The legendary Seattle band is back with its first new record since 1999. It stands tall among their classic records.
“After a lull of 25 years, the old band got together and made an album! And you know what? It turned out pretty great. Everyone played and sang their hearts out, just like the olden days… no celebrity guest musicians, no “featuring”s, no change of direction.”
So reads the Bandcamp descriptor for For WHAT Reason! (2024), the new album from Seattle legends the Fastbacks. Founding members Kim Warnick (vocals, bass), Lulu Gargiulo (rhythm guitar, vocals), Kurt Bloch (guitar), and long-time drummer Michael Musburger have all returned and managed to make an album that not only exceeds expectations for a veteran rock band reuniting after a long break, but one that stands tall with classic Fastbacks records like Very, Very Powerful Motor (1990) and New Mansions in Sound (1996). And as the band proudly states above, there is no change of direction in this unexpected new era. But then again, each song Fastbacks mastermind Kurt Bloch composes has the capacity to take any number of direction changes. Even the band’s tried-and-true formula of rollicking pop songs about loneliness and boredom will forever sound fresh and inventive.
Always one of the great and criminally unsung bands to come out of Seattle, the Fastbacks were also one of the area’s more idiosyncratic groups. In 2023, the late Charles R. Cross went so far as to call them “probably the single most-beloved Seattle band of the modern era.” But they were always one step away from making the leap from local heroes to critical darlings and beyond. Commercial success evaded them despite being signed to Sub Pop, landing support spots on tours with major Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, and getting the literal last word in the classic grunge documentary Hype! (1996). They certainly didn’t let that affect their music or their performances. Fastbacks have always had a different kind of energy from other Northwest rock bands. “There weren’t a lot of bands in Seattle like that,” says Musburger, who first saw the band play live at Seattle Center’s Mural Amphitheater in 1986. “That style of melodic pop-punk, for lack of a better term, didn’t exist here back then, and if it did, it wasn’t to the quality of their songs. And they were fun on stage. It was a fucking party and it was just funny. Kurt was such a riot to watch run around and play guitar like he did.”
The band’s chemistry has made for a truly unique sound. Bloch is maybe the only guitarist who can accurately be compared to both Johnny Ramone and Eddie Van Halen — often within a single song. As suggested by Musburger, Bloch’s performances, to this day, feature as many jumps and high-kicks as power chords. His often jaw-dropping playing opens many Fastbacks songs into ever-surprising new sonic frontiers, with interludes and outros that shift melodies into prog and even classical territory. Warnick’s and Gargiulo’s vocals are delivered with the directness of the best punk singers. They’ve covered The Raspberries and made their squeaky clean hooks sound raw. And among the bright and sunny pop-punk arrangements, Bloch’s most playful or innocent sounding songs — “Goodbye, Bird,” for instance — often take on an unexpected emotional weight. The lyrics quite nakedly address life’s most vulnerable and tender moments, loneliness, and uncertainty. But when put together with the upbeat music, the Fastbacks create a dynamic that few bands are brave enough to pull off with such sincerity and earnestness.
The band called it a day on a high note musically. They released The Day That Didn’t Exist in 1999, had some new material recorded, and had been busy touring when they decided to disband in 2002. They’ve all kept busy in the decades since, especially Bloch, who seems to have played in as many bands as he has songs, with the most notable being the Young Fresh Fellows, Alejandro Escovedo’s Burn Something Beautiful Band, Filthy Friends, The Yes Masters, and Full Toilet. Warnick joined Visqueen before retiring from music in the mid-2000s due to serious health reasons. Gargiulo works in the film industry and put her career in music on pause. Musburger has remained active in the drum world as a studio and touring musician, and as a drum tech, notably for Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band.
The Fastbacks insist they’ve all remained friends through the years, but the idea of recording again took a long time to win them over. Since 2002, they have played at a few festivals, including the Sub Pop 30th Anniversary, and released a few songs of both covers and originals. During the pandemic they made some backyard videos and remixed and released some studio and live recordings. There was activity, but they still weren’t an “active band.” Then last summer the idea to make a full Fastbacks record was teased and they all agreed to go for it.
