It only seems like yesterday that I was salivating over their first sneering and snarling release. A nasty little piece of vinyl it was, that ep Disco Sucks, and a welcome reprieve from all the bullshit they called music back in 1978. Then there came the momentous Hardcore ’81, which coined the term we all know and love today (even if it has come to define an entirely different genre).
     Next they assaulted our senses with the ep War on 45 and then Bloodied But Unbowed. And we loved every minute of it. Then there were the tours, those wonderful moments when you could actually experience the raw power and passion of the group in person. And these guys have toured non-stop practically from the day they were formed, spreading their brand of crazed manic melody coupled with socio-political commentary.
     Over the years, they have influenced, directly or indirectly, groups as varied as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Rancid, and The Offspring. . Now, here it is 2003, and they have released their 10th studio album Win The Battle, which combines their signature display of punk and straight-on rock.
For their first album in four years, Joey Kiethley and bassist Randy Rampage teamed up with “The Great Baldini” on drums to create rockin’ musical mayhem. They’ve continued in the vein they defined with a sound that’s punk, with a touch of rock’n’roll, reggae, metal, and ska.
     So after salivating over this new release, the anticipation building as I put it into the cd player and let the chainsaw guitars and attitude rain over me, I compose myself enough to get on the phone and have a sort of rambling conversation with the infamous Joey Shithead about everything from the new album to American foreign policy. Enjoy.

CN: First question: How long has it been since the last D.O.A. release?

JK: Uh, 1998 was the last album we put out and it was called The Festival of Atheists.

CN: Okay, I wasn’t exactly sure how many years it had been.

JK: Yeah, no problem. Yeah, I understand.

CN: How long did it take you to write the material on this one?

JK: It was weird, because a couple of songs were, I may have written like 8 or 9 years ago, right, but they had never come out. A couple of them were redone from past times, and then when the album was pretty well finished, I ended up writing one last song because I didn’t think it had all the right balance of material. So, you know, it didn’t take that long, you know, but I guess it was kind of spread over a long period of time.

CN: Right. Which were the oldest ones on the disc?

JK: Well, “Fuck You” is like, a cover; “Dead Men Tell No Tales” came out on an ep in 1994. “Drive To Hell And Back”, that one is about 15 years old. I really like that song, and it’s probably the oldest one. A bunch of the rest of them were all written within a few months and then uh, I showed the boys and then we kind of went from there, sort of thing.

CN: And the one you went back and re-did, last minute?

JK: Uh, the one I wrote at the very last minute was “Just Say No To The WTO”. And that was like, basically, it had to be mastered and finished, and we just went in and recorded it. And a certain time after that, I broke my hand in an auto accident. I hadn’t finished the vocals and the mix yet, but I’d finished up the guitar playing.

CN: At least you did that first, right?

JK: Yeah, that was the smart thing to do. It was the other guy who thought a stop sign meant go at 40 miles per hour. I couldn’t help but white knuckle.

CN: So, you have Sudden Death. Where do you usually record? I mean, do you have your own studio, or is there somebody you use?

JK: We’re building one right now. We usually record at a place called Profile, not to be confused with the old Profile Records in New York. It has nothing to do with that, but a studio out here called Profile. I done few albums there, a couple of, about five D.O.A. albums and about three solo albums, at the same place in East Vancouver. We started recording there a lot. We’ve been recording there off and on since about 1981. We’ve been a good several places, but somehow or other we seem to end up back there, right?

CN: You’ve got a good rapport, huh?

JK: Yeah, and the guy Rat was a good guy and they had good gear, and I think that’s the main thing, if you can find somebody who you like and you can communicate with, and you like the sound, then, you keep going back.

CN: All right. So, I want to ask you, on the record, you had Randy recording, but you have someone else in the band now.

JK: Yeah, well, before Randy was back in, we had this guy by the name of Kuba, and he was playing bass for us from ’98 up to 2000. And he’s back in the band now. Randy was with us for a year, which happened to be when we recorded the album. We didn’t do a whole lot of shows with Randy. We went to Japan and we did a few American dates and went to Europe and did some festivals over there, but that was about it. Randy, yeah, Randy the original guy from ’78 to ’82.

