When the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, legends in the U.S. ska movement, announced they were taking a break in 2004 after two decades together many fans weren’t sure if they would ever hear any new material from the bands again. Hell, the band didn’t even know if they would ever play any new songs together as a group.
To hear frontman Dickie Barrett tell it seven years later – judging from the anticipation for their new album and the record sell out of their Hometown Throwdown concerts this year - it would have been a brilliant strategy if they were purposely putting the brakes on the band so many years ago just to create pent up demand for the group later on.
Turns out the time off did the group well. Barrett found success as the announcer for Jimmy Kimmel Live and flirted briefly with his own radio show; bassist Joe Gittleman continue to record with his side project Avoid One Thing; Trombonist Chris Rhodes played with The Toasters, NOFX and a number of other punk and ska groups; drummer Joe Sirois sat on the stool for Frank Black and The Street Dogs; while saxophonist Tim Burton (not that one) wrote some scripts in LA; and guitarist Lawrence Katz formed a new band of his own and contributed to several soundtracks.
The band found time to put out 2009’s Pinpoint’s and Gin Joints and have managed to find a solid enough groove, thanks in part to cutting down on the touring quite a bit, to record their latest, the brilliant full length The Magic of Youth, play at a handful of European Festivals this year and even bring back the wildly popular Hometown Throwdown in Boston (Dec. 28 – 30).
In the midst of rhearsing about 60 songs for the upcoming Boston shows, Barrett spoke recently about the hiatus, the new record and finally giving a voice and anthem to the tragically overlooked sport of candlepin bowling. Though no Philly shows have been announced yet, we'll post if/when they add some this summer.
I’ve been listening to the album for the past couple of days and really like it. Like many, I’ve been a fan for decades and as much as I like the older stuff, this is a great record.
Thanks. That’s nice to hear. I think when you invent something you’re always a little unsure. I also think there’s a lot of people expecting us to f*@k it up and then there’s a lot of people expecting “well you know, they never played as good as…”; I think we figured out what it is we do well and we just went for it.
I think it was in the press release where I read that you were particularly proud of the lyrical content this time around. Do you mind talking a little bit about that? Is it just that you have more experience as a writer now or was it a matter of just having a lot of things you wanted to say this time out and hit a nice patch of inspiration?
Yeah, it’s probably a combination of both. I think you can also fold technology into that, making it a lot easier. In the old days when I used to write with a feather and ink well you had to break out the feather. I think with writing on an iPhone, it’s not as romantic, but if you’re instantly inspired you have something there. Even something as simple as the spell correct, if I was writing in notebooks and had a misspelled word I’d have to go back and rewrite the whole thing.
So you used an iPhone to write some of the lyrics on this album?
I’ve been using the iPhone and computers for awhile now and the phone is pretty much a computer in your pocket. I’m not the first one to do this, there’s no mystery there anymore, but in the course of writing songs, in the past I tried to carry around a little tape recorder with me and I always had notebooks with me and stuff…
Call your answering machine.
Oh, absolutely and then you’d get these rambling drunken messages… I think (technology) is part of the litany of different things that contributed to that, along with what I consider to be a decent skid of inspiration and at the risk of sounding like I’m bragging, I think we were really focused. We have a lot more time to focus (on songwriting now) and I get an instant reaction from Joe, who I do a lot of writing with. I can say “Is this crap or do I have something here?”.
So when did you start working on this record?
I think we’re always working. You never know when music might come in from me or Joe or someone else, and we fire up the recorder, bring out the acoustic guitar. Also too, I think you made an excellent point: we’ve had a lot more life experiences. I’ve got a good bird’s eye view, I’ve got decent perspective at this point of what we’re been through, the things I want to say whether they’re political or just commenting on life as it is in the year 2011.
I’ve only had the record for about a day and a half now, but every time I listen through it I find a new song that I really like. As of about 20 minutes ago it’s “They Will Need Music.” Are there any songs in particular that you’re really proud of?
I really enjoy “The Upper Hand” a lot. That says a lot to me. I like the opening track, “The Daylights” a lot. I like that for two different reasons: the chorus really says one thing and it’s triggered by what’s going on in the verse and the verse almost says something entirely different. The versus to me feel like they’re really, really dark and in the basement and when you get to the choruses it’s like you took the roof off the entire house and now there’s nothing but light. I’m listening to a lot of the album right now to get ready for the Throwdown.
