J. Bannon (Converge) Interviews Wes Eisold & Tim Cossar of Give Up The Ghost (AN)

Jake: Wes, you moved around a lot when you were a kid, I know that much. I know that you spent a lot of time in Maine, Virginia, DC?
Wes: Yes. I grew up mainly on Military/Navy bases. Wherever those would be, so east and west coast mostly. And in a couple sporadic locations where there were ship yards. I moved to Maine from Germany during my Senior year of High School, so in 1994 or 1995?

Jake: So how long did you live in Germany?
Wes: Two years, Ninth and Tenth Grade of High School.

Jake: Those were pretty formidable years for you.
Wes: Germany was great though, as I moved there from Carlisle Pennsylvania which is a small town. It was great because there was a college there and I got to go to a few cool shows. But it was in the "sticks", we lived on a 200 Acre cornfield that we rented. Germany was a city, and I got more into music there and I got to go to more shows. Then I moved to Maine, which was great because I was super into Boston Hardcore before I moved anywhere near Boston.

Jake: I have pictures from a Converge show around that time, and you are upfront singing along. It may have been in New Hampshire?
Tim: It was probably the Safe N' Sound.
Wes: Right. I probably booked that show. Overcast, Disembodied, and Converge. It could have been another show too.
Tim: It may have been 1996 or 1997.
Wes: Yeah it was probably 1997, because in 1998 I went on tour with Ten Yard Fight and we were gone a lot.

Jake: So how did you meet Tim?
Wes: I met Tim through Ian McFarland and Jay Toothacher right when I moved to Maine. I was like "Goddammit", I moved from Germany to a small town in Maine, and I was bummed about that at first. But then there was a record store in Brunswick, "Bullmoose", and I found that immediately. I met Jay, who worked there at the time. And I was so obsessed with Hardcore records at the time. So I was in there all the time, trading the CDs I had to get anything there Hardcore related. Then I met Ian McFarland, because he lived in the town that I ended up going to High School in. I met Tim through him.
Tim: Pretty much all the Punk Rock kids hung out at Club 269, this weird Punk house in Brunswick right on Bowdoin campus. A bunch of bands practiced there, and we just hung out there all the time. So many friends that moved down here (Boston) came from there at the time.

Jake: In a way it seemed like in that two year period it became an important place for &
Tim: I wouldn't call it important (laughter).

Jake: Important in the respect that you developed a sense of community, I don't want you to downplay that.
Tim: Yeah. We learned how to promote shows there. We put demos out. We drove an hour here, and hour there to record stores to flyer for shows.
Wes: I had a Distro in my High School, in my school.
Tim: Right. We had to go out of our way, making road trips in Ford Escorts or whatever.
Wes: It was still an era were you would actually become friends with strangers, whereas now you'd probably walk the other way. It just got to a point that I was gravitating towards Boston. Tim was playing in Ten Yard Fight who were in Boston, so he already moved.
Tim: I moved down in 1998, with Ian and Jay, to Somerville. It was all of Blood For Blood, minus Buddah. We lived just outside Union Square. I went on tour with them and said to myself "I'm not going to go to college right now". I just wanted to be in a band so I joined Ten Yard Fight. Fast forward to the summer, and Wes went on tour with us. After the tour that band broke up. After that I told Wes to get himself down here, and he dropped out of school and moved down.
Wes: Yeah. That wasn't hard because I never went.

Jake: It was a weird and wild time for music in Boston back then. In retrospect, bands were doing some really important things. There were all styles of bands playing interesting music. A lot of people tend to look at New York as the most relevant in the last 20 years, but I think that specific time period in Boston was way more prolific and way more interesting. As a fan of American Nightmare, what immediately appealed to me was that you weren't trying to sound like anything or anyone. Your band wasn't artistically derivative of anything else. The first time you came to me to do some design work for your band, I was struck by what you were doing artistically. In a way it felt like it was a backlash to the sports themed music that was dominating Hardcore at the time.
Wes: You, Tim may have wanted to steer away from what you were originally doing.
TIm: Absolutely.
Wes: I never felt that their was a vision, for me it was really natural. I feel like a bit darker of a person than the lyrics of the band's that I was friends with at the time. It was fun, but it wasn't how I felt day to day.
Tim: I knew that I didn't want anything to do with what has already been done. I remember the first time I sat down and read Wes' lyrics and I knew were were doing something completely different. People were either going to love it or hate it, and we got both.
Wes: It's funny to think about now, how all the sub-genres you mentioned were segregated at the time. It was a big deal when we asked Jake to do the Layout.
Tim: And for Kurt to record us.
Wes: I think we were expected to have McTernan record us and Lacroix do the layout.