CN: You know, you’re the only one out of the band that I’ve never met. I met Randy, actually toured with him when he was singing for Annihilator.

JK: Oh, okay, okay.

CN: I know Biscuits from when he was in Danzig and knew Dimwit through him…but we’ve never met.

JK: Okay, yeah, you’ve met a lot of the cast and crew, that’s for sure.

CN: Yeah. I kinda feel like you’re extended family, like that third cousin you’ve never met…

JK: yeah, yeah, that everyone talks about in a good or a bad way, right?

CN: That’s the one.

JK: Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve had a long association with the Montgomery brothers. I met Dimwit when he was about 10 and I was about 11, and Chuck was about 7 at the time. And we used to jam out in Dimwit’s shed and Chuck would sit a long way off. But, when he was 11 and we were about 15, and we say around with bongos, right. And they are both great great drummers, obviously. But, God rest his soul, Dimwit’s not there anymore. Unfortunately, right?

CN: Unfortunately. Sweet guy…good people, both of them, actually.

JK: I think Chuck’s retired. He’s up in Seattle, as far as I know of, and he’s a lot better, and he’s gonna be, like a graphic artist or something like that.

CN: Yeah, I haven’t seen him in years. I haven’t seen Randy in years, either.

JK: Randy hasn’t done much touring except when—I kind of brought him out of retirement because he was my old buddy that I got along with, and I thought I’d give it a try again, and it was fun for a while, but he’s gone back to being a longshoreman again. On the waterfront again.

CN: I heard something to that effect, but, you know…

JK: He’s all right and stuff.

CN: I heard that through Waters because he was doing stuff with Savatage, and I know those guys, so…

JK: Yeah, okay, okay…Jeff told me that he and Randy did one European tour and then he and Randy got into a big fight, and that was the end of it all. Randy’s a kind of wild guy, that’s why, uh, we got him back in, a picture of rock’n’roll, I suppose.

CN: Jeff didn’t like the fact that Randy and I were like conjoined twins. He also didn’t like the fact that Randy and I could really drink well.

JK: Yeah, Randy’s superior at that. I’ve known that for many years.

CN: So that was a bone of contention, there.

JK: Yeah, I’ll bet.

CN: So, you were just out on the road recently, right?

JK: Yeah, we did about 110 shows this year. We’ve done about 35 in Europe. We were there in the summer, and we did a west coast tour of the States…we did about 12 there or 9 in California. And we did 60, probably, Canadian shows throughout the year—a couple good tours, but we have some American stuff coming up either in the spring or in the fall we’ll be up there, out your way. We don’t know for sure, yet. We’re trying to balance that off with a tour of Japan. So, I mean, it will last a couple years because this is the 25th Anniversary and we’ll try to get South America and Central America, Asia and Europe. We go to Europe every year. And of course we’ll do some stuff in the United States, too.

CN: Excellent.

JK: Yeah, no, it should be good, I think.

CN: So what are your audiences like these days?

JK: I remember, when we play live, you know, it used to be the audience would be between 18 and 40, I’d say. But now we get people between 15 and 55. We’ve played about 3000 shows in I don’t know how many countries and I don’t know how many fans, all told. We kind of get a real widespread of people. But the kids were not in that sort of kinda California pop-punk sound, or the other thing would be the modern movement of hardcore…even though we kinda helped come up with the phrase hardcore…did they send you a copy of Hardcore ’81?

CN: No. I had it years ago, but I don’t have it anymore. It’s one of those that got lifted by some errant roommate…

JK: Yeah, no, they always do…I just reissued it on Sudden Death, Hardcore ’81. It just came out probably about a month ago, and faithful to the original copies, we have a bonus-track ep from England in 1984…So, just to let you know we sort of helped coin the phrase, the modern hardcore, it’s a different scene, right? So…

CN: Yeah, it’s totally different.

