Anti-FlagPunk rock icons, Anti-Flag, have been bringing their Silence Equals Violence Tour from one coast to the other for the last month or so, and if you haven’t gotten to a show, you need to! On the road with Sharptooth, The White Noise, and Stray From the Path, along with organizations with missions that align with their own passions, Anti-Flag is proving a concert can be about more than the music. It’s a community thing, and their shows provide that experience each night.
We had a chance to chat with Anti-Flag’s drummer, Pat Thetic. With topics ranging from human rights to drum gear to haberdashery, there really wasn’t much we didn’t cover. We hope you enjoy this lively conversation with one of the most down-to-earth and humble folks out in the scene today.
So, first of all, thank you so much for everything. I’ve been a fan of you guys for, like, a thousand years. So to be able to talk to you is, like, awesome. So the tour is the Silence Equals Violence Tour, and that’s a pretty bold name — which doesn’t surprise me, knowing you guys. Tell me more about the organizations that you’re partnering with to make sure this tour fits, like, every facet of that title.
Well, so, we have Amnesty International out, we have PETA out, we have Voices for the Innocent out, we have Love, Hope, Strength. Voices for the Innocent is a sexual violence organization that helps support people who have suffered sexual violence. PETA is obviously an animal rights organization. Amnesty International is a civil and human rights organization, and then Love, Hope, Strength is a bone marrow registry that helps people with blood cancers and blood diseases get matches with people who have the cells in their body who can help them fight these diseases.
That’s incredible. That is awesome.
So, yeah, so they’re all here tabling and getting people the information. Rock and roll is important — and it’s a very important thing — but there are other things in life that are important as well, and hopefully we can bring those two things together.
Well, I think it’s a really great partnership because with your passion for everything, and then these organizations’ passion for everything they do, no one’s going to walk away from a show without an underlying message, that’s for sure.
Well, hopefully they get their asses rocked off, too.
That’s what I’m looking forward to. I’ll see you guys in Pittsburgh, and I’m dying, I cannot wait.
It’s going to be a good time.
I can’t wait.
Yeah, the bands that we’re playing with are really awesome, so it’s been a lot of fun.
Yeah, so that’s the next thing I was going to say. This tour ticket is just packed with hardcore goodness, and that doesn’t always happen, where all the acts really make sense together. So, was that a conscious effort on you guys’ part, or did it kind of come together that way? How did that work?
Well, it always is hard to get everybody’s schedules to line up, but on this one we were very lucky with Stray From the Path. They’re from Long Island, New York; and we have Sharptooth and The White Noise, and all the bands are really great. They all have something interesting to say, and we’re really lucky that everybody was able to come together and make this tour happen.
Yeah, it seems like every single band on this tour ticket is the first I’ve seen in a while where it makes sense. Like, you guys all make sense together; it’s awesome.
I hope so. That was the goal.
I’ve heard good things. You guys always seem to be having so much fun doing what you do, and I know it’s work because, obviously, it’s your job. But, touring back-to-back, how in the world do you guys do it? Is there an Anti-Flag secret to staying fit and sane and making touring look as normal and as fun as you guys do?
Um, we have good people around us. We’re incredibly lucky we have the same people who have been with us for years and years and years, which makes it easy for us. But it’s — this is what we grew up doing. This is what we’ve wanted to do since we were young kids, so it’s — we’re incredibly lucky to be able to continue to do it, and people talk to us and they’re like, “Well, how are you able to find the energy to continue to do this?” and actually, I have more energy when we’re out here than I do at home because I meet amazing people who are doing interesting and exciting things every day. And when I’m at home, I just watch CNN and listen to shit radio and it’s depressing.
So when you get out in the world and you see people and you’re like, “Oh, I’m not alone on an island of horrible things.” We’re in it and people are battling these horrible things every day and there’s — and it may not get better, but there’s hope that things can get better because there’s good people working on it.
That’s probably one of the best messages I’ve ever heard is it may not get better, but there’s hope that it will. I like that.
Yeah. Yeah. I have no guarantees that anything’s going to get any better, but I’ve surrounded myself with people who are trying really hard. So, that’s an amazing place to be.
