In July of this year, The Lawrence Arms released their seventh full-length and second for Epitaph, titled Skeleton Coast. We recently spoke with singer/bassist Brendan Kelly and talked about the album in detail. We discussed how it was recorded in a remote part of Texas, as well as what inspired some of the songs and the record’s overall concept. Skeleton Coast is undeniably one of the band’s top albums and features a matured sound yet still retains their classic characteristics. In short, very few bands are able to produce a record of this quality after being together for over 20 years. Additionally, this Friday, The Lawrence Arms will continue the proud tradition of their annual War On X-Mas show. This year’s edition will be an online festival with many notable guest appearances. The show starts at 7:00 PM Central and tickets can be purchased here.
Bill – Other than the band’s first two albums, you guys have recorded all of your material with Matt Allison at Atlas Studios. You once again teamed with Matt to record Skeleton Coast, but with Atlas no longer in existence, you went to Sonic Ranch in Texas. How did you go about choosing that studio?
Brendan – It’s actually a really funny story. We were talking about doing a record, because it had been almost seven years since the last one. I’m fairly confident that Neil, (drummer Neil Hennessy) will dispute this story, but I promise you it’s 100% true. I suggested that we either go to L.A., where Epitaph is and they probably have connections with certain studios and there’s plenty of great gear that we could use. We also know a lot of people there. Neil lives there and Chris, (singer/guitarist Chris McCaughan) is in Portland, so it’s a short flight for him. Or, we go someplace completely random like El Paso and we just lock in and do it. That was what I said. Then, we’re at a show in Orange County and someone from Epitaph was there. They were like, “So, where are you guys thinking about recording?” Neil was like, “Well, it sounds like it’s either going to be L.A. or El Paso.” I mean, I pulled El Paso out of my ass. It was just like a random, remote place that I thought of.
Around the same time, I was suffering from really debilitating pneumonia. I didn’t know at the time that I was that sick, but I was sleeping almost 20 hours a day. So, I’m in the back of van and I hear these guys talking. They’re like, “So what’s it going to be, El Paso or L.A.?” Neil was like, “I don’t know if I want that guy back there getting up to his shenanigans in Los Angeles,” meaning me. And then Toby, (Red Scare Industries owner/TLA tour manager Toby Jeg) was like, “You don’t think he’s going to get up to his shenanigans in El Paso?” Neil’s like, “Not like in Los Angeles.” They thought I was asleep, but I could hear them. So, I started googling if there’s studios in El Paso. I didn’t even know if there were any or any that we would want to use. The Sonic Ranch was the first thing that came up and I was like, “Oh fuck, this is the coolest studio that I’ve ever fuckin’ seen.” So, then I just sent an email from the back of van, before I even talked to anybody. They’d obviously made the decision that it was either L.A. or El Paso, and that I couldn’t be trusted in L.A. And the rest is kinda history, man. It was cool down there. I’ve said this before and I will say it again, if that’s not like in the top ten most fascinating things I’ve ever done in my life, I’ve got a lot of shit to do still.
Bill – Wow. What was so unique about recording there?
Brendan – So, the studio is about 45 minutes outside of El Paso. It is located in a 3,000-acre pecan ranch. It has seven little houses, each of which are home to the top seven studios I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some nice studios. I’ve gone to see Suicide Machines record back in the day and I’ve seen Alkaline Trio when they recorded with Jerry Finn and stuff. Those were like state-of-the-art L.A. places. We’d go into one of the houses and they’d be like, “These were the consoles that mixed ‘Thriller’ and ‘Like a Virgin.’” It was so fancy, but it was homey at the same time. They just had the nicest, nicest shit. For each studio house, there was a little house that you got to live in. Our house was across the street from the studio that we worked in. The studio had everything. Matt Allison would come in and be like, “Is this a 1963 whatever pedal?” (Laughs). It was that kind of shit. They had all the best gear. They had old Les Pauls, old Fenders, basses from the ‘50s. It was fuckin’ wild.
We’d wake up in the morning and we’d drive a mile or so through the pecans to the main hacienda, where they’d cook us breakfast burritos. We’d come back and be recording by like 9:30. We’d record till about 3:30 and then we’d break for lunch. Then we’d record into the night for however long we needed to. When the sun went down, you couldn’t see shit. There were buckets of flashlights outside of each house because it was that remote. So, you go home, play a little solitaire and maybe drink a glass of whiskey, and then you go to bed. It’s very workmanlike. It’s like being at album camp. That’s the best way I can describe it.
Bill – So no shenanigans then, right?
Brendan – There were no fuckin’ shenanigans to get up to. The farthest I went from the actual compound was when I drove 20 minutes to go to the store to get a bag of chips. It wasn’t like there was a town around or anything like that. We were in the desert and we were recording a record and that was it.
