Tom Gabel Of Against Me! | Full Interview

Story by Mitch McCann 

| Published Mar 15, 2011

Anyone jonesing for a fast and furious rock song can find it almost anywhere, but fans of Against Me! are still around because they aren’t just dirty kids slamming 3 chords and bitching about the president. Instead, their strong, evocative lyrics, whose beautiful imagery and fiery heart have earned singer/songwriter Tom Gabel and the rest of Against Me! a well-deserved place amongst the top of punk’s pedestal.

While sometimes accused of being a polarizing band, nothing about Against Me! is insincere. The songs may be in-your-face at times, but Gabel is honest and kind-hearted, and spent a little time with the Dailyer detailing Against Me!’s tumultuous journey to the top.

DerN: How is this latest tour with the Dropkick Murphys coming along?

Tom: It’s been fantastic, incredible audiences and just an overall good vibe between bands backstage.

DerN: You’ve also toured with some other pretty amazing folks, I think the last time you came through the midwest you were with Foo Fighters and Serj Tankian’s solo thing, quite a show I must say. Has there been a particular tour that has been really special for the band?

Tom: That tour you mentioned was a pretty special tour. The tour we did last year with Billy Talent up in Canada was another tour that was really memorable. The first tour’s you always remember as well, the very first we ever did in the U.S., or the very first time we toured in Europe or Australia. We’ve been very fortunate in that there have been a lot of really great tours that are competing for space in my memory.

DerN: Speaking as someone who was thrown around the audience, I feel comfortable saying your shows are remarkably high energy, with hardly room to breathe in between songs, is that something you strive for or just what comes naturally?

Tom: I strive for it for sure. First of all I’m not a salesman, I’m not a politician, I’m not a comedian. I don’t have a routine that I’m running in between songs. I came to play music. If I have something to say I’ll say it, but I don’t want to script it. I definitely take a lot of inspiration from the Ramones and the way they used to play sets, with just a quick “1,2,3,4” in between songs.

I remember we were in Vegas a little while back. I played an acoustic in-store early in the day. In the stock room of the record store they had a Stone Temple Pilots set list pinned to the wall, it was 9 songs long. Later that night we played at the Hard Rock, in the lobby they had a small Ramones display set up with an old set list amongst the other items (Leather Jacket, Chuck Taylors, etc). I wanna say the set list was written on paper dinner plates, or the back of a pizza box, something like that, I think it was 30 songs long. I guarantee the Stone Temple Pilots show was in an arena and the band got paid like half a million bucks and while I’m sure the Ramones were playing somewhere significantly smaller and got paid significantly less, guaranteed they blew them out of the fucking water live and that their 30 song set was probably half as long as STP’s 9 song set.

DerN: I saw a photo you posted of your drummer’s thrashed hand from KC; fans broke the barricade in Des Moines. Has shit ever gotten too real for you guys? Any horror stories you'd care to share?

Tom: Our lighting guy, Pope, fell 20 feet off a ladder at a venue in Nashville on the last tour we did. He shattered his foot and ankle. He’s still at a rehabilitation center in Texas right now. He’s already had a couple surgeries and the doctors say he probably won’t walk for a year. That’s a little too real for sure.

We’ve been in a couple road accidents too that were a little too real as well. The first was early on in the band, coming home from our third tour. Our van got hit by a semi truck from behind, rolled us multiple times, we landed upside down on the side of the interstate in a ditch, everyone alive but all our equipment ruined. A couple of busted knuckles from playing a show? That’s just kind of showing off.

DerN: There’s plenty of famous rock songs about girls - Lola, Veronica, Izabella - and there seems to be a main subject of your lyrics (thinking “Thrash Unreal”, “Because of the Shame”), but never by name in my recollection. Do you have a specific someone in mind when you write these tunes? Are they memories?

Tom: I wrote “Thrash Unreal” for the New Wave album after Butch Vig encouraged me to write a song like Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side.” Thrash Unreal is fictional, the “she” in the song is just a composite of people I’ve met over the years, no one in particular.

I wrote “Because Of The Shame” for a friend of mine who died.

DerN: “Spanish Moss” is such an anthemic tune, a few major punks come to mind, namely The Cult, and being a pretty influential rock group (and following the success of ‘New Wave’) do you feel like there were certain expectations for ‘White Crosses’?

Tom: The Cult’s influence on that song wasn’t intentional but we all realized that it was there as the song started coming together. Any expectations we had for ‘White Crosses’ were all self-imposed. As always I just want to feel like I’m progressing.

DerN: …and did that cause any pressure or effect you writing for the new album?

Tom: With every album we’ve ever made we’re trying to out-do the previous, trying to raise the bar for ourselves just that much higher. Again, these aren’t to meet anyone else’s expectations, just our own.

DerN: When looking at the lyrics to a song like “White Crosses”, the chorus seems to be the only phrase that really has its own space, everything else blends with the song. Is there some process that works for you when you’re writing?

Tom: I always write lyrics first, then fit music around them. I think songs come from a more honest place when approached that way. The music is serving the lyrics as opposed to the lyrics serving the music.

DerN: So after putting it through the ringer, being road-tested and all, what does ‘White Crosses’ mean to you guys?

Tom: ‘White Crosses’ means the same as every other album we’ve made. It’s a collection of songs, representative of their own specific ideas and meanings, trying to convey their own points, that are reflective of the time and place in our lives that they were written.

DerN: I saw somewhere that you’re always working on new songs and that there may already be something in the works in the way of a new album. Can you speak to any of that?

Tom: I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to really start focusing on going into a studio before the end of the year, we’ll see what happens.

DerN: Just as a fan… you always have a song that sticks out to me, because it’s somehow different from the rest, like “Ocean” off 'New Wave’, I’ve always been curious where it came from… what about it is special to you? And although ‘White Crosses’ as a whole seems more personal or invested than some of the previous releases, I have the same question for “Because of the Shame.”

Tom: I wrote “Ocean” on the north coast of France. We were on tour, it had been a long tour, lots of long drives, everyone was stressed. We ended up having to cancel a show so we had a day off. We found this old resort hotel right on the beach and got rooms. We spent the day exploring around the hotel, walking on the beach then we all met up for dinner at the restaurant in the lobby. It was super fancy and we all looked like scum bags comparatively with the rest of the clientele. Also none of the waiters spoke English. I remember Warren used to think he could speak French and tried ordering an appetizer of 12 mussles, instead ordering 12 orders of 12 mussles. After the meal Jordan and I stepped out onto deck looking out over the ocean, we smoked a joint, and I wrote the song in about 5 minutes.

I wrote “Because Of The Shame” for my friend CC who was murdered, actually 2 years ago exactly to this day. Well, I wrote it for her and her mother. I hadn’t seen CC in a couple years when I got word she had been killed. CC and I used to work at the same bar, she was a bartender, I checked I.D.’s at the door and mopped the floors, cleaned the bathrooms at the end of the night. Most of the time we wouldn’t finish up until around 4AM but we’d still hang out for a couple hours after, go back to my house and listen to records, smoke cigarettes, have some drinks, just talk.

I used to have her name tattoo’d on the back of my leg but had it covered up a few years back. She had my name tattoo’d around her wrist. At the funeral her mother asked me if I still had the tattoo. I felt horrible having to tell her no. Later she took me aside and told me that CC thought the song “Thrash Unreal” was written about her, that it had hurt and embarrassed her, that they had talked about it as recently as a week before her death. She made me promise on the spot to write a song that made up for it. So I didn’t sleep for about a week, until I wrote “Because Of The Shame”.