That’s half the battle, really, is who you surround yourself with. You know?
Yep. Absolutely.
I dig it. So you’ve been in the game for decades. So for you, what has been the biggest change in the music scene that you’ve seen, and is there anything that you miss about the good ol’ days?
The good ol’ days weren’t very good. And there’s really nothing that I miss – about the good ol’ days, I don’t know. I just think of how far we’ve come and what changes have happened. Obviously, we’ve got shitty things like Trump and things like that, but we have gay marriage, we have protection for people who smoke marijuana, you know. Things have gotten better in the last 25 years.
They have, yeah.
We still have the wars for empire, and that is a tragedy, but on the flip side, we’ve gotten some better — we have Obamacare. As much as everybody hates Obamacare, there are more people with healthcare now and less slaves to their jobs to get their healthcare than we’ve had in the past. So, there’s definitely a lot of work to be done, but there’s some good direction. I don’t know, I’m in an optimistic mood today, so — the glass is half full today.
No, I like it. That’s good. You know, and I think something that’s really important is the messages that you guys put out in your videos highlighting that some things are garbage, and that this happened, but these are statistics that show that it’s not, you know, not end of days quite yet. You know, and I think that’s important to remember.
Yeah, it’s absolutely — we probably are in end of days, I’m not going to argue that that’s not happening. But I think that, again, I’m on tour right now, and I’m seeing people fighting these battles and fighting for other people, which, you know, that’s an amazing thing that people are willing to take the time out of their lives to help other people who are not able to help themselves.
And it’s not just in — you know, we talk about the empathy of it, but it’s not — even if you’re a capitalist, if your neighbor is not in abject poverty, you are safer. If your neighbor doesn’t have diseases that he could share with you, you are better off. So, these things that are for people that go, “well, I don’t need to worry about the schools in my neighborhood,” well, if the kids aren’t going to school in your neighborhood, they’re going to be out buying guns and stealing from you.
If they go to school, and they can get a job that makes them happy and makes them feel good about their lives, they’re not going to be stealing from you. So, even being a pure capitalist, then helping other people around you makes your life much better.
Absolutely. And I liked how you said — you talk about being out here, out on the road, and seeing the people that are fighting these battles, because your fans are crazy about you guys. I mean, your fans are a passionate, passionate bunch.
I guess. They’re people that I like. Yeah, it is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. A “fan” for me is somebody, a mindless person that follows something and doesn’t question. And, hopefully we don’t have fans. Hopefully, we have people who are interested in the band and the music. Because I think Justin Bieber has fans, and I never want to do that to anybody.
I want people to be interested in it and be — and care about it, but I hope that they think critically about it, and if it’s shit, they tell us it’s shit, and if it’s good, they tell us it’s good.
So, how do you guys manage, then, to engage the people that are interested in you and have been since practically day one while also still appealing to new audiences who might now just be getting on board and learning about you guys?
I have no idea. I do know that we try and do things that we think are interesting. We try and do things that are — that we think are important, and we just believe that if we think they’re important to talk about that other people might be interested in them as well. And that’s all you can really do. You can buy Facebook friends, I guess, but unless you are creating something interesting that people care about, it doesn’t matter. So, that’s what we’ve always just tried to do is do things that we think are cool.
And you guys — like I said, you’re resonating. You know, the Anti-Flag message is needed now, I think, more than it has been in a long, long time. So, I think it’s important that you’re still around doing this.
Well, thank you very much. I hope so.
You’re welcome.
I wish that our message wasn’t important, and we would just ride off into the sunset, but it hasn’t been that case. It actually seems to be getting worse. Each year it seems to be getting worse. And even with Obama, people were like, “Oh, well, we have liberal leaning President, we’re okay, we don’t have to do anything,” but the reality is that Obama was still killing people with drones, Obama was deporting people and taking them from their homes and sending them to their — other countries because they were here, they didn’t have the right documentation or whatever. There was growth between the people who make all the money, and the people who don’t make any money was further and further even under Obama. So, none of these people have been able to find solutions and make it better for all of us.
