LAGWAGON INTERVIEW.
Posted by Jen on 30.04.2007, 13:17
Lagwagon have just finished month-long tour of Europe. They were busy playing a number of dates in the UK over the past few weeks, and I was lucky enough to catch up with Bassist Jesse Buglione, backstage at the Mean Fiddler in London an hour before their set. Whilst a handful of decidedly random support bands, mostly with odd fashion haircuts, played away downstairs.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, how is the tour going so far?
Pretty good, we’ve played some really cool smaller shows. We’re going all over Europe so its great fun, but it finishes up soon, we have about two and a half weeks to go.
I’ve heard that at the Birmingham show on the opening night of the tour, you guys played a random set with mostly old songs, was there any reason for this?
Kind of because its gotten to the point where we’ve got nine albums so we usually try and play a lot of crowd-pleasers. A lot of the songs we’ve been playing for years and years, so now hopefully were playing songs people have never seen us do and also songs that they’ve never heard before.
Other than Me First and the Gimme Gimme’s, are there any other bands any of you are working on?
As Bad Astronaut kind of aren’t around anymore.. There’s Afterburner . It’s just recording, we’re not going to play live. Everyone has cool little side projects, its something we tend to just play around with.
Whats your opinion on punk label Epitaph signing hip-hop acts?
I didn’t know they were..
Yeah, they’ve signed Atmosphere, Sage Francis, Eyedea & Abilities..
..They shouldn’t be limiting themselves in any way, I think its great. Whether they are playing hip-hop or punk I definately don’t think its a bad thing.
There have been no package tours over in the UK since around 1998 when you played with the Bouncing Souls and Avail. Is there a reason for this?
I dont think theres nessisarily a reason. We should really get one together.
Do they still have them often over in the states?
Theres definitely a lot of bands that do package tours, maybe 6 or 7 bands, but still there hasn’t been anything happening for a while.
What do you think of the Warped Tour recieving corporate sponsorship and the consequence of smaller bands having to pay to get on the bill..
As for smaller bands having to pay its pretty bad because the Warped Tour was all about getting smaller bands on the road to play these shows. As for corporate sponsorship, in a way it allows more to happen, more bands to get on the bill and they can put on a lot more shows, then at the same time the tickets cost twice as much as they used to. We haven’t done the Warped Tour in about 4 years and I don’t think we’ll ever play it again.
The boys followed up the interview with an amazing show, playing both new and old songs to an obviously adoring crowd. They finished off their European tour at the Groezrock festival in Belgium this weekend.
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