Laura Jane Grace on the Most Painful and Surprising Music of Her Career
“There are songs I look back at now and I don’t even know how I sang them.”
I’m on a Zoom call with Laura Jane Grace, trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation she’s having with, of all people, her insurance adjuster.
A few days before our late-January chat, the Against Me! front woman was in a car accident in St. Louis, where she has been living part time since the onset of the pandemic. A drunk driver sideswiped her, landing her ride in the shop and leaving her unharmed but shaken. “It was like two in the morning, it was four degrees outside, it was a pretty intense experience,” she tells me moments after hanging up with Anthony from National General. (Before doing so, she flashes a thumbs-up and a big toothy grin to let me know it went well.) “And in my head,” she continues, “this all seemed like a real signifier of, I think my time in St. Louis is running out.”
This epiphany comes at an interesting moment in Grace’s life — she’s doing this interview from the comforts of the Chicago home she recently purchased with her wife of nearly two months, comedian Paris Campbell — but a rather inopportune one for the press cycle of her latest album, Hole in My Head. The follow-up to Stay Alive, her 2020 solo debut, is in many ways a love letter to the Missouri city that embraced her during a particularly lonely period that coincided with an estrangement from her Against Me! bandmates. (“That is a full open sore right now,” she says of her relationship with the Gainesville, Florida, punk band she founded in 1997. “I want to be playing with them again. It’s complicated, but I’m hopeful.”)
So has this scary collision on the streets of St. Louis forced her to reevaluate her feelings about her new album? Grace isn’t sure, but that isn’t too unusual for her. “It probably sounds a little cliché, but every record you do is a chapter in your life. It really encapsulates a specific period of time,” she says. “You don’t really understand what you’re making as you’re making it. You need perspective, you need some distance. You may need to ask me again in five or ten years.”
Grace has had years — in some cases, decades — to reflect on Against Me!’s discography. (The band’s gritty debut, Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose, turns 22 next month, while their most ambitious record, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, just celebrated its 10th anniversary.) And she is happy to discuss the most challenging, painful, and surprising moments of her career, all while reserving the right to reassess in the future.
Hardest Against Me! Song to Sing
There are songs that I look back at now and I don’t even know how I sang them. I did this charity event called Joey’s Song last month in Madison, Wisconsin. Butch Vig was kind of the musical supervisor for the event, and I ended up playing the song “Thrash Unreal,” which we recorded with Butch. As I’m gearing up to do it, I’m like, “Goddamn, there are so many words to this song!” It is just such a mouthful. It takes so much breath to sing. I recorded that song when I was 26, and I’m fucking 43 now. I look at that vocal performance and I’m like, “Hat’s off, younger you!” But I guess it’s kind of demonstrative of what the approach going into the studio was back then: I only got to do this once. I just got to get this one take, one time. Then you realize, no, no, no, no, no, you have to do this every night.
I’ve always been attracted to a higher growl scream that I think is equally evident in someone like Axl Rose but also fucking Kathleen Hanna. There’s a ferocity that fucking sounds like razor blades and is not always kind on the throat. Your voice really is a muscle. When I first started touring, the idea of doing vocal warm-ups was laughable. Never in a million years would I be caught dead backstage doing vocal warm-ups. Now, for the past decade, I’ve used the same app on my phone to do vocal warm-ups. I have this Vicks steamer thing that I’ll sit near while I do them. At this point, I’m sure I have nodes. I’m sure I have scar tissue. I used to be a drinker. I used to be a smoker. I still smoke weed sometimes. Your voice also just changes as you get older, so I’ve been kind of adapting to that. I don’t sing older songs the way I used to. I adjust the register sometimes. “Bamboo Bones” off White Crosses is so high in parts. I struggle with that song for real.
Hole in My Head Track That Most Reminds You of St. Louis
I had an apartment in Chicago, then the pandemic hit and I needed a space to make noise. I do month-on, month-off parenting, so on the months that I’m not with my daughter, I’m in St. Louis. When I moved there, I didn’t know anyone. I really came into the city kind of blind and it was intimidating. I was out of my element, but people were really cool. There’s so much to love about St. Louis, and I’ve gotten to experience the city in a really unique way. The record feels really tied to this city.
There’s one reference in particular that reminds me of St. Louis, the opening line of “Keep Your Wheels Straight”: “Dollar fifty N/A beers at CBGB’s.” There is a shitty punk bar in St. Louis called CBGB; I don’t know how it exists, but it’s been there for some 30-odd years. The bathroom is just as disgusting as the original CBGB, which I know because I’ve played at the original. The one in St. Louis is a killer hang. There’s a firepit in the backyard where you can just throw logs on the fire yourself. They don’t care if you smoke weed there. It’s just super-chill. It’s never too crowded; I’m sure they wish it was. But the idea that in 2024 you could still go and hang out at CBGB on a Friday night and have it be authentic, not a carnival-ride experience, is an example of the uniqueness of St. Louis.
