Gasoline Heart is not an indie rock band. They are a rock band, and a good old fashioned bar band at that. Like any rock band Gasoline Heart doesn’t have an exact sound to compare themselves to. It’s about a spirit, an attitude pulsing behind the chords and shouts. Gasoline Heart is the bottom of the bottle attitude that The Replacements famously showed off when playing Tom Petty covers as they opened for Tom Petty — they didn’t care that an arena was booing them. They were just having fun, and that is the spirit of Gasoline Heart.

This interview was conducted on the tail of a Gasoline Heart tour in support of their new full-length Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, and like most tours for the band, the tour was unpredictable circus that began with every member of Gasoline Heart quitting aside for lead singer and guitarist Louis DeFabrizo and bassist John Fortson. With not much of any practice, Adam Garbinski and Dave Petersen of the tour’s opening act Adam and Dave’s Bloodline filled in. And as anyone would expect, chaos ensued. But as DeFabrizo says in his tall-boy laugh, “It’s just rock and roll.”

Gasoline Heart – Armadillo

Matt DeBenedictis: Never Been Worse and Never Been Better, two songs on the new album that are basically the same lyrically except for one word, why did you record the song both ways and then place one at the begging and one at the end of the record?

Louis DeFabrizio: I thought it was cool to bookmark the theme of the record. I feel like a lot of the lyrics, like “we are all forgiven, we are all damned to hell”, feel like everything is kind of a wash. Lately that’s how I’ve been thinking about life that just everything that is good can also be bad. I like the idea of having two different versions and the chorus is of course, “I’ve never been better, but I’ve never been worse” at the same time, and I’m cool with both of it. I could either tap into complete depression and alcoholism or be positive say everything works out for a reason. And plus it’s a very Neil Young thing to do.

MD: At least you’re not singing about electric guitars.

LD: true.

MD: I love Neil Young but he does some really bad shit sometimes.

LD: I think he’s just doin’ shit. When you’ve been around for forty years you can do whatever the fuck you want.

MD: You ever feel like quitting?

LD: Everyday! We have a new slogan on tour, always hanging out… what is it?

Adam Garbinski: Always hanging out, rarely having fun.

LD: I’m kind of looking forward to a sober day so the next drunk day is more fun. But everyday I’m exhausted. I think about quitting all the time but my other job is making ten dollars an hour at a sandwich shop so I’d much rather be on tour barely making rent then helping people think they’re eating healthy food but really they’re getting fatter.

Dave Petersen: I think we all feel that way. You think about quitting everyday until you’ve been home.

LD: Then you’re home and your like, “when’s the next time we’re going out?”

An opening band began to play. The noise was too much, so the interview had to be moved downstairs to the green room of the club where the free beer napped. On the way to enjoy the silence and sulk of old couches, a conversation on the difference of metal and rock and roll began. The tape player was slow to wake up.

LD: Metal is a lot easier to play than rock and roll I think. It’s way easier to write some bullshit riff apposed to playing the same fucking chords everyone plays and make it mean something.

DP: I used to play a lot of fast hardcore punk.

LD: Who Blaster [The Rocket Man]?

DP: Yeah… bordering on metal, and that was actually the easiest stuff to play because it was just endurance. I played it on guitar and drums so I feel that’s a fair assessment, whether it’s true for everyone.

Well with playing heavier music you can get a core fan base very fast but with bar band style rock it takes some work.

DP: You got to be tough and tight, but in the rock and roll word you have to hit on some kind of nerve. And sometimes you have to manufacture that connection or that soul that is inherit in the song you wrote but not apparent every night that you fucking sing it.

LD: I agree. We probably had the best show of the tour in Pittsburgh last week, and it felt like you could do no wrong, and the next night it was a total bullshit show.

DP: It sucked.

LD: I loved that it was a bullshit show. I like the fact that we can’t repeat great things. That’s the great thing about rock music, and I’m not trying to over glorify rock music, but that what makes it rock music. One night it can be great the next night it could be complete bullllshit, which is awesome. That means come to the shows, have a couple of drinks, stare at the pretty girls.

