Steel Train
Web exclusive interview, 2004
S&S: If you could be a cartoon character who would you be?
Jack Antonoff: I am a cartoon character (laughter). I'd probably Mighty Mouse or something stupid like that. I suppose this should have some meaning behind it, so probably Arnold. I like Arnold. He's like an armadillo, some kind of new wave cartoon.
S&S: That reminds me of Arthur the Anteater. I have that book.
Jack: Oh god Arthur! That's what I meant, I'm sorry. You know Hey Arnold? That's what I was thinking of when I said Arnold
S&S: Do you have any crazy tour stories?
Jack: One time we were in California, and we all stopped at a rest stop, and then we got back in the van and drove for like two hours. We were driving and driving, and all of the sudden I get a call that's like, "Where are you guys?" And we're like, "Who the f*ck is this?!" We turn around and Scott's not in the van. We nearly lost an entire day finding him.
S&S: What about girls?
Jack: Well, there are girls. But we're more into being in love then anything else. I had a girlfriend the first two tours we did. We couldn't be together because we were so far away. Most girls at shows are so forward in a groupie way, that you would never want to be with [them] anyway. The way I look at it is immediately assuming all the tons and tons of disgusting bands they do that with. Bands are usually a pretty disgusting thing, don't you think? Like all those bands that go around and are like "Bands Gone Wild!" But we like to meet people, and wherever we go, we like to stay with people. We stay with some wacky people. We were in Portland once, and we stayed at some girl's house, and she had posters of us all over the walls. It was really weird. Most of us ended up sleeping in the van and our tour manager ended up sleeping with her.
S&S: Give me the juicy stuff that nobody knows, or few people know. I know there's a line.
Jack: Well, I can't give you too much. We're not proud of anything bad we do. One time when we where working on the Drive-Thru DVD and Matt made the editor like blur out a cigarette in his hand because he didn't want his mom to see. So, that's a pretty good image of who we are. We don't do conventionally weird things like big orgies. If we're going to do something weird it's like we're going to eat mushrooms and run around a field all night. That's more of how Steel Train does it. Europe was pretty crazy.
S&S: Oh, tell me about Europe!
Jack: We went there and we flew in at like 3 in the afternoon. We got on the bus, played a show at 5. We didn't stop playing the whole time, so we were on this schedule that we couldn't get out of because of the times of the shows, and the fact that we played a show right away. So, we basically played a show, stayed up all night because of jet lag, and then went to bed at noon the next morning. We would sleep from noon until 7. Europe was the only tour we did where everything was set up for us when we went out there. So, our tour manager would wake us up at 7 [and] literally take us on stage. We would play and then go to bed at 10 the next morning. We didn't see anything when we were there. It was bizarre. One night in London, we played at this place called The Mean Fiddler. It's a really cool club there. Everyone was going out after, and it was only like our 4th day there, so we wanted to go out. We were with these weird sort of band people. We tried to find a place to go, but they didn't know shit about shit. They might have been 15 for all we knew. We couldn't find anywhere to go. So, we finally find a bar that seems fun, so we go in, and we start drinking. The per diem in Europe was really good; the money they gave us every day just because. We didn't really make any money on the tour; we didn't collect our guarantees. We just took what per diem they gave us. So, we had all this money we hadn't spent because the food is so bad. You can't eat there. So, we started drinking uncontrollably. We were all there except Scott. Scott was probably off pondering somewhere. I went to the bathroom, but I couldn't find it. So, I kept opening these doors, and I opened this one door, and it was this crazy trans-like bizarre place. So, we all ended up going in there, and it was probably one of the crazier nights I've had. I was standing in the middle of the room which was spinning, and to my left was Evan, who was being attacked by three English girls. Matt was dancing on a bar probably. Matthias was probably licking the floor. It was crazy, but we're all nice people. The way the night ended, actually, was [that] we went outside...and I won't go there. That was a pretty crazy night in London. Europe was actually pretty mellow. We went with Homegrown. We were both opening for Something Corporate, who are really nice guys. We really like them. They're usually really crazy, but it was a really mellow tour. It ended up getting cut off early anyway, but we really just hung out. There were no real parties. We had a couple dance parties on the bus. Besides that, it was just pretty tiresome. Something Corporate draws a pretty young crowd. So, there was nothing too crazy, but we're crazy in a different kind of way. Want to know about the guys at all?
S&S: Yeah!
Jack: There's Evan. He's the bass player. He's the other one that has sort of bigger hair. He's crazy. He's probably the happiest person you'll ever meet. He never stops at all. Coming home from work at 5 in the morning, he'll drop me off and he'll go somewhere else. He just goes and goes and goes. He's insane. Every time we're writing a song, we all take a lot of pride in finding our own parts. No one tells each other what to play. So, if we have a song, he'll go through a two week period where he's really removed. He stays home a lot and he's trying to figure something out, and his whole point of view is like the bass line is out there and he has to go find it. So, basically that's what he does. It's a really cool mentality; it works every time. Evan's bass lines are ridiculous. So, he goes home and he spends this time alone when we have a song and we're all still working on it. He finds his bass line and he comes back, and we have this bass line that is the backbone of the tune. Then, you have Matt. I wouldn't say shy, but he's very Donnie Darko. He's very insightful. He thinks a lot, and he's really polite. At the same time, he's a real dirt ball. He's just this always thinking kind of person. The cool thing about our band is that we are each other's best friends. We practice, we go home and we shower, and then I call my friends and we hang out. And it's them. We practice every day from 2 to 8 or sometimes 2 to 2 in the morning. Everyone goes home, Matthias lives with me, we shower, and then Evan or Matt calls me and asks, "What's going on tonight? Is there an open bar in the city?" That's what we do and that's what we've been doing for a year, which I think is a really important quality in our band. We've met a lot of bands that aren't friends. We live together, we do everything together, we go to the country and the beach together, we go to Six Flags together. It works out perfectly right now because we all love being with each other. When we tour, we do everything together. We've had a lot of incredible experiences together, the five of us. Just things that we'll never forget. Whether it was one of our first shows we played on tour when we were opening for Finch, which was a weird tour but really cool. We played in front of 3,000 people and we were just like, "This is awesome!" We went out there and Matt actually broke a string on the first song. I think that's really the most important part of our band.