Jake: I always thought it was interesting. I grew up around a lot of those people, surrounded by them. I recorded with Brian McTernan a few times. I spent a lot of time in that first Hardcore house in Boston, where his first studio was. Tre who runs Deathwish with me lived there. I just never understood where that division came from.
Tim: We just wanted to throw that all out the window, we just wanted to do it our way.

Jake: I remember when I was just finishing college, and I was sitting in a restaurant with a couple of guys from Hydra Head or something. Tim you were sitting there with a Blood For Blood Shirt on at another table. I remember you looked so mad (laughter). Nathan from Big Block was sitting on the other side of the restaurant behind us. And it was so strange. it felt that although we all knew each other, it was as if we weren't suppose to address each other at all.
Wes: People who were always in rooms together.

Jake: Yes. People who were all in rooms together, all involved with music that was not dissimilar. It was all coming from the same emotional place, yet we weren't really suppose to address each other.
Tim: It was definitely weird being the Straight Edge kid in the Blood For Blood house, and seeing that whole side of Boston was. There were just so many different clicks. It was bizarre to walk into Boston and see who was friends with who. I was just like "Fuck this".

Jake: It was very strange at the time. I felt that people outside of Boston were never aware of the differences.
Tim: You had big bands: Converge, Dropkick Murphys, Blood For Blood, Cave In, etc. But yeah, how many of those bands actually hung out at the time?

Jake: As we all got older you saw those walls break down really fast. I feel that your band is a really important part of that. I think that you guys crossed some line in a really good way. I don't know man, for four years I just went to school and worked in a furniture store. I never knew being in a band would just be so polarizing for some people. To me we were all just a bunch of guys in bands, no different. It's never been a competition. So did you guys care about the reaction of your friends back then? The Ten Yard Fight guys, the Blood For Blood guys, etc.
Wes: I think band friends were really supportive. Other people that weren't in bands didn't like it so much.
Tim: Everybody hated us and talked shit on us. And our demo was really bad.
Wes: To be fair, that was the better of the two takes (laughter).
Tim: We played every weekend up the coast into Canada. And we didn't get a solid reaction for months until we played that first Worcester show.
Wes: Our first Boston show was at Al's (current drummer) old place with Hassan I Sabbah, because our friends wouldn't book us on the bigger hardcore shows in Boston at the time.
Tim: We played any show that someone would put us on at the time because of that.

Jake: Yeah you took virtually anything. I remember you playing in Providence when you first started with Madball.
Tim: Ah, the Madball benefit show.
Wes: That's where I almost killed the sound man with the mic.

Jake: I remember the mic flying off the cord and hitting the sound man in the ear at like 20 mph. He had a crazy Hawaiian shirt on.
Wes: I ruined his precious ear of the sound man.
Tim: How many shows did we go to at Lupos at that point? And to then be on a 10 foot stage shitting our pants, being a complete mess.

Jake: I think your set was 12 minutes long at the time. It was out of control but it was great. For me, as an "aging" hardcore kid at the time, in my early 20's I thought I knew everything at the time, which meant I thought I knew everything about life (laughter). I graduated from college and I thought I had everything worked out. And I was bored with Hardcore to be honest. Then I started working for you guys and listening to your band. The first time I listened, it really revitalized my love for Hardcore. It was abrasive hardcore but it had an emotional element that really resonated with me. It really filled a void and was a moving thing. When you guys did that, when you started to see the reaction of people relating and losing their minds to your music, what was that like?
Tim: For both of us it was one of the most gratifying things. We've done other bands and played other people's songs. For Wes to sing his lyrics and for kids to actually care about what we were doing was mind blowing. How quickly it took off from a couple of good shows, it was exciting.
Wes: It was real exciting and extremely gratifying. We would get choked up about it, and I still do when I think about it sometimes. It felt real isolating and singular, but also really communal in a way, since people were relating to it and it was so specific.

Jake: I should mention that you had a million and a half lineup changes in two years.
Wes: I think we added it up at one point and it was like forty or fifty people. We just wanted to be in a band and tour all the time. Finding people that would commit to that wasn't an easy thing to do. We were outgrowing a lot of our friends who were just part time hardcore musicians. We were also kind of crazy at the time (laughter) and difficult to get along with.
Tim: I think when we had a certain few kids go on tour with us, and realized quickly that it couldn't happen with them. I could name ten people that had that was the scenario. Most of them are still are friends. We were all changing, so quick and so fast. Bottom line, we dropped our lives to do this and finding people that were onboard to do that was difficult.
Wes: At the time, it was was difficult to find people that appreciated the same amount of urgency that we did. It was hard to keep up with for sure. It was constant pressure.

