INTERVIEW WITH PATRICK KINDLON BY KEVIN STEWART-PANKO
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MANUEL BARAJAS
The bio accompanying PRUDE, the fifth album by Drug Church, describes the Albany, NY band’s sound as “a singular amalgamation of eye-popping aggression, bulletproof hooks, and incisive lyricism.” Far be it from us to disagree. Originally formed in 2011, Drug Church—vocalist Patrick Kindlon, guitarists Nick Cogan and Cory Galusha, bassist Pat Wynne, and drummer Chris Villeneuve—burst onto the scene being a punk band that wasn’t quite punk, a hardcore band that wasn’t quite hardcore, an alt/indie band that was too heavy to be considered alt/indie, but definitely wasn’t a metal band. Their sound is one that melds PNW grunge with NYHC, the Taang! Records roster, and the 90s Britpop explosion, but has been sculpted by arena-sized choruses, that time Cobain jammed with Angel Rat-era Voivod, and back alley pulp literature.
What started as a cobbling together of hardcore punk skater dudes looking to form a different type of band amid upstate New York’s tough guy hardcore scene has grown into a tour de force, playing some of the biggest festivals here and abroad and sharing stages and tour routes with Alkaline Trio and Silversun Pickups. Not bad for a band that introduces a song from PRUDE called “Business Ethics” with the lyric, “My cousin had an idea / He needed money for drugs.” We caught up with frontman Patrick Kindlon—also known for his work as a comic book writer—for a discussion about recent converts to the church of Drug Church, his band’s growth in light of his limitations, and not being a band guy who’s in a band.
Now that you’re a decade in and on your fifth album, how have your goals and aspirations changed and what are you looking forward to and hoping from PRUDE?
I don’t know what to expect and I never really do. I think so much of what we do—and I mean musicians, not just Drug Church—so much of it is out of our control, so a lot of it is based on the changing interests of the music listening population. And then you’ve got complete wild cards like COVID and label politics and god forbid you step in some shit by saying the wrong thing in public. There are a lot of things that can follow you around, go up, go wrong, and go right, that really you have no ability to change. I never know because I never know what the million variables that create the macro moments are doing. A good example—or bad example, you tell me—would be the great many bands who felt they were on the way to something when 9/11 happened. Then the mood in the country shifted and they couldn’t get radio play, suddenly they’re not being promoted by their labels, and then they’re in debt and they break up and move to a farm in Canada to work for their brother-in-law (laughs). Whatever it is. I’m not going to name names, but I can think of at least two bands that were done so dirty by COVID that they haven’t recovered and I hope they do.
“THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS THAT CAN FOLLOW YOU AROUND, GO UP, GO WRONG, AND GO RIGHT, THAT REALLY YOU HAVE NO ABILITY TO CHANGE”
Everything that survived COVID tended to get bigger. Bands that released records right as all touring prospects died tended to suffer really badly, and those are things you can’t really account for. That was a long-winded way of saying I have no real expectations. Simple milestones that may or may not mean anything—like whether we can get to 300,000 streaming listens—are arbitrary milestones and that type of thing is the best I can do and hope for. Our band is limited commercially, mostly by me honestly, so I never expect a Twix commercial or anything like that and don’t let my thoughts really go there.
How do you find yourselves dealing with the adjustment to mainstream, larger audiences, and all the stuff that is the antithesis of what you grew up with as hardcore kids?
I’ve definitely noticed the differences and changes. It’s frustrating only in the respect that you can’t have exactly the type of show you want in a 500-cap room with a decent sound system and stage you can jump off of. I suppose you can enjoy Drug Church at an amphitheatre, but it’s just not ideal. Those are my frustrations. I’m sympathetic that venues can’t be DIY after a certain size. Finding a 1000-cap DIY venue is really challenging in the United States, so I understand that, but the whole barrier thing is a real bummer and discouraging and makes me feel like I’m playing a festival when it’s just a regular show and it’s not as fun. I certainly notice and I don’t always love it. I’m not going to lie: it’s fun to fill a good sized room. If you can fill a big room and make it look good from the stage, that’s all a great feeling. But if people are unable to enjoy themselves the way you intended when you wrote the music, then it can be a bit of a bummer.
Your lyrics are a big part of Drug Church. We were most surprised to learn that your undergrad degree is in Religious Studies, not an English or creative writing major.
That’s very nice of you to say. I’d expect that a physical decline in the next five years is going to happen that’s probably going to make it difficult for me to run around as much as I’d like, but hopefully I can continue with what I’ve started lyrically. I’m curious when my brain is going to calcify and I’m just not going to get any better. Everybody hits a peak then hits a wall, even my favorite writers. So, I’m sure that’ll happen sometime, but right now I’m still feeling like I’m in my era and I’m optimistic that my best work is yet to come.
Where does that lyrical element come from? Are you a big fan of gonzo-literature? Storytelling? Everyone is influenced by something, but at what point do you take what’s in your head and make it your own?
It’s probably because I’m not the most musical guy that a lot of the music I’ve always liked best is lyrical and a lot of storytelling. Perhaps if I’d been a gifted musician I’d be holding the lyrics as very secondary. A lot of people feel that way—my wife feels that way!—and process music like that. And it’s impossible to blame them because so many lyrics are objectively bad that just because some guy can hit a note and make noises with his mouth, the job is done. But because I can’t really hit notes, I put my efforts into the other side of things and try to make decent lyrics. In terms of where that comes from, I don’t know. When I was a kid, some of the first bands I latched onto was all stuff I could get at the public library. I really loved the Pogues, I really loved Rush, and those are bands that, if they’re not necessarily always telling a story, they’re always including either storytelling elements or details. I probably zeroed in on that aspect of songwriting, and later when I got into punk and hardcore I wondered why there weren’t more songs that told stories.