Bloch wasn’t certain he had enough songs to fill an entire Fastbacks album. But they quickly found the material and moved into Joe Reineke’s Temple of the Trees Studio. Warnick offered “Come On,” her first compositional contribution to the Fastbacks in more than 40 years. They worked out a cover of The Seekers’ “I’ll Never Find Another You.” Bloch had some songs in the works and dug through old notebooks to fix songs he’d never finished. They also selected two that Bloch had previously released with other bands — “So You Know” as The Yes Masters; and “The World Inside,” which began as a Fastbacks song before Sgt. Major recorded it in 2004. “The World Inside” is now the finale on the new record. It is not only one of the band’s most adventurous musical accomplishments — with arena rock riffs and a multi-part structure stretched over seven minutes — but features the album’s most delicate expressions of longing, both in Bloch’s lyrics and Warnick’s and Gargiulo’s vocals.
The resulting album captures the band playing with the same energy as they did in their prime while returning wholeheartedly to their DIY roots. From “The End of the Day” to “Distant Past,” the record features all the hallmarks of the Fastbacks: loud guitars, singalong anthems about boredom, and choruses that hit twice in less than 50 seconds. Perhaps most deserving of attention are Warnick’s vocals. In closing with “The World Inside,” a song that only Musburger had to record new drums to complete, we can hear the time that has passed between the band’s 2002 split and their recent reunion in the studio. It’s a moving reminder of the band’s history and of the years that have gone by, but more so, it is an indication of how in sync the Fastbacks remain after the time apart. It’s rare for any band to reunite after two-plus decades; it’s even more rare for the music to be this good. The Fastbacks have yet again shown that standards are generally set low and are meant to be defied and exceeded.
The Fastbacks are self-releasing For WHAT Reason! on Bloch’s No Threes label. We encourage you to click this link before reading further to grab a copy of the album from the group’s Bandcamp page. What follows comes from speaking with all four Fastbacks individually about the making of their new record. Throughout the discussions, we touched on what it took to get everyone back together in a recording studio, how their signature sonic oddities develop, and what lies ahead for a band that has been dormant but clearly remains at the top of its game.
Split Tooth Media: It has been 25 years since the last Fastbacks record. What led you all back into the studio for a new album?
Kim Warnick (lead vocals, bass): Lunch.
Lulu Gargiulo (rhythm guitar, vocals): During the pandemic, Kurt re-released a couple of our records and I made a couple videos. So we would get together when those rereleases would come out, sometimes for birthdays and things, or we’d go out for Fastbacks lunch.
Kurt Bloch (lead guitar): Every now and then we get together and have lunch and talk about the past and tell stories. Things like that. Rarely is there talk of playing music or doing anything.
Michael Musburger (drums): Then we did a single last year [“A Quiet Night,” 2023], that we recorded in Kurt’s basement. Everybody came in and did all their parts separately. I went in and did the drums by myself. We didn’t rehearse as a band or anything like that. Then last year at one of these lunches, the idea of making a record was brought up.
Kim Warnick: Mike Musburger said, ‘Let’s just record a whole new album.’ And I think we all just looked at him like, ‘Are you crazy?’ But it was like, ‘well, maybe…’ (laughs) It just was one of those things that rolled along on its own steam in a way. Certainly we didn’t go to that lunch to come up with that idea, let me put it that way.
Michael Musburger: I’ve been bugging them for years and saying it pretty much every time we get together, whether they remember or not. And finally it kind of clicked because “A Quiet Night” sounded really good and was fun.
Kurt Bloch: Kim, Lulu, and Mike are always like, ‘We should record a new album.’ Ugh. God, no! I love those guys. But we’ve been a band for 40-some years, a long time. It just takes a lot of… It’s not so much the work, it’s the blah blah blah blah (laughs), bickering, and the floods of ideas. Kim and Lulu were like, ‘We need to record!’ And I was like, ‘we don’t have any songs! What are we going to record?’ They went, ‘You’ll come up with something!’ Oh, yeah, great!
Lulu Gargiulo: We all looked at Kurt and I said, ‘Kurt, do you have any songs that you’re playing around with? At the time he said no, but he was sort of intrigued. Kurt’s a funny guy. He doesn’t always show all of his cards, and he is such a committed artist and musician that — and I’m not speaking for him — but I get the sense that it’s hard for him that other musicians that he works with aren’t as dedicated to the craft as he is. If he’s gonna do it, he wants to do it to a certain level. And I don’t think he’s had a lot of confidence that the Fastbacks really had it in them to do it.
Michael Musburger: A friend of ours, Joe Reineke has Temple of the Trees Studios. After that lunch I immediately texted him to see if he had any studio time available.