Jake: So let's move forward to the second seven inch. You received more accolades, and you started having influence outside of Hardcore. It was apparent in bands like AFI and others and you could see bands starting to embrace a darker style that you championed. What was that like for you guys?
Wes: I never thought that about AFI, I considered them dark before we were a band. But I definitely remember a change where people at shows were wearing clothes that we were wearing. Personally I was just trying to ape English Mod culture; Fred Perry's and things like that. And that wasn't cool in England at the time, as it was super outdated. Then the Hardcore bands in England that were trying to sound like us were also starting to dress like us, but we were just trying to dress like English people (laughter).

Jake: Leading up to the release "Background Music", the lineup was still unstable. But you guys were still blowing up.
Tim: Yeah, I knew I was getting out of school in May, and that's when we could try to be a full-time band. And then we put out the second seven inch, we didn't plan anything out. Little did we know, that was going to be the very best record we would ever put out.
Wes: We still think it's the best record. In hindsight, we totally regret not recording the LP's with Kurt. The second seven inch is what I'll play for someone who has never heard the band.
Tim: It's raw, it's punk, it's all over the place and so different than "Background Music".

Jake: You recorded that with Dean right? What was your experience recording that record?
Tim: I felt comfortable with him, because I recorded the last Ten Yard Fight seven inch with him.
Wes: We always liked changing things. We hadn't repeated ourselves really before that.
Tim: At the time, big records were being recorded there, and I wanted a big sounding record.

Jake: In some ways it's a big sounding record. I can tell you what is lacking in that record that wasn't lacking in the second seven inch was the urgency or percussion.
Wes: Jarrod was a hired drummer, a slower, more precise drummer.
Tim: And the second seven inch, I pulled in Mike from Right Brigade, and the drum tracks on that were just wild didn't make sense. But going from that to Jarrod, I don't know. So back to "Background Music". I just remember that part of my life was going to work and writing songs in my head. It wasn't even real band practice. We had an amazing drummer, and Wes and I just made it happen.
Wes: You would get a song done and I would listen to it in a car and just write to it. Otherwise I didn't know anything about recording. I would just sit upstairs in the studio or wander around in the parking lot. It was fun for me, it was great (laughter).

Jake: When did the other "American Nightmare" make contact? A lot of that story is clouded a bit, so it would be good to touch on that.
Wes: Our best shows were in Philly at the time and that band was from there. Robby Redcheeks and maybe Brandon Wallace gave us demo CDs of "American Nightmare" and we just laughed about it and that was it. We just never thought about after that.
Tim: I think I was on the phone with Steve Reddy and he told us that we had a big problem. I think I called from Europe or something on tour. He told us it was a really big deal and that was it. We got home and discussed it.
Wes: I think that it was just such bullshit. I think that if it happened now we would just say fuck you and that's it. We were talking about this recently. The whole thing that we couldn't use "AN" or "American Nothing" was bullshit. We were just like "okay". I think that if it happened now, we would just tell them to fuck off and that would be it.
Tim: And that was the whole issue, the timing. I don't ever like to refer to is as a job, but it was our life at the time. We spent two years on tour, it was our life. We were ready to put out a new record and we needed put out new stuff.

Jake: Did you feel driven or stifled by that?
Wes: No. I think we just all wanted to tour.

Jake: It's not like you cared. It wasn't like when you came home you guys were that responsible with it (laughter).
Wes: Our last tour we blew all of our money on tour. It was like this guy wants drinks, this guy needs pot, etc. After years of doing it, we just never knew enough to care.
Tim: We just knew after doing like 10 U.S. Tours and going to Europe a handful of times, that it was time to put out a record.

Jake: You were writing on tour with us write after the release of "Background Music" in early 2002.
Wes: You demoed with Kurt, right?
Tim: I demoed with Jim Siegel, yeah. All of our records had to be pulled from stores and distributors, it took so much out of us.
Wes: We had to pay for all of those to be destroyed and then pay for the reproduction of new ones. We had to pay all of the legal fees.

Jake: So you went grossly in the "red"?
Tim: Yes, we never made a dime on that record.
Wes: That really soured the relationship with the label and really hurt us personally at the time.
Tim: We just knew that we were creating new music that we cared about and we wanted to get it out there. I mean, we had great lawyers that tried to help us.
Wes: It was surreal to even have lawyers. We were on tour in LA and just wanted to go to a record store like any normal band but couldn't because we had to meet with lawyers.
Tim: We were just young kids. I mean who the fuck as a young kid in a punk band goes out and checks out trademarks? The first thing you sign in your contract is that we had our name trademarked. We were like "sure, yeah". In our world we just didn't think about that shit at all.
Wes: We also never thought we'd go anywhere beyond "our world".

