(some of the taxpayers’ songs can be found at the bottom of this post.)

You don’t have to have spent long around music fans to have heard the expression “this band saved my life” (perhaps between bong hits & to a soundtrack of the Grateful Dead). As hackneyed expressions of adulation go it gets the job done okay, but it’s always seemed a little abstract to me. Did they actually save your life? In a world devoid of Jerry Garcia’s noodling, would you not have found some other way to soldier on?

I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t be here had I not discovered the Taxpayers, but I can say that in finding their music (and through their music, the rest of the DIY punk scene) I found friends, hope, and the inspiration to get active, get (relatively) sober and get out there. I found that there are still people out there creating amazing music, and doing so without apologising or bending to the perceived will of the music industry in the hopes of Getting Signed.

The Taxpayers embody DIY for me: inspirational, messy, approachable, imperfect, amorphous, goofy & full of hope. Between the ever-changing lineup, the albums they’ve released with friends, the unpretentious & interactive nature of their live shows and the little hand-written Thank You notes that came with my early orders, the Taxpayers opened my eyes to the fact that making music on your own terms doesn’t just have to be noble, it can also be fun. It doesn’t have to be a means to an end, it can be the end-goal itself.

There’s a whole world out there, what do you want to do? Fuck doing it right and just DO IT.



I recently got the chance to talk to Rob Taxpayer about the new album, the creative process, DIY, politics and the punk scene as a whole. As is becoming a bit of a trend, I also took aeons to get it finished. Sorry!

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Finn Keaney -Firstly, I just wanted to say that I absolutely love the cover art. My copy just arrived and I’ve been glancing over at it the whole time while I listen. It actually reminds me a lot of Basquiat, but without his focus on figures & self portrait. It’s a lot less literal than the album art for all of your albums other than ‘To Risk So Much…’ but I think that really pays off.

Rob Taxpayer - Thanks, Finn. I love the cover art too. Colin Smith painted it specifically for the album, and I am absolutely blown away by it. Colin is an old friend of ours from Portland, Oregon. Him and I used to work at a copy shop / office supply place together in 2007, which is where we scammed and stole all the CDR’s and other supplies that were used to put out the first Taxpayers album. Colin is an amazing painter, photographer, and artist in general. He runs the website—-www.distortedperspective.com—-where you can see more of his beautiful work. We are really lucky to have such a talented friend.

FK -So, your new album’s just dropped and continues along the path your last few have taken in non-traditional songwriting and arrangement for a punk band. How are you feeling now that it’s out in the world? Does an album’s reception matter to you?

RT - Good question. I mean, it is nice to hear when people find something useful or meaningful or fun or interesting in the songs that you’ve spent a very long time crafting and dissecting and rearranging. I very much care about these songs, and it’s great when other folks do too. However, we have been doing this for long enough that we have made records that are either completely ignored, completely despised, called “album of the year” and everything in between, so we definitely don’t ever release a new album with preconceived expectations about its reception. We just do what we do and let the chips fall where they may. Part of this is because we don’t pay people to promote our albums, and the extent of promotion that we personally do is sending out a few emails to friends who run blogs or zines (like you) to let them know that we’ve made a new album. Another reason is because not all of the songs we make are easily categorized into genre labels, and music that is a little bit different is not everyone’s cup of tea. So, you know, you just make stuff that is meaningful to you and stuff is helpful to you, and try not to worry about what other folks think about it too much.

FK - Your songwriting has gotten a lot more adventurous over the years. What does your songwriting process look like? And, to double up on the question, what are your listening habits these days?

RT - Songwriting is a very mysterious and exciting process, and I’m still not terribly certain how it works. I think that a lot of it is solving puzzles, allowing your subconscious to design the things that it wants to design, and being confident enough in your abilities to be willing to experiment and be willing to kill off ideas that are not very good. In order to do these things, I usually try to be disciplined enough to allow a few hours each day to play around with melodies, phrases, stories, etc., and see what sticks. I do that every day for a few months while writing an album, and usually come up with hundreds of ideas, most of them not all that great. Out of those, maybe 5-10% of them make their way to an album.

My listening habits for the past few years have mostly consisted of traditional jazz and classical music. Stuff that can be either background music or intriguing / sophisticated, depending on what you are doing.

FK - It’s interesting to me that a concept album focusing entirely on fictional characters is your most political record so far. Can you explain the origins of the album and the headspace you were in when writing it?

RT – Sure. Decades of Laissez-faire economic policies coupled with drastic deregulation and limited consumer/individual protections has led most major cities in the United States to the place we are currently at, which is a city-center that is designed by and for the wealthy (and the select lucky few that are able to play the game within a very specific set of parameters). Public housing, basic public education, and easily attainable trade jobs have been all but eliminated, so low-income people get pushed further and further away from the city-center and become more and more desperate and unable to pay the bills or put roofs over their family’s heads. This, coupled with institutionalized racism (and race-targeted policies), has left minority communities frustrated and disenfranchised to the point of utter disillusionment. I live in New Orleans, where the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina have sped up all these things, but it has happened everywhere. We are seeing some of these effects boil to the top with the riots and protests that happen following the almost daily cases of police brutality, where people’s anger and frustration with the current state of affairs is just palpable. Maybe it’s the same where you live, in the United Kingdom, but I can’t say. But basically, of course all this stuff is going to seep into songs people are writing and movies people are making and books people are writing, which is what happened with the songs on this record.