I used to live in Boston awhile ago and one thing that I always liked about your records is that I find I learn more about Boston and New England lore from your albums than just about banywhere else. On this one, you have “The Ballad of Candlepin Paul”. Is that song based on a real person?
(Laughs) It is based on a real person and his sons will probably go “what the hell?” when this album comes out. I think we’ll have to find them and invite them to the Throwdown. I’ll tell you, but I don’t know if I’m extremely proud of the story. Kenny (Casey) from the Dropkick Murphys writes all these songs like “The Warrior’s Code,” all these sports-related anthems, and I thought you know what’s a sport that’s truly of New England and its candlepin bowling. When I grew up in Boston I thought the big bowling balls were just a joke from The Flintstones. The Honeymooners used those and I thought it was just for comic affect and then I realized Holy sh!t we’re the only ones who use these tiny balls and these candlepins. Not only that, but New England is the only place where bowling on television every really exists. I investigated and it didn’t really take me long to realize that there are not really that many candlepin bowling stories, except for this guy Paul Berger. He kind of came out of nowhere. You can check him out on YouTube. I showed Joe the lyrics and he just couldn’t stop laughing about it. Here’s “The Warrior’s Code” for candlepin bowling.
Editor’s note: Paul Berger holds the record for the highest score in the sport’s history (thank you Wikipedia).
Maybe you guys will get asked to play the National Anthem for the next candlepin championship?
I don’t think this will do much more than annoy Kenny. But it’s also a fun song. I’m sure that I watched the bowling when it actually happened, but it’s not something I remembered and always wanted to write about.
When you guys announced you were taking time off after Jackknife to a Swan, did you know that the band would always come back and write more albums?
With all the Bosstones news coming in right now - with the new record, playing in Europe and at the festivals this year, reports of selling out the Throwdown in record time - looking back it almost seems like it was all planned, like we thought if we would have kept going after Jackknife we would probably peter out after three years, but if we took some time off we would build up (anticipation). Looking at it know it seems more like strategy, but it really wasn’t. I wish I could say it was, but I was approaching 40 and had been a hard touring Bosstone for 20 years and just wanted to catch my breath, look around and see if there’s anything else I could do. As I’ve said in the past, 40 becomes 50 pretty quick and who’s going to want a 50-year-old-guy saying “You got any work for me?”. I was taking a chance that anyone would want a 40-year-old Bosstone guy and I lucked out. Jimmy Kimmel is great and doing his show is really creative and fun, so that worked out well for me and once that was in place we realized we missed each other. We had always been close friends; we lived on a bus for 20 years and became brothers, so you start to miss those guys. It’s not that we didn’t like each other; we didn’t split up because we weren’t talking to each other, we just all agreed to look around.
Obviously you and Joe and everyone else in the band have a whole other life outside of the Bosstones. Does that make it tougher to find time to work on an album together?
It’s not tougher because there’s only so much time and what we’re doing now versus what we were doing is a little different. We’re not going to be the touring warhorse that it once was and the days of the touring warhorse have probably gone the way of the dodo bird. I wouldn’t have what we did any other way, but it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. There are other ways of getting your music out there. The time that it requires to do what we need to do, we have. We know the people who want to hear our music and its people like you. I couldn’t be happier with the way we started the interview with you saying you liked the new album because at some point we’re going to make one of these things and our fans are going to come to us and say “We love you guys, but not this.” I’ve got the fans to face at the Hometown Throwdown now and if they’re not jumping around… I’m an egomaniac and probably a narcissist, but this is about stuff we created, so when I say I’m proud of it I hope I don’t sound out of control.
Obviously the albums coming out shortly, do you have any plans beyond the Hometown Throwdown shows?
I think we’ll do a few other shows, but if there are plans then I don’t of them yet. I do these interviews and I tend to have the least amount of information of anyone in the band.
Do you think you have another album in you after The Magic of Youth?
I feel like there is another record because I’ve already been writing and working on some things and I feel like this is a trilogy: Pinpoints and The Magic of Youth and I feel like there’s a third one. I don’t know why, maybe it’s a part of my bizarre OCD and there needs to be three. I feel like the first one felt like it was supposed to be long and ska-driven and the second one is supposed to be more punk rock-driven and shorter. I don’t know if I’m right about either one of these, but I think that’s what we were trying to create. I felt like the first one was a stroke from a paint brush and the second one was a punch in the stomach and the third one, I’ll have to figure out some kind of analogy for that one. Maybe I’m trying to make up for lost time.
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