JOE BRADLEY
By Ted Shumaker, ed. by Emily EasleyPhotos by Matt Asti
Joe's band, Cheeseburger, just released one of the best albums of 2007. The first part of this interview is Ted and Joe drinking together, with a special guest appearance by Cheeseburger guitarist Christy Karacas. Then I asked Joe a few sober follow-up questions via e-mail.
TS: The first question I was gonna ask you was what was the town like where you grew up. You grew up in Maine?
JB: I did grow up in Maine. The town I grew up in was a lobstering town that sort of switched over to a tourist trade, so it was kind of a summer town. It was mostly just parents and teenagers really, and you know – gift shops, nautical shops, shell shops. It was very quiet in the wintertime. We'd go to the Laundromat and no one was there. There was a really good shell shop that hadn't restocked since the 1970s – you could get special buttons and all that stuff.
TS: Did you get to visit bigger cities at all, like Boston?
JB: Sometimes, but not really. I had a pretty rural upbringing and Boston felt like a big city. When I was a teenager we'd go there and buy Doc Martens and stuff like that.
TS: Did you skate at all?
JB: Yeah. I grew up in a very big family. Me and my brother Marco used to skate a lot, with [our friend] Warren and Warren's brother. Warren and I grew up in the same town together and his brother was really into punk.
TS: Was there some sort of underground artsy people in your town?
JB: In Portsmouth, New Hampshire there was a punk scene, which was about five minutes away from my town, so we all hung out there a lot. Portsmouth was a very special town – for a small town it had a pretty sophisticated music scene, as far as punk and hardcore goes. But the punks were a little too old – I was never like part of the real punk scene, but they were fun to look at, you know, with all the Mohawks.
TS: When did you first start start taking interest in music?
JB: I got a Falco tape, the "Rock Me Amadeus" tape, when I was in fourth grade or something like that, and also I remember my friend Jason playing me "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band over the telephone, and being really excited about that.
TS: What was that all about?
JB: Well, it's a great song! He knew it was a great song, so he played it for me over the phone. Also, somehow there was a Jewish girl that grew up down the street from me and her family was really weird. They were the only Jewish people in town and I would go there in the morning and get a ride with them to school, and her mom would be screaming and her dad was a total nut.
Her name was Rebecca Hoffman, and her dad was a traveling salesman and she was into punk music. She spray-dyed my hair and everything, and she was sort of a nut, and sort of into a drug job early on. She got me into the Sex Pistols and Descendents. Nobody listened to the Descendents, and that's what made it cool, is that it was some kind of weird thing that only you and your nerd friends were into.
TS: So how old are you now?
JB: Very early, like eighth grade. Or I think I first met her in the sixth grade. I started high school in 1989, so it must have been '87.
Christy Karacas enters: (sniffles) I feel like this is some strong shit!
TS: Haaa...we're doing an interview.
CK: Ohh that's a good idea!
TS: So tell me more about Rebecca...
JB: She was cool, she was really into Duran Duran. She had like a vest and she had pins all over it that were Duran Duran pins. She was a little too old for me, she was probably like three or four years older. She actually sold me Never Mind the Bollocks on cassette I remember, and there was something with punk – I thought it was just kind of a joke or something. Well Never Mind the Bollocks seemed like a joke, like a funny sort of comedy kind of thing.
TS: So, did she get you into buying music, or who got you into buying records?
JB: I'd say Warren's older brother Dan, introduced me into all that kind of stuff.
CK: Dude, you gotta see a picture of him and Warren and like – there's all these punk dudes. And he's like YOUNG young.
JB: He was a real punk rocker, Warren's brother.
TS: So what did you think of Maine, like where I was in Michigan, I was near Detroit, so I could kind of go into the city if I wanted to see shows...
CK: Did you have any knowledge of Detroit, like MC5?
TS: No, we didn't know anything about MC5.
CK: Not trying to break the interview.
TS: No, it's all good. I didn't know anything about the MC5 until almost when I moved to New York.
JB: And you realized what a sweet town you grew up in! What about the Stooges?
TS: No, I mean, I knew about Iggy Pop and Ted Nugent, but I didn't know – going on, it's not like New York where you can bond with people and go, "Let's do something." I mean you can, but when I was in high school in '93, I was a total dork, I didn't interact with anyone.
JB: You didn't have any friends?!
TS: I mean, I had this girl that smoked me out for the first time, and she was like two years older and she dropped out of high school. I would always tell my parents, "I'm just hangin' out with Ginger," and they were like, "Ginger's very nice."
JB: She was corrupting you!
TS: No, she was totally cool. To get back to the questions here! Okay. So, were there shows going on?
JB: Barely.
TS: Were you able to grasp art and community at the time?
