Like many have attested, punk rock saved my life. More than that, it gave me one. It’s the wellspring from which I started carving out my own version of David Lynch’s The Art Life, ultimately leading me to where I am today — a person who makes a living with words. Throughout it all, an inarguably monumental presence has been the music of MxPx, no doubt one of the most influential pop-punk bands in the history of the genre who’ve maintained an artistic consistency most can only dream of.
The latest example of the Bremerton-formed group’s unparalleled dedication to protecting what it means to be MxPx, not to mention what it means to be a fan of the band, arrives today with their new album Find a Way Home.
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Arriving just over five years after the runaway success of their self-titled album, and decades removed from their initial Tooth & Nail era and trio of major label releases (including the Jerry Finn-produced classic The Ever Passing Moment), the band’s newest outing sees the proven punk stalwarts bringing all of these chapters together for what will arguably go down as one of the best albums of their career.
As with vocalist and songwriter Mike Herrera’s past lyrics, the album is at once deeply personal and readily applicable to the lives of listeners. The first line we hear — “I’m feeling sad from days long gone” — introduces the journey fans are about to embark on by hinting at the emotional stakes, specifically the hyperawareness of passing time that we’ve all experienced over the past three years.
Over the course of a phone conversation earlier this week, Herrera elaborated on some of the themes running throughout the new album, as well as shared insight on his writing process.
I know this is a pretty busy week for you. I just wanna start off by saying that the record is great. How does this rollout feel compared to all the other rollouts you’ve been through with the band?
It feels like even though it’s crazy busy, I feel a little less stressed than I should. I don’t know why. I’m just talking to a lot of people, basically. I’m just talking a lot, and I don’t normally talk this much. I’m a listener. I sit, and when I write songs, I write. So, this is definitely a busy, busy time, and it’s exciting because we’ve been working on this record for a while. We’ve been making videos, we’ve done some photo shoots — all the things that you do when you’re in a band.
Everything really just comes down to the release of the record and the songs themselves. Can those possibly live on? So if I really start thinking about it too much, I’m like, “I’m a little anxious.” But I’m happy because I feel like this record is gonna hit people in the right way, and people are gonna love it.
“Stay Up All Night” is a great choice for a first single. What were the conversations like behind the scenes when landing on that?
Well, there’s a lot of good songs on the record… Obviously, I’m biased. But that song hits people in a way that some of the other songs that are more fun and funny, they don’t do in the same way. We felt like, as a lead track, we wanted to hit people with a song that mattered. At least, it mattered to us. It matters to us. And hopefully, it matters to the listener when they hear it at a certain time. When they can think back and go, “OK, the first time I heard this, I was going through this hard time.”
The song is about times where we feel like we can’t get anything right. Everything we try to do leads to failure, and we’ve all felt that, right? And this song puts it out there and lets the listener just live in that. It’s not always a comfortable moment for everybody. At the end of the day, it’s comforting to know if you have somebody’s back. And for that person, it’s comforting to know if somebody’s got your back, even though you may have failed each other in the past or whatever that may be. As a lead single, we felt like, “OK, this can get people ready to hear a record that is very introspective.” In a lot of ways, it’s very much aligned with everything MxPx has done throughout the years, theme-wise.
I would agree. You guys are always killer at sequencing. So hats off for that. But I think “Stay Up All Night” definitely touches on themes that come up again elsewhere across the record. It’s the perfect choice. In the bridge, I would say, something that stuck out to me just on a personal level was you mentioning dragging monsters “out into the light.” I was wondering if you could offer any more insight into that particular lyric.
I guess for me it was just, when I write a lot, at times I write a little bit stream of consciousness.… Usually by the time the bridge hits, I know what I’m trying to say. I’m trying to wrap it up into a little more of an idea. And it’s not always explaining exactly what the song is in the bridge, but for some reason, the bridge — for me — I tend to write lyrics that almost could be their own little verse that is its own story. So for dragging monsters “out into the light,” it’s a lot of things for me.
Maybe it’s a copout to not pinpoint one thing it is, but I think it’s a lot of just the last couple of years, how everything on the internet seems to be just like, “Wow, OK.”
Then, of course, the personal thing. We all have demons. We all have monsters. And we think we’ve conquered them a lot of times. Say you quit drinking alcohol or you quit drugs. You have to be vigilant. I feel like maybe you quit, you know, whatever it is that’s not good for you, right? Whatever it is. … I feel like if you don’t pay attention to it, sometimes it won’t come back. But I think things have a way of rearing their ugly head in our lives, and it’s like that with everything. The world just moves so fast. That bridge, even though it’s a very personal-sounding lyric, it describes the world we live in, in general. It’s just like, “Man, it is crazy out there.
