"Yeah, the road for a band like us definitely isn't cushy," says Benny Horowitz, drummer of the Gaslight Anthem.
Earning several "best album of the year" accolades and landing a spot at Coachella doesn't shield a band from setbacks. The Gaslight Anthem, an increasingly rhapsodized punk band from New Jersey, may have won over critics and punk-averse indie rock fans with its second album "The '59 Sound," but the group still has its share of issues. Besides the constant (and we do mean constant) comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, the band also recently experienced the ultimate road horror story—the van robbery.
We recently spoke with Horowitz as the band kicked off their first major U.S. headlining tour.
I heard you guys were robbed overseas. What happened?
We got our van smashed up in Sweden. They broke the windows and pried open the back of the van. Fortunately, we have a fancy German tour van that had been reinforced with a cage, so they couldn't really get anything except some of the merch of our opening band. It was sort of ironic; we had parked in some really bad areas of the States and never had a problem. This was in some nice residential section of Gothenberg.
What exactly happens when something like this goes on, though?
Well, it actually turned into a story. The Swedish police wouldn't come, so we had to bring the van to the police station and file a report. After that, we duct-taped cardboard over the window, but that blew apart in a few seconds. So we had five hours of driving in the freezing cold, only to pull up to the ferry to get us to Finland...and see it pulling away. And they only have them every 15 hours or so. So we missed our Helsinki show.
Ugh. As Jersey rockers, you guys get compared to Bruce Springsteen a lot. Does that get tiring?
Sometimes. We're starting to hear every time we talk to anyone. I mean, we like Springsteen, obviously. It's not some big secret. At the same time, it gets repetitive to hear that. I'm actually not a huge Bruce fan; I got into him through our singer Brian. I respect his career, and for being a down-to-earthy famous guy, but I was more influenced by the '90s hardcore scene in Jersey—bands like Lifetime, the Bouncing Souls and Texas Is the Reason.
Speaking of Jersey, you're from New Brunswick. Is that anything like Asbury Park?
It's a small Jersey town, with an old-school downtown. It's a half college town, half working class area. The punk rock kids are on the fringe of those two. But it's really interesting for music. Rutgers is there, and it brings a lot of people from different areas. Most bands from New Brunswick actually move there, but aren't from there. The funny thing is, there's never a place to play. There have been a few good venues, like the Down Under and Melody Bar, but otherwise, it was always basement shows for us, ever since we were kids. It's a staple of the scene—you bring your own stuff, people all chip in, and a whole community developed around this kind of set-up.
Between touring with bands like [indie blues-rockers] Heartless Bastards and playing events like Coachella, it seems like the band is moving away from being just a "punk" group.
It's sort of a natural way things are happening. But yeah, not a lot of bands on the punk side get to play Coachella. We haven't done too many shows like those, just a few festivals in Europe. Every band always sounds like s---. [Laughs] Some s--- wasn't meant to be played in venues like that, you know?
You were on all these top 10 and best album lists last year...has that changed who's coming to your shows?
It did affect it. You know, there's not a lot of 50-year olds who discover punk bands on their own. They don't read Punknews or pick up band flyers. It also brought in a lot of younger audience too, people who started noticing our name more.