JB: No, I was always too young for that. I remember going to a GG Allin show at a grange hall in New Hampshire, and it got canceled.
TS: You knew who GG Allin was?
JB: Yeah. Christy, did you know who GG Allin was?
CK: I think different areas like New Hampshire kind of like – hardcore punk was big there. Or it seemed like it was big there. What's that band that was big up there? There was a lotta nerdy stupid skinhead shit up there.
JB: The Bruisers and BFW and all this kind of stuff.
TS: When did you first smoke pot and drink?
JB: I was a very well behaved teen, and I didn't smoke pot or drink until I was like nineteen. Then I took a couple years off after high school, and I had a job at a gourmet jelly factory. There was a guy who worked there and he asked me if I'd ever smoked weed before and I told him no, and one day he rolled me a joint and I took it home and smoked it.
TS: So you smoked it by yourself?
JB: No, I smoked it with my girlfriend.
TS: Had she smoked pot?
JB: I don't think she had either.
TS: So did you get high?
JB: Yeah, I got totally high! I felt like my legs were like – I couldn't move. I was glued to the couch.
TS: So were you living with your folks at the time?
JB: No, I was living with my girlfriend in York Beach in Maine. We were high school sweethearts.
TS: I remember one time I asked you how your parents met, do you remember that?
JB: No?!
TS: I did, I was so drunk one night and was like, "So, Joe, how did your parents meet?" So...were they both from Maine?
JB: No, the old man was in the seminary in Massachusetts and he met my mom in Nadick, I believe? They were both Catholic-ish. Dad dropped out of the seminary to marry Mom, which I think is cool.
CK: Your dad was in the seminary?
JB: Yeah, he was studying to be a priest.
CK: Jeeez!
TS: I think it's perfect!
JB: Yeah, I think it's sweet, because he had enough conviction go study to be a priest and then he met some broad that changed him.
TS: What were your family vacations like?
JB: Ugh, I had so many brothers and sisters, we didn't take that many vacations. I remember going to Washington, DC one time and then Disneyworld or Disneyland or whatever is in Florida.
CK: Are you getting kind of intense here?
TS: No, I'm not trying to get intense.
CK: You should be, it's awesome!
TS: I was just thinking. I mean, my dad's a sailor so we were always cruising on a boat.
JB: That's awesome.
TS: Yeah, I mean we would just cruise on the boat in the middle of the night with the family.
CK: Your dad sounds like Popeye!
TS: YEAH! He's totally Popeye.
JB: We did a little bit of sailing. My dad was a doctor so he worked all the time, and I have a very big family with nine brothers and sisters.
TS: Jesus Christ! You were like a serious Catholic family, when were your parents married?
JB: I don't know.
TS: Come on Joe, you gotta know these things! My parents got so pissed at me cos last year it was their thirtieth and I totally forgot. I mean I always get the story wrong of how my parents met, like you know, You guys met via some house party or something. And my mom gets all pissed. And she'll be like, We did not! Cos my mom actually dated my uncle first?
JB: Whoa.
TS: Talk about scandalous! Anyway. Sorry I'm interviewing Joe Bradley.
(That was the last coherent part of Ted's interview. I asked Joe the rest of these questions via e-mail.)
EE: It seems like performing comes pretty naturally to you. Have you always been a performer? When did you first get on stage?
JB: I started playing shows in Providence with Barkley's Barnyard Critters – Brian Gibson wrote all these amazing songs about life on the farm and we'd all get dressed up like animals and put on these really chaotic fucked-up live shows. It was lots of fun. Then I was in a cover band called Beerhenge where the idea was to just get really tanked and play popular radio hits. I really do like performing drunk – something weird happens to me when I drink fifteen or twenty beers and get on stage.
EE: I liked it when you said you thought Never Mind the Bollocks was a joke album when you first heard it. I can kind of picture some kid feeling that way about Cheeseburger. Do you think of your music as funny or sarcastic or just party music? What exactly are you making fun of?
JB: I don't know if we are exactly poking fun at rock music or what. There are definitely elements of it that are tongue in cheek. I like the idea of doing something you know is retarded with a lot of passion and a straight face – you end up looking like an idiot, but the guys that are up there really going for it – authentic rock 'n' roll dudes – always come off as total idiots anyway. Might as well beat 'em to the punch.
EE: Can you talk about the new record a little bit? How is it different from Gang's All Here?
JB: This one is maybe a little bit more "radio friendly" than the last one. There is some studio magic in there, where the last one we just recorded in our practice space in like a week. This one is taking fucking forever. I dunno – there are some crazy songs and some tender moments on this record. This one has some love songs on it.
EE: Ted wanted to ask you how you lost weight but I guess he got too fucked up or was too much of a pussy. What's the secret behind the Cheeseburger diet?
JB: Chain-smoking and yoga.