Photos by Katie Hovland
The Bomb is a long-running Chicago punk band that formed in 1999. Since 2003, their lineup has consisted of singer Jeff Pezzati, (Naked Raygun) guitarist Jeff Dean, (All Eyes West, Dead Ending, Noise By Numbers, etc.) bassist Pete Mittler, (The Methadones) and drummer Mike Soucy, (The Methadones). This fall, The Bomb plans to release a new, yet-to-be-titled EP on No Idea Records and we spoke with Pezzati about its songs. We talked about both their lyrical content and musical style. We also discussed recording, touring, the band’s relationship with J. Robbins and more.
Bill – Tell me about the writing and recording process of your new EP.
Jeff P. – Well, four of the songs are originals and one is a cover of a Dwarves song called “Backseat of My Car.” That was a really fun song to do. The other four are songs that Jeff Dean wrote all the music to and I wrote most of the lyrics and vocal melodies, although Mike Soucy did come up with some of the lyrics. It was kind of a collaboration in that way. I think they’re pretty strong songs, pretty good songs. They were mixed by J. Robbins and I would say that they’re a continuation of what we were doing before.
Bill – That sounds great. What do you like best about recording at Million Yen Studios?
Jeff P. – It’s a great studio. It’s got everything you need and it’s got a very nice sound. The sound you get in the studio is pretty much what you’re going to get outside the studio, which isn’t always the case when you record somewhere. Sometimes the recording sounds really different when you get outside. Million Yen has a really true sound though and we like that. They’ve got a very nice digital setup and they just invested in some new, high-end monitors for mixing. Everything is up-to-date and everything works, which sounds like an obvious thing, but a lot of studios have stuff that’s broken. Andy Gerber is the owner and he’s a really good guy. Jeff Dean gets the mix out of there and we kind of take our sweet ass time a little bit more than if we were at another studio in a different town or somewhere. It is nice to take the time and really run through it a bunch and get it right.
Bill – That definitely seems like a nice advantage to have. In what ways would you say that the music on this EP differs from your last release, The Challenger?
Jeff P. – It’s very similar to the music on The Challenger in that it’s guitar-oriented, it’s guitar-heavy. Jeff Dean wrote the songs on guitar, so there’s hardly any space without guitar. Sometimes I complain to him in jest and tell him to listen to The Pixies and listen to the space in between the guitar. It’s just fine what he does, it’s brilliant, so I have no complaints. Sometimes I personally write songs on bass and you get a little different sound when you write a song on bass and kind of a different thing happening. Sometimes I also come up with a melody before I come up with chords, but he usually comes up with just chords, but they’re brilliant chords. When I watch him play guitar it’s amazing because it doesn’t look like he’s playing anything. If you’ve ever watched him live, it doesn’t look like he’s playing anything that I can discern as a chord, but it sounds really good. When I play guitar, you can tell I’m playing an A chord or a B chord, but he’s got this alternate grip and he’s got two fingers on the strings and the rest are ringing free. It sounds brilliant though. He’s a hell of a guitar player. It seems like he’s not doing it right, but he’s just not doing it standard. I think he gets a lot of that from liking Bob Mould and kind of emulating somewhat of what he does, but also mixing it with his own style.
Bill – For sure. Some of the songs on The Challenger dealt with topics like perseverance and struggle. Do the new songs address similar themes?
Jeff P. – Yeah, they do. One song is called “Tell Me What Did I Do.” It’s got some pretty deep lyrics. It goes, “Tell me what did I do to bring us to this silent fall,” in other words falling apart with your girlfriend or something. The words are, “Now I’m adrift in a sea of debris, the mother of pearl just waves a curl and take their toll about me like a vine. No safety line can pluck me from this whirlpool hole.” It’s that feeling of hopelessness of going down and breaking up with someone and not being able to help where you’re going. Another one is called “In Red Square,” it’s kind of got Naked Raygun-like humor. Obviously, it’s a straight punk rock song, but some of the lyrics are funny. “No geese stall in the Red Square, but there are goose steps in the air. In time for fairs in that Red Square, birds crap on Lenin’s statue hair.” That was the second verse; the first verse is a little more political. It’s tongue-in-cheek and humorous, yet serious. “I see new faces in Red Square, but I don’t see any Chechens there.” Hopefully it’ll make people think a little bit, even though it’s got some humor.
