Lagwagon

eGigs meets Lagwagon guitarist Chris Rest (Leon) before their Manchester show.



How’s the tour going?

So far so good. We’re very early in the tour right now; we started in Holland with this weird festival, it was mostly rock bands, which was kind of strange, but since we got to the UK it’s been a lot better. Doing our own shows instead of festival stuff.

Where does the name ‘Lagwagon’ come from?

It was Joey’s mom’s car we used when we first started. It was this station wagon and it wouldn’t go over 45 miles an hour so that was the “Lag Wagon”.

You were the first band to sign with Fat Wreck; did you know Fat Mike beforehand? How did that come about?

That was before I was in the band. I knew Mike, my old band R.K.L. used to play with NOFX.

The last album, ‘Resolve’, must have been a hard one to make.

Yeah.

Have you done a new album since that?

No, not since ‘Resolve’.

For an old school fan like myself it’s nice for you to get back to the skate-punk influenced style; any reason for the change?

We just kind of trimmed the fat off a little bit for that record and decided to do a more straight forward, honest sort of record.

Are you going to release a new album this year as the rumours suggests?

I don’t know if it will come out this year ‘cos we haven’t really started on it yet, it might have to be next year.

You have been going since 1988, and with nine albums, do you find it easy to reel off the songs?

I’m too indecisive usually to write songs; I come up with parts here and there. Joey writes a lot of the music.

I saw you at Roskilde festival last year, what do you think to that festival?

It’s big! Crazy!

You were on pretty early on in the day. Do you prefer early shows or late gigs? Indoor or outdoor?

Indoor. It’s nice if it’s outdoor and it’s really nice out, and it’s mostly punk fans. Usually at those festivals it’s such a mixture of people, it’s kind of weird, and everyone’s so far away from the stage. When we did Warped Tour [in America] sometimes we would play on a smaller stage and that was fun. For the most part I would much rather do clubs, 400 to 800 [capacity] is the perfect size I think.

Any plans for European festivals this year?

We’re doing some on this tour; this summer I think the [Me First And The] Gimme Gimmes are coming out to do some stuff so we won’t be.

With a couple of your members in Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, do you have to juggle the tours and recordings a lot?

There’s been occasional overlaps that were just a mistake of lack of communication but, Mike’s in NOFX so they have to work around that schedule as well.

So the tours are more focused on when NOFX are free?
Pretty much, Mike’s kind of in control.

He’s the boss?!

He’s a bastard!

Are your crowds growing older with you or do you find a lot of younger kids are at the shows?

There’s definitely the older guys coming to the shows. It’s good to see the younger kids getting into it too. They’re like “my older brother used to listen to you guys”.

As well as your nine albums I’ve counted eight Fat Wreck Chord compilations, some with a couple of your songs on and eight other compilations. Have they helped to boost your career?

It’s helpful to be on those sometimes, yeah ‘cos some people buy them because they recognise some other band on there and they get turned on to our music.

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