[From the Ithaca Times] Anyone familiar with the history of the American underground of music, culture and politics will know the band Fugazi and the record label Dischord. Since 1987, the quartet has released a string of inimitable, groundbreaking records — all released by Dischord — and helped refine and strengthen philosophical concepts of Straight Edge and DIY as well as musical genres like post-hardcore and indie rock. Based out of Washington, D.C. and nominally lead by dual vocalists and guitarists Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat) and Guy Picciotto (Rites of Spring), the group defined a late ’80s/early ’90s zeitgeist of intellectual dissent — and they haven’t been matched since.
Behind it all, holding down half of the rhythm section with drummer Brendan Canty, was bassist Joe Lally. Quietly intense and articulate, Lally was there, anchoring Fugazi with his tense, propulsive bass lines. It’s hard to imagine the urgency of 13 Songs without his punk-funk playing, and we certainly wouldn’t want to.
Since Fugazi’s amicable hiatus several years ago, Lally, for the first time, has pursued a solo career. Staying with his Dischord family, Lally released two solo records, There To Here (2006) and Nothing is Underrated (2007). They’ve been released with relatively little fanfare, but as slices of minimal, dissonant rock, the records have made their mark. Lally has pursued other projects as well, including Ataxia, a collaboration with Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante.
Lally, a resident of Rome, Italy since 2006, still tours relentlessly, both abroad and here in the United States. For Lally, it’s always been about performing for the sake of performing. To see Lally in a setting such as No Radio Records — and to know the iconic history of the Fugazi and Lally’s place within it — is a rare treat indeed.
This Thursday, May 22, Lally will play at No Radio Records, joined by drummer Ricardo Lagomasino (Capillary Action) and guitarist Jonathan Morris. We recently spoke with Lally about his storied history with Fugazi, growing up in suburban Maryland, and playing music until he drops dead.
IT: Are the answers to those questions different now than they were 15 years ago?
Lally: Sure. I don’t pay a lot of attention to what is going on in contemporary [music], but it is different. There is just so much music now, that you can’t think of a way to get on stage and present music that someone else isn’t also doing on stage, right now, at this very time. It’s nice, but it’s also a glut of music, so people are much more choosy with regards to what they’ll bother to go out for. And I don’t know if it means as much as it used to.
IT: What do you think are the reasons for that? The Internet, or just time marching on, tastes diversifying?
Lally: Well, yes. When punk started, it was like, “Start your own band.” And I suppose everybody did. (Laughs) It’s just like everything else that rises and falls in cycles. With the Internet, people don’t have to try so hard to investigate bands. The way you find out about music now, compared to the way that I found out about music in the late ’70s and through the ’80s - it’s very different. The guy who works in a record store near you and remembers what else you bought from there - I don’t think that really happens anymore.
IT: When you were growing up, how much were you able to access other regional punk scenes, such as in Los Angeles, NYC or Chicago?
Lally: A lot of it is word of mouth more than anything. You would hear about a band in between other bands while you were at a show. I grew up in Rockville, Maryland, north of D.C., and my friend in high school turned me on to punk rock, and I would go to all of these shows with him. But I didn’t have that great of an understanding of the local scene, so I didn’t know about Ian’s band [Minor Threat], for example. I kind of found out about it as Brendan [Canty] and Guy [Picciotto] started playing music.
I was actually brought to the Bad Brains house that used to have shows in the city, and they didn’t even play that night. I didn’t see them again for probably a year, and it is so strange to think about. Had I actually seen them that one night, I would have been like, “What the hell is that? What is this?”
It took me longer to see a show and then go, “Oh, all of these people my age and younger who are seeing shows that I’m at, are also in bands and they’re putting out music.” I mean, that blew my mind when I figured it out. But it really did take me a couple of years to put it together of, “This is Dischord Records, and they work out of D.C., and they put together bands of teenagers.” That was pretty hard to comprehend at the time.
IT: You mentioned the cyclic nature of how music scenes coalesce and grow into significant communities and movements. Do you ever think there will be something on par with the Dischord scene of the late ’80s?
Lally: To me, it’s a matter of time, because it’s always been a matter of time for something to grow out of what is already going on. In D.C., punk scenes happened in ‘79 and ‘80, and then re-exploded again in ‘85. It’s always available to happen - that in another city, kids will get together and build a network and work together to make shows happen. It’s a really interesting thing for me to see what’s going to happen next.
IT: And you’re able to both watch what will happen next, and actively participate in that.
