Earlier this month, Smoking Popes released their latest full-length, called Into the Agony. We recently met up with lead guitarist Eli Caterer and discussed the new album at length. We spoke about the return of original drummer Mike Felumlee and how his involvement in many ways sparked the band to write new material. We also talked about the manner in which the album was recorded and their desire to capture more of a live feel. In doing so, there are moments on Into the Agony that are suggestive of the Popes’ first two LPs, but at the same time there’s a host of new influences present, including several political songs. Additionally, we addressed their upcoming show with Jawbreaker and Naked Raygun, their November tour dates and more.

Bill – This marks the first time that Mike has played drums on an album in roughly 20 years. He’s been playing live with the band for the past few years, but what was it like to have him be a part of the writing and recording process again?

Eli – Well, I sort of think it’s really the reason we’ve done a new album. We were kind of on hiatus before this. We had done a reissue of Born to Quit and it didn’t go great for several different reasons. And we did this tour that was kind of disappointing and then we just sort of stopped playing so much. We hit some sort of wall, which happens with anything. At that point we were barely playing, like maybe once a year. Then the idea of playing with Mike again had come up. Matt, (bassist Matt Caterer) had brought it up at some point and then Neil Hennessy, who was playing drums in the band for several years, as a Popes fan he was really was pulling for it. It just so happened where Neil was moving to L.A. and we connected with Mike again. I hesitate to use the world “organically,” but it came together pretty organically.

Then we had all these offers to play shows that came up in a very short amount of time. Face to Face asked us to open for them for three shows and then we got asked to open for The Replacements for two shows. That was all in April, about three years ago. We ended up doing a benefit show around then too, so we had six shows come up in a really short amount of time. It just sort of worked out where Neil was moving and we kind of reconnected with Mike. He got back in the band and we played six shows with him after two practices. The chemistry with Mike was still there and he’s really the drummer for the band. All of our recorded material, outside of the last two studio albums, are with him an it really did click. But we didn’t come up with any plan or anything. We started playing with Mike again and everyone was having a lot of fun. We just kept booking shows for a while and then all of a sudden Josh, (singer/guitarist Josh Caterer) wrote a couple songs. He demoed them and we all thought they were great. Josh doesn’t seem to just randomly write music anymore. He has to decide to write music and then he’ll write stuff. I guess everyone is different in that way, but once he decided to write more songs he focused on that. Then we’d arrange them together and we started recording a couple at a time with Josh writing as we’d go. There was no pressure or anything. We were just doing it because we were having a blast with Mike. We recorded a couple songs in Mike’s basement, which ended up being the opening and closing tracks on the album, and released versions of those. We played them for a while and eventually re-recorded them for the album.

Playing with Mike has been amazing. Every drummer is unique and Mike truly is. Some of it’s a technical thing is because he’s a left-handed drummer who plays on a right-handed kit. And he does fills differently than most drummers. He just has a certain kind of creativity in his drum fills and he has a great improvisational approach to drumming. As we were recording the album, we’d do some basic tracks and then get rough mixes. It was nice to have time to work on writing guitar stuff and I’d listen to Mike’s tracks repeatedly. I just love his drumming very much.

Bill – That’s awesome. How would you describe recording with Reuben Baird at Chicago Sound Lab?

Eli – Reuben plays bass in The Bigger Empty, Mike’s other band that he sings and plays guitar in. Mike had been recording with him and suggested him. Mike records his own stuff too, but even on stuff that he was recording, he would go to Reuben’s studio to do drums because he likes the live room. As we recorded those first two songs in Mike’s basement, which is also known as the Live from the Rock Room studio, it just seemed better have someone else recording it and then Mike could focus playing. Reuben, to me, is the perfect person to work with. He knows what he’s doing, he’s got great ears and he’s mellow. He doesn’t just offer his input, but if you ask him for it he’s got great ideas and he gives great feedback. I’ve recorded with people on either side of that, either they didn’t have enough opinion about something or had too much to say. Reuben is great and that’s what he does for a living. It’s not like he’s our friend who’s recording something on the side for free or whatever. I loved working with him.

Bill – Very cool. The album has somewhat of a live feel to it. Was that your intent going into it?

