Interview – Brooklyn Vegan

September, 2023
by Andrew Sacher

Mustard Plug talk first LP in 9 years: "I don’t know how many records we have left, so we can’t throw [one] away”

Ska-punk veterans Mustard Plug aren’t as prolific as they were during their early ’90s to mid 2000s period, but whenever they do put out a new album, they make it count. They not only stayed active after the ’90s ska-punk boom that Mustard Plug helped shape died down, they released some of their best records during those years when a lot of people thought ska was dead. 2007’s In Black and White is a fan favorite and a band favorite, and its 2014 followup Can’t Contain It–which featured contributions from AJJ’s Sean Bonnette, Jeff Rosenstock and members of his band, and more–was well-received too. Now they’re back with their first album in nine years, Where Did All My Friends Go?, which is also their first album for Bad Time Records, the five-year-old label that’s been at the forefront of ska-punk’s current resurgence. Mustard Plug vocalist Dave Kirchgessner tells us that a lot of factors led to this album coming out sounding as inspired as it did, including all the great new ska bands and the renewed interest in the genre, the recent vinyl boom, bringing in a new bassist and reuniting with the saxophone player from their classic 1993 album Big Daddy Multitude, and reuniting with longtime producer Bill Stevenson (of Descendents), who helmed In Black and White, their popular ’90s record Evildoers Beware!, and others.

All of those factors, combined with the fact that Mustard Plug are lifers and great songwriters, resulted in an album that stands tall next to Mustard Plug’s classics and sounds as fresh as the current, younger generation of ska bands. From Dave and guitarist Colin Clive’s unmistakable voices to the catchy horn lines to the unbridled energy, Where Did All My Friends Go? sounds like the Mustard Plug that longtime fans know and love, but, in multiple ways, this is an album they could’ve only written today. These fun, danceable songs are contrasted by some darker subject matter inspired by the isolation caused by the pandemic (mixed in with some more optimistic moments). It also pulls off the balance of sounding like a modern record without sounding like Mustard Plug have given up on the musical values they held two or three decades ago. It’s a reminder that Mustard Plug’s music has never been dictated by trends. They were making great ska-punk before the genre’s big boom, during it, and for many years after it, and they’ve always remained true to themselves.

Where Did All My Friends Go? is out now, and you can stream it below and pick up our exclusive mustard yellow & black pinwheel vinyl variant, which is limited to just 250 copies. I caught up with Dave and Colin to discuss the album, the band’s early days, comparisons between the ’90s ska-punk boom and today’s resurgence, and more. Read on for our chat and some music videos from the new LP.

What were some themes that were on your mind while writing this record?

Dave: This was a really different record for us songwriting-wise because we were stuck in our own homes, we weren’t in the same room together for a lot of it. The bulk of the songs we wrote just trading files online, and we got pretty good at using GarageBand and Logic and that stuff, and just trading files and building on them. Then when we were able to meet together we’d play them live in our rehearsal space and flesh them out a little more, but it was a really unique way to do it and a really unique time period. So because I was kind of just stuck in my basement, I’d say a lot of themes have to do with isolation and loneliness. Isolation was a running theme in some of the lyrics in a way that it hasn’t been before just because of going through that. I asked myself, “Are these lyrics still gonna be relevant in a few years from now, once people are out of their homes and not wearing masks?” and I think definitely, because there are so many other things that are isolating us as a society and as individuals. I think social media’s isolating, I think there are whole societal trends that are isolating, so I think there are still lots to relate to in the lyrics even though [the pandemic] was the specific event that inspired it. There’s a long tradition going back to The Specials of having dark lyrics with happy, fun dance music. And I think the fact that life can be so isolating at times, that this music–specifically ska–is so good at bringing people together. It makes people feel like they have a tribe, and an outlet, and a way to communicate and connect with people.

What were you hoping to get across with “Rebel Youth Face”?

