really remember much about it. I remember making fun of the music industry a lot, but that’s it.

Erik – You had a drumstick in your butt.

Paddy – I had a drumstick in my butt, (laughs). I don’t think collectively we remember that much. It sounded really weird too, so even playing-wise I’m not really sure I would know.

Bill – Tell me about your bar that recently opened in Minneapolis called The Triple Rock. 

Erik – It’s like a small bar with a full menu. It’s more of a bar than a restaurant. Me and my wife and an old friend of ours, actually me and Paddy’s friend, started working on it a few years ago and we got it open. I think we’ve been open for about 18 months now. It’s a lot like a lot of Chicago bars actually, which is kind of what was missing in Minneapolis and that’s what we wanted to open. It’s just like a normal, small kind of bar with a punk rock jukebox and a pool table. It’s pretty laid back. We’re planning to expand and start doing shows, but that keeps getting pushed-back a little bit because obviously it’s a pretty big undertaking. But it’s something we want to do really bad. And food-wise we have a lot of, for a bar we have kind of an insane amount of vegan and vegetarian food. That’s one thing that people sort of notice that sticks out about it. 

Bill – How’d you end up on the cover of the Hopeless Zine #4?

Paddy – I don’t know, man. Darren from Hopeless called, that’s way more kind of a question for Hopeless. He called up and asked if there was a picture lying around that they could use and I was like “no” and he was like, “Why don’t you just take a picture of yourself naked?” That was kind of slipping into goofy, pseudo-porn territory, (laughs). But we have a friend Dan who actually is a professional photographer, who’s taken pictures of us before. He had a setup already in the studio that he works at and I just came in after hours. We got a couple cases of beer, the guys came down and I took my clothes off and stood around for a while. 

Bill – You’re one of the few pop punk bands whose lyrics have social and political commentary. Tell me about the importance of lyrics to your band.

Erik – Paddy got me into punk when I was 13 or whatever and the punk that I’ve always been attracted to most has been the stuff that had something beyond just a clever twist of phrase in the lyrics. I think that’s just been true for both of us. Ultimately the bands that we’ve always really liked the most have been like that. We like all kinds of stuff, but at the end of the day it’s one of my favorite parts of punk and I wouldn’t want to do a band that at least wasn’t trying to look at some bigger issues.

Paddy – It’s kind of a hard question to answer. We actually do get asked that a lot and it’s really hard, because the thing is you don’t want to come off sounding like some high and mighty fuckhead. Obviously, there are all sorts of lyrics that are right on. Just for us personally, we feel really comfortable with it. I think a lot of people probably wouldn’t.

Bill – You guys toured with some amazing bands last summer, like Fifteen and Leatherface. What do you have planned for this summer?

Paddy – I think it’s a whole lot of us this summer.

Erik – We got really lucky last summer. I mean Leatherface, we only did a handful of shows with them, but that was like a dream for us because we’ve loved that band for a long time. We never thought we’d even see them, much less get to play with them. And then the Take Action Tour where we got to tour with FYP and we didn’t even know those guys. That was great and Scared of Chaka who we’re out with again now. So yeah, we got really lucky. This summer we’re going to Europe and we’re basically going by ourselves, although we’re talking with a British band called Four Letter Word, who are on BYO that we like a lot. We’re planning on touring some more in the U.S. in the later summer too.