Fun fact: There was a time when the term “hardcore” was not used to describe a punk genre. The new sound movement labelled as hardcore punk was delivered by a band known as Circle Jerks, and after a 15-year hiatus, they’re back on the road and on their way to Australia for the very first time to support Hermosa Beach punk legends Pennywise on a national tour.
Circle Jerks are in tow as supports for Pennywise when they touch down on our sandy shores, and the irony is not lost on Jim Lindberg. “We’re good friends with all those guys; they’re legends, heroes to us, so it’s like we’re riding their coattails, you know?”
Lindberg – vocalist and founding member of Pennywise, has been vocal about the band’s collective love for Circle Jerks throughout the years, he says. “I’m just so stoked the band is back together. We’ve been calling them out on stage for years now, trying to force them to get back together, so we’re glad they finally listened to us. We’re just really excited to be bringing this show down under.” He says. “We played a few shows with them already – in Italy we played in this cool Market Square; this outdoor venue, and they absolutely killed it.”
So, it’s been 29 years since the release of Unknown Road, and the band has recently released their own signature craft beer of the same name. It’s only reasonable to expect an album tour after the success of the 2019 Straight Ahead 20th anniversary tour, right? “Unknown road is a very special album – It’s really cool to be celebrating the [30th] anniversary, but at this point all these anniversaries are overlapping. The Straight Ahead tour, that was a beast. I think we overdid it with that album – 17 or 18 songs on that record.
Hopefully we’re going to add more cuts from that album than usual” says Lindberg. “We won’t be putting us through the torture of having to learn the whole album again, but we will be focusing on a few songs from that album. It’s always fun to go back and play the early stuff.
Hang on. There’s a Pennywise beer? “I was thinking about bringing one into this interview tonight. We’ve got a cool collab going with El Segundo Brewery, which is just about a minute north of here that some friends started. It was all their idea – they said: Hey, we want to come up with a beer for the unknown road album, and offered us a taste test situation, where we got to try a bunch of different beers – that went on well into the night.
I think all of us “Beer Scientists” finally landed on a pretty good recipe. We just tried to make something really drinkable and something fun to enjoy before you get in the pit at a Pennywise show.
Pennywise have been playing high energy punk shows for more than 30 years, with the popular opinion being that the band are now sounding better than ever. So what’s the biggest change since the band’s inception in 1988? “Well, we’ve all gotten a little greyer, we’ve lost some friends along the way, which is a great tragedy and incredibly hard to deal with the process, but like we say in a lot of our songs, you’ve got to keep going!
For Pennywise as a band, and for Jim personally, the subjects of mental health and personal empowerment play a big part in the creative process, as Lindberg describes. “I even wanted to do a tour called Just Keep Going to deal with mental health issues and just the idea that when the world gets you down, you’ve just gotta get up and fight another day. I think that’s very important to our band as well, you just keep going against all the adversity and all the challenges the bands can face, and you gotta get up to fight another day.
Pennywise are on tour with Circle Jerks throughout September.
Get tickets here.