Bill – It’s always good to interject a little humor when you’re writing about serious topics. I wanted to ask about J. Robbins, as he produced The Bomb’s previous two full-lengths and made a guest appearance on The Challenger. How would you describe your band’s relationship with him?
Jeff P. – I would describe it as all-trusting. We feel that we can send him our rough mixes and he will come up with something brilliant. He will continue the brilliance, (laughs). Is that cocky enough for you? Jeff and I flew out there once and recorded in his studio and I slept on the floor every night for three days. I didn’t have any other place to stay, but it was comfortable in the studio, nice and quiet and dark. I don’t think I left the studio for three days, but it had everything I needed. I find that recording at J.’s studio with him, it turns out a little bit better than if we record everything here and then send it to him. That way we can have input on what he does with the final mix and maybe I like it a little bit better. It’s nice to bounce ideas off each other when we’re mixing, because one time J. came back with a vocal harmony that was really awesome. He just laid it down himself in his studio in Baltimore over one of mine. I totally approve of that, but it might have come a bit easier and I would have been more comfortable doing it if we were all present. In terms of the three of us, Jeff, J. and me, we collaborate very well together. Doing it long distance, we may be reluctant to do it so readily, but it still gets done. It might be better if we were always together.
Bill – That makes sense. What were some of the highlights from the UK tour that you guys did the other year?
Jeff P. – Well, I’ve been telling these guys that I was big in Wales whenever they ask, as a joke, you know? Because I am big in Wales, (laughs). It’s funny, I always said, “I’m big in Wales. Wait till you get there, you’ll see.” Oddly enough, people there remembered me from all the shows with Naked Raygun. I got to meet people at every show that said “I remember you when Raygun came through.” One guy gave me an awesome CD of when Steve Diggle from Buzzcocks played with us in London and it’s got this track with him that’s just priceless. Hopefully we’ll get it out there sometime, somehow. I don’t know what to put it on though. He showed up at the show very drunk with a friend of ours and we talked him into playing one of his Buzzcocks songs. He messed it up so badly and the crowd was so unhappy to see him. They were like “Here’s the drunken English guy, messing up this band’s encore.” He starts screaming and yelling at the crowd, he’s calling them cunts. “Fuck you, you fuckin’ cunts!” It’s great comedy. It’s really, really brilliant and it goes on for quite a while. Maybe we can think of something to put that on. It really should be heard. It’s really genius, (laughs). So, one guy gave me that CD, which I never had before. I didn’t even know it was recorded, but he had the whole set.
It was also good to see some friends there. We had friends in every town and the one nice thing we did do, we can’t talk about it too much, but we did a John Peel session without John Peel, he passed away. They’re still doing John Peel sessions. I think a guy in California runs them now and is in charge of it, but I don’t know how he does that long distance. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on for, but we went to the BBC studio and recorded a couple songs. They don’t let you do any overdubs and they only let you record it live to tape. Those songs are on The Challenger, so you can hear what was done. There are no overdubs, but they let you sing the vocals separate from the band. The band played live, one time through. If you blew it you had to play it again. We didn’t blow it I don’t think, maybe we took two takes of one song, and the rest are all single takes. You can sing backups, but you can’t sing backups to yourself. You have to listen to “Can Jeannie Come Out Tonight” very carefully on that because somehow I have almost two vocals going on at the same time. At one second it sounds like two people, I don’t know how I did that. I don’t know if it’s echo in the room plus me overlapping it, I’m not sure what happened, but it sounds pretty cool.
