{"id":31039,"date":"2026-05-20T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=31039"},"modified":"2026-03-19T15:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T19:24:08","slug":"add-it-up-the-violent-femmes-40-plus-years-on-part-3-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/add-it-up-the-violent-femmes-40-plus-years-on-part-3-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Add it Up: The Violent Femmes, 40-plus Years On (Part 3 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"The 40th anniversary edition of Violent Femmes\u2019 self-titled debut album had a bunch of demos as bonus tracks, but it also included many live recordings. Were you involved in the archival project of going through those tapes?<\/b><\/p>\n

Gordon Gano:<\/b> Mostly no. It did get sent to me to listen and approve. There\u2019s a little bit of me that feels like, \u201cWe played it, so there it is.\u201d I don\u2019t have to listen to it again; I was there 40 years ago or whenever it was, and I can listen to it, or not. I know a lot of people get a lot of pleasure in something from the past that made them feel good and still makes them feel good. But I\u2019m extremely not-nostalgic about the band; I think the whole point is now<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I know some of the thoughts and feelings of these songs when I wrote them, but I\u2019ve played them all through the years. So when we play a song from our first album, it doesn\u2019t take me right back to when we recorded it or when I wrote it. Because it\u2019s been ongoing through all these years, and that seems right.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been about seven years since the band released a new album, <\/b>Hotel Last Resort<\/b><\/i>. Is writing, recording and releasing songs still part of the mix for Violent Femmes?<\/b><\/p>\n

I hope so. For the tour coming up, I want to keep putting focus on doing new songs. This time around we\u2019ll have gained the benefit of playing the songs for an audience. It\u2019s also having to make choices about what musicians and instruments we have at the moment: How are we going to get this song that no one\u2019s heard before across the best we can?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s great for us, and great for the song. You start to learn how an audience responds [to it]. I don\u2019t think that means the audience is always right, but I would take very seriously how they\u2019re responding \u2013 or not \u2013 to something. And then, \u201cWhy are they not responding to this? What can be done to maybe help communicate it better?.\u201d There was even something that happened after playing a song twice where Brian said to me, \u201cThe audience seems to think the song is over at this point,\u201d even though it wasn\u2019t. We weren\u2019t trying to be cute and do a fake ending. We were still playing, but the audience spontaneously starting applauding. And that happened twice. And it was like, well, yeah, that\u2019s where the song should<\/i> end.<\/p>\n

And it was interesting, because I had written a coda: We\u2019ve gone on this musical journey, and now it\u2019s come all full circle, and it\u2019s ending. I thought this coda was very clever, because it was taking bits of musical themes and lyrics that have already happened throughout the song and then intertwining them and overlapping them and building to a crescendo. But the audience didn\u2019t want to have to wait. The song was done. Here\u2019s all my cleverness, but it\u2019s all unnecessary. If we had just gone into a studio to record, we would have recorded all of that. It might have been an interesting recording, but the song wouldn\u2019t have been as focused.<\/p>\n

The group has disbanded and reunited on more than one occasion. What keeps bringing you back?<\/b><\/p>\n

I guess there\u2019d be two things. One is that there\u2019s an audience there. I can speak for myself and Brian without any hesitation: We are so committed with music, and we are involved in music all the time. Only a small part of it is Violent Femmes. A whole lot of what we do doesn\u2019t make any money at all; nothing. And that\u2019s fine and that\u2019s okay. But it\u2019s great to have something that can. And that, for us, is called Violent Femmes.<\/p>\n

The audience is there. People want to hear it. People want to come out and see a show of us playing, which is incredible and wonderful. But if we didn\u2019t like it \u2013 or if we thought it sounded bad \u2013 I\u2019m sure that it wouldn\u2019t be happening. The thing is, it sounds good.<\/p>\n

There was a time when we thought we were done forever. But an invitation from Coachella was passed along by our agent, saying, \u201cThere\u2019s not a snowball\u2019s chance in hell you guys are getting together, but I gotta let you know that this is what you\u2019re being offered.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we got back to play a couple of times at a rehearsal \u2013 we hadn\u2019t seen each other in a long while outside of a non-musical setting \u2013 it was kind of amazing. It just clicked right away; it just had this sound. It has a sound when Brian and I play together. What he\u2019s playing and how he plays, and my songs and how I\u2019m playing, and my voice\u2026 the way it all comes together has a sound. It has an energy that we appreciate; it really does sound good to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… The 40th anniversary edition of Violent Femmes\u2019 self-titled debut album had a bunch of demos as bonus tracks, but it also included many live recordings. Were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[5898,5897],"class_list":["post-31039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-gordon-gano","tag-violent-femmes","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31046,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31039\/revisions\/31046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}