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College Tribune | 3rd March 2009
MUSIC
Giving It All Tim McIlrath, frontman of Illinois punk rockers Rise Against, chats to Jim Scully about the group’s enthusiasm for touring, how mainstream popularity hasn’t compromised the band’s message, and how they remain as committed to the cause now as they were when they formed ten years ago.
In 1974, three young men from the Queens, New York City, started something that would change music forever. They presented a whole new sound, a sound that would bear influence for generations to come, for artists of all disciplines. In 2009, thirty five years after the birth of the Ramones, we can look back on the movement they spawned and where it has brought us today. We have seen bands like the Ramones carry punk from its humble beginnings in the late Sixties, through the revolutionary Seventies with bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash, on to the Eighties hardcore scene of Black Flag and Bad Brains, and from there to the Nineties where we found the groups that helped shape punk as we know it today. Bad Religion, Rancid and Nofx have all played a major role, both directly, and indirectly, in pushing punk rock forward to where it is today. One group who would share this view is Chicago’s Rise Against, whose roots are firmly planted in the hardcore punk scene – but of course, given that Fat Mike of Nofx was the one responsible for giving them their first record deal, through his own Fat Wreck Chords. Over a shaky telephone line from somewhere in Eu-
rope, lead singer Tim McIlrath says, “We owe a lot to Fat Mike, and Fat Wreck Chords, for adopting us in their family, just really cultivating our career, and being there for us in lots of different ways” Rise Against have come a long way from their first release on Fat Wreck Chords, 2001’s The Unraveling. Their latest installment, Appeal to Reason opened at #3 on the billboard 200 in the US, and on the back of this they have done what Rise Against always do: take to the road, and don’t turn off it for a long time. After they made their way across the US with old hometown friends Alkaline Trio, along with Thrice and The Gaslight Anthem, they found themselves venturing across Europe and the UK, stopping only to squeeze in a blisteringly energetic, sold-out Irish date. With a tour alongside punk icons Rancid on the horizon, the band aren’t slowing down anytime soon. However, Tim McIlrath is quick to point out that the band didn’t always enjoy such successful tours. “It’s been a long haul but it’s been definitely worth it and it constantly amazes us all, especially now. We’re here in Germany, now we’re headlining clubs we used to open, it puts
it all into perspective, when we think back to the time when kids were throwing shit at you cause they hated your band”. The band seems to live for the road, using each stage as a stepping stone to their next destination. The Chicago native seems unphased by the rigorous amounts of touring that lie ahead,” this year has been the most enjoyable year to be in Rise Against, in the States our tour with Alkaline Trio, Thrice and The Gaslight Anthem, that was an incredible tour for us and everyone else and now we’re here in Germany with Strike Anywhere, going to the UK with Anti Flag, and then Australia with the International Noise Conspiracy. We will then go back to the States with Rancid and The Riverboat Gamblers, so we’ve managed to get on the road with so many amazing bands that we’re legitimately proud to share the stage with”. Success of this stature was not something that the band themselves expected to ever achieve, and McIlrath himself would be the first to admit it. “It’s pretty overwhelming as you can imagine, we’re just kind of four kids that came out of the hardcore punk scene, and we just started opening for some of our favour-
ite bands, plugging along, playing shows, and accumulated fans along the way”. So how do four kids from the punk scene reach such heights? What exactly was it that made Rise Against the one band that rose above the rest? “I don’t know what to attribute our success to, I think about it a lot, I think that the hard work and the work ethic we have certainly helps, I’d say there’s a lot of luck involved. Right time, right place. There’s a lot of our punk rock family that helped us out, Fat Wreck chords, Fat Mike who signed us when we were young, and all his bands like Sick Of It All, The Mad Caddies, Strung Out, No Use For a Name, they all took us out on tour with them. We had a lot of help from our older brothers in punk rock”. Even though the band was surrounded with all this help and support, they still decided to move on from Fat Wreck Chords, but as with anything they do it wasn’t an easy choice for the band to make. “Every
single decision we make with this band we consider very seriously, we consider how we feel about it, how we’ll sleep at night, how it’ll affect the reputation of the band, we take all of that very seriously.” The affect on that very reputation seemed to be something the band was concerned about while with Fat Wreck Chords, and in the end was the decisive factor in leaving the label. “One of the obvious downsides to that [being signed to Fat], was we got stigmatised to being with Fat, Fat for all extensive purposes has an established sound, we were lumped in with a lot of bands that, as much as we love them, we didn’t sound like them, people would see the Fat logo on our record, and think ‘oh this must be the new Lagwagon, or No Use For A Name junior’. And we got really stigmatised in the whole punk scene, so we weren’t taken very seriously by the hardcore scene”. This led to the band leaving Fat Wreck Chords and signing with
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