Lally: Because music is important to me - regardless of whether I’ve been in bands all along or not - it will keep meaning a lot, and I’ll keep following it. It’s just so important to go out and play, even though I have a 6-year-old and don’t go out past 10pm. (Laughs) It’s a very fortunate thing for me to have, to go through that experience, to be part of a local music family. I’ll always carry that with me, when I’m involved with a group of people watching music… Even when I was 10 or 11, I would go see R&B shows, like the Isley Brothers or the Jackson 5. Music was that important to me when I was young, and it slowly developed whether I liked it or not. Whether I am playing or watching, it’s about a gathering of people and not being stuck in the individual anymore, but being a group.
IT: Was the transition from non-musician to musician an organic one?
Lally: It depends on how you look at it. (Laughs) A friend and I had walked out of a Minor Threat show in ‘83, and he was like, “Ok, I’ll sing.” And I was like, “Ok, I’ll play bass.” (Laughs) And we literally went out and bought the equipment and immediately started to write and play. We would play shows at, like, some mother’s art opening in a hair salon. (Laughs) They were the weirdest places because no one else would give us a show. But we just played, because that was what going to see those bands did to us. It was: just go play, and you’re not going to complain about where. It was fantastic. So I quit my job to play in a band, and then I became a roadie and that was what changed my life.
IT: Because you were right there in the thick of things?
Lally: I was pretty serious about it. I was ready to do that forever. After the first tour, I came back and I was ready to find the second band and tour. They needed someone to go out, but Ian [MacKaye] asked me to play bass with him about after week I got back.
IT: And the rest is history.
Lally: In a way. (Laughs)
IT: Do you feel as though you’re still growing as a songwriter?
Lally: Totally. I still feel that I don’t know what I’m doing, to a certain degree. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write the way that I want to write. If I could construct songs where people can come in and improvise, and really make the songs come off and work - that would be incredible.
I realize that I have a lot of tools that are necessary, but I do feel that when Fugazi decided not to play, that someone had stolen the toolbox. I just need to keep trying, to not second-guess that I can do it, but get to the thing that I’m imagining.
IT: What is your general approach to songwriting? Do you write the bass line first, and then flesh the rest of the song out after that?
Lally: Well, the weird thing is that Fugazi - unlike most bands - started by writing all of the music, and then singing over it, trying to find and create space. Fugazi did that, always.
But then I found that when I started writing songs by myself, that there were a lot of melodic lines that were first coming vocally. At first, I was like, “What do you do with that?” (Laughs) I really didn’t understand how to put bass to it. But it does happen both ways, too, and many times it’s the other way around.
IT: Did you ever get a feeling that your identity as a member of Fugazi is inextricable from your identity as a solo artist?
Lally: I know that it establishes itself, because I had to watch Ian go through it when Fugazi began. It was “Minor Threat this, and Minor Threat that.” And with Brendan and Guy as well, all they heard about was their previous bands. But eventually that dies away. You can’t pay attention to that stuff. What you’re pursuing is writing a song, and then going out and playing it. It really has nothing to do with anything else.
It’s even more than that - it’s about sharing space with people. It’s constructing a vehicle to go outside of everything that we normally know and occupy in our minds. It’s a different kind of communication. And whether it’s something that I write musically or lyrically, people will come up to me and say how important it was to them. And I always say, “Well, you know what that means - that means that you have to do it now. Because that’s what I once to said to someone else, and now you’re saying it to me.” It’s eternal.
IT: That feedback loop is really important when creating and sustaining a music community. Have you found that there are younger generations of Fugazi fans?
Lally: Oh, sure. There are so many people that I’m meeting now, that missed us play. Yes, I’m that old. (Laughs) But it really is an honor.
IT: With your first two solo records, did you always know you wanted them on Dischord?
Lally: Oh, I knew that I wanted them to be on there, but I honestly didn’t know if they would end up on there. Ian had to listen to it first. I really didn’t expect to be treated any differently. Ian is my best friend, but I really didn’t want to put him in the position of, “Oh, on top of everything else, I have to put out your record, too!” (Laughs) … If there’s any record label that means a lot to me today, it’s Dischord. It was a house that I was able to record in, sleep in, and live in for nine years, so it was very appealing to come back to it and make a new recording.
IT: Reflecting back upon your career, is there anything that surprises you or blows you away?
Lally: The whole thing has been a surprise. It’s hard to believe that I was in the situation that I was in, listening to music in the ’70s and thinking that I could never really be in a band - and then ending up in one, and making some kind of mark on people. It is a bit hard to comprehend. It’s like I’m in a dream.
Joe Lally will perform at No Radio Records this Thursday, April 22 at 8pm.