Legendary American punk rockers The Descendents are celebrating their new album Hypercaffium Spazzinate with a February 2017 Australian tour. We had the honour if talking with vocalist Milo Aukerman about the new album and Aussie tour.

SCENEzine
Looking back on 2016 do you have any favourite moments?

Milo Aukerman
Making the new record was such an exciting thing for us. We hadn’t made a record in so many years and we had such an enjoyable approach to doing it. For example when I recorded the vocals Bill flew out here to my town and we just did it in the basement of this house I was renting. So we just had fun hanging out together an doing the vocals. There was so stress or pressure and we had a lot of great songs. I look back at the whole experience as being one of favourite recoding experiences we’ve ever had. That was definitely the highlight for me making that record it was a culmination of several years of putting songs together, trading songs back and forth with the band and having it all come together was great.

SCENEzine
The world lost a lot of influential musicians in 2016. Do you ever take a moment to think about your life and how many people you’ve inspired and the legacy Descendents will leave behind?

Milo Aukerman
Yeah well we are no spring chickens so now you see these people dropping like flies and it’s like oh no. Someone like David Bowie dying you just kind of go wow he was such an icon and legend. It makes me think we still have so much more that we want to do with music. On a personal level its like stay healthy, stay healthy. The last ting I want to do is not get my creative side fulfilled. I’m using death as a call to us to keep at it. To keep grabbing for that illusive song that we haven’t written yet. he perfect song is still out there somewhere and we have to write it. So that’s part of it for me we just have to make sure we reach our full potential as a band.

SCENEzine
Can you tell us a bit about how the album title Hypercaffium Spazzinate relates to a new coffee concoction?

Milo Aukerman
Yeah I was working at DuPont and I thought we should make a version of caffeine that’s more potent. So I tinkered around a little bit in my laboratory and came up with this fusion of chemical X with caffeine. It’s all documented in the record so I won’t give you all the boring chemical details but I created this compound called Hypercaffium Spazzinate and it is in fact more potent than caffeine. So as the caffeine band that we are we were pretty jazzed to discover it.

SCENEzine
After such a huge gap in years between albums was this an album that may not of ever been made?

Milo Aukerman
Well it might not of been made if someone had of died in the band and Bill came pretty close. He’s had a lot of health problems but he came out the other end of it being even stronger than he was before. Once we started touring in 2010 within the first 6 to 12 months of touring it started to become a viable thing like we can record. I started bringing in songs and they always had songs so once the songs started to emerge it became something that we wanted to get done. Nothing was going to stop us doing it other than someone dying. These things take time too it took us a few years mainly because everyone’s got their own families. Also we had to do it more long distance we were sending the files back and forth so it takes a while to get everyone on the same page and get the studio time. So that’s probably why it took a few years that way but it was going to happen.

SCENEzine
One of our favourite tracks on the album is “On Paper”. Is there much of a story behind that song?

Milo Aukerman
Karl wrote that and he was referring to the notion that you view yourself as a bit of a charlatan. I relate to it personally as there’s this thing called imposter syndrome. It happens a lot especially to people in science I related to it as I was in science and felt that way. It’s where you feel like you don’t belong with a group of people and your not good enough to be with them.
It’s not rooted in any kind of reality it’s because of the expectations of society. I never behaved that much like I was a scientist while I was a scientist that’s probably why I ended up with imposter syndrome. That’s how I view that song it’s like you spend a lot of time trying to figure out if you belong in a certain environment. If you don’t that’s where the on paper comes in like you may look good on paper but you feel someone’s going to find you out like the emperors got no clothes basically.

 

SCENEzine
Do you thing it’s funny that in the end you chose music over science when growing up a lot of kids would be told that music isn’t a real job?

Milo Aukerman
Yeah the irony runs very deep. It took me a long time to figure that out. Even just a few years ago I was saying this music thing is great but I need to have my science as my back up.
I had it backwards it turned out music was the stable choice and science was an unstable thing. That’s something I didn’t figure out until fairly recently. Basically when I got laid off from my science gig I had the music to fall back on. Everyone talks about having something stable to fall back on who would of thought music was a stable thing that I had to fall back on.
It’s a source of humour for me now because it’s like who would of thought that was the case.

SCENEzine
There’s a really nice moment at the end of the record with “beyond the music” that talks about the unity of the band. When you push the music aside is at just about how cool it is sharing these life experiences with your best friends?

Milo Aukerman
Yeah Bill and I we’ve been friends since high school. It’s funny in high school we were acquaintances until I joined the band. When I joined the band the friendship deepened and deepened through the years. Of course nothing brings friends together like tragedy and he had all those health problems that he went through that only made us that much closer as friends.
He wrote that song because he wanted to document what we have as a band. What we have as a band is we are a family. He didn’t really have his own family it was messed up so he didn’t consider it a family. So the band is his family and that’s where that song comes out of. That’s kind of how we’ve been able to persist as a band is to treat the band as our little sanctuary.
To treat it as our family and brotherhood it’s been so much more important to treat it that way. There’s so many ways you could view a band. A way to make money, get chicks or a way to create. All those things take a back seat to the fact that it’s really our family and that’s why we do it. That’s why we have been able to persist for so many years, it means that much to us.

 

SCENEzine
Are you guys all excited for the Australian tour?

Milo Aukerman
Yeah this is the third time. We went down in 2010 and I think in 2013. I’ve had my various challenges when I go down there with my voice. The first time I went down there I lost my in Brisbane. This time around I’m really trying to step up in terms of getting ready. We just came back from South America I played several shows in a row back to back shows so that’s a good preparation for me. That’s been the main thing how to prepare for what I have to do improving on how on how I rehearse. I try to rehearse now in a way that more closely parallels the on stage experience. I feel a lot better and more confident this time around to give a good show staying robust throughout the whole thing. I want to do it right.

SCENEzine
Is there anything you’d like to do in Australia besides play shows?

Milo Aukerman
I’d love to go to some beaches. That’s always been the hard thing we are on these schedules where it’s like show, next show then next show. I would love to hit some Australian beaches like Bondi I would love to check something like that out. I grew up on the beach so it’s always good to see other places like that. Last couple of times we were there we did a variety of sight seeing but one thing that’s always eluded us is to just hang out at the beach. I’d love to go out and surf a little bit.

SCENEzine
With older songs like “I’m the one” which is a huge crowd favourite is it a different feeling seeing the energy of the crowd for the older songs?

Milo Aukerman
I think certain songs you can tell when people are singing the lyrics back to you. A song like “I’m the one” I try to get down close to the crowd and they can sing along. There’s a few songs where I’ll get down and pass the mic to the fans so people can sing along. I like getting people involved in that way. There’s people there who sing every lyric the whole way through so they deserve a chance to get on the mic and see what they can do. Plus it helps me out if my voice is getting a little scratchy.

 

SCENEzine
Can you leave us a last message for your Australian fans?

Milo Aukerman
This is our third time down and obviously we love Australia and we will keep coming back as much as they’ll have us. It’s a great place for us to come the Australian fans have been really nice to us and really energetic. We have real fond memories of going down there and we want to continue to have them. We can’t wait to see everybody.

(Interview by Christian Ross)