Song That Has Exceeded Your Expectations
There are songs that end up coming back in unexpected ways. “Holy Shit!,” off of Searching for a Former Clarity, is a good example. I wrote it and I didn’t really like it that much. I thought it was a knockoff of a song on our previous record called “Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists.” We played it a little bit but not that often, then all of a sudden people have been asking for that song. I’ll throw it on the set list and it works really well. I’m not sure why, 20 years later, it feels really good to play. Sometimes things like that happen that surprise you.
There’s another song on Searching for a Former Clarity called “Pretty Girls,” which, similarly, we didn’t play that often. When I wrote it, I had not been as direct with some of the lyrics that I wanted to write. I went back and rewrote the second verse to play it live now. Essentially, it’s like I’m playing a new song. I like that I have the ability to do that. It can still become something new as opposed to having to rigidly be what it was. It is kind of alive in that way.
“Sink, Florida, Sink” is another one I play every night that, when I wrote it, I never thought would be a lasting song. Sometimes it’s those songs that force you to ask yourself, Why is this still relevant to me? Why do I still feel these feelings when I sing this? Even if those feelings have changed, you’re still feeling something. It’s those songs that end up lasting for a long time.
Favorite Against Me! Album Closer
I always put my favorite songs at the end of a record. That’s when I know a record is nearly complete — when I’ve found that anchor song, that one that defines the record. Undoubtedly, “Black Me Out” off Transgender Dysphoria Blues, feels like the mission statement of that record. That song is definitive in a lot of ways. It has some personal meaning to me but has also shown me the power of manifestation. Playing that song every night and seeing the way things have turned out always gets me.
But my favorite is “The Ocean” from New Wave because I knew what I was actually saying while no one else knew what I was saying. It’s also a song that, leading up to recording New Wave, we played every night on the road. It’s not a formulaic or traditional verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song, and it was always a really magical musical moment between us every time we played it.
Song Title That Makes You LOL
It’s funny, in the early 2000s there really was a rebellion against just going with the obvious title. Whatever the chorus says the most, that’s usually the title of the song, right? During this period, everyone rebelled against that, and you’d come up with the most asinine song title. I rarely start out with a title in the writing process. It was always, “Okay, the song’s finished. I guess we got to call it something.” Oftentimes, we would’ve already developed a name for it within the group that was just kind of referential. Like the “Boom, Boom, Tap, Tap” song or something that only we got. On Searching for a Former Clarity, there are songs named in parenthesis: “(The Mover),” “(The Shaker),” “(The Roller).” That’s how we would reference them, like, “Oh, it’s ‘The Roller.’ It’s the song that kind of rolls.” But then later on in life, I’m like, Well, it does make sense to just call it the thing that repeats the most! It’s just easier for everybody when they go to look it up. But I was texting with Matt and Mikey Erg about the upcoming tour, and I was like, “What old songs should we play?” Matt suggested “Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners.” As a metaphor for the music industry, I think I nailed it with that one.
Album You Sacrificed the Most to Make
Honestly, recording some of Shape Shift With Me was depressing and hard in different ways. But Transgender Dysphoria Blues undoubtedly was the most difficult to get made because of the personal circumstances happening around me. The amount of pressure I felt under and then things that were out of control, like a tree fell through the roof of the studio and destroyed the building. Our drummer left and Adam started playing with the band. Andrew Seward left the band and Inge Johansson ended up joining. Fat Mike played bass on some of the record, and I played bass on the rest. Some of it was recorded at Dave Grohl’s studio, but then some of it was recorded in a gas station that was converted into a studio in Valdosta, Georgia. It was one of the coolest experiences and also one of the darkest. It didn’t feel like there was necessarily going to be a future for the band.
Most Memorable Basement Show You Ever Played
For some reason, I immediately thought of this one basement on Long Island. We had chosen this kid’s house — well, it was his dad’s house — with a finished basement. I want to say it was cedar-lined, so it had a nice wood finish, but it felt like a sauna in there. It would get so fucking goddamn hot and sweaty in there and people would just take off all their clothes so it would be a bunch of naked punks just drenched in sweat screaming at the top of their lungs. I remember these surreal moments where I’d be down on my knees trying to gasp for some kind of air and just looking up at naked bodies. It’s an unforgettable experience that is hard to even describe. There is a song called “Punk Rock in Basements” on Hole in My Head, but it’s always been ironic being associated with basements, being a band from Florida. There are no basements in South Florida. The water level is too high.
