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Thursday, 18 December 2008 10:54
Have Heart

Have Heart... what am i supposed to say? I love this band. period. Therefore, I'm very happy that Patrick Flynn had some time to do this interview, even after a show and a tiring 15-hour-drive.   We talked about the two records, the deeper meaning of the lyrics and a lot more, so please read the interview, even if it's a little longer than usual.

www.myspace.com/haveheart

“Songs to scream at the sun” has been out for about half a year. Are you still satisfied with it? 

 
Totally, we’re really surprised. Even before it came out we played some songs in Australia on a tour. And we had some songs on our myspace, and those songs have been going over very well. And when it came out, we did a US tour. And it went over reallywell. Lot of people said some nice things about how they feel about the record, which makes us feel better, but we wrote the record we wanted to. It’s not as “action-packed” as “the things we carry”. It’s different. There is still “action” but it’s harnessed in a different way. That’s probably due to the fact, that the mood and the lyrical content are a lot different from the last record.

Have the reactions of the people been any different, compared to “the things we carry”?

Not really. Every time we come back we always think that people are kind of sick of us. But we are always surprised by the response. And we are very grateful for that. You caught me at a very interesting time in Have Heart. It is the last tour we are doing, after 9 months of touring. We tour in cycles, we tour May to January or end of December. So, I’m very tired. We’ve played the songs about 200 times. I’m very very grateful, and it’s interesting, it gets better every time we play these songs. But now, we need to take a break for three, four months. Then, we gonna do a weeklong tour on the west coast and a week on the east coast, then another tour from May to October. But I’m definitely in need a break right now.

 
“songs to scream” is a more personal record. Is it more difficult, or do you feel uncomfortable writing and singing about more personal stuff like you do on the new record

 
Definitely, it’s kind of weird. I’ve always just kind of written just whatever is on my mind, even when I was a little kid. Even when I was younger, when I was 15 I wrote some serious things, for other bands. When I was writing this record, I was going through kind of a turning point in my life. A lot of things have changed in the last two years. Looking back, it’s very personal, and I didn’t really think too much about what people gonna think, because I knew I was happy. Of course I think about what people will think about this, it crossed my mind, but I didn’t really grasp it. It’s been kind of weird, hearing people scream such personal things. But on the same token, a lot of people have written to me, saying it has been very therapeutic for them, because not many people have found something they can really relate to. I remember being young, nothing spoke to me and I got into music and it was really therapeutic for me, it helped me stay away from other forms of therapy. So that makes it all worth it. It has been a little alienating. We had a 7” called “You can’t go home again”, which is taken from a book by Thomas Wolfe, about a guy who writes a book about his family and his town, and the book gets really famous and it alienates everyone in the town. I thought it would be kind of appropriate to attach to the record.



Many pictures in the booklet of the new record were taken by someone from the band. How important is the artwork for you, and is there a deeper meaning behind the new cover?

 
It’s very important, because I’m writing about important things. I know how attached you can become when you get a record and how attached you can be to just the font of the lyric in the booklet. So, that stuff is important to me, so I was very controlling about that and I hadn’t want some random image that had nothing to do with what I was talking about. I took all the pictures except one of them and every picture is really associated with a song in some way or another. On “the things we carry” the pictures are very important, the artwork and the coverartwork. The picture for the new cover is very important, too. Not many people liked it; a lot of people were like “aw that’s weird”. It is not traditional, but on the same token, when we had the artwork for “the things we carry”, we had a very heavy Youth Crew fanbase and we had this artwork that was sunset with birds, very pretty looking. People didn’t really like it that much. Quiet frankly, we don’t care. That’s totally fine. It’s not unexpected. I don’t know if we are going to write another record, we really set out only to do 2 records, we didn’t even think we were going to write a second LP. But if we were to brake up, we would have a good Yin and Yang: an illustration and then a live picture. And that was important to me, just in case someone died or we decided to break up or something like that. It’s a good balance and the picture goes hand in hand with the image in my mind of what the time in my life was like. It’s a picture of a young young kid. That’s just how I often see myself, someone who can’t break out of this “Peter Pan” role. The kid in the picture says something to me, there is something wrong about it, but at the same time, the grass is green, the sky is blue and everything seems like it’s supposed to be perfect. Yet it’s not. And that just hit the nail on the head for me. The colour scheme is very bright and lively, yet the lyrics are very dark. So it creates an interesting juxtaposition. People say that it doesn’t fit, but to me, it not fitting fits. Because everything on our last record fit very well, but this record it doesn’t really fit and that for me is a part of fitting. It’s very complicated, but that’s how life is sometimes, the things that don’t work out, that’s just part of life and we wanted to be natural and honest about it. We weren’t trying to be cool or special or do something different. It made sense to me.

