Robbie Takac:So where are you at?

Suburban Horror: I'm in Chula Vista, San Diego. I'm about 2 miles from where you guys are playing tonight.

RT: Oh Right on, gotcha. It's been a fun tour man, usually by now there's something weird going on but the Counting Crows are out too and they're really nice guys.

SH: How long have you guys been out?

RT: 8 days, 9 days, something like that?

SH: Oh, so you guys JUST left?

RT: Yeah, we're just starting it; we got like 45 shows, something like that.

SH: Is Augustana on the whole tour?

RT: They're on about 3/4 of it I think? They're really good though. They're great guys, and that's really a hard spot to be in you know? Opening up an amphitheater show? I mean where we're at is not easy at all either, but yeah, they're great guys.

SH: I can only imagine. I saw a show on Vh1 where they had you guys playing in like the freezing snow and you were all bundled up and people were cramming together and still rocking.

RT: Yeah man, they love to do that to us, we're from Buffalo so they figure we can brave the elements, they put us on top of volcanos and fucking ice bergs. It's crazy.

SH: Ok well I'm sure you've probably gotten this question a billion times, but I've never heard the answer, so what the hell is a Goo Goo Doll?

RT: Oh, well actually we keep finding new things out, but there was something in a magazine called that and since we had an even WORSE name, which we won't even go into, because this one is bad enough, and we needed something to throw into the newspaper. That was 20 years ago, so we were looking through magazines and saw that written down and said "Well, this is as inappropriate as anything" that's a time when we were for lack of a better term "post punk" or whatever we were, so it became what we were, and we got a record deal really fast and didn't have time to think about it. We were off to the races.

SH: You guys have been around over 20 years and just released your eighth album, how do you keep it fresh? How do you get inspiration still?

RT: I think that there's probably a million answers to that, I mean as human beings I guess the bigger answer is that it's an equation of all that stuff. The respect to leave people alone enough, the respect to not step on toes, because you've got to remember we're friends too. You've got to remember that. It's not like you're just business partners with folks. They're your friends. I guess as human beings you just respect each other enough and give each other enough space to grow and hopefully the equation still stays vital. Then you feel good about it, if you're still making music it means something, and you still have something to say, on the other hand, like I just mentioned music, a lot of bands get stuck in this weird situation of "We can't be this, we can't be that, this is what we are, we're pigeon holed into this sound." I remember we used to laugh and say we're a "Vegan/hardcore/ska" whatever just all these microcosms of music. It got to a point where there are so many rules about every band that no one was doing anything cool, or so we thought. We were just always really careful to say "Well why can't we do that?" We like bands that do acoustic songs, why can't we do acoustic songs? And we had been saying this since our first record, that's something that a lot of people don't know. They hear that we were a band doing a lot of harder edge stuff, and playing CBGB's, but at the same time we were still doing harder stuff later on (Long Way Down) and early on we were still doing acoustic stuff. A lot of our current material is based on what people know about us at the time, but its fine because we've been allowed to have a career and a lot of bands haven't been allowed to have that opportunity, so we feel pretty lucky. Sitting here at my home in Los Angeles right? Pretty fucking funny right? We grew up in Buffalo, and I've been out here about 7 years. I actually really like it out here. When I moved it was really weird, you know growing up in New York, freezing my nuts off 6 months a year. This is nice.

SH: Everyone is drowning over there now.

RT: Oh I know crazy huh?!

SH: It's hot as hell out here.

RT: Dude what the fuck is going on? I mean with the fucking, ahhh I'm not getting into this. That's a whole other conversation right?

SH:So the new record is called "Let Love In", is that in any way a tribute to Nick Cave or is that just a coincidence?

RT:That's interesting; it's a coincidence in the sense that John wrote a song called "Let Love In." We were tossing around record titles and we always have a board with potential record titles on it, inevitably we put up all the song titles, and we put it up there and were laughing because it was a Nick Cave record. We said "Wow, that's a great sentiment, for right now." Right in the middle of our last record September 11th happened; we were working on the record and hadn't started the vocals yet. So we made that record, went out and toured it and did our thing. Being in that culture now for the past 5 years and being the inquisitive types as we are questioning what goes on. We love to get a lot of sources about what's going on in the world, and we spent a lot of time trying to identify the problems and talk about them. That was probably the main topic of conversation on the last tour. That's all we talked about, incessantly. It seems like that's all the whole world was talking about. I think the problems have been identified (laughs) and if there's not a solution yet, there needs to be hope that there's going to BE a solution. However there's going to be no solution to any of this stuff until people decide they're going to cooperate. I think that that was kind of why "Let Love In" kind of stuck out to us as sort of very somatic as to what our feelings were at the time. It's really difficult right now, the world is all about you wake up, check the terror alert and the weather report, then you go use your anti bacterial soap. Then you go talk to all your friends, who you're never going to have to actually see, because they're on the internet, then you get in your car by yourself, you drive to work, and sit in an office, by yourself. You work with a bunch of people that you're never going to see because you do it over the internet, and that's how all people's lives are now. People are scared shitless man. They put us in this situation, where no one trusts anyone anymore. You can't get on the internet because someone is going to get your IP address, come to your house, stab and rape you. There's a terrorist outside your door. You know what? No, there's not. It's not that way, life is not that way. Most people's lives are affected in that manner, and why do people have to live their lives that way? I guess the concept that we address in this whole thing is, you've got to trust somebody in order to let something cool happen and let new ideas grow. So there you go.