Kurt Bloch: Mike had just worked on some songs there with Joe and said it’s a really great studio. He said, ‘I could call him and see if he has a couple days we could go record?’ No! Don’t call him!
Michael Musburger: Joe came back with some dates. It was available. We could do this. (laughs)
Kurt Bloch: And Mike said, ‘OK, a month away he’s got a Sunday and a Monday for us.’ I went, ‘assholes.’
Kim Warnick: It’s a tired old term, but it was very organic. It was like, ‘OK, I guess this is really happening.’
Michael Musburger: Kurt was the last holdout because he’s the one who’s gotta do all the work, and the songs. And he wasn’t sure if he had enough songs.
Kim Warnick: Kurt’s a realist. And in the end he’s going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. He just probably thought it was some pie in the sky idea. Sounds like a good idea, but where, and how, and… songs?
Kurt Bloch: I went home and thought, what songs are we going to do? There were a few that were simple, that could be simply done, and then I had to dig through all these songs that didn’t get used. I had to figure out what was wrong with them and try to fix them. And it was really like four weeks away. It’s either going to work or it isn’t. So we took the dates and spent a couple weeks trying to figure out a song list and stuff, and then we practiced a bunch over the couple weeks before the recording days.
Since The Day That Didn’t Exist came out in 1999, the Fastbacks have played a handful of shows and released a few songs and videos. Did the band ever ‘break up’ or was it more time away until it felt right to get back together?
Kurt Bloch: I could easily say that, whenever it was, March 2002, was the end of that band. I’m pretty sure, not to just pin it all on one person, but Kim pretty much quit.
Kim Warnick: Oh yeah. We had. I did quit. We took breaks for other reasons, like, when we didn’t have a drummer, or no interest within the band, or a member had left. I had drug and alcohol problems, so there were some dark times when we weren’t a band for reasons. I was not OK. I quit in 2001 because I joined another band, Visqueen, a Seattle band. They’re the greatest. And that was really exciting and fun, but I just didn’t want to be in two bands. I don’t really like going to practice, at all. So I didn’t want to have to practice with two bands, every night. That sounded miserable to me. Visqueen toured kind of a lot for three years, until 2004. But I finally dropped out after that. I was having health issues. I wasn’t very well. But then of course, I’ve always been friends with all the people in the Fastbacks. We’re all friends.
Lulu Gargiulo: I was definitely not in the band for a period of time, as is documented by records and shows. But I don’t know if I ever really think of us as breaking up. I think it was more of an ebb and flowing. Since the previous record I had a kid and you know how that whole business goes. And now they’re 24. I work in the film industry. Since 2018 that’s really picked up a lot. I’ve been working a lot in the last 10 years.
Michael Musburger: Either of those options are probably true. I started playing with them in 1992 and I’ve pretty much been their only drummer ever since, even though a few people have subbed for tours here and there when I couldn’t do something in the ’90s. I think they did actually call it quits in 2001 or 2002. I quit in 2000, right before my kids were born. I had twins and I just couldn’t be in a band. I was literally up to my eyes in dirty diapers with twin boys. I didn’t have the time and I cut my schedule way back. So I quit, which was sad to do. We had just put a record out and done a touring cycle for it in 1999, so it was a good time.
Kurt Bloch: Some of us started different bands and some of us didn’t. But we were always in contact with each other.
Kurt, you for one have been in many bands over the last two decades. Do you write songs with specific bands in mind? Like, ‘OK, this is a Fastbacks song; this is a Full Toilet song’?
Kurt Bloch: No. Not at all. The songs are just made to be good songs, and then it’s up to whoever is doing them if they like it or not.
What was the selection process like for picking which songs to focus on for the new Fastbacks album?
Michael Musburger: We recorded everything Kurt gave to us. We weren’t involved in any of the deliberations over what material he had. It’s always been that way. He gets it to a presentable place demo-wise. Kurt’s songs show up pretty much done, which is a testament to his songwriting. Kurt’s been sitting on some really, really good songs.
Lulu Gargiulo: Kurt always makes this thing we call ‘the Bookie,’ and it’s the book with all the lyrics and all the chords. This was the first record in a long time where we all went into the studio and we played the basic tracks together with Kim laying down basic vocal tracks. But Kurt has a lot of these songs. He’ll record the entire thing in his house and do all the tracks and give us a demo. They don’t always turn out exactly the way he presents them, but it gives us an idea. The guy is just an overachiever when it comes to that kind of thing. He really takes it seriously.