“The things we carry” was more obviously a political record, on “songs to scream” the songs that stick out with a more apparent political message are “the same son” and “the same sun”. Could you say some more words about these two songs?

Those two songs are like one and the same. I don’t really separate them, it’s like part A and part B. I tied these two together, that’s how I approached writing them. I didn’t really intend on it. The record is kind of a story about the prodigal son who comes back. My story is unfinished. But some of the record is about leaving home and what went on in the mind of the prodigal son, which is me. I grew up roman-catholic in an Irish family. I’m not really a practicing Christian but biblical references often find their way in how I write. It’s not much political. It is and it isn’t. The whole record is about me. All the songs are about me and the last one is about somebody else. The first song, I started writing about things that I’m not so happy about and things I like to change. I found myself thinking about that man I used to run by, he used to sleep on a bench late at night, often in the winter. And many times I just ran by him and one time we had a short conversation. It wasn’t very profound or something. Nothing much was really said, but it impacted me. Not that I was a complete ignorant and selfish person that doesn’t care about the homeless, but I found myself kind of lost in slowly moving with the rest, forgetting that there is a whole world suffering, kind of forgetting that I’m really a small person in this world. You walk these streets and see all these people and their life does mean nothing to you and your life means nothing to them. So, “the same sun” is really about what that man said to me in my head and the whole conversations impact. If you pay attention to quotation marks in our records that’s usually someone else talking to me. It’s like the voice of someone else. That song is someone else speaking. It’s really only about taking a moment to appreciate what you have in your life and considering the fact that you are really small. I’m not really trying to say “Save the world”. I hope people didn’t get that cheesy, insincere message. I really meant what I said but I’m not saying: “Go save the world! Your sisters are starving!” It’s just about a personal revolution, denying the flow of mainstream society, especially in the United States, it’s something I call an American Hell; Constant living for yourself, you can see how people are living their lives; it’s just such a waste, and it was kind how I felt, where I was going in my life. The conversation with the man messed around with my brain.

One word that is very popular in hardcore lyrics is “Unbreakable”. What does being unbreakable mean?

That song wasn’t originally called that. All the titles on “the things we carry” were actually called something else. “Watch me sink” was originally called “my American hell”, “Watch me rise” was originally called “for miles and miles”. I forgot what “the unbreakable” was originally called. I wanted to have a good interaction between the songs and the people. I know what you mean; it’s kind of a trendy word. It’s a strong word. I was young when I wrote this song too. But I’m happy with it. Some kids kind of loose the message because of the name of the song, though.

Would you say that literature is an influence for your lyrics?

It’s really really important. The best things in life are always influenced by great things, in my opinion. There are some wonderful things that come out of nowhere, but they don’t never actually come out of nowhere, there is something you see or some action that somebody writes about. I read a lot. E.E. Cummings is one of my favourite poets. He has a very beautiful way with words, his aesthetic is awesome. But writing songs, writing stories or poems are completely different things. Words can be very beautiful thing and I think E.E. Cummings has a very beautiful way of putting words together. He can make a sentence look like a painting.

My father is an AP Latin and English teacher in High School, so there is Literature, Shakespeare all over the house I grew up. My father quoted Shakespeare all the time, so literature is a big part of my upbringing and it kind of seeps its way into songwriting, but my songwriting is very different, because you are writing to music. I want to write what I want to say and it’s a very complicated thing for me to do. I spent hours not just on the content but making it work musically, for hardcore, trying to keep it exciting…

What is the book that has impressed you the most recently? JD mentioned Cormac McCarthy a few minutes ago… 


My father told me about Cormac McCarthy. He said he was the finest American writer that there is and there will not be a better one for a long time. My father was a big fan of him, of his book “All the pretty horses”, which I’m reading right now. The Coen Brothers made a movie, “No country for old men”, which was great and it really brought Cormac McCarthy to the mainstream. Then, “the road” came out. I think it’s a great book. It’s very easy; I think it is the best first Cormac McCarthy book that someone should read, because it is so beautifully put. His other books are little bit more complex. I noticed, not many females like Cormac McCarthy. A friend of mine told me that “stream of consciousness” writers as William Faulkner or McCarthy only hit the male audience. It’s kind of disappointing, but I can understand that. A lot of the themes McCarthy writes about, father and son or the trials of young men in America, make sense as he is drawing from his experience.

Dennis Lehane, a writer from Boston. A lot of his books have been made into movies, such as “MysticRiver”, “Gone Baby Gone”. Those are interesting because he has a really firm grasp on Boston and the Massachusetts culture. Watching the movie, felt like a family gathering, my uncles and aunts yelling at each other. Dennis Lehane is a good modern day writer. He is influential for me, as he writes about Boston and I’m interested in writing about my time in Boston and whatnot…

Thomas Wolfe wrote “You can’t go home again”, which is the name of the 7 inch. I was contemplating changing the title, because I don’t like directly taking something, but it just hit the nail on the head and it was only a very small pressing of two songs.

