THE ERGS!

by Dan McClernon

The East Coast is once again enjoying a thriving Pop Punk scene, due in no small part to the bands involved in the scene and a dedication to the DIY ethic that accompanies them to every dingy bar or suburban basement they've been invited to play. The kings of this resurgence are New Jersey's The Ergs!, who play a stunning blend of Descendents melody and sincerity, Screeching Weasel's snottiness and Elvis Costello’s best Power Pop leanings. With one full-length LP, DorkRockCorkRod already released to critical acclaim and several EPs that sell out almost immediately, Upstairs/Downstairs [Dirtnap] is one of the most eagerly anticipated new records of 2007. The Ergs! have created a wave of excitement that's been unmatched in years, and whether it's tearing up the West Coast or being everyone's favorite band at the Fest in Gainesville this year, they leave a trail of sweaty fans in their path.

Under the Volcano: Can you please introduce yourselves to the readers of Under the Volcano, as well as what you do in the band?

Mike Yannich: I'm Mike, I "play" the drums and "sing" a bunch of the songs.

Joe Keller: I’m Joe. I play bass, and thankfully nothing else.

Jeff Schroeck: Jeff. Guitar and singing, and dancing.

UTV: How did you guys come up with the idea to form the Ergs? Were you each in different bands prior? And what the hell is an Erg exactly?

Mike Yannich: We'd all played together in some form or another for the bulk of our high school years. We were just kinda fooling around and doing some recordings. At some point we decided to “take it seriously” and start playing more shows and doing tours. It was around this time we started using the name the Ergs. Joe can field what it actually means. Joe?

Joe Keller: We had a bunch of horrible names and then settled on a somewhat less horrible name--The Ergs. I got the name from an appendix of one of my physics textbooks. An erg is a measurement of a unit of energy in the metric system. We later found out that an erg is an extremely minuscule amount of energy--like the energy a mosquito uses to flap its wings once.

Jeff Schroeck: Mike and I started playing in ‘95. Then Joe started playing with us in ‘97. Then I decided I didn’t want to play in a punk band and started doing other stuff. Then the next year I decided to not limit myself to drunken music anymore, and started doing songs with them two again.

UTV: You guys came along at a time when Pop Punk was kind of in the doldrums and suffering from a hangover of watered-down acts trying to ride the coattails of band such as Green Day, Screeching Weasel and The Queers. But it seems since you first began, Pop Punk is once again a force to be reckoned with. What do you attribute this change to?

Mike Yannich: I think Pop Punk is just back to having a very healthy underground scene right now. Every few years the right influences find the right bands, and a ton of great music is made. There are a lot of incredible bands out there right now. It’s really great to be a part of it.

Joe Keller: I don’t know if Pop Punk is a force to be reckoned with, but it looks like things have certainly gotten much better. In the last couple of years it seems as though there are a lot of good and promising bands in the subgenre springing up--Copyrights, Unlovables, Steinways, Teenage Bottlerocket, Team Stray, For Science to name a few. Sheesh, did I drop enough names? I feel like the Knock Knock Records message board run by Mark Enoch has helped a lot. Pop Punk bands there can get in touch with each other easily, promote, and set up tours. Aside from that, time killed the hangover, I suppose. People’s tastes go in cycles.

UTV: For a band that's only been around for a short time, you've been fairly prolific. Could you try and give a cohesive run-down of your various releases, as well as what might still be in print?

Mike Yannich: We started with F’n and Digital Endpoints, two demo quality CDR releases. Next up was 3 Guys,12 Eyes, our first 7". Then came the Ben Kweller EP CDEP. These are all out of print at this point. Next up, we did our full-length, DorkRockCorkRod. After that, we did a split 7" with Modern Machines and our country 7", Cotton Pickin' Pinute. These 7"s are out of print as well. We followed those with the Jersey’s Best Prancers 12"/CD. We did a 7" for the Art of the Underground label's singles club. This has gone out of print. We just finished up our new record and a couple new 7"s that should be out by summer.

Joe Keller: Short time, my ass! We just hit the seven year mark. We’ve been thinking about putting out a collection of all the out of print stuff. We might do that by the end of 2007 or so.