Kim Warnick: It was just so exciting to hear new songs of his. And they were all good.
Kurt Bloch: Kim was like, ‘well, I have a song.’ She hasn’t come up with a song since 1980 for the Fastbacks. And she was like, ‘I never had a song in 1980 in the Fastbacks!’ You sure did! Don’t argue with me about history! It’s called “Another Thing Coming.”
Kim Warnick: I don’t write songs for the Fastbacks. There’s a couple older ones from one of those compilations. I had forgotten all about them. I wrote “Come On” when I got to Portland, Maine. I went out there to get sober, so I’d already gone through rehab and I was just on fire with wanting to create something. I moved to a whole new place. I was really engaged in loving my life, feeling good. So one day I was playing guitar and came up with this thing. I just wanted to write a song that’s super easy and familiar sounding. But I never, ever thought I’d show it to my bandmates because we weren’t even a band when I came home.
Kurt Bloch: I asked, do you have a demo, or can you play it for us so we can hear it? ‘No.’ (laughs) Well, OK. That’s really helpful. She must have sent a demo to one of her friends who did make an acoustic guitar version of it, so we learned her song from somebody else. Whatever it takes to get the idea across!
Kim, do you write songs much on your own?
Kim Warnick: I have written songs in another band, but I generally don’t. I’m really embarrassed to write lyrics and have people look at them. I’m just very shy. It’s why I never wrote in a diary when I was a kid because I was terrified of having somebody read it. I’m my own harshest critic. I will say I think “Come On” is a good song! But I don’t think it’s too embarrassing. I’m not baring my soul. It’s not the most profound lyrics in the world. But I don’t really write because I’m lazy, and as far as our band, Fastbacks, Kurt writes the greatest songs ever. I like his. I had this song sitting around since 2012 and I couldn’t finish it.
Kurt Bloch: She was like, ‘I don’t know what should happen here.’ So we tried some things so she could tell us what she thought. She wanted hand claps and key changes, tambourines, and extra lead guitar.’ So all those things got dumped onto that song. There’s not much on the other ones, really. Kim’s song got all the frosting. And it turned out great! It’s a great piece of work.
Kim Warnick: So I showed it to him, and of course, all three of those guys, it was finished in like one second. ‘Why don’t we do this? How about this?’ OK. Done. It was like, oh my god. That’s all it took?
As with many of the best Fastbacks songs, a lot of the tracks on this new record — “Nothing To Do,” “A New Boredom” — are built lyrically around the dilemma of being alone and having nothing to do. What is it about that topic that has kept inspiring the band for over 40 years?
Kurt Bloch: (laughs) The only thing I can say is, if you’re out doing something, if you’re running around, if you’re working on a project, driving around in your car, hanging out with your friends, if you’re at a bar having some drinks, you’re not going to be writing songs while doing that. I almost have to be bored and have nothing to do for a couple days, and maybe on that third day the guitar comes out on the couch and I’ll start playing music. I’m not a workaholic. I’m not a Bob Pollard sort of person who gets up in the morning and writes songs. And if you’ve been sitting around the house for three days feeling sorry for yourself, then the lyrics are likely going to be about boredom. And I haven’t really thought about that, haven’t really dissected it, but it would kind of make sense that that’s why.
This record also features, even in seemingly more musically straightforward songs like “So You Know,” many of the classic Fastback detours from traditional verse-chorus structure, with shifts in melody and key changes. Do these shifts tend to come up when Kurt composes, or do you work them out in the studio together?
Michael Musburger: For Kurt’s stuff, his demos are pretty darn close to what we end up recording arrangement wise. If there’s a key change or tempo shifts, it’s in the song. Even on this new record, he played some drums on some of the demos and I basically just copied his parts. Not everything. I had a lot of free rein to come up with my own stuff.
Lulu Gargiulo: It’s a composition thing. Kurt writes them. There’s always something in every song; parts that don’t go like you typically think they would. He’s not just doing it to be weird. It’s just how he composes in his head.
Kim Warnick: He’ll make a demo CD for us. So for me it’s just trying to make sure that I’m recreating the sound and the melody he initially heard in his head. That’s the thing about singing somebody else’s songs: I don’t ever want to try to make them my own because this person is giving us a song to hopefully make what he heard in his head. It’s a big thing. It’s a big responsibility.