Bill – How does this place even exist? It’s so far off the grid and kind of unknown, but it has all this equipment that’s been used on famous recordings…
Brendan – I don’t totally know. The guy who runs it, Tony, he grew up there. It was his parents’ house before it was his. We went there right before the pandemic kicked in, so we were pretty much the only artists there. There was one other guy there that did like dance pop for South America. He was apparently very important and he was at a studio that was like a mile away from ours in this vast compound. Other than that, it was just us, so we got to eat dinner almost every night with the owner and he kind of shared the stories of what the place was all about. I guess the dudes in Ministry used to live there at one point. He’s had all these crazy experiences just sort of by virtue of having been there for so many years. I think it’s more popular than we know. I mean, what’s the most famous studio in the world? Probably Sun Studio where Johnny Cash and Elvis used to record. What’s number two? I don’t know that there is one. I think that’s kind of the thing. It’s off the beaten path, but this guy Tony has the greatest gear in the world and if you know, you know. We just slipped dick over fist into recording there accidentally. It wasn’t like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to the legendary Sonic Ranch.” We just had no idea. It was seriously Hennessy being like, “It’s either L.A. or El Paso, I guess.”
Bill – That’s great, (laughs). I’ve read that you guys kind came up with the title “Skeleton Coast” first and then wrote around that idea. Can you tell me about that process?
Brendan – Well, that’s not entirely accurate, but it’s not wrong. What happened was when we first started writing, Chris’s song “Ghostwriter” was one of the first songs that popped out. We probably had about five songs at that point. We started talking about possible titles for the record. I was suggesting some stuff and Neil was suggesting stuff and Chris was like, “I think ‘Skeleton Coast’ would be cool.” I also work in marketing and when he said “Skeleton Coast” I was like, “Oh my god. We could do beach towels, postcards with like skeleton families that say ‘Greetings from the Skeleton Coast.’ It would be so fuckin’ dope.” It wasn’t my sort of predatory desire to sell things. I thought most of those things would be giveaway items, but it was more that it was so evocative and I had so many thoughts immediately. I was all in on it. It’s also a lyric from the song “Ghostwriter.” I thought it was a great title for the record and it proved to be. Even the cover, what a cool thing. That artwork was done by Jeremy Bruneel and it’s some evocative shit, man. Sometimes you just hear it and you go, “Yeah, it makes me think of a lot of things. We’ll work with it.”
Bill – That’s awesome. “Pigeons and Spies” is one of my favorite songs that you’ve ever done, both in terms of the lyrics and the vocal performance. What were some of the things that inspired that song?
Brendan – Thanks, man. There’s so much. A friend of mine who lives in Italy sent me a picture of a bunch of pigeons on top of a statue, kind of looking down. It said, “Pigeons are spies. I don’t trust them.” And I read it wrong. I thought it said “Pigeons and spies. I don’t trust them.” I was like, “Damn, that’s dope.” One of my biggest influences has always been the Beastie Boys. And when they go through this crazy litany of references that are all seemingly not connected and esoteric, but then form a greater whole. That was sort of the idea when I started writing this song. There’s a song by a different hip hop artist named Immortal Technique called “Point of No Return.” It’s a pretty cool song and it’s hilarious too. The first time I played it for my friend Sean he was like, “What’s this guy rapping about? Everything? It’s like dinosaurs, solitary confinement and the Knights Templar?” And it is, (laughs). That’s literally what it’s doing. So, I wanted to do something like that and the combination of the words “pigeons” and “spies” is where I started. Obviously, the song on its most fundamental level is about misunderstandings and trying to maintain a post-destruction symbiosis, I guess. That’s if I’m trying to really analyze it. But the middle part, the bridge with the back and forth vocals, that was supposed to sound like the Beastie Boys. Not exactly like them, but that was basically the exercise.
Bill – That’s really cool. I didn’t hear that at first, but when you describe it that way I can see the inspiration.
Brendan – Yeah, it’s like that trading vocals. It’s something we started doing on Oh! Calcutta!, where we go back and forth. This time I was like, “We have to do it like the Beastie Boys do. Where it’s not like you, me, you, me. It’s gotta be like you, us, me, us, you. We have to really twist it around.” We sort of experimented with it on Oh! Calcutta! and when we got to Metropole, that was something that really was part and parcel with what our entire paradigm is now. Sorry, I’m talking like a fuckin’ professor. I apologize.
Bill – That’s alright, (laughs).
