Samuel: To start with, what is your name and what do you do?

Vinnie: My name is Vinny, I play the drums, and generally a collector nerd of sorts.

Samuel: Speaking of the collector nerd thing, I know Less Than Jake has something close to 100 releases, do you try allow people to enjoy their collector nerdness through your band?

Vinnie: Well, yeah. That’s how it should be. When I was growing up I collected KISS and things like that. You have to, you know what I mean? For the band, it’s fun to release a lot of records and for the fans, it’s interesting to follow it. I collect Pez and I collect a bunch of other things like that, so I can appreciate the hunt of new things.

Samuel: I saw on your website that a truck full of your gear rolled, did anything cool get lost in the accident?

Vinnie: Everything was a little banged up, but it was alright. When I first rolled up on it I though that our equipment was fucked up for sure.

Samuel: So no missed shows or anything?

Vinnie: No, everything was fine.

Samuel: How has it been being out on tour with Bad Religion? Has it been fun so far?

Vinnie: It is. Bad Religion is one of those bands that I listened to when I was 16. It’s the same feeling for us as when we toured with the Descendents on the Caffeine Nation tour, where it’s a band I grew up listening to, and being on tour with them is a cool feeling.

Samuel: I know you guys did Warped Tour last year, any plans to be on it this year?

Vinnie: We’re not doing Warped Tour this year. We’ll be doing a three-week tour headlining tour of our own, then we’ll spend all of June and all of August touring Europe doing festivals. I think in August I’ll be suffering from some bacterial disease from drinking the water in Portugal or Spain.

Samuel: Do bad things always happen when you guys head to Europe?

Vinnie: Well, the weird thing is that Portugese food is really starchy and really greasy, yet they don’t have any toilet seats or decent toilet paper. It’s one of those weird oxymorons that are around the world.

Samuel: So you’re stuck with a problem and no way to fix it.

Vinnie: Well, here it is. You have the shits, you’re in Portugal, there are no toilet seats, so here you are, you’re balancing, you’re performing a balancing act, trying to take a shit. Then you go to grab some toilet paper, and it’s like cardboard. You’re wiping your ass with cardboard in Portugal. If someone actually brought decent toilet paper and a toilet seat over to Portugal, they’d probably become a millionaire.

Samuel: They don’t have any toilet seats in Portugal? Is that what you’re telling me?

Vinnie: What I’m telling you is that you have to hover above the bowl to take a shit in Portugal.

Samuel: I guess that is something to add to the list of things to bring to Portugal.

Vinnie: You bet your ass, literally.

Samuel: See, you should make the "Less Than Jake Travel Book" with lists of things to bring to Portugal and abroad.

Vinnie: Yeah, fuck those Fromers people for travel books, I’ll make my own. They don’t tell you to bring a toilet seat to Portugal or that you’re going to have to shit standing up in Italy, I’ll tell you all that.

Samuel: That’s practical reading.

Vinnie: You need to bring, here’s my travel guide real quick, bring ketchup to Europe, because the ketchup there isn’t really ketchup, it’s some weird faux-ketchup. Bring toilet paper to Europe, don’t drink the water, bring condoms to Europe, because they use these weird sheep membrane intestine condoms there. It’s sick. They come fresh, so you have to fish them out of this brine, like a pickeled egg. So there are my two cents. Also, don’t get any hookers in Amsterdam, even though it’s tempting because they’re hot. But it’s a hooker, you don’t want to fuck a hooker, bro! It’s sketchy.

Samuel: At the show here, you talked about writing some new songs.

Vinnie: We have completed our writing process. We have 15-20 new songs, depending on how many we finish. We’ll be going into the studio to record that in the near future.

Samuel: Well, with the touring schedule you guys have, when are planning to actually record everything?

Vinnie: The month of May.

Samuel: Are you releasing this new album on Fat as well?

Vinnie: Good question. We don’t know. We haven’t discussed it. I can’t give you an answer.

Samuel: I know you did the re-released of Goodbye Blue and White on Fueled By Ramen, which is your label, are there any plans to release any new Less Than Jake albums on the label?

Vinnie: There is a possibility of it. There has been talk here and there. We won’t know until we sit down with Mike, but he’s been on tour lately, but we’ll sit down with Mike and a few other people and see what happens. It’s all good.

Samuel: I know you were on a major label and then went to Fat, is there any chance that Less Than Jake could go back to a major, or is that behind you?

Vinnie: I’ll never say never about going back to a major. It all depends on the deal, how happy we’d be there. Also, if the people were cool. That’s the main thing about releasing records, people have to be nice and like your band. As lame as that sounds, it’s true, for our band anyways. We’ve been around for nearly a decade now, why would we want to go to a label that didn’t like our band? Why would we want to go to a label where everyone is a bunch of fucking dickheads, so it’s really important for us to be chemically cool with the people who work at a label and have a good vibe. Plus, they have to give us free cocaine and hookers!

Samuel: That’s always a plus.

Vinnie: Though I will never have sex with a prostitute or hooker, but I know people who will. There are few people I know.

Samuel: I know that you spend a lot of time contributing to the band’s website, do you feel it’s important to have a first hand word on what the band is up to?

Vinnie: It’s not really about that. It’s about, you’re in a band bro, you’re supposed to send along information personally, you’re supposed to talk to kids and listen to what they say. It’s stupid, the bands that don’t control their own websites are assholes, and they’re not thinking. You have to be actively involved in what your band is doing, or you’ll lose it. Look at Courtney Love and I could go on forever with a list of artists who write on their websites actively. I think it’s just smart. You’re a little more in tune with everything.