Kurt Bloch: When it comes time to write songs I always forget that somebody is actually going to have to learn these songs. All those things that you do when you’re making it up because it sounds cool, it’s like, I thought I’d just make this recording of it and then it’s done and nobody would have to learn it. That has backfired so many times. ‘I’m even supposed to learn this?!’ It was just made to be a cool song! “So You Know” was definitely that. ‘This part goes four times, the next part goes three times, and the last time it goes five times. Oh, and there’s a little break of a measure and a half.’ The things are not the same length and it keeps changing keys. Stuff like that. I thought we’re never going to be able to actually learn this song. We’re just going to have to have Mike go and play along with the demo of it and then overdub everything. We did it! We learned it and played it. Good for us! We’re pretty smart!
Kim was like, ‘we have to do that song.’ But it’s already on another record. She was like, ‘no, there’s no question. We have to do that song.’ I don’t mind. Fine with me. That would be fun. And that’s another one that’s in four different keys. Once you start working on a song it’s hard to stick with something that you know would be playable, or learnable for that matter.
Kim Warnick: [“So You Know”] blew my mind. It’s a bubblegum song, and that’s one of my favorite things in the world. And it also sounds like it could have been on the first Joan Jett solo record. It’s like “Make Believe.” Chunky guitars. But when I asked Kurt about it, he said, ‘Well, I don’t think we can do it. It’s too hard.’
Michael Musburger: He underestimates us. (laughs)
Lulu Gargiulo: I’m a task-oriented musician and I think Kurt realizes that. I am going to really work hard because I don’t want to be bad. (laughs) It’s kind of like riding a bike. There’s always this period of about two weeks where I’ll be practicing and it’s like relearning and you feel like, ‘God, this is horrible! Am I ever going to be able to do this?’ I learned the parts and now I’m just going to really play them as good as I can. I don’t think they’ll ever be perfect though. Perfection is not the goal! (laughs)
Mike, the Fastbacks are sort of notorious for having a long roster of drummers through the years. In the late Charles R. Cross’s 1996 Rocket cover story on the Fastbacks, he listed you as drummer No. 10. What are some of the highlights and challenges of being a drummer for the Fastbacks?
Michael Musburger: Well, there’s that humorous legacy that I sort of have to play into even though I’ve kind of been their drummer since 1992. (laughs) I have to remind people of that. It’s like, ‘oh they have this drummer problem!’ And a lot of times I’m like, [raises hand] hi! (laughs) I’ve done quite a few records and a ton of touring with them. But there’s still the joke that they have a drummer problem, but… they actually don’t and haven’t had one for a really long time. The expectations are reasonable. And it just makes for a positive experience and I love the music. And I love playing that style of drumming. It’s fun and it’s challenging to play that style of punk rock drumming at my age now. I love it. I can still do it. My hands still work.
What was the sequencing process like? Did you all get together?
Kurt Bloch: All getting together? Christ. (laughs) No. I think I probably made a song order and then put it on a CD and listened to it in the car a bunch. Maybe moved one around a little bit and Lulu was like, ‘I like it like this!’ There’s a lot of arguing that can happen in this band, but I think the order I came up with probably was the right way. Not that I’m the big boss and tell everyone what to do, but I think I came up with a good one there.
Lulu Gargiulo: There’s a collective energy that you feel throughout the whole record, even with songs like “So You Know,” which is a little more laid back, or “Distant Past,” which has an almost Zombies feel to it. “World Inside” is not unusual, except that it’s a very long song that has lots of parts. But the energy goes through the entire thing. And at the same time it doesn’t feel like it’s just a wall of sound either. There’s a bit of dynamics throughout the whole record that I think really works. I attribute a lot of that to Kurt and the way he put it together, and, obviously, he’s producing it so it comes out a certain way. But it’s the energy and it has a feeling of the early Fastbacks, but with better quality. (laughs)
No one writes songs quite like Kurt Bloch. Many of his best songs are fun, rocking pop songs, but when you listen to the lyrics, it can catch you off guard because they are incredibly personal and vulnerable.
Lulu Gargiulo: Kurt is a really interesting and unique songwriter in that the songs do have this sort of yearning about them and sometimes they’re kind of innocent and sometimes they’re very sophisticated at the same time. He’s a complicated dude, and I think he tells it from his heart. Sometimes not so obviously, but that’s kind of my feeling anyway.
