QUESTIONNAIRE

| Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace

LAURA JANE GRACE HAS NOT ONE BUT TWO BIG RELEASES COMING UP THIS YEAR: Against Me!, the punk band in which she sings and plays guitar, is releasing Shape Shift With Me, their seventh album, in September. Considering this is a band that started as a solo project playing rambunctious acoustic punk, then went through a wildly unexpected glossy-radio-rock phase before diving into abrasive punk, it’s safe to say that half the fun of a new Against Me! album is having no idea what it’s going to sound like.

Two months later, her book Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout hits shelves. While only one Canadian Against Me! date is confirmed — September 21 in Montreal — Grace will also be speaking in Victoria, BC at “festival of imagination” Thinklandia, which runs from September 8 to 14. GREG PRATT

WHAT ARE YOUR CURRENT FIXATIONS?

I read this book recently that blew my mind, Bore Hole by Joe Mellon. Mellon was an early pioneer of psychedelics and wanted to figure out a way to get permanently high, so he started experimenting with self-trepanation, and after three attempts, he drilled a hole in his head. He managed to write the book, so he didn’t do too much damage.

NAME SOMETHING YOU CONSIDER A MINDALTERING WORK OF ART:

One of the songs on the new record, “333,” is inspired by a trip to the Guggenheim Bilbao when we were on tour in Spain. A couple of the exhibits there were just so mind-blowing. One painting in particular — The Renowned Orders of the Night [by Anselm Kiefer] — I’d never been affected by a painting like that before.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST MEMORABLE OR INSPIRATIONAL GIG AND WHY?

The Damned in 1997 at the State Theatre in St. Petersburg, FL. When you first get into punk rock, you get into the classic bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash; the Damned kind of skipped me by for some reason, so I went to the show not really knowing the Damned at all. I’d never been that sold on a band just by seeing a show, where it’s like I’m a fan for life because of that show.

WHAT’S THE MEANEST THING EVER SAID TO YOU BEFORE, DURING OR AFTER A GIG?

We played a show in Germany one time and you had to go through the crowd to get back stage, and this fan stopped me and was like, “That was shit.” I was like, “Okay…” and just tried to brush it off and move past him, and he was like, “No, no, no. That was total shit.” I’m like, “Okay,” and he said, “That was shit,” and I just, like, snapped at that point. I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m sorry you didn’t like it, but that’s not a question, you’re not asking me a question. There’s nothing I can say back to you.”

You’re also talking to someone who plays in a band who, you know, we had Maximumrockandroll publishing columns telling fans to sabotage our shows at all costs and pour bleach on our merch. I’ve had people physically try to stop me from playing guitar at shows, like other punks put their hands on my guitar or whatever, slash our tires, graffiti our van… One of my deciding moments with punk rock was outside this show where there was this ridiculous fight happening, and I saw another punk pick up a brick. I was like, they’re going to kill me over an argument about punk rock and my band and what it means to be punk. I was like, “Fuck this, and fuck you.”

WHAT TRAITS DO YOU MOST LIKE AND MOST DISLIKE ABOUT YOURSELF?

I dislike when I’m inhibited. I like when I’m very uninhibited, and I’m usually very uninhibited, but sometimes I can be a little shy.

WHAT ADVICE SHOULD YOU HAVE TAKEN, BUT DID NOT?

I regret not listening to my own gut, when I know something’s right and I know I should go through with it, and I don’t, and I hesitate. I

WHAT WOULD MAKE YOU KICK SOMEONE OUT OF YOUR BAND AND/OR BED, AND HAVE YOU?

I have a thing on the bus where you don’t eat in your bunk. Eat in the back lounge, eat in the front lounge, but don’t bring food into your bunk. I just think it’s unsanitary. We had a keyboard player, like an auxiliary musician, who we brought on tour in 2010 in Canada, and he was getting blind blackout drunk and missing bus call. This one night, we’re all drinking in this bar, and it’s time to go, so we’re like, “Okay, where’s homeboy?” He’s in the alley. We’re like, “Hey!” and he tries to jump in behind the dumpster and hide from us.

We drag him back to the bus and we’re all pissed off. I’d already said to him, “Don’t eat in your bunk.” He storms onto the bus, grabs two slices of pizza and bumps past me to his bunk. I was like, “Did that really just happen? Fuck this.” We went back to his bunk and ripped the curtain open, and there he is, shirtless, [with a] piece of pizza on his chest. So we meowed at him for two or three hours. We all just held him down and meowed as loudly as we could, like cats. Then we ducttaped his bunk completely shut. In the morning, there was a hole like an animal had clawed out. He was a sweet person, but a bad drunk.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST LP/CASSETTE/CD/EIGHT TRACK YOU EVER BOUGHT WITH YOUR OWN MONEY?

First cassette was Def Leppard, Hysteria. The first CD was Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, and the first LP was the Misfits’ Die Die My Darling. It was an EP, but a twelveinch — my first piece of vinyl.

IF I WASN’T PLAYING MUSIC I WOULD BE…

Dead.

WHAT DOES YOUR MOM WISH YOU WERE DOING INSTEAD?

Visiting her more often.