UTV: The first release that seemed to garner you the most attention was your first full-length, DorkRockCorkRod, which, in my opinion, is one of the best Pop Punk records ever. Going into the song writing process for this record, did you have any aspirations or beliefs that this record was going to be as good as it was, or at any time did you feel that something special was going on during the recording process?

Mike Yannich: We had no idea what that record would do. I think we just did a full-length because that was the next logical step. We'd already done a 7" and a CDEP. We did make sure that we had what we thought was a kickass collection of songs–-we didn’t rush into it. Anything we thought was lacking we left off.

Joe Keller: The songwriting for this album occurred over the span of about two years. We didn’t really think the album was going to be as big of a deal as it became. We had received mostly positive response from the other two “legit” releases we’d already done, but nothing that major. We sort of were just recording it for ourselves because the three of us had been playing music together for over five years and never done a full album.

UTV: The follow-up to DorkRock... was the Lifetime cover-art influenced Jersey's Best Prancers. Besides being extremely funny, what made you guys parody Lifetime? Are you fans of the band, or is it simply a New Jersey thing?

Mike Yannich: I remember having that title for a couple years, and once we recorded these songs we decided to use that name. We're fans of Lifetime, and thought it was funny. Thankfully, they thought so too.

Joe Keller: Lifetime’s a sacred cow in Jersey, so we had to parody them, of course. We’re fans, although none of us were around during their first go around. I had an “oh shit” moment when Dan Yemin came to one of our shows in Philly and saw the artwork while I was behind the merch table. I thought he was going to crush me with his 14" pythons, but he was really cool about it and flattered--he just wanted a copy of it.

UTV: The original run of Jersey's Best Prancers was limited to 100 copies on vinyl, while the CD has been made nationally available. While I'm all for collecting rare vinyl, it seemed strange to me that you would keep such a great record at such a limited amount of copies...though I see that it will soon be made available once again on vinyl through Don Giovanni.

Mike Yannich: The original pressing was supposed to be 500 copies. Due to circumstances beyond our control, only 100 ended up being pressed. We happened to be on a three month tour of the US when we got those records, so they were gone almost instantly. We talked to Don Giovanni about doing a CD to get it out to more people, and they decided to do it. The original label ended up doing a second pressing of the vinyl, but ran out of money for the covers, so Don Giovanni just bought those records and got covers made. This press should be out soon.

UTV: While the full-length and seven-song EP were released through Don Giovanni, your soon to be released sophomore LP, Upstairs/Downstairs will be released on one of my favorite labels to date, Dirtnap. How did working with Dirtnap come about?

Mike Yannich: We had a couple of dream labels for this new album and Dirtnap was one of them. We had been in loose talks with Dirtnap for a while and when we went through Portland on our last tour Ken [Cheppaikode, owner] came. He said, "We should talk sometime," and we said, "Yeah, we should… how about now?" The next day we went to Seattle to record the album, and brought it back to him the following week.

Joe Keller: Mike had experience working with Ken from his days in Dirt Bike Annie--and that experience was all positive. Dirtnap released their sophomore record, Show Us Your Demons. We’d been to his store [Green Noise] a few times and done mailorder with him. After I told him that Don Giovanni was re-releasing Jersey’s Best Prancers, he informed me that HE would have done that if he knew we’d be interested. So, we got into talking about doing the second full-length with him.

UTV: How do you think Upstairs/Downstairs will compare to DorkRockCorkRod? Can people expect any surprises or is it pretty much a natural progression since the Jersey's Best Prancers EP?

Mike Yannich: I think it’s a natural progression, for the most part. There are a couple curve balls on it. There’s a Country song on there, and the last song is an 18 minute psychedelic noise song, but it’s basically a Pop Punk album.

Joe Keller: I don’t know if people will like it as much as DorkRockCorkRod or not. It’s hard to predict things like that. It’s similar in many ways but also pretty different in others. It’s paced the same way DorkRockCorkRod and Jersey’s Best Prancers are paced--the faster, more Pop Punk-ish stuff is mostly on the first side, and the slightly more eclectic stuff is on side two. We did follow up on a lot of things we did on Jersey’s Best Prancers ; we continued to use Miranda Taylor from Hunchback on harmony vocals because she sounds good on Jersey’s Best Prancers, and we also added J. Nixon from Hunchback to sing some harmony as well. Like Mike said, there’s a really long psychedelic noise song at the end which is a new thing for us, but the people we’ve played it for seemed to enjoy it.