Dave: I thought about like, you know I’m like 54, and I first really got into music in my late teens and from being involved in the punk scene and alternative scene and going to alternative dance nights and hardcore punk shows. And I’m sure the young kids are still part of a tribe and a counter-culture, but there are some real big differences, and certain aspects have become commodified or commercialized. You know like, to buy a pair Dr. Martens you had to drive to Chicago or Detroit, you had to know where to get them, and they were outrageously expensive, and so there was real research and effort and money you had to put into it, but it was like part of your tribal uniform. If you had ’em, you were cool, and you could show that you went through all this stuff. Now, you can just go on Amazon and buy a pair. So it has to do with nostalgia, it has to do with commodification of rebellion.

You made the new album with Bill Stevenson, who you’ve worked with multiple times. What do you like so much about working with Bill and what was the studio experience like this time around?

Dave: Bill is a really unique dude. It was kind of a lark that he did [1997’s] Evildoers Beware!. We knew that he had started to record some bands, but he really hadn’t recorded many bands at all, he wasn’t really known as a producer or whatever. But his band ALL was playing at the Reptile House, and I think Colin went up to him and got his phone number, and we called him and were like, “Hey, you wanna record us?” And we went out there, and at the time his studio was really primitive. He had a really cheap board and he didn’t have mics, but he knew how to get the best out of us and we just kind of clicked. We did the next record after that, we did In Black and White, which is one of my favorite records that we’ve done there. For this one, we just felt really strong about the material, and we’re at this point where I don’t know how many records we have left in us, so we can’t throw away a record at this point, especially if we feel really strongly. And we felt like the one sure bet to do to make it an awesome record, besides write good songs, is have him record it. It was expensive because for a band that’s not doing this full-time there’s some risk involved, and we decided to do it, and we’re all out there for like two weeks. The whole band was there pretty much the whole time. All seven dudes were in the studio, we slept there, we ate there, it was like boot camp. Some of the guys didn’t leave the studio for two or three days at a time. But it got more out of us. We came up with some different ideas, and added some different textures, and just really put more into this record than pretty much any other record we’ve ever done. And Bill knew when to push us, he knew what our strengths and weaknesses are and how to get the best stuff out of us, so it was just such a great experience.

How did you get involved with Bad Time Records and what made you want to release the album on that label?

Dave: We have a lot of respect for what Mike has done with Bad Time. We came up in the punk scene and I’ve always wanted to be on a punk label, like my dream labels that I grew up respecting were like Touch & Go and Dischord and stuff like that, labels that had a lot of integrity that created a community of bands, and didn’t screw over their artists. And Mike shared a lot of those values that we had, and plus us being old dudes, we’re not that savvy when it comes to social media and some of that stuff, so we just kind of felt it was the best of both worlds that we partner with him and he could kind of push us in ways that we wouldn’t necessarily do ourselves if left to our own devices. It felt like the perfect fit. We realize that there’s this whole new generation of kids getting into [ska] again, and it’s a little bit more challenging for us to get them to listen to us. We have our old fans, but we’re always looking to make new fans, find new fans in new places, keep progressing. …It’s really inspiring right now. For a long time, it felt like we’d tour and it was getting harder and harder to find local ska bands to open. It was kind of depressing. It’s rad that now there are so many new bands.

You mentioned growing up in the punk scene, and ska-punk was still a relatively new thing when Mustard Plug first formed. What pushed you towards starting a ska-punk band?