Samuel: I saw you did an interview with Buddy on the site, was that to ask the questions you’ve always wanted to know?

Vinnie: Doing those interviews is asking the questions that always get asked, so we don’t have to be asked them anymore.

Samuel: So it’s your way to answer the questions you get over and over again.

Vinnie: Well, when you’re Buddy and you get asked for the millionth time what kind of trombone you use and it’s on your website, you shouldn’t get asked that anymore. The next interview up there is going to be mine. I think it’s so long they’re splitting it into two parts.

Samuel: Did you do the interview with yourself or did you have someone else do it?

Vinnie: I had JR do it for me. All the questions, when you’re talking about lyrics and band stuff, it’s split into two, it’s just insane. We’ll do part one of me, then I did JR’s, so it’ll be part one of me, JR’s, part two of me, then Chris or Roger, whichever we get first.

Samuel: I saw on the site that if you ever ran into you at a show, to ask about playing a graduation, so what’s the story with that?

Vinnie: I won’t tell you, you have to ask me at a show.

Samuel: So I have to see you at a show and ask?

Vinnie: Yes, yes. It’s the ‘hey what’s your sign?’ for the kids coming up to us. It’s the conversation starter for kids who normally wouldn’t have anything to talk about.

Samuel: And we wouldn’t want to ruin that here.

Vinnie: Right, why ruin that here? Then kids would know.

Samuel: Then the kids would have no way to initiate a conversation with you.

Vinnie: Exactly.

Samuel: So we don’t want to ruin that.

Vinnie: Don’t want to ruin it.

Samuel: So how happy are you about the growth of Fueled By Ramen?

Vinnie: I’m stoked. It’s really grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.

Samuel: Is it nice, after shopping Less Than Jake records around for so long to find a label, to now be the guy who gets to choose what’s on a label?

Vinnie: I just like an eclectic amount of music. I don’t like the band The Eclectics, but I like an eclectic amount of music. I like to be able to help out. You’re just giving back what was given to you so long ago.

Samuel: How does that feed the collector nerd in you? I know you get sent a lot of CDs, is that fun?

Vinnie: Yeah, it’s cool. It’s also about helping the punk rock scene. As lame as that sounds, and a cliché as that sounds, it really is. That’s why you put the records out, that’s why you take young bands on tour. You try to help the thing that helped you out.

Samuel: So keep the good karma going.

Vinnie: Yeah, good karma is definitely a plus. And how else could I afford my 1995 IROC-Z. That’s a joke, I actually don’t have a car, I have a bicycle.

Samuel: Yeah, but the IROC gets the whole Florida vibe going, with Camaros and Trans-ams. So you gotta stay true to your home.

Vinnie: I wish I had an IROC-Z. My car is a mountain bike called a mountaineer, which was bought from Wal*Mart for $119.

Samuel: It gets you around.

Vinnie: Fuck yeah it gets me around, it’s fucking Gainesville, what do I need two cars at my house for? My wife has one, why do I need one? I ride my bike where I need to go, to get coffee or to look at magazines.

Samuel: Well, you’re also on tour for 8-9 months a year, so it’s not like you’d get much use out of a car.

Vinnie: Exactly. Nine years ago I got hit by a car on my bike. Like Chris just said, I’ve been retarded ever since. Probably, I tend to agree with him. I’ll tell you something that hasn’t been on the website yet. Next week we’ll be releasing our home video that is 120 minutes long that is called Avant-Tard.

Samuel: Is that going to be live footage sent in from people who have taped your shows? I know you still have the open policy.

Vinnie: Well, I looked at all the footage and everything. Everyone can have us playing live, so this video is stuff people can’t really find like interviews in Austrailia, us playing on New Zealand TV, little movies and shorts done by Chris and other people in the band filmed. People can come see us live, so this more about the humorous side of us, the wackiness of us live.

Samuel: So you actually put time into this?

Vinnie: ummmm...yeah.

Samuel: Well, maybe not time, but thought. Most bands just tape a show and make it their video.

Vinnie: Well, anyone who likes our band enough to buy the video has already seen us half a dozen times and knows the schtick: confetti, costumes, fire, blah, blah, blah. This is all the other stuff they can’t get, so it’ll be rad.

Samuel: That is one thing I was shock about when you guys played here, there were no costumes and the skull man was nowhere to be seen.

Vinnie: I’ll tell you why. You really answered your own question, because you were expecting it. Because when people expect it, you have to change it up.

Samuel: When everyone expects something, it does make it seem less fun.

Vinnie: Yep. You can’t do things too much, because you become a parody of yourself. So, we brought out TV sets instead and kept everything pretty much ghetto. Who else would bring 9 TV sets out on tour with them and show weird things and colors.

Samuel: That’s what I thought was interesting, the flowing colors on the screen.

Vinnie: Which was cool though, did you dig the colors?

Samuel: I was rad, it gave the vibe of one of those old lava lamps with the rotating bulbs that changed the water’s color. Very retro!

Vinnie: I liked it a lot, I thought it was cool and original, that’s why you bring things like that out. Because it keeps people guessing about what’s going to happen.

Samuel: Right, so next time they just want know and will be all anxious to find out.

Vinnie: When people show up, then they’ll know. That’s why people still see us live, it’s not the same shit over and over again, it’s something new each time. That’s the best thing to be.

Samuel Barker is Senior Editor. Contact him at suma@rockzone.com.