I think the songwriting, both lyrically and musically, is also slightly more developed. A couple of Mike’s new songs on it top the best stuff he had on DorkRockCorkRod. Jeff’s songs are the best he’s ever written for the band.

UTV: Upstairs/Downstairs has been highly anticipated due to massive praise put on the previous album and sometimes it seems in these cases that people can never be happy with the end result. If you experiment with your sound, they call you sellouts, if you stay the course and write a DorkRock... part two they say you got lazy. Do you feel any added pressure due to this, or are you of the belief you can't make everyone happy all the time?

Mike Yannich: I'm pretty nervous about it but we basically just did what we always did--made an album that we were proud of with songs that we like. That has always seemed to work for us.

Joe Keller: There’s a little bit of pressure, I suppose. I always want the latest thing we’re working on to be the best, and be perceived as the best thing we’ve done. On the other hand, it’s not like we’re the goddamn Beatles and the whole country is craning their necks over us wondering what our next move will be--we’re not a big band or anything, so it’s not a real high stake thing. Also, this band has always been pretty good about doing what it wants to do material-wise as opposed to what is expected of us. If we were so worried about Pop Punk fans not liking us, we’d have never done a Country-flavored EP, and I think that’s my favorite things we’ve produced...and people did like it. So, if we feel like we made the record we were trying to make and other people don’t like it because it’s too different or just not as good, it doesn’t bother us as much.

UTV: Now, in addition to the Ergs!, you three also moonlight as the backing band to one of my all-time favorite Pop Punk acts, the Parasites--or more accurately, Dave Parasite. How is it possible that one of my favorite bands presently has been called into the ranks by Dave Parasite?

Joe Keller: Mike met Dave while Mike was tour with the Unlovables. They stayed with Dave one night and Dave played them some demos of new songs he’d done. After that, Mike and Dave got to talking about an Erg-backed Parasites.

UTV: You guys also went on tour with playing as The Ergs!, and then following up as the Parasites. It's been sometime since the Parasites were a big name, so which band do you think got the bigger and better reaction? Does it become exhausting playing two sets a night, and in the case of the New York City show at Lit, Mikey Erg playing, what, an astounding four sets?

Mike Yannich: That Parasites tour was fun as shit. As far as reaction goes, both bands went over really well. I did notice that there wasn't too much overlap--the Parasites had their fans and we had ours. As for two sets a night, I'm pretty used to playing multiple sets a night, so it wasn't too much of a stretch for me. That New York show was one of the most fun nights I've ever had.

Joe Keller: I personally liked playing two sets in a row, but I don’t have to play the goddamn drums. The skin was totally worn away from my fingertips on my plucking hand by the end of the tour, and that’s never happened to me!

UTV: With the upcoming release of Upstairs/Downstairs, do you plan on going on a full-scale tour in support of it?

Joe Keller: The plan right now is to do a five week national tour with Lemuria, a great Indie/Punk band from Buffalo New York, in May right after the record comes out. We’re also doing a split 7” with Lemuria for the tour as well. That will be coming out on Whoa Oh Records.

UTV: And finally, the other day, New York City was filled with a horrible odor of natural gas and since no one can figure out where it was coming from, it appears us New Yorkers have chosen to blame New Jersey for it--while Jersey passes the blame right back at us. Jersey always seems to get a bad name from us New Yorkers, so what do you have to say in response to this incident? Is the Garden State to blame for the smell of rotten ass that filled Manhattan the other day?

Joe Keller: I can’t believe the last of all of these very well thought out and nicely articulated questions is “Who farted?” I have no clue as to who caused the offending odor. I do know that both New York and New Jersey are responsible for some pretty terrible aromas, and putting the blame on one side of the river is a shaky proposition at best.

Jeff Schroeck: Besides, Staten Island, NEW YORK is a big fucking landfill! X