Eli – Very much so. Having recorded some albums early on, like Get Fired and Born to Quit were just these things we did on our own. Then we did the major label album where we were really under the microscope. And although Jerry Finn who recorded that was really great and pretty close to our age, that was a thing where we recorded the drums first and then overdubbed everything. Everything was under a microscope. Even though that was good in a certain sense, we decided basically to never do that again because it wasn’t as much fun. I think we’re really good at playing together as a band and listening to each other at this point, so we decided to kind of take a Born to Quit approach where we recorded a couple songs at a time and did all the rhythm tracks live. Mike would be out in the live room and we had our guitars in isolation booths. Then the three of us would be standing or sitting in the control room, but we played everything live. Maybe we’d punch in a part here and there, but it’s important for the feel if you’re playing together. You could still get a good feel if you’re overdubbing everything, but there’s a certain kind of energy to a live performance that you can’t replicate. Maybe even if it wasn’t played as precisely as it could be, there’s still something great about the natural feel.

 

 

Bill – What’s the significance of the record’s title?

Eli – Well, I will say that Josh came up with the album title, but we did talk about it a little bit. He had a couple album titles, maybe three album titles, and that was just the one. Everyone felt the same way about that title. It’s partially because all of our album titles have a negative connotation, (Get Fired, Born to Quit, Destination Failure, Stay Down). This Is Only a Test fits into that the least…

Bill – That was more of a concept album…

Eli – That was the concept album. But Josh is a big Judy Garland fan and one of the songs is inspired by her and he grabbed little pieces of lyrics from a bunch of songs she sang. With that in mind, she had a very tragic life and really grew up in showbusiness. She started performing at a young age and eventually got into drinking and amphetamines. The combination of those two things is really awful and she just had a bit of a rough life. It was thinking a bit about that, but the album title can kind of be taken a couple different ways. There’s also being into the agony, like enjoying it. Or it could be like you’re moving towards the agony, although the album isn’t terribly dark or anything.

Bill – In terms of some of the album’s themes, “Little Lump of Coal” and “Melting America” are easily the most political songs that the band has ever written. What compelled you guys to address these kinds of topics now?

Eli – Oh yeah. Well, I think it is the most obvious motivation, which was Trump getting elected. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything political at all in any of our songs, but it’s cool. Josh is Christian and actually I think it’s very antithetical to Christian beliefs that a lot of Christians have these right-wing views, which I think seem to conflict with one another. Josh is Christian, as is my brother Matt, but both of my brothers are very independent thinkers. They think for themselves and are people of integrity. Josh wrote these songs and because they were totally different he was kind of unsure about them. We told him that they were great songs and that we had to do them. I mean, I also agree with him. “Little Lump of Coal” was written after Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement. It was really motivated from that and the current administration overall.

Bill – “Simmer Down” is also fairly political, but in more of a personal way. What inspired those lyrics?

Eli – That one not as much. It’s funny, but I think that’s the beauty of lyrics and sometimes stuff being not as specific. Although Josh doesn’t always do that, I think he started to do it more over time. I’m not lyrically-focused as a music listener. There are certain people whose lyrics I really love, but I’ll listen to music and the mood of stuff first a lot of the time. The lyrics to that song I like and I mostly know them, but I don’t know if I’ve really thought about those lyrics in depth. You probably have more than me.

Bill – That’s totally fair…

Eli – But I think you’re probably right. Josh tends to write from a fairly personal place.

Bill – “I Can Feel You” is one of my favorites and I feel like it has somewhat of a Destination Failure vibe. How did that song come together?

Eli – That was one of the first three songs that Josh wrote for the record. I have a real affinity for that song, more so than I think maybe anyone else in the band. For whatever reason, I really like that song a lot. In terms of how it came together, that one was pretty complete when Josh demoed it. Josh plays drums too and he’s a good drummer, but on the demos his parts are pretty straightforward. I think he used his phone to record all the stuff. That one stayed fairly similar to the way Josh demoed it, outside of the creativity that Mike brought to the drum parts. I do that sort of repeating guitar lead thing in the middle part and I put some pretty serious effort into a lot of the guitar parts that I wrote in these songs. I just felt like the song could use something that didn’t interfere with the vocal melody and the lyrics at all. I worked on that part for a long time and I had the luxury of spending a lot of time on the guitar leads because of the way we recorded the album.