Dave: There was a cool little bubbling ska scene in Detroit and Chicago, and we were into Fishbone and all the 2 Tone stuff–I still think The Specials are the best ska band that ever was–and the Operation Ivy record obviously, and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones would come through and play Detroit at least a couple times a year. And in the early ’90s there were a bunch of little ska bands that were popping up in Michigan. Gangster Fun had been around since like ’85 and they’d continue to play, but then it would be like Pickle Brown Betty and Etch-A-Sketch and Tom Collins & The Cocktail Shakers. It was just a really inspiring thing. It’s weird to think about now, but in 1991, combining ska with punk was still a novel idea and we thought we were being really, really original, but of course it turns out that there were all these other bands that were doing this super original thing too, you know what I mean? Like MU330 and Reel Big Fish and all these bands doing it in their own little worlds in their own little way. It was kind of like the same thing that happened in the 2 Tone era, where like The Specials were doing their thing and The English Beat were doing their thing and Bad Manners were doing their thing, and then they realize, “Oh wait a minute, everyone’s kinda doing the same thing.” It kind of felt like that in ’92 or ’93. We would go play these ska shows, and at that point most of the bands were pretty much 2 Tone-ish bands and we were kind of the odd band out, we were kind of the weirdos at some of those shows. I remember like skinheads being super pissed at us for having long hair and distorted guitar parts and that sort of thing, and we were getting a lot of boos. But we also got a lot of people that dug us right away too. It was a really inspiring time, and it’s so crazy that within the course of like four years, ska-punk became almost the status quo of the ska scene.

How did you react when ska-punk became such a big mainstream thing?

Colin: It was weird. Being from where we come from, Michigan–like we weren’t a coastal band–and we had been working pretty hard we thought, and there were a lot of bands around us like Blue Meanies and MU330 and Gangster Fun and stuff like that were all kind of existing in this pretty successful middle ground area, but then once radio started hitting it was really West Coast-based. It kind of felt like it almost ignored everything else. So it kind of took us by surprise. Looking back on it, a lot of these bands had been around as long as us, but we didn’t know of them because it was pre-internet, so all of a sudden to us it was, “Who are all these bands that are on the radio and hugely popular? What about all of us?” [laughs].

Dave: Yeah, because we were trying to tour the whole nation for like a couple years, and then you have a band like Goldfinger who we’d never even heard of all of a sudden have a hit on the radio, and we’re like “Whaaaat?” It was a little tough, because like Colin was saying, it felt like the Midwest was getting ignored a little bit. I mean The Suicide Machines got signed right away and went on their big tours and that sort of thing, but the rest of the scene… it was weird, and things happened so fast and changed so much from ’94 to like ’96 or ’97. It was also tough for us, because with Evildoers Beware! we recorded with Bill, and he had a manager at the time that was trying to find a record label for us and he just kind of flaked out. And then we had to find a label on our own, and we hooked up with Hopeless eventually and then Hopeless had this schedule and they couldn’t put us out for a while, and then we decided to remix something. So meanwhile all this stuff was blowing up, and it just felt like it was taking forever to get our record out. But once it did come out, we didn’t really get picked up by radio, we didn’t really get MTV play or anything like that, it was just like hitting the road and continue doing what we’re doing, and just by hitting the road we sold like 200,000 copies of that record. It was nuts. A lot of it was just that it was the best time to be a ska band, but it was also that we were doing almost 200 days on the road a year. But yeah it was a crazy time.

How would you compare this current moment for ska and ska-punk to what was happening in the mid to late ’90s?

Dave: It feels like about 1995 to me, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of energy and more people are coming to shows, and people are excited about it, but it’s not like it’s going to blow up because if it was, it would have happened, you know what I mean? Like the difference between ’95 and ’96 was like, shit blew up overnight, versus this whole wave that we’re in now has kind of just been building for the last, like, four years. To me, the [early 2020] tour we did with The Toasters on the West Coast before COVID being like, every show is killing it, every show is awesome. That was the first time it felt like, “Man I haven’t felt this way since the ’90s,” where kids were that excited. That felt to me like the turning point.

Colin: I feel like it’s missing the radio element and the MTV element, some of those things that don’t exist anymore, or at least not at that level–that’s not how people consume media as much or whatever. I feel like that not existing is a big hindrance, but I can’t honestly say that’s what’s causing it to not get to the next level, because obviously other artists are going from 0 to 1,000 overnight. It’s not an over-the-top frenzy but it’s cool that there’s some energy behind it and some hype behind it. But you never know, maybe tomorrow it will be huge [laughs].