SH:Hearing that, and especially with you guys coming from punk roots, do you guys have a set of ideals where you feel that you're a band that needs to speak out?

RT:I don't know unless asked, I mean “Better Days” is a great example. We did that song for a Christmas record, I'll tell you the story in a second. The point I'm trying to make is it's all up to your interpretation of what it is. Back to "Better Days" as an example; We wrote that song for a Christmas record, NBC and Target were doing this thing, and we were originally going to do a cover, and instead John decided to write that song. Right in the middle of our recording our record we went in and did this song, it took us two days to write this song. Within 6 or 7 days CNN had gone in and picked it up as their Hurricane Katrina relief theme. We never planned on that happening; it's just something that happened. Like me, when things happen naturally like that, and take on a different meaning to whatever person is there that's the most magical part of this whole thing. All of a sudden you've translated somebody's life and situation, it's so cool. I really dig it.

SH:Do you think that as musicians you have an obligation to open people’s eyes? Look at the Dixie Chicks, they made that statement about Bush and it was almost career suicide for them but them...

RT: Well this is where they are man; hang around me for a day I say way worse shit than that. Right smack in the Bible belt. I mean we do Nascar shows too but the bottom line is George Bush does things I don't agree with, Democrats do things I don't agree with too. For me it's just an ethical question. Are these people right or aren't these people right?

SH:Since you have this massive soap box, and people will listen to you, do you think it's your responsibility to speak out for change? Or do you think politics is one of those lines that are too heavy to tread and you have your beliefs but don't want to broadcast them?

RT: I think that we're on the radio. We are a band that's on the radio, a lot of the radio stations are owned by people with political agendas. As far as the music goes, I don't think I'm going to write a song called "Fuck George Bush" you know what I mean? But fuck George Bush. There are messages in our songs, and a lot of the time the messages may not jive with his policies, but who knows that? You mention the Dixie Chicks, and as much as it was career suicide for them it was also the biggest thing that's ever happened in their career. We've campaigned for Al Gore and Kerry, and done rallies and I've met both of them. Doing rallies for them. I've been out on the road with Michael Moore doing shows, we did the "Slacker Uprising Tour" with him. We've done shows for www.moveon.org. We're passionately involved, but as far as our music goes, I think it's a level deeper than that.

SH:So I take it you won't be playing any White House parties anytime soon?

RT:Nah, no, no I'd be afraid to step foot in that place, but I think Bono did, didn't he? Didn't Bono go to the White House? He's a trip, I see him on TV sometimes and he trips me out man. We spent a lot of time on this because you asked, so that's where the conversation went, but we're not the type to stand on stage and broadcast. It's just a part of what we do, but if you want to have a conversation about it, we'll certainly have our opinions about it.

SH:So you sing on a couple songs on the new record, is that basically "I wrote the lyrics so I'm going to sing it"?

RT: This went a little bit differently; when the band started I sang most of the songs on our records. As we progressed John actually started writing more songs, I'd generally write the lyrics and the melodies and he'd write the chord progression. That was 20 years ago when we were writing punk rock songs. Then we sort of started coming upon ourselves and started writing together, then we started writing separately, where I would come in with full songs, and he would come in with full songs. He just blossomed into writing all these different kinds of songs so the records went where they went and through the process of us becoming a better band. For the first time, when we got back together to write this record, we decided to write together on these two songs to kind of pull the record together more cohesively. So the process changed a lot on this record. These songs were born from us sitting in front of a console with a couple guitars and making some demos which hadn't happened in years so that was a lot of fun to do.

SH:You guys ever think of doing the whole Outkast thing where you do a double disk and he sings on one and you sing on one to see which is better?

RT:That's interesting, that's not a bad idea.

SH:Like the 2 sides of Goo, your rocking side and his ballad side.

RT: He'd have like 6 songs and I'd have like 23. (laughs)

SH:Well that's about all I got, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

RT:Give me one last zinger here at the end, c'mon man, like ask me my favorite...sushi, I dunno.

SH: (laughs) I don't have another question.

RT: I like the octopus any ways.

SH: Well thanks again, good luck on the tour.

RT:Thanks man, see you tonight.

- Boss Anjo