Greg Pallante
Members of The Falcon(from left): Dave Hause (guitar, vocals), Dan Andriano (bass, vocals), Neil Hennessy (drums, vocals), Brendan Kelly (vocals, guitar).
If you listen to punk music, chances are that at some point, someone from your favorite band has been in another band with Brendan Kelly. He’s one-third of Chicago punk legends The Lawrence Arms, and has also done time in Slapstick, The Broadways, and is currently on the road with The Falcon, a supergroup of sorts that also includes members of Alkaline Trio and The Loved Ones. The Falcon is touring in support of an excellent new album Gather Up the Chaps, released earlier this year.
Outside the realm of music, Kelly’s a prolific tweeter, most notably under the popular Nihilist Arby’s parody account, with 224,000 followers (sample: “Dems and republicans have their differences but one thing brings us all together: everyone dies alone & is quickly forgotten. Eat Arbys.”)
Isthmus caught up with Kelly in advance of The Falcon’s Sept. 15 show at the Frequency to talk touring, corporate tone-deafness and watching his friend Matt Skiba join Blink-182.
Gather Up the Chaps is the first Falcon album in 10 years. Can you talk a little bit about how it came together?
I had this idea for a band called The Falcon, and it was going to be me, and Dan (Andriano) from the Trio, and Todd (Mohney) from Rise Against at the time. And Toby (Jeg, founder of Red Scare Records) was like, “if you make a band with those dudes, I want to put that shit out!”
So we started Red Scare, and then when we did the 10-year anniversary of the label, Toby was like, “Dude, The Falcon really needs to play a show for the 10-year anniversary.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s fine, but we don’t really have a guitar player anymore.” I haven’t seen Todd in like ten years. So I tweeted something out like, “Hey, does anybody want to play guitar in The Falcon? You already have to be famous.” — Just something obnoxious like that. But Dave Hause (singer/guitarist of The Loved Ones) hit me back. I was like, “Are you serious? I didn’t really think anything was going to come of this, but I’d love it if you’d come out and play.”
When we played that show at the Metro in Chicago to like 1,200 people — it was sold out — and we had never, the four of us, stepped on stage together. But the show went awesome, and afterward, we were down in the green room, like “Wow, so we’re kind of like a real band; that was really fun.” And the next day I started writing songs for the record.
What’s been different doing your first proper Falcon shows and tour, as opposed to doing, say, a tour with The Lawrence Arms?
There’s just a feeling of “Oh yeah, it’s just us out here doing a thing.” There’s not as much of the grind of doing like a Lawrence Arms tour. Even though I love touring with The Lawrence Arms, I’ve just done so much of that where there’s a point where it becomes routine. I think there’s also a cool sense of novelty for the crowd, because they haven’t seen us before, either.
It’s like having a new band again.
Exactly, it’s like having a new band. I think when The Lawrence Arms plays, and I know for sure when Alkaline Trio plays, people come out to see their favorite band and they just expect it to be awesome. But when people come out to see The Falcon, they have no idea. So if we have a really good show, people are really surprised. It’s a fun opportunity to blow people’s minds unexpectedly.
It’s probably good that you’ve all known each other for so long, too, so there’s no fear if you actually went out on tour of being like, “oh, god, what if we hate each other?”
Yeah. We all get along great. Dan is maybe my oldest friend that I never lost touch with. Dave is the new guy; I’ve only know him like nineteen years. [laughs]
We played a show in New Jersey on the first tour, and I had disappeared and got a little loose before the show. Afterward, Dave was like, “Dude, no way.” So I was like, “Okay, no drinking!” That’s the closest it’s been to a fight. But Dave’s sober; he doesn’t have time for sloppy shenanigans.
I’m curious: Where on Earth did you get the idea for Nihilist Arby’s?
I work at an advertising agency and I was in a meeting, and the meeting I was in ended, and a new meeting came into the room, and I just stayed. It was this company that makes cornmeal, and they were telling the social media director of our office to make them be the sort of go-to cornmeal for any American kitchen or five-star restaurant.
So basically to tweet as cornmeal?
Yeah! I was just sitting there, like, “this is all wrong!” You might as well just try to remote control the space shuttle with a handful of Coca-Cola. It’s just not happening. And I could see the social media director’s face, and she was just hating her life. So I thought it would be pretty funny if there was a social media director who hated life so much and was still just tweeting every day about a really inane product.
It’s a pretty accurate description of the feeling you get after eating Arby’s, too.
(laughs) Yeah, there’s that too. But the drudgery of having to promote things on Twitter — it’s a horrible job. Secondly, the way companies on Twitter are so tone deaf. People are always like, “You’re making fun of Arby’s!” or “You’re making fun of nihilism!” It has nothing to do with Arby’s and it has nothing to do with nihilism. It’s about how fucking stupid brands are on Twitter, and the poor idiots that have to do it.
Did you expect it to gain the traction it has? At this point, it’s really a question of how many people know you for your bands, and how many people know you for Twitter.
It’s weird. That account is popular, and I don’t know, I guess it just hit people the right way.
Interestingly, The Walking Dead season finale was a huge deal. I don’t watch the show, but I heard people really didn’t like it. So there were huge articles about The Walking Dead everywhere. In The Washington Post, there was a front page article about The Walking Dead, and they referenced Nihilist Arby’s in the headline. In the headline on the front page of The Washington Post! It’s pretty weird to be a part of something that’s taken off like that.
You’ve been friends with Matt Skiba (singer/guitarist of Alkaline Trio who recently joined Blink-182) for a long time, right?
I have. He’s one of my very best, favorite people.
How has it been watching him become a household name over the past few months?
It’s awesome! To say I’m proud of him is really condescending I think, but there’s something about turning on the radio and hearing that Blink-182 production with my friend’s voice singing it that’s like “Ho. Ly. Shit.” It’s so cool! And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer dude. I was thinking about this the other day, because I was thinking about the album title Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. The idea that one of the biggest bands in the world would make an album called Take Off Your Pants and Jacket just because it probably made them laugh while they were sitting around at a bar or something is so awesome to me.
But it totally makes sense that Matt Skiba would be in that band, because he does not get credit for this, but he is the funniest guy I know. He is so quick-witted and so hilarious, that it’s like,of course he’s in Blink-182. Besides being tall and dreamy and all that shit you need to be in Blink-182.
Since you guys are playing at The Frequency, are you planning on doing any more scorpion shots?
[groans] I don’t really like doing shots period, but I’ll do a scorpion shot. It’s pretty cool. But if we’re doing scorpion shots, it’s going to be after we play. I don’t need Dave yelling at me again.