JK: You know, in a few ways, we did that, and we have been really political, and we sort of have, like, an odd category because, you know, we’re like, a punk rock band, but we’re also like a rock band, too. Some people don’t see that, but it’s always occurred to me that way, you know. Given how we grew up and what we listened to, that, it wasn’t just straight-up punk rock, right? That’s why we always end up doin’ rock covers and stuff like that, usually one per album.

CN: Yeah, well, most people wouldn’t expect you to do a cover of “La Grange”, you know?

JK: Yeah, but, people ask me about that, and I just tell them that Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard and Dusty Hill are like, three of the, three members of one of the greatest trios ever created. But I love blues. I love rock. I love folk music. You know, you’ve got to have, like, a variation, musically, to listen to, or you’d go nuts, I think.

CN: True.

JK: When you’re younger, you listen to one style. When you’re older, I think you listen to much different stuff.

CN: Yeah, I was reading this thing that you had on the website that this kid wrote recently, where you were listening to Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Paul Robeson.

JK: We just did a big tribute concert to Paul, because, he’s an American citizen, obviously, but they took away his passport and tried to stop him from making a living, like, playing in Canada and Europe. Yeah, so there’s a big festival on the border, US/Canadian border just south of Vancouver about 50 years ago where Paul Robeson played on a flatbed trailer with his piano player, right on the border, and about 40,000 people came down from Canada to listen to him, right? So this was a tribute to the 50th anniversary of this. And I got to sing “Old Man River” and a couple other songs that he used to sing. And it was great.

CN: So, Sudden Death, your label, it takes up a lot of your time?

JK: A fair bit. We have to do catalogue number 49, so it’s not all new releases, there’s some re-releases, some of it is stuff that we’ve imported, or singles or whatever, but, we’ve put out about 25 cds from different bands. They range from old school like The Damned Brightspot, D.O.A., and newer stuff like The Real McKenzies, a bunch of Canadian stuff like Karen Thatcher, JP5…it’s quite an extensive list, right? We’re okay with it. Basically, our best stuff has been D.O.A. and The Real McKenzies and a couple other things.

CN: I love The Real McKenzies.

JK: Yeah. It’s a good band. We’ve put out a couple of interesting comps, punk rock and hockey, called Puck Rock. Then there’s another one that we put out, it’s a benefit cd for The Green Party, which I ran for three times out here, so…

CN: Are you gonna do it again?

JK: I missed the municipal elections on purpose. I was just too busy with the new album. But, I’m not sure. I’ve kinda been tellin’ everybody that eventually I should be mayor of Vancouver here, but we’ll see if that happens, right?

CN: Well, if you keep pluggin’, you never can tell.

JK: Yeah, but then again, I’m not sure if I want to do it right now. Playing music is a lot more fun than sitting there listening to council meetings and everybody bitching about every single thing going, right?

CN: Yeah, who are you tellin’? We just had the most fun weekend because we were all held in thrall by the fact that the Transit Workers’ Union was threatening to strike for the first time in 20 years, which…New York City with no subways, buses, tunnels…you know, nightmare.

JK: Yeah. That would be bad. Did they go on strike?

CN: No. At the last minute they pulled it out, but still, everybody was on edge because a lot of people have to go from the outer boroughs to Manhattan on bridges and tunnels and trains and stuff.

JK: That would be like, a complete drag.

CN: Some people were like, ‘oh, we’ll walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.’ I mean, that takes 45 minutes by itself, then how to get from there to where you need to go in Manhattan.

JK: Yeah, right. Right. Good luck.

CN: You and--I just interviewed Joe from The Vandals…

JK: Oh, okay.

CN: You are parallel, but in different scenes. You both have your own labels, you know, put out other people’s bands, but two different styles of music from the same era.

JK: Yeah, that’s for sure.

CN: So, after the first of the year you’re gonna start touring again, or are you gonna wait a month, or what?

JK: We’re gonna take a moment. We’ve got a meeting with a publisher next week about doing a book about traveling around with D.O.A. and the weird and political stuff we’ve been involved in.

CN: I was reading your website, all the ‘as told by’ word of mouth history…

JK: Yep.

CN: Great quotes. It’s not finished yet, though.

JK: No. It kind of just…my old manager, me and him worked on it for a while and then kind of…it just never got finished. I guess the book will be when it comes out, but it won’t quite be in that form.