DP: It’s just like what you were saying about the partying and drinking stuff. Take a night off and the next night it’s so awesome again. It’s the same with a great show. Great show after great show you start complaining about weird shit and being an asshole. You’ve gotta find something to be unhappy about. That way it’s still like an art project.

LD: Because there’s something in it.

DP: Because you’re repeating a piece of art over and over every day.

LD: You can learn to play a riff completely precise but how do you learn to play the same boring chords over and over…

DP: Leave a little bit of room for improvisation and fun, and to fuck up. The best shows have super suck moments that made the show better.

MD: I love those moments. It’s the unexpected moments that what make going to a show worthwhile.

LD: Neil Young used to find a new band if they sounded too tight. He’s like, “That sounds too much like a computer.” Adam and Dave jumped on this tour because my band totally bailed last second. There’s been a total excitement about them barely knowing the songs. I remember I asked Dave if he was familiar with our record and he said, “Oh yeah. I’m married with a kid. I listen to your bullshit record everyday. I play the fucking drums. We’ll be fine.”

DP: That is exactly what I said.

LD: That is the greatest answer ever and it just made me excited. After the show sometimes Adam and Dave will ask me if the show was okay. It fucking ruled! Did you have fun? Yep. Great, I don’t care. It’s almost gotten boring that we know the songs so well. I want to throw a monkey wrench into it somehow. Let’s fuck it up. Let’s do a triple chorus for no reason, just ’cause we can.

MD: On the record how did the word “armadillo” end up as the repeatable line from that song?

LD: I feel like the first record was a very lonely fucked up record, like lyrically, and I was married at the time, and I got divorced after the record then I listened to the record and I was like, “Oh. Apparently that’s why I got divorced.” I was writing all these things subconsciously and didn’t even know it. What I like about the new record is it still has that heartache but I feel like it’s not depressing; it’s almost third person. But that song Armadillo is exactly what the fuck happened in a I’m not a victim way.

The reason it’s called Armadillo, because usually you see that dead pathetic creature getting run over by a car on the side of the road and that’s how I felt I was at that moment.

MD: I kind of wondered because the way the chorus runs the yelling of Armadillo almost sounded like it was a kept mistake on the vocals. The first full-length was a very tight-sounding record, while Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be is a very loose-sounding record. What has changed over the years?

LD: With the first record we were all about to turn 30, and Squad Five-O had just broke up and my band The Kick had just broke up and we thought we were supposed to play slow music, so everything we did was down tempo, and we recorded that record before we toured. We hadn’t planned on touring and we finally got signed when we were bored with the idea. For so long we tried to get signed but as soon as we didn’t give a shit something happened. When we started touring the record I was like, “You know what, I kind of want to fucking rock again. I don’t want to just play mellow songs.”

MD: For me the lyrical approach became so blunt on the new album.

LD: That’s because I had to hide it on the first record.

MD: Was there a fear of offending Christian kids on that record?

LD: Well No. We couldn’t really curse on it ’cause it was on a Christian label, but it was the only label that would fucking put us out. I don’t care. It’s not like we’re some big Christian rock band that’s making money off of our faith, so I just wanted to make a record. They paid for our record. Fuck it, we did it, and there was no fear… I just didn’t say fuck or shit on the record. That was the only thing I did to play by the rules, but I don’t feel like I did anything to write any differently on the first record. I wasn’t holding back. I just didn’t want my wife to know how fuckin’ miserable I was. That was probably the only thing.

MD: The other night, I went and saw poet Jill Alexander Essbaum do a reading and she talked about all that she learned she was hiding from herself in her last book, which I found to be fascinating. For her she learned she was going to be getting a divorce, as you did from the first record. Did you learn some kind of personal thing on this album?

