The band are industry veterans themselves, with over 100 releases (singles, records, full-length CD’s, samplers, etc.) and 17 years of live shows. From the early, fast-paced sounds of Pezcore to the polished songs of their latest release, GNV FLA, the band isn’t slowing down.

VF: Well, I’ll go with the first part of your question. Right now we’re under our own label, Sleep It Off. Basically, it means that we’re responsible financially for not only marketing the record but the recording costs that are involved with it, the art costs that are involved with it, everything. We have a distribution deal with another company that distro’s the record to various brick-and-mortar stores and digital outlets. That’s number one. Number two: with that said, I think the situation that we’re in currently allows the most freedom when it comes to writing and creativity. But, I also think that because it’s late in our career, we sort of have an established name, even though we have that freedom, we’re sort of putting ourselves in a box. So, the most creative freedom we’ve ever had as a band was when we first were starting, because there was no pre-conceived notion, there was no “how to do things,” there was no anything. We were just locked in a warehouse writing songs because we wanted to write songs. Not worrying about whether or not we were ever going to put those songs out. We were just writing.

VF: Well, I think as a writer, or an interviewer, a member of the press, right? If I go to you, “describe Less Than Jake,” how would you describe us?

VF: So, with that said, that’s who Less Than Jake is. I don’t necessarily think GNV FLA was a throwback; I just think that it was living up to the definition that people have of our band.

Who we are right now is a band that has always played pop/punk with shades of ska, with varying horn parts, and that’s who Less Than Jake will always continue to be. I think that we’ve reached out of the box on certain songs, certain records. Getting out of the box didn’t necessarily work for our band, you know?  To stretch our writing skills, does that mean we have to do a Passion Pit-inspired record? I don’t think so. I think that we just have to continue to write the best songs possible and to stretch technically out of how we are as players. So many times people think that growing as a band means changing of style. For a while I kind of agreed with people on that, but I know now in retrospect that growing as a band and as songwriters doesn’t necessarily mean you have to leave the genre that you are comfortable writing in behind.

VF: It doesn’t really even start with the lyrics. More so, it starts with me conceptualizing what I want to do with the record, taking it to the rest of the band, having their tweak on it, and then starting the ideas. It’s based off of that idea of the record and kind of conceptualizing lyrics behind that, conceptualizing a sound that we want to work in within that title, and within that idea for the record.

Sometimes I write a set of lyrics down with no music. I’m sitting in a practice space and I say, “I think I have this cool idea. Take a look at it,” and we start to fumble with chords and beats, and it becomes a song. Other times it’s, “Hey I have these chords and I have this loose melody line.” And then, I kind of take a shot at how the song feels and kind of write some lyrics for it, and we kind of morph it from there. There’s other times where there’s this melody line and there’s a point to it, we kind of dive in and I write lyrics directly for a melody line and it fits in. I think first and foremost, you have to sort of know what the record that you’re doing is and in what parameters and limits [the record is].  So, let’s say on GNV, I wrote a love song, it might not have necessarily worked on GNV FLA, it might have worked on In With The Out Crowd you know?

VF: I think lately, as a band, it’s the quietest we’ve ever been. I think that, ultimately, we over-toured. We toured in the spring and then we toured Warped Tour and then we toured in the fall, and that was just too much. We got off tour in December and I think that we just needed a break to kind of let people miss us a little bit, you know? And, to write some songs and get some ideas and some fresh perspective. So, I’m considering it a mini-hiatus of touring, so to speak.

VF: Some of us are big comic book fans. Myself, I do vinyl toys (under Wunderland War Toys), they’re collectible toys. So, it sort of fits in with the vibe. I think that our band since day one has always been a collectible and a very collector-oriented band. So, the lifestyle that we promote is sort of in that SuperCon way of thinking. We’ve done toys as a band before. We’ve done limited-edition records. We’ve done limited-edition shirts. We’ve done everything under the sun when it comes to merchandising the band.

VF: I think that it’s the missing part of music. I think that music can take you to a certain place, but I think that having the art behind it takes you to the place where the artist meant the music to go to to start with. Take AC/DC, Back In Black. You can listen to a song on Back in Black and it takes you to a certain spot. But when you look at the jacket of Back in Black, you go “Oh, I get it even more so.” I think that’s a good record jacket that sort of frames the music a little bit more, frames who the band is more. In this day and age of kind of file-trading and digital sales from digital outlets like iTunes, Amazon, you never have a chance to see who the band is trying to be. There’s no pictures of the band, there’s no “Thanks” list from the band, no lyrics of the band. Sure, you can spend the extra x amount of dollars to get an “iTunes album,” but that’s kind of bullshit. It’s just a PDF. You’re not really holding it in your hand. It’s not this ritual. When I was growing up, I loved the ritual of buying the record and pouring over the lyrics, and seeing who the band is and seeing who the band’s friends are. The “Thanks” list was a huge way for me to discover music. There’s no fucking “Thanks” lists when you buy a record from iTunes.

VF: It’s two-fold. One. I was looking at the horizon line for where the label was headed. I really didn’t like the style of music that we were headed toward. My partner at the time really did. I was like, “This is really not going to work.” Looking at the moment where I decided to leave: Fall Out Boy at the top of their game, Panic! at the top of their game, Paramore not at the top, but definitely climbing near the top, Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is. That, for me, was the ceiling for the label, and I personally like to get out at the ceiling. Could I have waited another year and it probably would have been the ceiling? Probably. Maybe I went out a little bit too early, but I think that the combination of me feeling that it was the ceiling of popularity and sales for the artists, as well as being not happy with the direction it was heading; It was time for me to fucking go. So, I left. Luckily enough, there was a major label there waiting to write a check to get me the fuck out, and I was stoked to take it.

VF: Here’s the thing, there are a lot of life lessons and a lot of business lessons that I learned with Less Than Jake over the last 17 years. But, ultimately Less Than Jake is 5 people, you know? Five different distinct personalities, 5 distinct opinions. Less Than Jake was the school that I learned a lot of things in, but Paper + Plastick is decidedly my thing. I think with Less Than Jake, it’s a great democratic feel, and we all have an equal say. It’s awesome. With Paper + Plastick, it gives me an opportunity to take the things I’ve learned and the things that I believe in when it comes to music, when it comes to marketing, things like that, and allows me to do whatever I want without having to clear it 4 other people. My point being, there’s a fucking freedom there, that I can do what I want and ultimately it either sinks or swims, you know? It lies directly back to me. It doesn’t really lie on 4 other people, and that’s the fucking freedom that I love.

That’s a lot of things, and a lot of unanswered questions as well. I can probably guarantee you that you will not see a full Less Than Jake tour until early next year. We’ll take the summer and the fall off, doing some regional shows and some spot shows. I can also guarantee you that we will be going to foreign countries before we do the United States. We’re working on it right now. I’m not at liberty to tell you when, but I know that it will be this year. As for releases, you’re going to see a bunch of releases come out over the next 8-9 months. So, that’s definitely something that we are in the stages of talking about planning and executing.

11/4/10 UK Oxford O2 Academy