FK - One of the big subjects touched on in the new LP is what Naomi Klein calls the shock doctrine - the idea of big business and government using the chaos resulting from disasters to push laws or business deals that would be immediately blocked were the population not in a state of shock. This kind of thing - as well as gentrification generally - is something we’re all hearing and seeing a lot of (especially since 2001), as are the feelings of poverty and hopelessness felt by characters in the album. That said, it’s also a time of instant communication and increasing grassroots activity in some areas. How do you feel about the direction we’re collectively heading in?

RT - It seems like we are collectively spiraling into a state of constant violence, anger, and chaos, and the descent has been happening for a very long time. But the stuff that is happening today is nothing new; the people in power have always found ways to manipulate, control, and harm the people without power. In order to live in the world, you have to search for moments of kindness and generosity to hold onto hope. I’m not sure if you heard about it, but there was the Iraqi man who hugged a suicide bomber in a mosque, cushioning the impact of the explosion in order to save the lives of everyone there.

FK - I did! Not through the mainstream media, though - good deeds don’t shift units I guess.

RT - I was also very moved by a story posted by a young black woman in Dallas after the recent shootings who had a conversation with an older white police officer in a convenience store - he said “it’s been a difficult day to be both of us, huh?” and they hugged and cried together for a long moment. There are good people in the world. It is very easy put the people around us into boxes of either “friend” or “enemy”, when in reality, most folks are just trying to do what they think is right.

FK - Outside of the Taxpayers, you teach young children. How, if at all, do you apply your DIY or punk ideals to your role as a teacher - and have you had any difficulties with management or the school system as a result?

RT - You have a good memory! I used to teach kindergarten and 1st grade, (FK edit: oops!) and got a masters degree in elementary special education a few years ago. Nowadays I teach adults GED classes at the local community college and the local jail. But management and school system problems are the same in both elementary schools and community colleges - the state and the federal government requires you to do things that are detrimental to the way students learn, and you just have to figure out ways to not let those things control your classroom. DIY ideals have been especially important in my community college classes - the idea that everyone has the capacity to solve whatever problem comes their way, if they are given the means to do so. Questions in these classes range from “How do I write a resume for a job?” to “How do I learn more about English grammar?” to “I need to understand geometry for my work as a carpenter, where do I start?”, and my job is to basically provide the fundamentals and the means through which to find the necessary resources so that folks can solve those questions for themselves. It is definitely something that I learned a lot about through DIY punk.

FK - I read about some friction between some Punker Than Thou types and your partner, as well as yourself. As a scene there’s often a struggle between being a safe haven for outsiders and being distrusting and isolationist. How do you feel we can work to improve relationships - both within the scene, and between the scene & society as a whole?

RT - Well, it probably sounds stupid, but I think that people should probably just try to be kind to one another, regardless of what they look like, where they come from, what they’ve heard about them, their background, etc., until they have an actual reason to not be nice.

FK - Novel idea.

RT - It’s a very basic concept that many of us are taught at a young age, but that we often forget. I think the easiest way to improve your relationship with strangers or people that are different from you is to talk to them; go out of your way to compliment your neighbor’s garden, tell the old man at the bus stop that you like his hat, introduce yourself to someone standing by themselves at a show. When we talk to one another, it becomes more difficult to hate one another.

FK - You said recently that you’ve moved with your partner into a storage unit which you’re working on turning into a home for yourselves - how’d this come about, and how are you finding the process?

RT - I just finished building a rooftop deck on top of the container! I’m very proud of the work that we have done because we’ve done it all by ourselves, or with the help of a few friends.

FK - You released a book alongside the Henry Turner LP which continued themes brought up in that album. How did you find the process of writing in comparison to making music? Have you or any of the band been considering any further artistic ventures outside of music?

RT - With the Henry Turner book, I found that writing prose was much more difficult for me than writing songs. They are two very different processes. I’ve occasionally tried to do some writing since then, but nothing has stuck. We’ll see if anything ever does.

FK - What can we expect to see and hear from you in the near future? I saw that you’re playing PIX Fest again, but are you going to be touring this album?

RT - We were planning on playing PIX fest and doing a little tour, but life has been kicking my butt lately and we had to cancel it. What they say is true, touring becomes harder and tougher to coordinate the older you get. Hopefully we’ll be able to make it happen some time in the future; everyone in the Taxpayers is incredibly dear to me, and some of my favorite moments in life have been driving around the country in a van with them.

FK - Finally, if you had to pick one person or group of people (musician, band, artist, author, whoever) that you’d want everyone to check out after finishing this interview, who would it be?

RT - Well, I’d definitely encourage everyone to check out Colin Smith, who I mentioned at the beginning of this interview. Right now I’m listening to Gwen Thompkins, who is a public radio host for the show “Music Inside Out”; her laugh and her enthusiasm for life are infectious, so I suppose that I’ll recommend her! It was nice to chat with you, Finn.

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