From The Editor's Floor: Trevor Reilly of A Wilhelm Scream

We here at AP love to talk. So much so, that when we do interviews with the rich and famous (or the on-tour and barely-scraping-by-eating-Taco-Bell), we end up with an excess of Q&As that can’t be wedged into the magazine, no matter which way we turn it. This is why we have From The Editor’s Floor. This week, enjoy music editor Scott Heisel’s full, unedited interview with A Wilhelm Scream guitarist/vocalist Trevor Reilly. -AP



SCOTT HEISEL: First off, being from Massachusetts, are stoked are you that the Celtics got Kevin Garnett?

TREVOR REILLY: Oh, man, I’m beside myself with joy! I mean, now we have the low presence that we need, but also balance; he’s a nasty shooter. And then you got Paul Pierce who’s still the best player on the Celtics, I think. I can’t see us not beating Cleveland. What do you think?

I don’t know, man. I’m a witness, that’s all I can say. I was a witness to us choking huge, that’s what I was. The finals were embarrassing.

Dude, I love the Cavs, man. They used to be a crappy team. They were just outclassed, you know? I think the Cavs will just keep coming back; they’ll be good for, like, another eight years, I think.

It seems like you guys are really into the Boston sports scene. How does that play out when you’re on the road 250 days out of the year? Like, do you ever make time to watch sports games?

Well, when we’re playing clubs that have a bar, they usually have, like, SportsCenter running, and we usually crowd around the TV to see what happened with the Red Sox. You know, we’re getting to the time of year where it’s, like, the playoffs are approaching, and the Yankees are kind of creeping up on us a little bit, and our guitar player, Chris [Levesque], is fuckin’ Yankees’ fan. So now he’s starting to talk shit; our lead keeps getting smaller and smaller. I think we’re down to like four or five games. So it’s right about the time when it gets really interesting, when we’re on the road. I mean, we’re about to go up to Canada, and we were in Canada when freakin’ Pedro [Martinez] threw Don Zimmer to the ground. Dude, it was awesome! And it was only one TV because they turned it off and put on hockey on all the other huge screens; it was, you know, like this big restaurant. So we were watching it on this tiny screen just fuckin’ laughing our asses off.

So how does that work? If you have one Yankees fan, three Red Sox fans and then a Canadian, how does that work in terms of who controls what?

Oh, we’re a Red Sox band. I mean, all these other teams, that’s just peripheral. I mean, the Blue Jays, okay, whatever, the Blue Jays are okay. They make it interesting, you know what I mean?

So the official party line is straight Red Sox, huh?

Oh, yeah! We endorse the Red Sox. I don’t know about that Yankee business; we’re not about that.

I know a few years ago the Dropkick Murphys recorded a song for the Red Sox. Have you guys ever thought about doing something like that, like a specifically Red Sox-themed song?

I’d like to do a Celtics one; I think that’d be pretty fun. Yeah, that’s a good idea.

This is the third record in a row you’ve done in the Blasting Room with Bill Stevenson. What’s the reason to keep going back there?

Well the reason we keep going back is because they keep stepping up their game because they know that when we come in, we’re going to bring something that we didn’t bring the last time. So they still have that fire; they’ve still got that real competitive streak, and I love that about them. I think the new record is everything we were trying to do with the other two, you know what I mean? But now that we got to know Bill and Jason [Livermore], you know, to work with them, we were a lot more comfortable. You know, there’s no kid gloves, so everything just goes a lot more smooth and a lot faster, and we can just concentrate on getting tight sounds and fuckin’ banging them out.

Was there ever a time when you considered working with another producer?

No. The only time when we had considered it was, we were originally going to do Mute Print — we were talking to Brian McTernan about doing it with him. But for scheduling things, that didn’t work out, so, basically, we were like, “Fuck. How about the Blasting Room?” It was basically down to those two, but since we’ve gone to the Blasting Room, we couldn’t imagine going anywhere else.