Michael Musburger: The Kurt Bloch songwriting model is like really fast — not always fast — but generally upbeat, major key sounding songs with really, really intense lyrics if you really get down to it. He’s really baring it all in a lot of places in a lot of ways. Not in every song, but there’s definitely that. I love that juxtaposition. I think that what is challenging and what is artistically important is that it’s not just, ‘oh happy song! It’s sunny out today!’ It’s… ‘things kind of suck.’ I think people need to understand that dichotomy in music. So, being the drummer, I sort of try to internalize the song, the arrangement and the vibe and the feel along with thinking about, ‘what is he talking about right now?’
It’s so sincere too. A lot of times when people try to create that dynamic there is a lot of irony mixed in.
Michael Musburger: It’s so sincere and it is pretty raw. And then when you meet him, you realize that he has layers upon layers of guards. He’s an incredibly funny person and he’s incredibly sarcastic, and all his stuff is a lot of fun, but I think it’s hard for him to be that honest in person so he does it in his songs. That’s my personal feeling, which, I’ve never told him that, but I think there’s some truth to it. He expresses himself and how he really feels about the world around him through the songwriting. I’ve known him for a long time and sometimes I might’ve had intimate knowledge of where a song could’ve come from. And it’s intense. He’s a great songwriter because he can juxtapose those emotions. People end up listening to something kind of important about who he is.
Lulu Gargiulo: As a band we’re not getting into the deep of what the lyrics mean and things like that. We don’t talk in those terms, usually. But many times I wonder if this or that song is about so and so.
Kim Warnick: The music fools you into thinking we’re a happy pop-punk band, but if you listen to the words, maybe not so much. They’re sometimes very depressing. Sometimes the songs can seem personal to me. I just try to sing them the way that he wants them. He’s not some dictator or conductor sitting up there yelling at me to sing it perfectly, but ultimately it is his song and it is the melody he heard in his head. I just want to make that the reality.
Kurt, do you generally start with words or music first?
Kurt Bloch: Generally the music comes first. I know that’s not the way a lot of people write songs. As far as I know most people sit there with a page of lyrics and try to do that. But for me the music is first, if not the melody. On a song like “The World Inside” there’s a lot of things being stuck together and ordered together. So you can have a bunch of pieces of music and try to figure out something that’s majestic and flows well. It’s kind of a dichotomy to like, say, Genesis and The Ramones, and appreciating an eight-minute song and a one-minute-and fifty-eight-second song. If you can somehow distill that seven-minute Genesis song from, say, Trespass — their 1970 masterpiece — into a two-and-a-half-minute punk song, then you win. Because you have it all. Obviously something like “Nothing To Do” is nothing like that. It’s pretty straight ahead. The solo is just a rhythm guitar solo. That’s so great too! But with something like “World Inside,” you picture it being something bigger.
The lyrics are not the most important thing, but they can’t be a negative. You’ve gotta have something that you’re at least mildly proud of. Because you get to the point where you’re going to present it to somebody else to sing. They don’t have to make obvious sense and I myself will sing stupider things than I would assign to other people to sing. So that’s a little dangerous. But when it comes time to ask somebody else to sing your lyrics, you better be a little bit proud of them.
“The World Inside” closes the album. It’s very much the emotional climax of For WHAT Reason! It’s this epic, multi-part song with very simple, sad, almost delicate lyrics. Kurt, where did that song come from, particularly the lyrics?
Kurt Bloch: Being sad, probably. I can’t remember exactly, but it could have been inspired by leaving a party and drifting, ghosting from some sort of get-together. It wouldn’t have been the first song I’ve come up with walking home from somewhere. Things go through your brainard.
The riff is totally something that, if Pete Townsend had come up with it, he’d be stoked. [sings the riff] It’s totally, for me, late ’60s Who, which is some of the greatest music of all time. I think it’s a wonderful, amazing work, and I’m so glad that that arrangement of it can finally see the light of day after 22 years or however long it’s been since we played it.
Kim Warnick: The version you hear on the new record is not 100 percent new. Everything except the drums is from 2001 when we recorded it. Mike re-tracked the drums because it had to match the sound of the rest of the room.
Michael Musburger: I knew the song and I played it for years in Sgt. Major so I had the parts. The Fastbacks recorded it first and never did anything with it. Then a couple years later Sgt. Major recorded it because it was such a great song. Why would you let it go to waste?