“BECAUSE I CAN’T REALLY HIT NOTES, I PUT MY EFFORTS INTO THE OTHER SIDE OF THINGS AND TRY TO MAKE DECENT LYRICS”
Does writing for comic books and having limited space and word balloons influence your lyric writing, in the sense of having to get your point across quickly?
That’s how I see it, but not a lot of my contemporaries do. Some of them like a lot of balloons all over a page. That’s an interesting analog there. Perhaps the brevity is the common denominator there? Being able to get it done in a certain amount of time and space, not feeling like you had to omit the whole thought because it had to be scaled appropriately. I would assume that is a crossover skill.
I think the lack of storytelling in punk and hardcore could be the result of a lot of songs only being a couple minutes long. But then you have a band like Discharge where a song’s lyrics would be maybe two lines and a one word chorus, but I also think that is such a gift when you can pull that off. My favorite band of all time is Lungfish, and some of those songs are highly lyrical, but others are highly repetitive where they deliver the same line 20 different ways. I do think there’s a real talent to having as few lyrics as possible, but it’s one I haven’t mastered at all. I was so impressed with that last Turnstile record, because if you listen to it, there are very few lyrics. My 10-year-old step-son knows every word to that record because there aren’t that many words to know, and for that reason it’s very memorable and sticks in people’s minds. It also, in some respects, opens you up to much more scrutiny because people are analyzing the few words that exist.
“YOU WANT TO FIND SOMETHING NOVEL IN EVEN THE MOST MUNDANE STUPID SITUATION AND HOPE FOR THE BEST.”
You cover a number of themes with your lyrics, topics that aren’t usually addressed in punk. How do you go about finally deciding what to write about and what’s the deciding factor in making a topic powerful enough to write about?
I would leave that to the listener to decide if I’ve achieved that each time or failed a few times. I’d be open to that. I don’t know. You want to find something novel in even the most mundane stupid situation and hope for the best. There’s a line from a Hold Steady song, and I don’t even remember the line, but I remember him talking about chicken fingers and all I could think of is that I’ve never heard a song where someone is singing about chicken fingers despite the fact that people eat chicken fingers everywhere everyday. So, there’s something novel about hearing about whatever day-to-day thing is out there.
Like “Hey Listen,” the song on PRUDE referencing a Walmart’s missing kids board?
That’s just about the idea in general that you can walk by or just miss something or someone. I ran into a friend of mine from high school who I hadn’t seen in 10 years at a gas station in rural Colorado. Five minutes earlier or later, I wouldn’t have seen him. Little things like that are always interesting. Imagine how many people you miss seeing or things you miss experiencing by seconds.
In your bio you talk about being more of “a guy in a band” instead of a musician. There’s a certain amount of layered delicacy to Drug Church’s sound that takes a fair amount of work to achieve. At what point does what you’re hearing in your head become satisfactory enough?
I really couldn’t speak for the real life musicians in the band, but we’re not particularly scientific, it’s largely intuitive. You try something, it doesn’t work, is there a way to make it work? No? Okay, next song. We’ve thrown away a couple songs that I thought were quite good, but the guys for whatever reason felt there was something not working. But that was the only thing they had to say because the whole process is pretty intuitive. It works because it works and it doesn’t work because it doesn’t.
Is sonic recreation of what’s on record a difficult thing? Or are you comfortable not doing exact renditions and being two distinct bands?
As the guy that can’t sing at all, occasionally, I’ll read comments about how I can’t sing at all live, and I’ll just hit them with a “like” because that is a fact. It is a much more aggressive experience in person and if I’m hitting a note in a live setting it’s entirely by chance. I really don’t believe my job is to sound like the album. I love Rush, and I saw Rush once and I never needed to see them again because it was album perfect. Maybe you’ll get a drum solo or something, but there’s not a ton that’s loose in Rush. There’s very little loose in Drug Church, actually. We like to be tight, but tight has a lot of variables when you can’t hit notes. Tight is very relative when you’re not inclined to be in key.
“WITH THIS RECORD BEING CALLED PRUDE, OBVIOUSLY THERE’S A SEXUAL CONNOTATION TO THE WORD, BUT WE’RE THE LEAST SEXY BAND THAT EVER LIVED”
What can you tell me about the significance of the album’s title?
The last record was called Hygiene, and it wasn’t literal, it was about mental hygiene, not armpit odor. With this record being called PRUDE, obviously there’s a sexual connotation to the word, but we’re the least sexy band that ever lived, just look at us. So, it’s a provocative name in that respect, but it’s about a general fear of experience. I don’t think I’m talking about myself, but perhaps it’s more about the anxieties people hold on to when they’re making excuses for not doing anything.
In that sense, it seems like you’re poking at the hornet’s nest with the cover art?
That’s a complete misdirect in that respect because if you’re going to use the name PRUDE, there are only so many directions that the art can go. We decided to go with something that played into the name, but if you listen, I would challenge anybody to find a sexy moment anywhere on the record. It’s more prude in the broad, fear of experience sort of way.