Brendan – But the thing is, it might’ve gotten ahead of us a little bit too. At the end of the actual song “Metropole,” when we play it live, the back and forth is so unusual in its construction that we can almost never do it right. And when we do, we pretty much high-five onstage. It’s unnatural by design, so it’s hard. With this song and with a lot of stuff on Skeleton Coast, that’s sort of what we use as the template for how to elevate the idea of our two-singer approach. After having done Oh! Calcutta!, where we’re singing everything at the same time, it’s like we did that and you can love it or hate it, but we did it as good as I could possibly imagine us doing it, (laughs). It’s just like a fun, whimsical thing and it’s a tribute to this team of artists that have been incredibly important in sort of my aesthetic development.
Bill – Awesome. The record’s last song, “Coyote Crown,” talks about transitioning from one period in life to another. It also kind of hints at new beginnings. I feel like it was the perfect song to conclude the album with, as it brings together a lot of the reoccurring themes. I know that Chris wrote this song, but what does it mean to you?
Brendan – It’s interesting. That was the first song Chris wrote for this record. The first song I wrote for the record was the first single, “Pta.” I was writing it and I was like, “Man, I’m gonna blow Chris’s mind. I’m just gonna send him a song to start the writing process for a new record.” We hadn’t talked about it too overtly at this point. While I’m in the middle of recording, I get a text message, which kills my voice memo on my phone, so my recording dies. But the text is a download for “Coyote Crown.” I’m like, “I don’t believe that you just beat my by like 40 seconds.” Because “Pta” is only about a minute and 20 seconds long. It was a real bullseye to hit right in the middle of when I was trying to record, (laughs).
I typically always sequence our records. I mean, we all talk through the whole thing and I’m not like a dictator or anything like that. I think those guys trust my judgement and we all weigh in and then I just kind of place the songs. When that song was recorded, I was like “Well, this is the last song.” It literally couldn’t go anywhere else on the record. But the way I see the song is definitely the understanding that the world you live in is kind of done. And you’re sitting there, gathering around you the things that still exist that can make you feel whole and kind of rocking that program, regardless. That’s sort of what I get out of it. It’s funny because it was the first song written for this record and the writing process was long. It was written a good year before there was even a notion of a pandemic. And this song seems very much like it’s about that.
Bill – Right. Like this is your life before the pandemic and this is your life after.
Brendan – Yeah, exactly. And the “Belly of the Whale” song is also sort of post-apocalypse. But I think we were trading in the notion of post-apocalypse, just in terms of aging if I’m being really honest. Where all of a sudden, it’s like “Well, ya know, we’re old. It’s over for us.” It just so happened that the world actually ended, (laughs).
Bill – What a happy coincidence, right? (Laughs). There’s a lot of animal imagery on Skeleton Coast. Everything from certain song titles to the album’s artwork and even some of the audio clips between songs. What were your motivations for doing this?
Brendan – Yeah, if I can digress, when we were writing Metropole, there’s a song that I wrote with a dumb name, but it’s not a dumb song. It’s called “Drunk Tweets.” There’s also a song that Chris wrote called “October Blood.” At a certain point in the studio it was like, “Are we both talking about the same scene in Vertigo in these two songs?” And we were. That just gave me goosebumps on my leg to say that out loud. Chris and I have been best friends forever and the sort of mind meld that goes on could be frightening if we weren’t homies and working towards the same thing. So, in this particular iteration of songs, we were sitting there and realizing that we’re writing about wolves, foxes, whales and coyotes. These are all things that like howl alone. They’re all sort of scavenger beasts looking for their place, but with a task of understanding that there’s not really a place for them. So, those are the four noises that you hear. You hear the song of the whale, you hear coyotes, you hear the vixen cry of a fox and you hear the wolves. And I think it’s just sort of part and parcel with the whole notion of the album, where you’re finding your sort of soul and happiness where you can find it. Everything’s gone, what are you going to scavenge out of this? What are you going to scream into the empty sky in order to make yourself feel like you’re doing something? And that’s sort of what we’re doing with the record, I guess.
Bill – Wow. Thank you for the insight into what you were going for with the whole concept and everything. That’s really cool. Do you have a favorite song from the record in terms of how it evolved from a demo to the finished version?
Brendan – There’s a lot of choices, because these songs really evolved. I never expected “Pigeons and Spies” to turn out as well as it did. I almost suggested that it didn’t go on the record. I was like, “I don’t know. This song’s fuckin’ weird. It’s either gonna be great or it’s going to be terrible.” I thought “Quiet Storm” was a great song. I was like, “That’ll be maybe be like the fifth or sixth best song on the record.” And it turned out to be such a burner. It’s so awesome. It’s a testament to how good the song is and what a fuckin’ whip ass band we are, (laughs). And also “How to Rot.” I thought that song was very strange and I didn’t know if it could come together and be an actual thing. Chris and Neil, to their credit, were like “No, we’re doing this one. It’s fuckin’ cool and weird.” Those three turned out really great.
