Interview: Unwritten Law
Neumos, Seattle, WA
06.09.15
SMN: You’ve got an acoustic album coming out in the fall, tell me about it.
UL: Everyone’s expecting this rock album done acoustically and it’s not, like, we produced it and put beats to it and wrote chord progressions and went all the fucking way with it. If you’re a punk rock fanatic you’re definitely not going to get it, but if you’re dope you’ll get it. It’s beat driven, I love it, but it’s definitely not
rock. They’re already making some videos around it.
SMN: Similar to the surf videos that kicked you guys off?
UL: That was really Taylor Steel who converged action sports and punk rock rock music, there was a show called born in OC, which is what became the warped tour. It had a vert ramp with vert demos on bike riders and skaters. At this very same moment Taylor steel was making surf videos with some of the best surfers in the world and putting punk rock music in them, us, blink, bad religion, and pennywise and threw them into his videos. So he’s just filming his surf friends and
putting his punk friend’s music in it. So these videos hit the surf market which gave us and all these other bands that didn’t graduate to offspring or blink’s level the longevity that we have because we were at the birth of a movement in surfing that was all about catching air. So if there was no Taylor Steel there’d be no warped tour, there wouldn’t be action sports mixed with punk rock when that happened, obviously it’s all gone and skate boarding is mixed with hip hop now.
SMN: How was working with Mickey Avalon and that dive into hip hop?
UL: I knew Mickey right before his first record dropped, right before he signed to Interscope. I had just gotten out of rehab and was going to sober living in Santa Monica, my sober living house manager recognized me! This guy who’s my house manager scored me cocaine at Bumbershoot in Seattle. I went to a fucking rock star rehab, so they let me have pro-tools in my own bungalow as long as I’m not on the internet or fucking around and am just making music. So I spent some time recording for a few weeks and when I left we went to Cisco’s house, Cisco Addler, so he plays me this song and suddenly I hear Mickey Avalon’s voice. I tell
him he sounds dope and Addler agrees so I take the song home and put a chorus on it and it sounds great, in fact it was the first single on the last record he dropped “Girlfriend”. Cisco made the beats, I wrote the hooks and Mickey wrote the raps we made like 5 songs. We were definitely the three scumiest dirtbags in Hollywood. So Mickey had the #1 hip hop record in LA and then Interscope came in and signed him so that band died then but the records are still out there.
SMN: Where did the tour name come from, “love is the law?”
UL: It was actually from a quote from Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law.
SMN: So you’re stuck on a desert island, what book, album, and movie do you take with you?
Wade: Aleister Crowley’s Book Four, Close Encounters for the movie, and Tool’s Anema.
Scott: Oh man, I want to answer this one. Sublime’s 40 oz to Freedom. I only get one album so it’s got to have everything that I want to hear, beats acoustic reggae and I hate religion but I would choose the Bible because I love a good comedy. For my movie…..The Goonies.
SMN: Great picks, that’s all for us, thanks for sitting down with us, looking forward to the show.
Interview and photos by David Endicott
Unwritten Law
Ten Foot Pole