Why do you think there’s this renewed excitement around ska these past few years?

Dave: I think ska’s always been awesome! There was such a big backlash against in the early 2000s, I mean it’s crazy how much of a backlash there was, from like ’97 where it’s the hippest thing to everyone was hating on it by 2000–at least in the mainstream media. I think it just took a long time to get past that. Now we have a whole new generation of kids that don’t remember any of that, they don’t remember the backlash which is good because it was dumb. And I think there’s a cultural thing where people aren’t as concerned with being cool anymore. Kids don’t have as much of an attitude about trying to be cool. And ska is just all about having fun, it’s more about having fun than having an attitude, so it’s working now, I think the time is right. And people need something fun to dance to.

When you put out records like In Black and White and Can’t Contain It, did you feel like it was a struggle to get those out in a time when people were still in their backlash era?

Dave: Yeah, it was definitely tougher. In Black and White was one of those records we felt really strongly about, and we had done the Ska Is Dead Tour around then and it felt like there was some momentum there, but we put the record out and nothing really seemed to change for us, I mean nothing major. It got great reviews, the people that heard it really really liked it, and to this day people tell me it’s one of our best records, but it didn’t really push us to a different level and I think it was just like the headwinds of that time, that era. I think if that record had been released in ’97 or something, it would’ve done way better. That was really frustrating. It’s tough to put that much work and heart and soul into something and it doesn’t bring another 200 kids to the shows. But, you know, we keep going.

Before we go, anything else to add about the new album?

Dave: We have a new bass player [Greg Witulski] and we brought back our saxophone player from Big Daddy Multitude [Mark Petz] to record the whole thing, so that’s one of the other things that I think helps a lot. When you bring some new people into the band that are excited, it adds a new level of energy and excitement. Especially like, Greg has never been in a band that’s really played outside of Grand Rapids or whatever, so that’s all new for him even though he’s like 47 years old or something like that. And Mark quit the band to become an adult after Big Daddy Multitude, and being an adult isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and then he became an empty nester and I’m sure he thought he’d never have a chance to do this again, I’m sure he spent the last 20 years wondering if he made the right choice. So just having their excitement added a little bit of electricity to it as well. And as a side note, part of the energy in In Black and White was bringing in Nate [Cohn] and Rick [Johnson], our drummer and bass player were new for that record as well. So it’s a lot of things, the excitement of the ska scene being reinvigorated, the new people in the band, and just also having some really great material. It all added a spark to the record.

Colin: And it was kind of written, from my perspective, slightly differently than we have in the past. Probably 15 of the 17 songs we wrote for the record, I had demoed myself with just a very bare-bones structure. And I purposely did these differently; I didn’t do any vocal melodies, I wrote 15 songs without any sort of concept of a vocal to them–which is hard, because I usually try to even just mumble something to make it sound like a song or so people know where parts are–so I would just feed those to Dave and just let him go to town and I said, “Write, sing, whatever you wanna do to any of these, and whatever ones you don’t do, send them back and I’ll sing those songs.” I didn’t wanna claim anything as a “me” vocal song. It was kind of an interesting thing from a songwriting perspective, trying to write songs without any concept of what the vocal melody would be like. It was kind of fun to have the time to do that and not feel pressured, there was no end goal of when we were going to be out of [the pandemic]. I loved that time. As much as Dave had his tales of woe and isolation, mine was like a joy and happiness. I loved being cooped up and not having to see anybody [laughs]. So two of the three songs I sing on there are pretty positive, happy, good-vibes-in-the-end sort of songs to kind of counteract that. The yin and the yang [laughs]. It will forever, for me, go down as one of the greatest time periods of my life. I’m not making light of it by any means whatsoever, I don’t want anybody to have to go through that in the negative context, but for me, if they could force-isolate me for another couple years, that’s fine [laughs].