Bill – Tell me about this year’s War On X-Mas show, which will of course be a livestream event.
Brendan – So it’ll be me, Chris and Neil live and we’ll all play acoustic. I should back this up. When Toby, who’s the real brain behind The Lawrence Arms at this point, got us all on a Zoom call and was like, “It’s the sixth year for War On X-Mas and we can’t let it die. Do you all want to fly someplace and do a livestream of a live show?” First of all, nobody’s comfortable with that because we live so far apart. Secondly, that’s being done a lot and it’s just not that cool. If we’re gonna do War On X-Mas and we’re gonna put that particular branding on something that we do online, it has to be neat. We need to do like a variety show. Something’s that worth watching just on its own, not just us in a live room. That’s not that great. We’re going to have a wheel that I spin and it tells you who’s up next. It’s like The Lawrence Arms’ version of The Price Is Right. So, the idea is that me, Chris and Neil are going to play acoustic. Not together, because that doesn’t really work. We’ve also enlisted a lot of our close friends, like Kyle Kinane, Tim McIlrath, Brian Fallon, Matt Skiba, Dan Andriano, Lauren from Worriers, Deanna from Sincere Engineer and Sam Russo. I hope I’m not leaving anyone out. They’re going to do Lawrence Arms covers. I’ll spin the wheel and we’ll see what’s up. We will be live and their stuff is pre-recorded. We’ll also have a meet the crew part of it and just the idea is for it to be this bawdy, Benny Hill kind of bullshit. Not with butts and stuff like that, but just sort of fly by the seat of your ass nonsense. We have great exclusive merch stuff with it and I think it’s going to be really fun. And I’m almost positive that I’m in charge of this and that all I really have to do is probably play five or six songs. We’ve got six or seven other people doing songs and it’ll be about two hours long. Although I don’t know exactly what everybody else is playing, so I might have to make a change at the last minute. I definitely can’t snub the guest.
Bill – It sounds like you might have to audible a little bit.
Brendan – Yeah, so it’s going to be a little bit of an audible. But the good thing is that the people that are actually talented are all pre-recorded. I’ve seen the ones from Danny and from Brian Fallon, and they both literally made me cry. It’s going to be really cool. The whole thing about War On X-Mas is that it’s such a weird community that is Lawrence Arms fans. And the fact that after 22 years, it’s become this thing that’s sustainable and cool. And we have this festival every year where people from all over the world come together and celebrate this sort of shared joy and pain of whatever we’re talking about. Not even specifically us, but the vibe. We don’t want to lose that, so that’s sort of what we’re going for here. It’ll be cool stuff to get, cool stuff to make you feel like you’re part of the team. And you are part of the team and it’s cool. That’s all. I don’t know…
Bill – Well, I’m very much looking forward to it. It sounds a lot different than your average livestream event and it’s great that the tradition is staying alive.
Brendan – That is the thing. What Toby said when we got on the Zoom call and I really have to give him credit for this particular sentiment, he was like, “We’re all really creative people on this call. What can we actually do?” That’s when the wheel came about, man. (Laughs).
Bill – Assuming that you’re able to play shows in 2021, what sort of things are you looking forward to doing with the band next year?
Brendan – Wow. You know what this reminds me of is the AIDS scare. It’s like, “Assuming you can fuck without a condom next year, what are you most looking forward to?” It’s like, “Ahhhh! I’m terrified of that. I don’t even know how to answer.” The truth is, there’s obviously been some great progress on these competing vaccines. If those turn out to not be the kind of thing that turns everybody into I Am Legend-style zombies, which I’m not 100% sure it won’t, then we would like to get out there and get back to everyone. I don’t know that it’s going to be as easy as like, “Hey! We’re back!” And there will be 2,000 kids that show up to see us play. And where are the clubs that are still alive? That’s the other thing. I don’t know how many people are ready to go back into crowded spaces. I don’t know how many clubs are still going to be around. I think the ones that are going to be around are gonna be big because they have the capital to surf the storm or whatever. I don’t know. I was saying this to my wife the other night. Against all odds, we put out a record that is one of our best records. This year, we’re supposed to be a bigger band than we’ve ever been, but based on this I don’t know if that’s the case. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I want people to feel safe and cool. Obviously, my ego is not in play in wanting other people’s safety to be recognized. What do I want to do? I think I can speak for all three of us when I say play shows for literally anybody who wants to see them. I want to give everybody a hug, man. Don’t we all miss that? The human contact thing is fuckin’ wild. I don’t know what the future holds, but we’re still here. We are kicking it in the desert, wearing coyote skulls on our heads, ready for the next chapter.