I hadn’t played it in a while but it was the last thing we did in the session. Nobody else was around. It was just Kurt, myself, and Joe Reineke. I’m alone in the studio listening to the track on headphones and there’s no click track. It’s seven and a half minutes long and has all these parts. And if you listen to the song it starts really slow and speeds way up. There’s a big tempo shift in there. From a technical standpoint it was really challenging. We actually had to use some Pro Tools at the very beginning to kind of get my drumming to jive with the original track. It took a little doing. But once we got started, I think I only did one or two takes to get through the whole song because I knew it so well. And I always loved it so much. I still get a little choked up when I listen to it and I think about the history of the song and my involvement in it. It has been in my life for 20 years. I remember hearing the original recording [featuring Jason Finn on drums] years ago. It’s Kim singing live, playing bass with all of them in a studio. That’s not an overdubbed performance. That’s a live take. And it’s frickin’ amazing. And it’s cool to hear the change in the tone of her voice between 24 years ago to today.
Kim Warnick: I’m so glad I didn’t have to re-sing it. It’s perfect as it is.
And Fastbacks played it at the last show in 2002.
Kim Warnick: Which is incredible to think about considering the shape I was in in 2002. We did it, and I’m sure it was probably pretty great. But still, that song is like five songs in one. In the seventies, that would have been a whole side two.
Michael Musburger: It’s the opus. People say, ‘oh they make two and a half minute fast punk rock songs.’ It’s like, nope!
You are putting the album out on your own. Your band has always been pretty self-reliant, ever since the early days when you were just starting to play shows.
Kurt Bloch: We didn’t play music that regular people wanted to hear, whether it was our own songs or whether it was “Eight Days a Week” by The Beatles or something like that. We were just a little bit too loud, a little too ramshackle, a little too out of tune, and a little too boisterous. Most of the shows we did were hall shows where we just rented a hall and cobbled things together. You’d find two other like-minded bands and you’d pool money together to rent the hall and pay $75 for a PA system and hope that nothing got broken.
Kim Warnick: We’re not for a lot of people. And I know that. We’re not a band you can dance to, and I think that’s fucking awesome, personally. We were never New Wave, we were never hardcore. We were punk rock ’n’ roll with some arena rock leanings. That’s what we liked. So it was a weird mashup of stuff that wasn’t very popular in 1978, ’79.
Lulu Gargiulo: You really couldn’t play unless you put on your own show. I think I even bought a PA, and I used to build the stages sometimes. I’m pretty crafty and I was then. So you’d get a hall and you’d build the stage. They weren’t very good, but the whole idea was just community, right?
Kim Warnick: It’s just what we’ve always done. I think it’s served us well and still is, clearly. The only thing missing right now is distribution, which would be nice. That’s the part of DIY that we don’t have. But other than that, I think we’ll be fine. I feel like people are excited about [the record.]
Michael Musburger: We’re self-releasing For WHAT Reason! That sounds like we are self-releasing it; Kurt is self-releasing it. That is all his work. And that takes a lot. He’s dealing with pressing plants, mastering, just all of it. All the technical, mechanical things of putting a record out he has to handle.
Kim, Kurt, and Lulu — you three have been friends since high school and basically learned how to play music together. There’s historically been some bickering in the band and arguments about anything and everything. What was it like to get back to recording as a full band again?
Kim Warnick: Everything about this record, from how we even thought about doing it to recording, was a breeze. Nobody was bickering. We have gotten older, but we just understand, well, they’re not into that so don’t push it. You know? Oh yeah, in the early days there were some dustups for sure. But we were like 20 years old. I still think a 20-year-old is like a teenager. It was for us anyway. We were like dumb little kids.
Lulu Gargiulo: There’s always a tiny bit of bickering. I’m sort of a taskmaster and if I get too serious Kurt will kind of make fun of that. I think we’ve both mellowed, so there’s not a lot of that that goes on anymore. But there’s always a little bit of giving each other a hard time. Like siblings, you know?
Kurt Bloch: Band records are always better than solo records. And band records with the original people in them are usually better than band records where the guy has replaced all the band members with people who are ‘better’ or different players. Because even if you’re frustrated with arguing with those band people or if you’re tired of playing with them, other people’s ideas are valid. And you may argue constantly or think their ideas are shitty, and you may have no problem saying that. But for other art projects that involve people, it’s worth being frustrated. It’s worth arguing and throwing ideas back and forth.