LD: Something I learned from the new record is sometimes I would create drama just for the sake of art. That’s the one thing I feel successful about with the new record is I didn’t manufacture any depression or bullshit just for art’s sake. I just tried to let it come to me and if I was going to talk about I wasn’t going to talk about it in a sad big bag of mashed up assholes kind of way. I’m just gonna write this song because honestly I’m pretty happy with life right now and it’s okay if I talk about fucked up shit. Even though some people may think the record is depressing.

MD: Hopefully the few thousand couple of kids that dig the stuff keep with us and if not I’m gonna play music no matter what.

MD: You’ve been doing this non-stop for a while now.

LD: Since I was 19. I’m fuckin’ 32 years old. I ain’t doin’ it for the pussy, you know what I mean? I ain’t doin’ it to get through the pearly gates. I’m doin’ it cause it’s all I know.

MD: Now you do a radio show. How did that come about?

LD: I just did an interview and it went real well, and I was scheduled to do another interview. I used to work for a Christian radio show but got fired for saying shit on the radio and I told her all this and she called me up and she said, “Listen I can’t do your interview today because I’m sick, but you can come in and do my show for me.”

She’s like, “You know how to run the board right?” I had no fucking idea how to run the board. So I went to the show and I remember I was like, “So what’s the button that puts me on the air?” And all of a sudden the radio programmer came in.

“Have you been trained?”

“Yeah, I’m fully trained.”

“SO you’ve been FULLY trained on how to run the board?”

“Yeah. I know how to do it.”

I just fuckin’ did it. It’s the same thing with being a singer and a guitar player. I was always a bass player, I didn’t know how to sing or write lyrics. I just wanted to be the co-pilot and play bass and look cool. But I kept getting kicked out of bands, so I had to learn how to write a song. Luckily they’re not all terrible.

Sorry if I’m talking too much.

MD: No, no. This is fun. Just shootin’ the shit. What have been 5 albums that have influenced you to want to make music?

LD: Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses. I was in seventh grade and stole my dad’s pack of cigarettes, his bass, his leather jacket, and I would dress up, and put on Headbangers Ball — and learn how to play Guns N’ Roses songs while in the mirror smoking cigarettes.

Definitely Foghat, which was my dad’s favorite band, this is what made me fall in love with music. Definitely Pearl Jam, and later in life Adam and Dave introduced me to Bruce Springsteen, and I’m a big fan of two singer songwriters: Patti Griffin and David Bazan. And then there’s the only band that depresses me and makes me not want to make music: The Who. They’re just so good, I just don’t know what to do with myself.

But I will say on my 13th birthday or 12th birthday, I wanted to go see Neil Young in concert and my parents wouldn’t take me because they thought I was mistaken on who I wanted to see. “That’s from our generation”, they said. No I saw this song Rockin’ in the Free World on MTV. So when Pearl jam played with Neil Young on the MTV video awards… Pearl Jam led me to everything.

Adam Garbinski: Can I ask a question?

MD: Yeah!

AG: What are your new songs your writing like? Is it the same? Is it different?

LD: I don’t think I’m good enough to have a complete new approach, like it’s going to be the same bullshit chords, but what I’m really aggravated at right now are people that are shitty songwriters. Not that I’m a great songwriter, but I’m aggravated that if you have cowboy boots and a checkered shirt on you seem like a cool singer song writer. I’m inspired the most by shitty music.

AG: Does that mean your going to take it in a more musical direction or are you going to write more concise songs?

LD: I always write the same songs. It just depends on who I’m surrounded by on how they’re going to come out. If I played them on an acoustic guitar they would sound the same. Lyrically, and we’ll see what happens by the time we make the next record, I’m in a good place. I’m excited about not writing tear in my beer music. I’m looking forward to not putting myself into a situation to get depressed enough to write a song. I’m good at that somehow. I’m excited to see what I can come up with when I’m not bummed out.

AG: Do you think if you try that and it sucks you’ll throw a monkey wrench in your own life to try and get inspiration?