CN: No, but that’s a good format to pull the quotes from, and then to have someone or you write it and then have someone polish it up.

JK: There’s a couple of people involved in there that made a dent on the scene here.

CN: Sure. Twenty-five years, who wouldn’t you have an effect on? So, besides doing your musical stuff, what kind of political things do you have in the forefront, uh, on your desk right now?

JK: I haven’t done too much. We’ve been involved, the last thing we did was the Robeson concert, and actually the next thing I’ve got to work on is another benefit cd. We haven’t decided who it’s gonna be for yet, but it’s gonna be titled, well, you’re gonna print this, so I have to be careful. Basically, one half is gonna be D.O.A. songs that were protest songs or anti-war songs and stuff like that. It will be all electric, and then it’ll be like a double cd and the other side would be D.O.A. doing some of the same songs, but some other songs in more of like a jug band fashion with like, acoustic guitars and weird percussion and stuff like that. We’re gonna start on that in January, recording that, and we’ll probably have that out by the middle of the year or September, or maybe earlier, right? But I think it will be a really pertinent thing. I think it’s a good thing to get across to people because there’s very few people speaking out against all out invasions and stuff like that. Although, I must give a hats off to Willie Nelson and Carlos Santana. I really like both of them as performers. I just think it was about time that people got up and stood up and said ‘Hey!’ Of course, Saddam Hussein is not a nice guy, but invading them is not the way to do it.

CN: But are we any better in what we’re doing in our foreign policy, the US?

JK: Yeah, like, it really reminds me of the time before Vietnam, which I wasn’t really conscious of at the time because I was like, 6 years old or whatever, but things are just in a paranoid state. It’s gone, not in a complete circle, but a bit of a circle here, right?

CN: The people in charge are in that paranoid state, and I see the parallel between the press machine of our government and the press machine of somebody putting out an album and a tour. They’re trying to drum up, like, interest or fear, or whatever they’re trying to drum up.

JK: Yeah, and also, anybody who speaks out against it ends up in trouble. Look at Bill Mahrer from Politically Incorrect. He said something that the government didn’t agree with and very shortly after his series was cancelled. Yeah, and well, that kind of happened with people like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and stuff like that. Not quite McCarthyism, but a few steps away from it, you know what I mean?

CN: Yeah, I’m a lot of times real ashamed to be an American.

JK: Well, see, that’s the thing. I always try to tell people, because I run into a lot of anti-Americanism in our last trip to Europe, well, what I try to tell people is look, this is not the American people that are making this up. This is the big oil companies. This is George W. Bush, his dad, and this, like, power cartel that has been involved in running the states for a long time. They want to make a lot of money, so don’t blame it all on just average Joe American, right? They may get sucked into supporting it for a while, but after a while, most people come to their senses, right, so.

CN: Yeah, a lot of people don’t realize that George W. has a major oil company and his dad was head of the CIA, what a good combo for him, right?

JK: Yeah, well, the whole family, right? You know, he had to get his brother to throw the election to him, right? So, it’s just a real mixed up thing that a lot of people outside the United States don’t understand and the United States media doesn’t do a good job of giving an even-handed report of what’s going on. A lot of people don’t agree with it, if you ask me, right? It isn’t just this slam-dunk; let’s go do this and that, right? So.

CN: Right, but there are some who just blindly swallow it.

CN: Yeah, lobbyists and the whole nine—it’s like, you never see Canada going and JK: Well, yeah, of course, if you get the same opinion every night on the news, after a while it just reinforces itself, and the same with the newspapers, so. And the newspapers and the media are all, almost all, not all, are owned by rich people, right? So, there are interests at stake here.
doing the things to other countries that we do.

JK: Well, it’s a different thing, though; we’re a lot smaller. We couldn’t go and do the things. The United States is in a unique position in the world in this day, you know, being the most powerful country. But I think the thing is that there has to be some compassion. If there’s some compassion, maybe not all of it in invasions, maybe people in the Arab world will go, ‘Hey, it’s not the great Satan.’ You know what I mean?