Bouncing Souls - Interview

  by Alex Halls

published: 21 / 3 / 2005

intro

New Jersey punks the Bouncing Souls have recently celebrated a decade and a half in the music business. Alex Halls chats to guitarist Pete Steinkept about touring and their recent decision to shun MTV

The Bouncing Souls have marked a decade and a half of their contribution to punk by recently adding 'Do You Remember?: 15 Years of the Bouncing Souls', a collection of material onto DVD for general release, a now useful marketing tool, but one which allows fans to gain an insight into their favourite artists. Pennyblackmusic was fortunate enough to catch up with band guitarist Pete Steinkept shortly before a London Brixton Academy gig, the last show on the UK leg of their recent tour to further explore the outcome of 15 years of passion and dedication. Taking many positives from the UK shows Pete appeared upbeat... Pete Steinkept: The UK tour has been great, the shows have been awesome. We got to play in front of a lot of kids who wouldn’t usually come to our shows but who have come to see the Dropkicks (Dropkick Murphys, co-headliners on the UK tour-Ed). Exploring the creative and inspirational side of the Bouncing Souls music I asked Pete to what extent his current musical ambition is being met… Pete Steinkept: You’re always trying to be better than you were.  I don’t think I’m ever satisfied; I always want to make a better record; I am always being more ambitious. PB: The last time Pennyblackmusic spoke to the Bouncing Souls your bassist Brian Kienlen noted Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys as two of the bands that inspired the Bouncing Souls to play punk. Are there any bands around at the moment that inspire you further or that you have taken a shine to? PS : Strike Anywhere are definitely a great band. There are also the Loved Ones, who are pretty cool at the moment. PB: Do you think that bands in the future will use your music as inspiration? PS : I think they already do. There are already kids that go to shows and cover our songs. The Bouncing Souls have always restricted access to their music. Not content with the idea of the band’s music hitting mainstream radio or television, MTV being the biggest name to be forfeited, I investigated the reasons behind such a bold move… PS : The MTV thing was something that we decided on a long time go as it was such crap and still is. It has probably worked against us but, at the end of the day, I can say I have done what I believed in and stuck by my guns. PB: Do you think this has helped the Bouncing Souls to gain respect? PS : I think we have gained a lot of respect from kids who feel the same way we do. They respect us because we made out stand. 'Anchors Aweigh', the last Bouncing Souls album release and an excellent one at that, came out in 2003 but no information seemed to have been released on when we could all expect the next issue… PS : I don’t know. We’ve been touring upon the 'Anchors Aweigh' record a lot and will now go home and take some time out; time out to think about a new record and see how long it takes to put it together. We have no deadline. We’re just going to go home and create. PB: How long does it normally take you to record an album? PS: It’s always different. It depends on how much time you have and how much time you want to give yourself. It’s as fast as it is. This time we’re no going to worry about it. PB: Every Bouncing Souls album has a completely different number of tracks on it. If you have 18 songs and they’re all good, do they all go on… …or do you set yourselves a rough quota to fill each time? PS : Last time we put everything on. We thought about cutting songs but decided against it. All the songs were so different from each other that we didn’t see that there was any point in removing any of them. PB: The release of Do You Remember (DVD) marks over 15 years of footage of the band being together. What were the main reasons for releasing the material in this way? PS : Greg (Attonitoi-Vocalist-Ed) had so much footage of us from the last 15 years that we decided we had to do something with it. There was a real pile of tapes, so some friends of ours took the stuff away and we ran with what came of it all. We wanted to tell the entire story once and for all. PB: Had you ever envisaged getting this far? PS : We never planned on anything and I certainly hadn’t planned on getting this far. We have done a lot but there is still much more to do. Bands often tell of how they miss home but I wondered whether, after 15 years, the Bouncing Souls had become accustomed to this… PS : You always miss home. You just learn to deal with it. I’m married so I miss my wife. I try and make up for being away when I am home. After 15 years one would have expected the Bouncing Souls to have played just about any venue available, yet the band was about to play pastures unknown: Puerto Rico was to be the next stop… PS : It’s a cool place we’ve never been before. We’re excited to go. I heard the shows there are really good so we’ll see what happens…

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