{"id":3013,"date":"2011-08-03T13:25:04","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T20:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3013"},"modified":"2011-08-03T13:26:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T20:26:00","slug":"against-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/against-me\/","title":{"rendered":"AGAINST ME!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

AGAINST ME!<\/h1>\n

Drawing inspiration from Florida, fatherhood and a cross-country journey<\/h2>\n

Driving across the country\u00a0allows plenty of time for contemplation, which is how Against Me! singer Tom Gabel spent the trip last year on his way from his native Florida to Los Angeles to start recording sessions for the band\u2019s new album, White Crosses<\/em>. Gabel converted those thoughtful hours on the road into song lyrics, resulting in a batch of vivid punk tunes drawn from his own experiences. \u201cI took four or five days and just lost myself in the wilderness and wrote a bunch of lyrics on my way out there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With his wife then pregnant with their daughter, it seemed to Gabel like a good time to settle accounts with his life to that point. \u201cIt\u2019s a really introspective record in that sense,\u201d he says. \u201cI spent a lot of time thinking about people I used to know and places I used to hang out and Florida in general, which was the setting for all those years in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, it wouldn\u2019t be an Against Me! record without also including a\u00a0healthy dose of the band\u2019s trademark political and social commentary. Although Gabel tries not to steer in one direction\u00a0or another when writing, \u201cI think the political has to be personal,\u201d he says. \u201cI try not\u00a0to approach songwriting as, \u2018Now I\u2019m\u00a0going to write the political song.\u2019 I just want to write about things I feel really\u00a0strongly about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trick, he says, lies in sharing ideas without being pedantic. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to come across as someone who\u2019s up there saying, \u2018I have all the answers, I have it all figured out,\u2019 or, \u2018I\u2019m in a band, so obviously I\u2019m qualified to talk about this stuff,\u2019\u201d Gabel says. \u201cI\u2019m not a politician, I\u2019m not a preacher and I really don\u2019t have it all figured out. But I have a big mouth, and I have opinions\u00a0on stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he was certainly aware of his impending fatherhood while the band worked on White Crosses<\/em> (\u201cWe didn\u2019t know when we were making the record which was going to be done first,\u201d Gabel says with a laugh), he didn\u2019t write with that in mind. \u201cAnything like that was subconscious,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat it really did for me was make me focus, knowing that it\u2019s going to be tricky to balance these two things. Leading up to it, I often felt like I was losing my mind.<\/p>\n

But that was a good thing from a songwriting perspective, because it made me\u00a0really unguarded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AGAINST ME! Drawing inspiration from Florida, fatherhood and a cross-country journey Driving across the country\u00a0allows plenty of time for contemplation, which is how Against Me! singer Tom Gabel spent the trip last year on his way from his native Florida to Los Angeles to start recording sessions for the band\u2019s new album, White Crosses. Gabel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[2275,80,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3017,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions\/3017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}