Interview // Mikey Erg! On The Ergs Return, working with Steve Albini & more!

Mikey is most famously known as the Drummer/Front-man for New Jersey’s own Power-Pop Punk Rock Group extraordinaire, THE ERGS! Not to mention Mikey plays in way too many bands to list, and we tried! Some of those groups include: WORRIERS, Jon Snodgrass, All Away Lou and oh so many more! In this late night call, we sit back and sip IPA’s and chat the night away. We cover a lot of ground. We talk about SPARKS, Growing as a songwriter, Working with Steve Albini, Descedents and oh so much more! But most importantly we talk about one of the BEST pop-punk bands of all-time, THE ERGS, and how they came to start (occasionally) playing/recording together again! THIS INTERVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT MOSTLYHARMLESSPODCAST.COM. I fell in love with Mikey Erg in 2005, and my life has been better for it ever since.  The Ergs were touring through Southern Colorado with the “nerdcore” hip hop superstar, MC CHRIS. I went to the show that night, at the Black Sheep with the purpose of interviewing MC Chris for my then, Mostly Harmless Magazine!  I liked Chris. He was goofy and weird and wrote rap songs about Star Wars, Robotussin and Blizzards! He even worked on two of my favorite cartoons, SEALAB 2021 and Aqua Teen Hunger Force!  MC Chris was burnt out on interviews and we did not want to chat. Instead of letting it get me down, I took my tape recorder over to the merch table for The Ergs and introduced myself, asking if I could interview them after their set. Thankfully I had listened a little, and written a few notes. We gathered outside the Black Sheep and I fell in love with the three loveable boys that were Joe, Jeff and Mikey. It was also the start of a lifelong obsession with THE ERGS! I’ve gotten to spend time with Mikey all over the country. Whether in Chicago, Gainesville, New York City or Colorado Springs… Anytime I see Mikey out on the road, he greets me with a hug.  As I was gearing up to restart Mostly Harmless for a third or fourth time, I was having a crisis of confidence. I wanted to do this thing that I’ve loved since I was 16, but at 40 years old.. I’m too old right? But here was Mikey, still out there living his dreams. I had wanted to learn more about the Who and Why behind the man who has written so many of my favorite records, and inspired so many wonderful adventures! Thankfully Mikey was once again on board and we jumped on a late night zoom call,  sipped on a couple of delicious IPA’s and shot the shit and called it an interview. I’m so god damned lucky to be able to call this Saint of a human being a friend of mine. He makes my life, and my music collection oh so much better by being a part of it. He inspires and encourages a number of my dumb ideas and my late night record purchases. I hope this chat teaches you a thing or two about songwriting, or what you can learn by working with a pro like Steve Albini. Maybe you’ll even decide to check out a SPARKS record or two, but we both agree, you should definitely check out SPARKS BROS, the killer documentary directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz fame. It’s streaming now on Netflix, and we both have the Blu ray on our Christmas list.  If you would like to listen or read the original Ergs interview, conducted in 2005 outside the Black Sheep in Colorado Springs, you can read that interview here: Or listen at: http://mostlyharmlesspodcast.com/flashback-episode-1-w-a-wilhelm-scream-the-ergs/ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Hey, buddy, what’s going on? So good to see your face! It has been a very long time! What is it 18 years since I last was interviewed by you? What was that? That was the MC Chris tour, So, 2005!? I was I was fortunate enough to see The Ergs twice in Colorado Springs of all fucking places. Once with MC Chris and another time with Hunchback at JJ Nobody’s Triple Nickel Tavern. You were at the Triple Nickel! That was a night. There’s a famous among us- It’s not a famous photo or anything- There’s a famous photo of all of us cheersing Whiskey River, Willie Nelson’s whiskey at the Triple Nickel. We stayed at JJ’s that night. We got to see the infamous collection. I’ll say no more. I mean, yeah, if you know, JJ, Nobody… then you know…. [Laughter] The other day I was watching the Sparks documentary [The most excellent film directed by Shaun of The Dead/ Baby Driver director Edgar Wright] and I assume you are a Sparks fan? Oh, not only am I a Sparks fan, but you probably know this about me: I am a consumer of music and also of rock documentaries of musicians that I love… And I think that the Sparks documentary is the best rock and roll documentary that I’ve ever seen! They did it so right, where they didn’t skimp. It’s two and a half hours long. They don’t skip over even a millisecond of their career, but it’s concise enough where the average person can get into it. There’s been a lot of talk about GET BACK [the Peter Jackson directed, 9 hour long Beatles Documentary]… If you’re a casual Beatles fan. It’s probably not the movie for you. But as a massive Beatles fan, I’m so glad that they left all that shit in. But no one wants that from the Sparks documentary. Even as a massive Sparks fan, there was stuff that could have been talked about, but this is the perfect documentary. It’s got everything and it’s got some stuff that maybe massive fans didn’t know. Have you been a Sparks fan for a long time? I got into them…not a long time ago. I

