Max Bemis Opens Up About Fatherhood, Comics, and Music
posted in: Music News
Say Anything frontman Max Bemis recently sat down with AbsolutePunk for an extended interview that debuted online earlier today. In the piece, which was written by Drew Beringer, Bemis discussed his comic series, numerous musical projects, being a new dad and more. You can read the full feature on AP, but we’ve highlighted an interesting section for you to enjoy below:
First things first “ how awesome is it being a new dad?
It’s really amazing. To me, obviously the main perk being around the baby and just simply “ it sounds corny “ but just looking into her eyes is literally the most experience I have ever had in my life. You realize it’s your kid and that’s how your relationship with her, and it already sort of manifested itself even when she’s so small, when your baby’s so small, but then it also, in a selfish way, puts everything even more into perspective in your life. I was kind of on that road anyway, like whittling away all the bullshit. When you look at a baby and realize it’s yours and realize your life is dedicated to making that kid’s life better, it puts things in perspective. And being in the music business – or any entertainment job – it’s very easy to become self-involved or worry what people think. You know, things that don’t matter and it sort of falls by the wayside a little bit more when you have a kid.
And with being a new dad, what are some things you thought you be harder with a kid that turned out to be a little easier than expected, and vice versa? Like some things that have turned out to be really fun and you love to do with Lucy?
Yeah, I thought the hardest thing would be just how time consuming it is and I’m the type of guy that kind of like “ I don’t like to go out and party. I have basically no social life, but it’s really more about having the time alone to relax and read and stuff like that. And actually that was my slight worry that that would be done and gone. But, at this point at least, I still get to do those things, if not more, because we don’t really leave home that much and we just get to hang out with her. I’m very pleasantly surprised with how much time I get to myself to do music, my work, to do fun things around the house. It just sort of fits me and Sherri’s lifestyle.
And I guess the hardest thing I didn’t would be so hard is just actually watching Sherri have to do more at this point because she breast-feeding the kid. You know, I can’t do that, unfortunately. And so a lot of the times that’s really calms down Lucy and it’s almost like a disempowering thing. I’m just kind of the bozo who does the diapers and tries to cheer her up with stupid sounds. And it works, but at the same time the link between mom and the kid is so strong that I didn’t realize how hard it would be to hear her cry and realize I can’t really do anything at certain times to make her feel better. I actually wrote a song about that on our next record “ hopefully it’ll make the record “ but it’s just about that feeling of being a guy¦ it’s just one of those few times that your gender as a man disempowers you. You’re like, man, this is like one of the things where a woman is biologically made to do something that I’m incapable of. So that’s a hard thing I didn’t realize would be so hard.
Following up on what you said about writing a song about it “ how much is Lucy is influencing the creative process and what you’ve been putting out musically?
Well, I would say utterly. And I’ll explain how. Basically when we found out that we’re going to have a baby “ we were trying to have one, it was very much on purpose “ but when we found out it was definitely happening, immediately “ and this is like the sick artist mentality that I have “ I thought what does that mean for our next record? And I started to be more conscious of the feelings I was having before being a father and realizing that they would most certainly change when Lucy came into the world. So I came up with the idea of doing the record that¦the majority of the record is pre-Lucy, or I’d say the first half. And the second half is when she’s in my life and there’s one song in the middle about her birth. So, the last few songs I have written have been center around Lucy and having her, but the whole first half of the record is definitely about¦it has almost nothing to do with Lucy, in the sense that it’s about what it’s like to not have a kid. And most people don’t have kids, so I think it’s like¦for people who are afraid (that) just because she was born that the creative decisions that went into it (are influenced by her), the majority of the record has nothing to do with having kids. But it does happen to sort of fit into the concept on the record about not having anything in your life and then having something like that and a big responsibility coming into your life.
If you don’t mind sharing, what was her day of birth like? What was that whole day like for you?
It was insane and we were seeing some symptoms the day before she was born that might happen the next day and we were doing everything we could, like home remedies, to try to make it happen. We just wanted her and we were like five days past her due date. So there’s some signs of it and we went to sleep and my mother-in-law woke me up and was like Sherri’s probably going into labor. I’m like Oh my god! and got her out of bed. It was like the first thing that happened “ it’s not like it happened at night and I woke up to it. So I just kind of got into a zone and we had the most amazing, sort of relatively easy birth ever, thankfully. It was very quick and wasn’t insanely painful even though it was. It was just like this obvious spiritual experience and because there were no complications “ we did a home birth with midwives and it was all-natural. Not to say that there’s a right way to have a baby but in that sense we really got to experience the wonder of it.