Dead Boy Productions

 

08/24/08
Rev Dan & Dan Zig

Dead Boy Productions Interviews 12 Step Rebels

We’re standing here with Jacob from the 12 Step Rebels. We have been listening to 12 Step Rebels for awhile since 2002 or 2003 right around then you were really, really active 

Yeah we came out in 2000, spring of 2000 actually, and we toured with Mad Sin in 2003 

We were at that show at the Showcase. 

Damn, yeah, that was a fun show! 

So what kind of happened then? We were just talking about school… 

Yeah, I wanted to go to school I’ve got a year left a double major in politics and education I wanted to teach that’s my passion. I read political theory, educational theory. I love music, but I love that even more. I have my daughter and it worked out. Essentially we just got burnt out and the record label just didn’t go as planned. It was hard on us and there was a lot of stress. After about two years we had some inner turmoil with the band, not fighting really, but people getting mad at the way things turned out. I’m not really going to get into it. 

So it just didn’t work out… 

We loved it. I really just wanted to go to school. 

Did you ever take the band to be a serious full time thing? 

Oh yeah, that’s what we were going for and some things where we thought we were going one direction and we ended up not going that direction and 

So there was a point you just realized it wasn’t going to happen full time. 

Yeah and we got lucky we got a new drummer and we played a show in Albuquerque and it didn’t work out as much. He was a great drummer, but not really our style. We actually brought Mad Dog Chad in for another and brought Ian, our roadie in and we did a couple of shows, which was good, but it felt kind of weird and Nate has a new band called the Doomsayers with Pat and they live in Philadelphia and Delaware and now Pat’s our drummer. We’ve only rehearsed twice and we’ve played one show. This is our fourth time playing together. I think it sounds good. We can only improve. 

When did you decide “OK, let’s start playing again.”? 

Well with Chad it was maybe a year ago or so. We came out and did Dia de los Muertos I think. No it was Mad Monster Party. We did that one. So we came out and Jose (the promoter) asked us to do the show. We love playing in LA, but Chad decided he didn’t really want to do it anymore. We wanted to come out here and people already wanted to see us. We had been on the bill for about two months and we’ve never been one to cancel shows unless something serious happens so we thought we would do an acoustic set we’ll find a drummer we will do something. Nate found a drummer and here we are so…it’s last minute, but…. 

What are the plans now? Are you going to continue being a side thing? 

It’s a side thing always and forever. 

You can tell you want to be a teacher. 

Playing music is a whole other thing. I love the music. I love the fans. I love the interaction playing our music. Nothing can take that away from you. If we don’t do anything ever again...people have put on our record and had sex to it, danced to it, drove their car, listened to it when they got off work, listened to it when they were getting drunk, listened to it with their kids, listened to it so they could feel better. People tell me Ballad of Frankenstein’s Monster, sometime if the world is out to get them, they can connect to that song. Nothing can take that away from us; however, we’ve got some awesome songs. We are ready to go, the new ones we have been trying to record them for three years. We got Pat, we’re trying to go out to Philly this summer to do an EP and then next summer try to get the full length. We want to get something out now 

This one are you going to put out yourself or are you looking for somebody to do it for you? 

No, we’ve got distribution, we’ve got good distribution, in fact we don’t even know how many records we sold. We never got the amount. We just got a small distributor one guy out of his bedroom or whatever. He sold like 850 copies. He’s got a couple of hundred left we bought them off of him. Just that one small distributor, mom and pop, sold 850 copies. I mean we don’t even know. We sold a lot to make me feel good. We didn’t see a dime unfortunately. 

That sucks, but it must be an amazing feeling to go across country and see people singing your songs, so you know they were getting the album. 

Oh download it. Please get the music, I don’t care. Download it, copy from a friend, steal it, whatever you can. Yeah the music is important. 

That’s something we hear often, get it however you can. It doesn’t seem like you would really make a lot of money from selling albums anyway. 

No we probably would have made something to help us on tour. It’s more like an insult than anything. We never intended to get money or we would be doing a different thing. We just want people to have the music, so take it, steal it, do whatever you can. 

So you want to have something out this summer? 

Something out an EP maybe we are looking for something because people have been asking we said we were going to do it. We did it out of our house and whoever was doing it we didn’t really know what we were doing so we are going to do it in a studio, a better recording. The people who recorded Doomsayers, Pat and Nate’s new band, who are awesome, everybody go to their webpage and check out MySpace, but he’s going to record us so we’ll do that this summer hopefully. 

So all merch you have left, people can get it through you guys then. 

On our MySpace page there is links actually and people have it actually if you look on the Internet you can search shirts for sale, CDs for sale 

I think you can get stuff on Interpunk still. 

When it came out it was up to 42 or 47 for a couple of weeks, it was doing good. It was amazing to have people find our record. It’s such a weird thing, to have them spend their money from a crappy job to buy our record that’s amazing.