The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – Interview [2002]

The mighty might bosstones
Interview: joe gittleman
June.30.2002
While Joe serves ice coffee and tea we talk about what’s new with the Bosstones.

How is the Warped tour treating you so far?

Well obviously I get out and about. It’s always fun to be on this tour and get out among the people because I don’t want to spend my summer on the bus.

What happened with the change of labels?

We were on Mercury or Island or whatever they are called nowadays for close to ten years. It was a long time and we made a lot of good records for them, but we’ve been through three different presidents there and the current president didn’t seem to care about the Bosstones. We didn’t want to be in a relationship like that. So we felt like they were ready to see us go so it was like ‘alright then, see ya!’

Are you involved with the new label?

They are friends of ours. They are actually our managers as well. It’s really a family thing and very inhouse. It’s a cool label with cool bands. Although the Bosstones were on a major label the kind of shows we did over the years were never really all that major label anyhow. Whatever happened that year when we had that one song on the radio was really it for our career. Outside of that our shows have always just been punk rock shows. The label wanted us to sound like contemporary music and become something we weren’t. Our label would come to us and say ‘could you remix this so the horns aren’t in this part’ and all this shit. They wanted to pretty us up. We never did that, we never gave in, but it was annoying that we had to put up with it.

So was the success in essence bittersweet?

Well the success in ’97 was good. I felt like we were a huge success because we were selling some records, but we’ve been happy since ’90-’91 when we were just selling independent records, anything that happened along the way was gravy. A lot of our fans jumped onto us before we were on the radio. That success was really all about timing. We didn’t change anything, we just made our record but the stars aligned and people wanted to hear ska music. We had built a huge fan base through years of touring.

And because you have that fan base you don’t need to rely on a major label pimping you out as much anymore.

Exactly. Just think of all the big bands that have come and gone through the career of the Bosstones. When we started it was metal then grunge and now its metal again. We’ve stuck around through so many waves of music. We just want to do what we do because we do it well. If ska music ever comes back around again I don’t know or care, but we are content.

I often wonder why bands like U2 or other bands don’t do what you are doing by going independent. Because you’ll probably make more money of this record even if you sell half the amount as you did on a major.

Right. On top of that we aren’t making big budget videos and spending three hundred thousand dollars on recording or ridiculous amounts of money on expensive remixes. We’ve always supported ourselves through touring and that is the same. The recording part of the Bosstones is only one part of us. We love touring.

Was the recording of A Jackknife To A Swan different this time around because you didn’t have a major label over your shoulder?

We recorded it a little quicker. It was good. We always have a lot of songs. We usually have our thirteen songs, but this time we had probably thirty five songs and for the first time in our career we democratically chose the songs where each member had a vote.

What influenced the track “Mr. Moran”?

Dicky has this fascination with mobsters and crime novels. That is about one this guy. He really has this fascination with true crime.

Has the songwriting stayed the same?

Its always different. You know honestly, I’m always bored listening to someone talking about how they write songs. Sorry about that, but its just really shit you know? Talking about your craft, how you craft songs, man its just boring. People like to talk about it to make it more magical than it really is.

+ charlie craine