Jake: That's what's interesting to me. It's as if you are downplaying your reach. You were legitimately in places and doing things that traditional hardcore bands never were before. Especially for being a hardcore band that didn't sound like a metal band or anything.
Wes: Yeah. I mean we toured with bands that more traditional hardcore bands would never tour with at the time.

Jake: That was a rare thing. You blew open some doors for darker music to be on people's radar.
Wes: There weren't many bands that we liked either, that were real hardcore bands. We toured with every band we liked in the first few years of being in a band. We ended up getting along with bands as people, but we detested what they were all doing. It ended up being a good thing though in the end.

Jake: It was wild what bands played together, it was slim pickings.
Tim: I just looked at it like, some of these bands would go on tour with Converge. and we were caught in the middle. I'm using your band as an example because you were way more metallic than us. Well, we don't want to have a glass ceiling, so it was very awkward going on tour with some of those bands, but it was good. It was weird to do one tour with Kill Your Idols who taught us the most, then to go on tour with "band x", the opposite of that.

Jake: So at that point, you had to decide on a name. I remember sitting my house with you guys for weeks trying to come up with a name. The brainstorming sessions for naming your band took months off my life (laughter). I'm never getting that back. In a way, through all of this bullshit, your band really grew. It was some deep, soul searching shit. In the end though, I think the transformation to Give Up The Ghost worked well.
Wes: Yeah. That was a working title for the record. I remember "Love American" was going to be "Love American Nightmare". "Love American" was a contender. "Hearts" was another. Now you can add an "S" to the end of a band name and it's cool, but back then?

Jake: There was a level of paranoia too. I think many people didn't realize that you had to pay to have all of those records destroyed, and everyone really took a bath on that. So you toured with no name for awhile, you did the GlassjAw tour with no name.
Tim: We did that tour with no name, we made "American Nothing" Shirts for that tour, it was ridiculous. I remember being on the phone with Beck and he was like "I want you to go on tour with us" and I told him we didn't have a name. He didn't care, so we did it. That time period was when we really started to change as people.

Jake: You guys were dealing with a lot of stress back then. I've been involved in this community since I was 12 years old and I've never seen a band get so big, not in a trivial way, but actually effecting people emotionally. That was a lot of weight to deal with. You were doing all of it, living in squalor. Sharing bedrooms with multiple people, guys literally living in closets, etc. I think there was a lot of stress in all of that. You worked incredibly hard for years, had this connection with people, then had the identity of it taken from you.
Wes: That's life.
Tim: Also it was a big deal because we finally became five dudes solid when Al joined the band. We weren't burning through members anymore. We were recording with a drummer that we truly loved. He's was a real part of the band.

Jake: With the name solidified, it was now time to record the record. You guys went into the studio with Jim Siegel at The Outpost, who recorded some other Boston bands at the time. I felt he did a great job on that record. Tim, I remember you were super hands on during that recording process.
Tim: I think at that point we just wanted to do something different. I don't think it was a "fuck you" to kids who were into us. I think overall it's way too polished. It definitely had some bad parts, but it also has some of our most creative moments too. Some songs stand the test of time, some don't

Jake: I feel like it stands the test of time for sure. To me, it's executed like an album, not a collection of songs.
Wes: Yeah. It is executed like an album. I remember at the time we were dealing with our third or fourth backlash. First it was the artwork, then the name change. Over the years, I've met so many kids that prefer that album, and that's the one they know

Jake: Your previous record is always going to be your best record to some people. Especially when it's a record that was held in high regard. "Background Music" captured a time and place for many people, and it's wrapped up in the lives of those listeners.
Tim: We were growing and the kids who were into us were growing. And it felt like all those things were growing apart.
Wes: Most bands in hardcore seem like they can't progress without changing too much. Converge can put out a different sounding record, but it all makes sense. But most bands try and do something different, and fail, or put out the same record. Even when AN started I wasn't listening to Hardcore anymore. Our other interests were creeping into the songs slowly. it's always been about the personalities to me, individuals, not really the music.

Jake: At that point, you guys started touring after the release of "We're Down &". I always felt that it was masochistic in a way. Why do you think you did that?
Wes: We were a band for four years and we did something like 25 U.S. tours.
Tim: And a handful of European tours as well.