Well, I selfishly would love the world to be better, but I’m glad that since it’s not we still have you guys out there stomping the ground for the good word, I guess. Anyway, the new album is quite literally everything I wanted it to be. I wrote a review for the magazine telling everybody how much I loved it.
Oh, thank you very much.
You’re quite welcome. What have you been hearing from people that you talk to as far as American Fall’s place in the Anti-Flag canon? Because that canon is deep.
People — actually, I’ve been surprised. People have told me that they — and obviously they’re going to tell you this — you know, but they said this is one of the records that they like more than a lot of the records that we’ve done lately. So that’s — it’s a weird thing because it’s like somebody saying they like your oldest child better than your youngest child or your youngest child better than your oldest child. It’s a little weird, but yeah, people are digging it, which is good. We want people to connect with it on some level and hopefully — that’s what they seem to be doing, so it’s good.
So, going to that then, lyrically the content right now is some of the strongest out there coming from you guys. Is there anything content-wise that’s happening in the world that you haven’t covered in a song that you would like to? I mean, every day there’s something new that pops up it seems like. So, is anything to come that you would like to see you guys talk about?
Well, so, it’s sort of a weird thing for a band like Anti-Flag, you would think that somebody like Trump would be easy for us to write songs and deal with, but where Anti-Flag is at its best is finding the space between what people assume to know or think or believe and the reality. And with Trump, he’s just such a caricature of an evil businessman, that there’s no real space between reality and impression because he’s a piece of shit and he looks like a piece of shit. So, it’s hard to find things that are interesting to say.
But on the last record, the song “Racist” I thought was a good choice because what this process with Trump has done is, it is called out people who we didn’t think were racist or who don’t think they’re racist. When you talk to them you realize that, oh yeah, they’re racist, too, and it’s sort of disheartening. But that was some space that we found between what people’s expectations of themselves are and the reality of what they are, and I’m a firm believer that we all have racist tendencies. It’s just part of the human condition is that there’s some people that you like and some people that you don’t like, and it’s the nature of it.
But being a human being also means that you fight against those inborn things that are in you because again it’s better for all us that we see each other as who we are and not just colors of skin or backgrounds. Because it’s not just colors of skins, it’s race, it’s religion, it’s gender, it’s everything. So, you have to be consciously checking yourself all the time and saying, “Am I treating this person the way that they should be treated or am I treating this person based on the stereotypes in my mind?” If you do that, you can walk a pretty good line, but if you don’t do that, you become a raging racist and nobody questions you about it.
Even if you don’t believe you are, you are. And so, that was one of the things that we wanted to talk about, and we found that on this record, yeah, it’s hard with Trump being such a piece of shit that there’s — not everybody knows he’s a piece of shit. If your grandmother can tell you that Trump’s a piece of shit, then there’s not much to say about it.
No. Even grandmas know, and that’s where we’re at.
Yeah. Which is unfortunate, but that’s the reality.
It is. So, you said you grew up in this band, and I know that just from following you guys forever, so what do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t in Anti-Flag?
I would be a haberdasher. (laughs) If you ever watched Spinal Tap, that’s — you should watch Spinal Tap, that’s a quote from Spinal Tap. (laughs) I don’t know what else we would do. We’ve been doing this our whole lives; this is what we’ve wanted to do since we were little kids, what we believed in, music and activism, since we were very young. I don’t really have a — we don’t have a fallback plan.
This is what we do, and this is the only thing we do.
I don’t think that you need one at this point. I think the fallback plan is just to keep doing what you’re doing.
Oh, we always need a fallback plan, so I think it’s going be living under a bridge, I think —
Or haberdashery. It’s always there for you.
That’s true. That’s true. It’s always there.
So, I’m always interested in what gear you’re playing with. So, what are you playing with, and is there anything out there that you’re giving sexy eyes to that you want to play with?
I am the antithesis of a gear guy. I don’t care about gear at all.
Awesome. I kind of love that about you, actually.
Stevie is out with us, and he makes my drums sound good. And that’s all I know. I hit them as hard as I can and as fast as I can. And that’s what happens. But I do play Pearl drums. I never really learned how to tune drums, so that drumkit sort of sounds good even if you don’t know how to tune them. I will tell you the other thing that is interesting about me.