LD: Probably. I would probably do anything to be inspired to write music. It’s weird; it’s kind of the self-full filling prophecy.

AG: So you can say you knew it was going to go all-wrong.

LD: Yeah and I’m trying not to.

MD: Didn’t you write a song while your apartment was flooding?

LD: That Never Been Worse song. I just sat on the balcony. One thing I don’t want to get caught into is being too religious, because I know the new record is a kind of “am I cool with God, or am I not cool with God, and even if god is not real and I’m into it does that matter?” I was hanging out with my friend Jay Bakker, who’s a preacher in New York, and we were talking and I said, “Even if Jesus is all bullshit, I’m still cool with it. Because I’m fine.”

And I say that now but six months from now I may have a completely different opinion. When I was talking with Jay, a lot of people were falling from the faith, and not that we’re a faith-driven band, but as of right now I don’t care if it’s bullshit. I’m into it.

MD: And I ask this only because I know Jay. I used to work for him, how did he take that?

LD: He said he was gay affirming. I’m not trying to get religious, but I just can’t disagree with treating your neighbor better than yourself, but I guess they’re are people that are selfish and only think about themselves and that’s fine. But me, I work better when I think about someone more than myself. But don’t worry I’m getting mine.

Photo by Corin Joel Laggara.

16 Responses to “Interview: Gasoline Heart”

1. 

   On 08/17/09 2:46 PM, Josh Mock said:

   Ha, I had no idea Gasoline Heart was ex-Squad Five-O. Glad to see dudes are free from the Christian thing. The couple times I saw SFO I wondered how they got away with playing churches.

   

3. 

   On 08/17/09 4:17 PM, Jay DiNitto said:

   They sound like real class acts.

5. 

   On 08/17/09 4:39 PM, seth@buzzgrinder.com said:

   GREAT interview. Nicest bunch of dudes ever.

7. 

   On 08/17/09 6:31 PM, Bump Galletta said:

   Louis is such a great guy. Fun to drink with.

9. 

   On 08/17/09 8:32 PM, louis said:

   wow someone called us classy
   i like it

11. 

    On 08/19/09 3:47 PM, Bill Power said:

    Obviously they don’t know you as well as I do.

13. 

    On 08/20/09 12:27 AM, reid said:

    louis, i’m still weirded out by tht lisa palleschi girl covering “all the way”.

    bill, you’re definitely right. but then, i don’t think i would like louis as much if he was classy…

15. 

    On 08/20/09 8:13 AM, Jay DiNitto said:

    Yeah.

17. 

    On 08/20/09 1:23 PM, louis said:

    the heart wants what it wants

19. 

    On 08/24/09 2:12 PM, jonshell said:

    Fantastic interview. Now if GH would only come to St. Louis.

21. 

    On 08/24/09 7:08 PM, scooter josh said:

    great interview. good to see people walk away from the lame rules of “Christian” music.

23. 

    On 08/25/09 6:36 PM, Christian Music News August 25th, 2009 | said:

    [...] Gasoline Heart was interviewed over at buzzgrinder.com this week. Read Gasoline Heart interview. [...]

25. 

    On 09/9/09 7:51 PM, Andrew said:

    I don’t care if they’re the same chords; they’re damn good songs.

27. 

    On 09/10/09 4:31 AM, ajtfm said:

    I catch these guys every year at cornerstone
    c-stone won’t be happening for me anymore, but I’m glad I saw GH when I did.

29. 

    On 02/20/10 10:55 AM, Charles said:

    Sounds like former Gasoline Heart drummer Jeff Irizarry wants to meet Buzzgrinder in the parking lot behind the softball field after school for some bareknuckle problem solving! Just check the comments on GH’s myspace.

    Great band by the way.

31. 

    On 02/20/10 3:26 PM, Matt said:

    Charles,
    I just read that comment. As the person who conducted the interview the status of when Jeff quit was told by DeFabrizo. If there was false information of the exact day and time well, we’re the wrong people to ask on that fact.

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