So this is your first time recording with Brian [Robinson] on bass. How did that affect the song-writing process, or did it at all?

Well, yeah, it did. Brian’s a very technical bass player; he pulls off some shit that I couldn’t even fathom being able to do myself. Like, ever. So kind of knowing that, working with him it was kind of like, “Hey, Brian. I’ve got this part in this song and it’s about like a shark attack, and I wanted you to do this nasty fuckin’ bass thing, and I want it to be fuckin’ as if it was like a Disney movie, and you were scoring on screen like a bunch of scattered cockroaches running from the light.” Just by that — he hadn’t heard the song yet; I was kind of writing it on my own — he goes, “Oh, shit! Yeah, yeah, yeah!” And then he ran into the room in the back and just came out with this fuckin’ insane thing that I don’t even understand. You know, I’ve been playing guitar for a long time, and he’s just, he’s totally on another level musically. A lot of Canadians are like that though; I fuckin’ love it.

In the past you were responsible for writing most everything, music and lyrics. Was that still the case this time around, is was it more of a group dynamic for song writing?

It’s definitely way more, like, Chris had a lot more input in the guitar, you know, like, he came forward with a lot of stuff. There were a lot of moments on the songs where, you know, it’s not uncommon for to be working on five or six songs at a time, just tinkering, just going back and forth between all of them. Sometimes, I’ll get stuck and I’d just be like, “Guys, this is what I have so far, and I want to take this and…” you know, I’ll give them a little bit of direction. But that’s kind of the only way my role has evolved into more of, like, I guess every band kind of needs somebody that’s like a lightning rod, that sort of thing, where I can say, “Yeah, we’re going in the right direction. Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah!” I don’t know: It’s kind of evolved into that, and I’ve really grown into, you know, we’ve been playing on the road for so long that it’s kind of, you know, the past couple of years since Ruiner we’ve been straight up on the road. So when you play, and you’re in such close proximity to everybody else in the band, that’s going to change the sound of the band, too, like in the way that we approach tackling certain areas of a song. So I think that’s also had a lot to do with it. And I didn’t want to write everything by myself, you know what I’m saying, because that’s not a band, that’s not fun.

Did you still handle the bulk of the lyrics on this record?

I wrote the majority; I wrote a couple of the songs with Nuno [Pereira], so there’s a few on the record — I think there might be three or four that me and Nuno worked on together.

Which ones were those?

I think “Check Request Denied” is one of them. I’m trying to think; I’m drawing a blank. I’m kind of stoned … There’s a few other ones; I don’t know. It escapes me right now. You know, it’s like, he’ll add his things, like I’ll say, “Nuno, I want you to kind of, you know, I want you to step up. Like, ‘What would you do if you’ve never heard this song before, maybe here’s a couple words, how would you lay that down?’” You know what I mean? And then you have a song like “Career Suicide,” you know what I mean, where I was thinking a part was going to go one way, and then I said to myself, “No, no, no, how about this? I’ll just give a couple words to Nuno, and just let him feel it out and I’ll kind of record him at our home studio and do some demos and see what happens.” I had a good time doing that kind of stuff with the guys, too.

This record has two of the longest songs of your career [“The Horse” and “We Built This City [On Debts And Booze”]. Do you go into those thinking, “I want to write these lengthy songs,” or was that more of a subconscious, or was it more of a happy accident?