Jake: There was stuff that seemed financially driven, as you had a successful record that you made nothing from. You had to pay bills, yet you didn't have the ability to keep jobs. The stress was heavy.
Wes: Honestly, I think one time we made like two grand each from a tour. But after being on the road for a few months, that's not "money".

Jake: You either go home and get a regular job, or you keep going out, tour and sustain your life on tour for another few months.
Tim: Exactly. We were just sustaining. We weren't thinking logically, or in any sort of healthy manner whatsoever. It was so wrong when I think about it now. It's all we knew.

Jake: It was almost a mix of self preservation and obligation. I saw something a friend of mine who tours with large rock bands wrote the other day. He wrote that if you are on tour for six weeks your level of animalistic behavior grows incredibly. Amplify that by four years of constant touring you guys were doing. You become a completely different creature. Then you fall into a "Post tour" depression, and need to go out again.
Tim: We were completely disconnected, then we'd jump right back on tour again. We thought the grass was always greener.
Wes: You ever think about how none of us were ever in serious relationships then?
Tim: Because how many amazing relationships did we fuck up and pass up? How many family members passed on? How much real life real life did we miss because we weren't connected?
Wes: I still remember those things. The effect of that still wears on me.
Tim: Me too, absolutely.
Wes: It's not a bad thing, it's just an observation.

Jake: It's an interesting grey area. You also have to look at the life that you are living while touring. It's not a romantic thing, but you are doing something that's incredibly rare, even if it's seeing truck stops, and public bathrooms.
Wes: You have to care about it, regardless of whatever kind of band your are in. You have to suffer through that.

Jake: I still think about you guys taking video of our van about to flip off a cliff, and how that just felt normal.
Wes: Yeah, in Wyoming.

Jake: Just all the weird experiences we've had. Sleeping in the weirdest places; empty houses, parking lots. It was all borderline deviant, homeless like behavior.
Wes. Bummy (laughter).

Jake: It's character building, it's given all of us this tough psychological, leather.
Wes: Truly nothing phases me because of that time. I'm never worried about anything anymore.
Tim: You go through such weird situations on tour, nothing is shocking.

Jake: So many highs and lows. In terms of your band, all of that wore you out towards the end, when Josh was removed from the band.
Wes: Totally, we wore ourselves out. We couldn't even talk for seven or eight years.

Jake: You ran full throttle until there was nothing left, done.
Tim: Ragged. It was apparent to everyone, including us.
Wes: Even in the last six months, we weren't talking to one another. The last few tours we just sat in the van and didn't really talk to other people much.

Jake: You were all shellshocked and needed a break. As a fan of your band the break was tragic, but as your friend I feel it was an necessary for each of you. So why now? Why play now? Has enough time passed that some perspective has been found?
Wes: There's more perspective. We've all grown as people, but it's also still a real big part of who we are as people. So I wanted to do it, and not carry and weirdness anymore. I wanted to re-friend my friends and play these songs. I've met so many kids that the band meant a lot to, and they never had a chance to see it and I want them to be able to. The band started out of all of these from negative emotions but it created positive reactions from people.

Jake: Your band connects with people on a level that few bands do. It's a rare thing and a beautiful thing. It doesn't mean that you owe anything to them, but the fact that there is an audience there for it, means something. I think it's important to share that with people.
Wes: Yeah, I'm real proud of what we did. And it just felt like the right time to do it you know. On our terms, with our friends, our own shows, etc. Like our friend, you, releasing the records, etc. It all just made sense to do. I'm always paranoid about time. I didn't want to wait until we were too old to do it or something. When bands do that it's just weird to me. In the last year or so, a lot of the songs we've written, a lot of the words I've written, the whole mentality of American Nightmare reappeared into my personal life. It made a lot more sense to me. For years, I felt that I didn't want to feel that way. I didn't want to be upset or angry. I needed to separate.
Tim: We just wanted to put it on a shelf and grow on our own.

Jake: When we were all younger, some of the first emotions that we learn to artistically cultivate are anger and sadness. And as we gain perspective, things become much more grey, and we go through periods of not wanting to feel those things or write about them. After awhile though we can come to terms with it.
Wes: And realize that it is real, and not one dimensional.

Jake: So you are going to do these two shows. As someone who has been around all of you as a friend, I'm happy that you are doing it. I think there are a lot of kids that are ecstatic for the right reasons; because your music means something to them. I'm just happy to be able to help you guys in any way that I can..
Tim: I'm just psyched. We've all grown. We can hang out with one another, laugh, and forget about all the bad times. We can play now and there is no stress or weirdness. It's as though we just flipped the switch back on.

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