Bill – I’ll have to go back and listen again and see if I can’t notice that. Given that The Bomb has played Fest in Gainesville, Florida several times, what are some of your favorite Fest memories?
Jeff P. – I want to say we’ve played Fest at least three times, but it’s a great event and it’s getting bigger every year. I didn’t know this and it’s kind of hard for me to even fathom, but when Naked Raygun played in Gainesville back in the day, sometime around the late ‘80s, it was one of our worst shows ever. Not that we played bad, it was just one of the worst experiences ever because there were a lot of skinheads there. It seemed like 80% of the crowd was skinheads and it seemed like they were in two factions that were fighting all night. They were really making people who weren’t skinheads feel uncomfortable and being abusive. Our guitar player, John Haggerty, got into it with some skinheads, even though they can’t fight by themselves and they have to fight in groups of 20. Onstage while we’re playing it was a really tense situation, so we just wanted to get the fuck out of Gainesville after we finished playing and of course our van broke down right in the parking lot of the VFW hall we were playing. We couldn’t leave, so I made friends with the biggest, meanest skinhead guy I could find and started chatting him up. He sort of got his cronies to make sure we didn’t get the shit kicked out of us before we could get our van fixed and get out of town. That’s the way I remember it.
The way other people remember it that were from Gainesville, and this is hard to believe, they remember it as the turning point for Gainesville music. After that time, the skinheads realized they better get the hell out of town or change their tune and become civilized people. A lot of bands were formed since that one day we played and they tell me that a lot of them sounded like they were influenced by Naked Raygun. They played for a decade in that town and it changed everything. And I never knew anything about it, but when The Bomb went back there to play, over ten years later, we were welcomed like the second coming of Christ. We’re really small in Chicago and we don’t really make it a big deal that we’re not huge in Chicago, but we went down there and we were gigantic. People knew all the words to our songs, it was totally nuts. People down there explained it to me and I was like, “Why have I not heard this story before?” They said, “Yeah, you guys are responsible for all this.” I had never heard it before and it came as quite a shock. Word never got out somehow, but some of those bands became quite large. When Raygun played Fest, these bands played the Raygun show and they were coming up to us and telling us how important we were to them. It was very complementary and very nice, very touching.
Bill – That’s an incredible story and really cool that one show can have a lasting impact like that. On a different note, what do you like best about working with No Idea?
Jeff P. – No Idea is a great label. They’re still plugging away at being a label, and they let us put out vinyl and have download codes with the records. They’re very low hassle and they let us do what we want to do. I don’t have that much contact with them directly, Jeff does, but from what I can tell they’re very easy to work with.
Bill – What definite plans does The Bomb have for the rest of the year?
Jeff P. – Well, Jeff Dean is in so many other bands that it’s a little difficult. We tried to get a show with FULL, they’re getting back together and playing at Cobra Lounge. They’re playing with Dan Precision’s new band, Set Fire To Reason. Jeff’s going to be out of town then, so we’re not playing that show. What does The Bomb have planned? The Bomb doesn’t have many plans yet. We’re not going to play Fest this year, for once, but our EP should be out before Fest. I’m kind of in the works of demoing at home all my solo songs to bring to J. Robbins to eventually record. I have some pretty good ones. Some of them are pretty old, but they still hang in there. I can’t tell if they’re an old style or not. To me they all sound current, but who the hell knows? I want to write an album that makes people weep it’s so goddamn good, (laughs). The only thing I can compare it to is like a feeling you get when you listen to Radiohead’s sad songs, where the guy’s just pouring his heart out. Even the end of their song “Karma Police” is touching in some way, even though it’s not really about that. It’s just so freakin’ good and the sound is just enveloping you. So, I want to kind of go in a different direction for the solo record. I don’t want to go really punk rock, although some songs will probably be like that. I covered a version of “Downtown” by Petula Clark. Just the lyrics of that are so individually creepy, just to read the words on paper. It’s so creepy and I really made it extra wicked. We’ll see how everything turns out.