Bill – Cool. What are you looking forward to most about your upcoming show with Jawbreaker and Naked Raygun?

Eli – I think because of my feelings about both of those bands, my intense fandom for both bands, everything about it is kind of a big deal to me. I was just talking about this with my girlfriend and about that thing that has happened with me and our band, where we’ve done it for a long time and we’ve had some success. The music fan in me, I’ve compartmentalized it to a certain degree because these other bands all over the world, in general, we’re peers and we’re all doing the same thing. No matter who it is, I can’t be too dorky about it because we’re doing the same thing. With Jawbreaker, we toured with them when they were supporting Dear You, which was cool and weird and a little bit challenging because some of their fans were upset at them for signing to a major label. Although I don’t think they could deny the quality of the album. And Naked Raygun was just a huge band my whole life. I’m the youngest of the three brothers and I’ve been listening to them since I was in single digits. We’ve never shared a stage with them. We’ve shared a stage with Pegboy before. Jeff, (lead singer Jeff Pezzati) had reached out to me about playing a show with them many years ago when we first got the band back together, maybe in 2006 or 2007, but it just didn’t work out. Actually, I’m getting up and playing guitar with them for a few songs and that’s this extra thing that’s really amazing about the show. I went and rehearsed with them and I can’t just sit there and gush the whole time. I’m there to rehearse these songs and then after I get to hang out and listen to them play.

Bill – That’s pretty awesome.

Eli – It’s really amazing and it created a whole renaissance where I went back and started listening to them again. That band was huge for me and I really hadn’t listened to them in several years. They were a band I sort of burned myself out on at a certain point. They’re so great and completely unique. To me, they’re so much more interesting than most punk bands. They didn’t adhere to like a punk style and then stick to that all the time. They had multiple songwriters and it created a really great dynamic.

Bill – I totally agree. Tell me about your tour in November and early December.

Eli – This one is heading back down to Florida and then coming back up to the Midwest. I’m looking forward to it. We have a good time playing. Everything we’re doing is just because we’re enjoying it and we want to be doing it. There’s no pressure or any other reason to be doing it, and it seems like the best possible way to be doing the band. We’re managing ourselves and unless things really pick up and change, we’ll probably just keep managing ourselves. We have a booking agent and on the road we bring almost no crew at all. We sell our own merch and we bring one person with us at this point. It’s a lot of fun. It’s just a good time.

Bill – Having been together for over 25 years, what else would you like to achieve with the band?

Eli – That’s a solid question. I don’t know if we’ve been particularly career-oriented as band or thought long term much in that way. And I kind of feel like that’s where we’re still at. All the stuff I already said, like we started playing with Mike and we didn’t think that much about the future. And then the album idea just sort of seemed to pop up. Now we have the album, so we’ve gotta play some more shows. But Josh really wants to play more, which has sort of been a shift. Some of it is because his kids are older. And you know, it’s just so damn fun. I don’t even know if we have any expectations about the band anymore. It’s not like we’re putting all this pressure on ourselves or trying to take over the world with an album. Whereas when we were younger, there were all these different expectations. Now because the album sort of came from a natural place, it seems like more the long term is just that the band is something we do and something we enjoy. And we enjoy each other. I think there are some things, like we’re playing the Aragon Ballroom. We’ve played almost every other indoor venue in Chicago, either headlining or opening for people. I always wondered if we’d open for someone at the Aragon. The Chicago Theatre is another one that would be neat. When we started the band, playing at the Metro was the be-all-end-all for us. And that became a place we played over and over again. I’d love to play a late-night talk show. That’s certainly something that I’ve always thought about. We played 120 Minutes on MTV and we’ve done some morning shows, but if we ever got to play a late-night show, that would be pretty cool. We’ve had our songs in some movies and that would be cool to do again or have a song be featured on a TV show, that would all be great. There are certainly some people that if we could ever share a bill with them, that would just be the best. Elvis Costello would be one for sure. His new album really blew me away. But yeah, I think that’s about it.

Want to win a pair of tickets to see Jawbreaker, Naked Raygun and The Smoking Popes this Sunday at Aragon Ballroom? Head over to our facebook page and tell us your favorite song from one of the bands (extra points for all three) and tag a friend you’d like to bring with you. Winner will be announced this Friday at 10am CDT!