Well, from my perspective, it also says it triumphantly. You’re dragging these monsters out into the light almost with some intention too, which is nice. It works both ways.
Absolutely it is. MxPx really tries to be that. … You start out with, “If I hurt you, I’ll try to get it right.” That’s positive to me. Obviously admitting that I’ve done wrong, but it’s positive to say that. It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong. It’s hard to say you’re sorry.
Of course.
You know, it’s funny. Me and Tom [Wisniewski, MxPx guitarist] got in a fight the other night at practice. Tensions were high. It wasn’t a long fight or anything. But we don’t get in fights too often anymore. So looking back, it’s funny. But it’s like, “Wow, we’re still brothers. We still care about this so much.”
Did you just start quoting the song at him?
[Laughs.] Yeah. “So, hey, if I hurt you, you know, I’ll try to make it right.” The other night, we were at a Less Than Jake show, and I hugged him [and said], “I love you, brother.” We’re just in the hallway backstage by ourselves, and it’s just a moment. Those things are real. Because that’s how MxPx has been able to stay together this long is because we’re able to set aside our ego and our pride a little bit and go, “We didn’t understand each other. We both want the same things. We’re both trying to make it the best it can be. I love you.”
To bring it back to sequencing again, I love where that song falls within the record. It feels like you could look at the record as almost telling a story from start to finish. I feel like you guys have done that before, not as an actual concept record, but there is a narrative that flows through. I was wondering if you did that intentionally with this one or if that just came together with the songs.
The songs were chosen based on what fit together. There are some great songs that we didn’t end up putting on the record or recording. But we try to get to having a theme, having something people can parse into themes without actually saying it out loud because then you really make your whole thing about that. And really it’s about whatever people want it to be. The songs will find people in their lives in different places. So I don’t know if we really overthink it to that degree or if I’m just thinking about it now. Like with the artwork, Find a Way Home, all of that. We could tell a deeper story, and I think we will, but just put some images out there. Is he in space, or is he on Earth? Honestly, it could be both. You just don’t know exactly. Sure, it’s in space or a spaceship or something. But maybe he’s going back to Earth, [or] maybe he’s coming from Earth.
Or even, what is home?
Yeah! In the same way the songs themselves do. I feel like what you’re saying completely. They do have a flow to them. They have a story to them. Mistakes are a theme that comes up in the lyrics over and over. It ends with that.
“Mistakes Will Be Made,” yeah. Do you remember which song was written first for the record or demoed first?
Definitively, I have to say a couple. Track one, “Not Today,” was very early on, and “Stay Up All Night” was probably right before that. I wrote “Stay Up All Night” in Texas in Waco at our house there. That’s where I actually wrote a bunch of these songs. I wrote a ton. I just was on this a writing spree.
Do you have a strict daily writing routine, or is it kind of a loose thing for you?
I wish my life was that scheduled. I usually am not writing at all, which is crazy, but it comes in waves. So when I’m writing every day, I’m writing every day for a couple months, and then I get busy with other things. It’s hard for me to really focus on writing when I’m doing live shows, for one. Unless the live shows are the same exact thing over and over. But we’re just not doing that these days. Most of our live shows are changing up quite a bit, and we’re doing weekends and things like that. So I gotta be on my toes mentally for those. And so I just compartmentalize my writing, live, and then also recording and making videos and all that. I just don’t allow myself to get into that headspace when there’s so much else going on with show announcements. I mean, we’re playing the Palladium.
What would you most want for someone who sits down with the album for the first time and listens to it front to back? What do you most hope they get out of it the first time?
I hope they get that we’re all out here together, and these things are in a lot of people’s minds, these thoughts. I just hope that the music hits in a way that either makes them happy, just gives them some entertainment, whatever it is. I don’t wanna say it’s more important than it really needs to be. But that’s why we do this. We do this for people to have something in their lives, not just today. I mean, music, and everything, these days online really kind of seems fleeting. But songs — good songs — aren’t. Something that can stay with you years from now — that’s what makes it so worth it for us to put so much work into the songs. These songs are gonna be listened to by all these people — some of which we’ve met face to face over the years, some of which we’ll never meet in our whole lives and we’ll be dead, and they’re listening to our music and that’s just wild to me. After doing it all these years, that still blows my mind.