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Interview Hutch Harris // The Thermals. Creative Life, New Records and The End Of The Thermals! (Dec 2021)

THIS INTERVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT MOSTLYHARMLESSPODCAST.COM. I’m moving away from Denver with the love of my life Claire and her Dick, the tabby cat. I am quitting a job that I thought was going to be my dream job. I am on a healthy medication and meditation routine. I am creating more than I have ever before. What does this have to do with Hutch Harris or The Thermals? You’ll see. I almost made a very stupid decision to stay here in Denver and run this little restaurant, while the love of my life moved away without me. Claire wanted to move away and explore her passions, but I wanted to stay here in Denver and explore where this path had taken me. I wanted to BUILD SOMETHING. I feel like I have been on a path to this place for so long. This path brought me to the front doors of the little restaurant that I help run. I thought this was the end of the path and the place I had always been working toward. I thought this was it. I thought I had made it. And it was there on that path that I found myself night after night cleaning out the grease traps on our industrial fried chicken fryers. Cleaning out those fryers, I would often sing to myself and that’s when when the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, “Here’s Your Future,” from The Thermals popped into my head. “god reached his hand down from the sky, he flooded the land, then he set it a fire, he said, “fear me again. know i’m your father. remember that no one can breathe underwater.” so bend your knees and bow your heads, save your babies, here’s your future, yeah here’s your future!” That night, Claire was out of town and I knew I’d be going home to a quiet and lonely apartment. I had nothing to really look forward, and soon this was going to be my future if I let Claire move away. Those lyrics staying in my head for weeks… “Here’s Your Future…” I’m not the smartest cookie, but elbow deep in old fryer grease, I realized I had already been building something with this woman I love. I was a dope! I had building a pretty GREAT life! I didn’t want her to go without me. I wanted to be with her, no matter where. I can find another job. I can run another restaurant, but I can never find another woman like her. So I sat and thought about what I really wanted to build. I thought about the things that really bring me joy. Cuddles with Claire and the kitty, writing about art, Interviewing people and just living a simple life. I just want a happy, creative, easy life and I wasn’t going to get that if I stayed here in Denver, cleaning out the fryers. Later than very night, I was sitting here enjoying one too many beers and a few too many tokes off the peace pipe and a Facebook ad scrolled across my screen from THE THERMALS page, announcing that Hutch Harris had just put out a new solo record, SUCK UP ALL THE OXYGEN. A manic idea took hold that I could maybe, just maybe, interview Hutch Harris! We could talk about quitting things and compare our creative processes, but really I just wanted to tell him how much that damned song meant to me in these moments of my life! How this song helped me decide that the path that lead me here to this place, was also leading me away from this place! So I fired off a rambling message to Hutch and to my surprise, he said YES! He would be on the show. That morning I was nervous for a whole lot of reasons. Right before we had our chat, I fired off an email to my bosses at the restaurant and let them know my last day would be January 15th and I would be moving to parts unknown with the love of my life. It felt like some kind of destiny taking over and taking me along for an adventure. The chat went well, I was a rambling mess. My diarrhea of mouth is worse than ever, but as I listened and edited this interview together… I could hear that under the rambling looney nonsense I was spouting off and calling questions, I could see that I do actually have a talent for this kind of stuff. I just need to calm down, relax and maybe drink a lot less coffee. It’s all part of the creative process. For those who may not know, do you mind catching us up on what happened to The Thermals? It’s been three or four years, I think. The last record we did was in 2016 and then we toured, but not as much as we usually did for the other records. We toured most of that year, I think. And then a year or so later, I was like, “I think that’s good enough for me.” I wanted to leave.. it. I wanted to stop doing it because I felt if I didn’t stop doing it, it was just going to be the same for the next 30 years, or until we stop doing it. And I thought about that, my life and my creative life. They were just going to be kind of a flat line for the rest of my life, If I didn’t stop doing the band and do something different. So I just told the band that. They weren’t thrilled but they understood, I felt like it had a good run and I just kind of needed to do something else at the end. How scary was it ending this project, that had been such a big part of your life? It was fine. I knew what it was going to be like. I just knew I

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