So yes, literature is very important for my writing, I have used direct lines from E.E. Cummings poems in two of our songs. He just nails it.

The documentary “American Hardcore” points out that hardcore came up in the Reagan-years as a form of protest against the ideas of society he built. Now that the “Bush-years” have almost ended, would you say hardcore has changed within the last 8 years?

Yeah, in a very subconscious way. What the Bush administration has done, was that it was so uninvolved with the youth, so untrusting, so that it caused a lot of people to seem very confused. People aren’t writing about it directly, about the war in Afghanistan or such political issues, because we are kind of kept in the dark about it and it’s really hard to understand. But I think the Reagan Administration and the Bush Administration were two very different administrations. The Reagan Administration had a real stranglehold on youth activities, their war on drugs and how that was administered. The last 8 years have definitely an effect, but not in a way that you have a lot of bands called “Bush Youth” or “Bush Squad” or whatever. You have a lot of slogans but not a lot of answers.

Barack Obama is the new President-elect. And people compare him to JFK and have high hopes, especially young people. Do you think that he justifies all these expectations? 


For young people it’s very important. Here’s the main things, I think a president should do. He should be able to connect with the youth, connect with the working class, connect with the affluent and connect with the other political parties all over the country. On top of that he should be well spoken. And I think Barack Obama does all of that. Will he change everything? No, absolutely not and I don’t expect anything to dramatically change, but I think he is great for internal issues of the country like race-relations. In the States there are so many issues involving race, there is tension. It’s not like we hate other races or other nationalities or ethnicities, but there is tension because there are different cultures coming together and it’s unfortunate that America sometimes gets a bad name for incidents that happen. Not that it is ok, but it should be understood that this is a country coming together, trying to make things work. And there is always going to be a resistance to that, but regardless of that, having an American-African president is so crucial to the progress of race relations in America.

He is connected with the youth as I have never seen a president. I have never seen, like Boston hipsters riding their bike, wearing a shirt of the president. It’s so unheard of, it doesn’t make sense, the hipsters in the city, the college kids are supposed to be against that, but these kids are really proud of their country’s decision. And I think that’s great.

I think it’s very important, I’m not saying I’m buying every slogan, but he is very well spoken and he has been able to connect with the country and I don’t think the country is gonna become divided or polarized. On top of everything that, he is excellent for the world view, which makes it a lot easier for me. When I go around, I don’t feel like I’m hated anymore because of my president. I always felt embarrassed coming over to any country because of George Bush, because he is your “flag”. Your president is who represents you, and it seems like the whole world is in love with Obama, and it seems the world is pretty happy about the progress the US has made. 

Another topic: The financial crisis has hit the economy all over the world. Suddenly, there are doubts about the endless growth of the world economies and people lose a lot of money or even their jobs. What do you think about this development? 

It’s interesting because gas went down to the lowest it has ever been in the last 6 years, which helped us touring. I think it’s cyclical and that kind of thing is gonna happen no matter what. It’s just the perfect example, sometimes we forget our history. How we manage money and how we direct people, organize people, helping the clients with money, needs a less greedy mindset towards money. I think it’s a reminder. I don’t think it’s the end of the world, it is nowhere near the depression of 1929, but it will have serious ramifications and will eventually trickle down and affect the lower class of the world, which is unfortunate because it’s all in the hands of the rich who stay rich no matter what the recession is. It’s a reminder that human beings are so fucking greedy and not so perfect just yet. 

Many bands break up after a couple of years. How long do you think you can keep up being in a hardcore band? 


Joe Strummer would say: “the future is unwritten”. You never know. When we started, we set out to write a demo to play around Massachusetts, but then we wrote a 7” and that was cool, then we wrote a record and said “ah, that’s cool” and then we wrote a second one, but in between, I was always like, if we break up tomorrow, that’s fine, to make sure I appreciate it. The future, one thing is for sure, we are not going to be around in 5 years. We are not that band that’s gonna stick around. We believe in supporting a LP for two years, that’s proper time of support. We might write another record or we might not, but one thing is for sure we’ll definitely write a 7” kind of thing with like 4 new songs. I still feel I have something to say, so the band is not going away. We’ve done a lot, and I’m very grateful for that. Sometimes I feel like I want to have a sign and hold it up, it just says “I don’t take this for granted” and just hold it up while we play, just so people can take pictures of me and so when I’m older I can remember and make sure that I didn’t take this for granted. I have gotten tired but we make the most of what we’ve been able to do and I’m very happy and very proud of that. It hasn’t been meaningless. It helped me experience life in an interesting way.