A brief chat with DOA

Yellow Scene: ell us about the new album – you say it’s back to the DOA roots…

Joey Shithead: Yeah. It’s called Hard Rain Falling. I just tried to write some songs that, rather than adding extra guitar riffs I was thinking of old DOA that was quick and to the point. When you think about really early punk rock, from the English stuff to DOA to Bad Brains to Black Flag, it’s pretty um-tempo, quick and to the point. I made it topical, about street gangs and racism.

YS: You’ve used crowd-funding to pay for it, right?

JS: Yeah, partly. Our record label is a small label, so we were getting the fans to help out a bit. It won’t cover the whole thing, but it’s going pretty well. We’re going with Kickstarter, and we just started with that six days ago. Its going up for two months, which is really when we’ll be finished and we’ll be able to deliver the stuff to the people that donated. When people did it five-seven years ago, it was probably more successful because it was so unique at that time. But I think that, as long as you’re really fair with the fans, then they’re good. Give them CDs, signed stuff, drum skins, posters and stuff like that. The thing is, they probably would end up buying something anyway, so this way they can get a greater level of participation and feel like they’re part of it, which they are. The record company model obviously has broken down for a bunch of different reasons.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

JS: You know what – we have not played there a whole lot lately. I think the last time we played there was maybe 1999, and it was a punk rock tour with about 14 bands called something like Social Chaos. It was like us and TSOL, UK Subs and a whole pile of other bands. I’m pretty sure that’s the last time we were in Denver. But, having said that, we have some fond memories of Denver. If nothing else, we should do well because we haven’t been there for so long.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

JS: One of the things we’re doing on this tour is playing the Hardcore 81 album from start to finish. There’ll be still be time for more songs, because that album’s only 29 minutes long. If I get a beer, that’s 30 minutes. There’s that, and then we’ll play a few new ones. Songs like “Police Brutality,” which is pretty important when you think about what’s going on in places like Ferguson.

YS: When the tour’s over, what’s next?

JS: I think everyone can look forward to a wild, unbridled show, no holds barred, trying to maintain that reputation on stage. Every time we go to a town, especially because we’ve been around for so long, I just go, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna put everything into the show because who knows, this might be the last time I’m here.’ That’s important. People can tell when you’re going through the motions. It takes a while, but eventually they figure out that it’s lame. DOA has always been loud, upbeat, political and funny. That’s really what we are so we try to keep doing that.