If you want to talk gear, I can talk gear a little bit — I started playing Vater drumsticks. I got them at Pianos and Stuff when I was really young, and they were the cheapest stick because it was a new company, and they had really cheap sticks. I started playing Vater when I was 12 years old, and then I still play them, and they’re really expensive now. But I can’t get off of them. They’re the only stick that I’ve ever played, so I still use them. I don’t get them for free or anything; I have to pay for them, and they’re very expensive.
Well, I’m glad that you found sticks that work, and I’m glad you beat those drums as hard as you can because it’s working out. So, what are four words you would use to describe the band for someone that may not know quite what you do?
Four words. Leftist, punk, shitty music.
Oh man. You lost me at the shitty music part, but the rest of it I was with. I like it. So do you have any questions for me that I can answer?
My question is are you writing for yourself or are you writing for someone else?
I do it because I love it, and I publish it on the internet, so the world can see it under somebody else’s thing.
Awesome. Okay. So you write it, but you publish it under somebody else.
Yeah, kind of. I’m the managing editor at RockRevolt Magazine, so we publish it through there, and it gets all the way around the world because of that.
Awesome. Good.
Yes. Writing is my favorite thing besides music. So I get to do both, and it’s kind of awesome.
That’s great. And when you put it on the internet, everybody gets to see it, which is really great.
Yes. Yes. Which is cool because the internet is where everybody likes to spend their time, so it helps me out.
Yep. Well, again, going back to what is good about now versus 25 years ago, to get a show in Boise, Idaho, you had to write a letter and get a letter back from somebody. Now you just call their cell phone and text them, and the show happens. It’s a very different experience, which it’s obviously much easier and better now. I’m definitely not a “Oh you young whippersnappers have it so easy” or like that, it’s great.
I don’t want first and second class; I want everybody in first class.
See, that’s why I love you, that’s awesome. That was a good quote, that’s going to go in the byline right there. I like it. You already made it for me.
There you go. That’s awesome. I have — one of my struggles is that there are a lot of white dudes playing music, white men playing music, and we need to have more diversity within those voices, and as many people as we can get a lot of young men and women with different backgrounds need to be playing music. We can change that idea that only white boys can be rock stars.
Yeah. Where did that idea come from? That’s crap!
Yeah. I clearly benefited from it; I can’t deny it that I benefited from it, but I agree a lot. It’s definitely a privilege that I have and that the more voices that we have, hopefully more people have access to that and be able to be — play music or do whatever else they want to do, and be who they need to be.
I totally love that. Yeah, I agree, 100%. I think there definitely needs to be a little more diversity, especially across genders and racially for sure.
Yeah. Absolutely.
“Absolutely,” says Pat from Anti-Flag. So I don’t want to keep you, but I usually let the artist have the last word, so do you have anything that you would like to add that we haven’t covered? Or anything that you think is important that people need to know about whatever’s important to you?
I’m going to go back again — I mean, go back to the well of it’s better now than it was before. I just think about how many — well, I’ll say from my point of view — how many trans kids that I’ve met in the last year that I didn’t know were trans. The reality that they were there being — living the lives of somebody who they weren’t for years. And then people finally have been able to say, “Hey, this is how I want to be and I’m going to be — and I’m going to be who I am and not worry about it.”
That’s pretty awesome, and I think that that’s happened only in the last couple years, and that’s another example of how things are so much better now than they used to be.
If you feel like you’re not who you want to be, figure out a way to be who you want to be because you’re the only one who has to live your life, and you have to figure out how to do it the best way you can.
Man. You’ve got, like — you should write Hallmark cards. That’s what your backup plan is: Hallmark; and I’m going to totally back you on this.
(laughs) That’s what I’m going to use from now on. That’s what I’m going to tell people who ask me what I would do if I was not in the band. I’m going to write Hallmark cards.
Yes, please. Devon from Cleveland says that you should write Hallmark cards, yes. Awesome. Well, I am dying for the Pittsburgh show. Hopefully I get to say hello to you at the show somehow.
Yes. Please come up and say hello.
I will.
I’m the one who plays drums and has the funny hair. (laughs)