Well, a little of both. Usually I’m not satisfied with a song until it has had its beginning, it has had its middle, and it has had its ending, and then it’s like, “Okay, I’m satisfied.” Sometimes that takes like 50 seconds for a song, but sometimes it takes, I guess, 5 minutes. You know, like, “We Built This City,” with that song, we’ve never done a fade out on our records. We were like, “Oh, that might be kind of cool to do it. It might sound a little cliché or whatever but, you know, ‘How would our fadeout song be?’ you know what I’m saying?” When I’m in a room with, like, Brian — who’s like insane on the bass — and Chris and Nick [Angelini], like, sometimes you don’t want to stick to a simple formula; sometimes you really need to do it. Because sometimes I write too many songs that are, like, too conventional for our band; sometimes I got to go, “Oh, wait a minute. I think our fans would be really fuckin’ stoked if we did a five-and-a-half minute song about a horse.” [Laughs.] We’ve been playing it on the tour, and we don’t usually let our songs breath that much, and “The Horse” was an opportunity to let it breath. You know, we didn’t really know how the fans were going to take it — I know that when we were playing it in the room and looking at each other, we were giggling, having a fuckin’ awesome time just fuckin’ around with the song. We knew that we had something really special, because if you look at everybody and everybody’s giggling, you got a good song, you know, it’s a no brainer. But, yeah, fuck man. There have been many nights where people have never heard the song before, but, like, clap in the middle of it, you know what I’m saying? Which is not something that usually happens because there’s usually no room for that for any breath like, “Okay, yeah, let’s chill like that.”

Going back to your lyrics, I’m really curious about “Pardon Me, Thanks A Lot.” I think it has some pretty direct lyrics, and I’m wondering who specifically it’s about.

It’s about Mitt Romney; Mitt Romney has had a thing against our city. We’re from this city called New Bedford — I’m sure everybody knows he’s the governor of Massachusetts — and he fucked over our city pretty bad. He didn’t get any support from where we live because we’re a very democratic city, and so the people of our city never showed him any love because, you know, the people of our city are like, you know, fuckin’ salt-of-the-earth type people, like blue collar — something that that dude doesn’t understand. So, you know, now he’s running for president, and it’s all a big joke, so I just felt like writing it.

This album seems to have a lot more external anger than past albums. Why do you think that is?

Well, I think the No. 1 thing was that, the Ruiner record was, like you said, was all internal. And it’s like, “We did that record for now.” You know, we’re fortunate enough to go see a lot of places in the world multiple times, you know? We’ve had the opportunity to go to Europe several times, Japan, Australia, like all these places, and playing shows every day and meeting some cool people, but at the same time, it’s kind of like a wake up call when you’re on the road for so long without stopping. Sometimes you don’t meet some very nice people on the road, like, sometimes some that will piss you off; sometimes while you’re gone shit at home could present challenges for you. So it was kind of like, I don’t know, the past few years definitely shaped, you know, we learned a lot as a band; I think we grew a lot in the past few years.

How do you view yourself as a career punk band? Where do you think your place is in this scene?

There’s not many of us around; we’re kind of on the progressive, melodic-punk tip. There’s not a lot of us like, you know, touring full time and stuff. There’s a lot of young bands coming out — I meet them every day coming to the shows and stuff. A lot of thought went into it, the song “Career Suicide,” it has like this [Sings melody], and I started playing that one day, and Chris was like, “Whoa! That’s the harshest sound thing. We should call this song ‘Career Suicide,’ like our career is over.” And then, you know, I kind of took that and said, “Yeah, you know what, you’re right, because that kind of is the theme of this record.” You know, we’re going to play the music we want to play, regardless of if it sells a lot of copies or it doesn’t, because we don’t really give a shit; we’re over that. As long as we’re having fun and making music that we feel is doing something different and trying to push people in a different direction, you know what I mean? So, it was like, “Not a lot of bands are doing this, or, like, doing this type of thing with wide-eyed enthusiasm.” That’s how we felt making it; we weren’t thinking of trying to make a song for the radio, or trying to have like a mid-tempo jam or something with a breakdown, or dressing a certain way; that’s just not us. Most people would be like, “Well, all right, their third record, this must be their last so, like, you know, time to put out all the pop songs, and try to fuckin’ grab on to that and try to get something big and get on the next label.” But that’s something we just didn’t want to be a part of.

A lot of people have been wondering what’s going on with Nitro Records right now, because it seems all they’ve been doing it making hot sauce. What is your situation with Nitro Records right now?