And that’s the last thing you want from a band that has taken 25 years off from making a record: ‘Oh, yeah, we rethought everything and we’re changing everything.’ Nobody wants that! Not the people making the recording, and certainly not the people listening to the recordings. You just want your old band back, your old favorite little combo. You want them to pick up where they left off. I think we did that quite well. Getting together to make this record was — and maybe this is a happy thing — it really was like no time had passed.
You have all been pretty clear that there will be no live shows coming up. What do you feel this album says about the future of the band?
Lulu Gargiulo: I think we all were so happy with this record that we could see us making another album. The bottom line, I think as a band we’ve all felt this is Kim’s decision. It’s really hard for her to play live. We’re a band, and if Kim can’t do that, we support that decision. There’s nothing we can do about it, right? For a long time we thought, why make a record if you can’t play live? That’s sort of the common thought for people. We just showed there’s a reason. You can still make really great records.
Kim Warnick: I think there will be something. I hope. It’s just been so fun and so fun to sing with Lulu again. Just singing with her reminds me of being a kid, honestly. That’s the sound that I’ve heard a lot in my life. It’s just very familiar and, again, it’s like family.
Kurt Bloch: Oh God, that’s not a question that I want to address. (laughs) I’ve given it anti-thought. [plugs each ear with pointer fingers] I don’t want to think about this and I’m not going to! The last interview we did, the three of them were like, ‘let’s make another album!’ No, we’re not going to make another album! No! And those guys are like, ‘Come on, it’s fun and the record turned out great!’ The record did turn out great, but we’re not entertaining that idea. That’s not even going on the table right now! So I don’t know.
Michael Musburger: I think that’s yet to be seen. I am up to make records anyday, everyday. I’ll go do that again tomorrow if everyone else wants to. And honestly it is up to Kurt. He has to have songs, he’s gotta have the bandwidth. But maybe sometime next year we’ll have lunch and I’ll go, ‘Hey, Kurt! Do you have any songs?’ I’ll try one day, but not any time soon. I want to be a small annoyance, not a large annoyance. (laughs)
Did the time apart between The Day That Didn’t Exist and now make you reevaluate what the band means to you at all?
Kurt Bloch: No! (laughs) Nothing was learned.
Lulu Gargiulo: No, I don’t think so. I think it was more, for me, right time, right place. During the time apart, I longed for the band to be able to play again. I would love to play shows again, but it’s not the time apart, it’s the coming back together that made me realize we can’t do that. In getting joy out of the recording part, and everybody participating, and, hey, we have this record coming out and we’re really excited about it, that’s a good thing.
Michael Musburger: All the stuff was all definitely reinforced how everyone reacts with one another. It wasn’t like there was a great epiphany. You can’t erase 40 years of crazy friendship with one record. It just reinforced a lot of that stuff, but everyone was on really good behavior, and everyone was happy to be there, and was having a good time doing it. I’ve played music with a lot of people and do a lot of studio work. I’m in other bands, but the only ‘band band’ that I actually have a desire to be in is the Fastbacks. And I’ve felt that way literally since the day I joined them. Bands are kind of dumb and they’re not a great idea, but Fastbacks are super fun. And the band dynamic is hilarious. I was kind of beside myself that we got to make some music. It has a ceiling on it, a limited thing. It’s head-spinning to think that in 2024 the Fastbacks made a record this good. (laughs) We’re really happy with it.
I will add, about Kim Warnick, it’s just super heartwarming for me that she has come back from near-death to do this. I never thought this would ever happen, that she would do this. And that is the hugest thing is that having her back in Seattle and back in all of our lives, back in my life. It’s really fucking amazing that she is back, and happy, and healthy. That’s actually kind of the most important thing. There would be no Fastbacks record without her. So there, heartfelt answer.
Kim Warnick: Yeah. Of course. How could I say anything other than yes? There was a lot of time apart from the Fastbacks. I’ve been friends with these people forever. And we have had our ups and downs, but how I think about our friendships today is it’s so precious and so important. To have gotten here, especially considering some things that have gone on in our band, with me not being so well at times, it’s amazing that we’re still here. And happy. And we’re friends. It’s very refreshing. Nobody ever thought this was going to happen; we didn’t for sure.
Kurt’s answer was: ‘No! Nothing was learned.’
Kim Warnick: (laughs) That’s the best thing ever! I like his answer more. That’s more punk.
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