Well basically, we talked to them, we’ve had many conversations; we got Dexter [Holland] on the phone, live via satellite or something from wherever he was. You know, we basically said like, “Guys, what’s going on? Do you guys really want to put our another Wilhelm record.” Nitro wasn’t selling a shit-load of copies; the music scene just keeps changing, that’s just the way it is. They were like, “Guys, we love the band; we’d do anything it takes to make you guys happy. We really want to put out this record.” And, basically, that’s all the band needed to hear. And that’s kind of where it’s at right now; we’re doing this record, and we’ll see what happens after that.

As far as contractual agreements, are you guys free after this record?

Yeah, we’re free after this one.

Have you put any thought into what the future might hold?

We’re not sure; we don’t keep on top of what labels hot right now. Our old bass player, Jon [Teves], he takes care of all that stuff for us because he’s, like, my business-minded best friend. So we’ve been talking about what we want to do, but it all comes down to, who’s going to take us under their wing that really love the band. That’s really all we’re concerned with, and we just want to take care of our fans that have been coming out to see us play. That’s why we wrote the record we did because I think our fans are going to be stoked on it. We’ll just see; who knows what the future holds. All I can worry about is the show in Winnipeg tomorrow, [and] making sure that show goes off. I think everything else, like labels and stuff, it will all work itself out in time. And I’m totally not ruling out not doing another record with Nitro if where their heads are at is where we need them to be, you know, if we’re seeing eye-to-eye.

So how many cases of hot sauce would it take for you guys to resign with Nitro Records?

Uh, yeah, a lot.

Have you had their hot sauce yet?

I have.

Is it any good?

It ain’t bad.

What would you recommend to put it on?

Probably eggs; hot sauce is good on eggs. And burritos from No Problemo. Put your Nitro Records hot sauce on No Problemo burritos.

Is there a deluxe edition of the new record that comes with a bottle of hot sauce?

I don’t know; I hope so.

Are you guys going to do vinyl this time around?

Oh, man, I’d love to! We still have to work all that out.

It hasn’t been talked about yet?

No. I mean, they’re still working on the marketing of CDs. Usually the LP conversation happens after they’ve kind of gotten some stuff done for the record. But yeah, we’d fuckin’ love to. We’d love to put Mute Print out on vinyl, too. We’ll be talking to them about it: Maybe they’ll license it to somebody else that will make them.

What the status on reissuing a lot of your back catalogue?

Right after we’re done with everything for Career Suicide, that’s going to be the next thing we work on. Nick’s already been working on the artwork. We’re basically getting all the Smackin’ Isaiah stuff together, like all in one package. Something like, even any inside jokes that we can throw in there to have a cool package, to have all our own material in one place. Like, I went on our forums and it’s pretty ridiculous some of the money that people are spending on eBay for some of that old Smackin’ Isaiah shit. Like some kid paid 100 bucks for Benefits Of Thinking Out Loud and the DVD case. I was like, “What the fuck!” I mean, come on now, that’s crazy.

Who do you think is going to put that out then?

I don’t know. We’ve got Jump Start; we’re always friends with them. Fork In Hand; we’re good friends with them. We’re thinking about doing it with one of them, or putting it out ourselves, or, I don’t know, either one of those options are out there. It’s definitely a thing that’s going to be for fans; we’re going to put as much extra stuff on there as possible, you know, make the linear notes as extensive as possible.

So what’s the deal with titling all your records after hardcore bands? Career Suicide is a band from Toronto; you’re last record was called Ruiner, and there’s a hardcore band from Baltimore called Ruiner…

Dude, I just found that out yesterday. Like I said, I don’t really go on the internet much and find out about these bands, but with the Ruiner thing, they contacted us like, “Hey! We’re friends with friends that you guys are friends with!” I remember back that I was like, “Oh, man, I hope that fuckin’ never happens again.” And then, like, yesterday I found out that there’s another band called Career Suicide. I’m like, “All right, fuck it. No more voting on album titles.” [Laughs.] alt

Portions of this interview originally appeared in AP 232.