Best Against Me! Song to Mosh To
I was in Greece recently. I was brought over by the Onassis Foundation and did two shows, both of which were filmed. One was in Athens and the other in Thessaloniki. I had local musicians who I had never played with backing me for these shows, one of which was a house show. We played “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” at that one and everyone was going fucking crazy singing along — so much so that after the filming was done, the director was like, “Let’s do it one more time just so we can all sing along again!” I was like, “Fuck it. Let’s do it!” So we played the song two times in a row just because everyone was having such a good time.
Most Striking Album Cover
I started out doing the artwork for Against Me! records. I did all the first EPs and the artwork for Reinventing Axl Rose. I also did the artwork for The Eternal Cowboy. It’s a picture of me, but it was my art direction, it was my idea. Then after that, it became an issue. We were on tour so much, and I needed to make a choice. It was like, “I’m either going to be a musician, or I’m going to be a graphic designer, but I can’t do both.” Especially because I was coming from a place of hands-on X-Acto knife collage work. I ended up beginning a collaboration with Chris Norris, who also goes by Steak Mtn. Chris is from Florida and played in a bunch of Florida bands that I grew up seeing. He was closely associated with No Idea Records, one of Against Me!’s first labels. We just had really similar points of reference, similar ideas for how it should look. I’ve always loved the idea of really marrying yourself to a designer. Bands that were important to me when I was a young punk had a strong visual aesthetic, so I wanted to stay with Chris for as long as possible. He ended up doing a number of the Against Me! records and he’d do our shirts and tour posters.
Along the way, there were other people. I did the cover of New Wave and some of the more recent album covers, like Stay Alive. I smoked every one of those joints. I own that ashtray. I took that picture. Personally, I love the cover of Bought to Rot, although I’d like it better without the center text thing that Chris added in. It was a Kmart that was in Michigan by where we were recording. To me, there was something so striking, so haunting about a vacated Kmart. The record came out in 2018, and it really just, to me, encapsulated the state of America at the time. I’m also glad that we got a picture of that particular Kmart in rural Michigan because it has since been bulldozed and is no longer there. It’s a disappearing past.
Song That Makes You Cringe
On Reinventing Axl Rose, there’s the song “Scream It Until You’re Coughing Up Blood (Jamaican Me Crazy),” which, at the time, was an inside joke that became the song title. When I look at it, I’m like, “Oh, that’s so cringe.” It shouldn’t have been on the record. Also the song is maybe my least favorite on that record. I don’t like to play it; I just don’t think it’s well written. But there’s a lot of Shape Shift With Me that’s brutally painful for me to think of. I was going through something at the time and I just don’t like to play it. Maybe I’ll come back to it, but I don’t know. It’s kind of where the band left off. Hopefully, we’ll get back there.
Reinventing Axl Rose Track You’re Most Proud Of
Undoubtedly, “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong.” That’s a song I wrote for my grandmother, but then I named my daughter after my grandmother so the meaning behind that song has changed for me over the years. It’s still a song I sing every night. It’s still a song everyone reacts to. “We Laugh at Danger and Break All the Rules,” also off that album, is actually about my other grandmother. I know songwriters sometimes like to throw out the name Mary as just a cliché name in a song, but Mary is my dad’s mother so “We Laugh at Danger” is for her and “Pints of Guinness” is for my mom’s mother. So all my grandmothers were present on the record. The air is finally clear now, and I feel good about that.
Most Surprising Fan Request
There’s a song that was only on the second EP, The Acoustic EP, called “We Did It All for Don” that people yell out for. I’ll play it still, but I’m always like, “Really? Fuck.” It dumbfounds me that people like it. I look at the song and think it could have been written better, but I appreciate that people like it and I’ll play it. But it goes to show, as an artist, you don’t always know what you do best. I like to get up onstage and just ask what people want to hear. I’ll go in there with a general idea of what I’d like to play, but if people yell a song out, I want to be able to play it for them. It’s a balance, though. You don’t want to fake the funk, but at the same time, if people are coming to my show, I want them to be happy. I want them to hear what they want to hear. I don’t want to be like, “You liked that song? Well, I don’t. Fuck you.”
What You Learned From Making the 2014 AOL Original Web Series True Trans
That series was kind of a weird format. It’s broken up into these 15-to-20-minute docu-webisodes that were then available in a way that was kind of hard for people to watch. I kind of knew that going into it, but AOL had this incredible budget behind it and gave me free rein to choose who I wanted to talk to. I really took advantage of that by choosing people I wanted to have a conversation with and had actual questions for. I was there behind the camera every time someone was interviewed. It meant a lot to me personally to have that connection with the trans and gender-nonconforming community at the time. Even though a lot of those relationships have since changed or have been weird, they all have their individual nuances. For me, it wasn’t even about the final result. That actual lived experience was really valuable to me, and in particular Austin Reza, who directed it, was just a fantastic person. Seeing the crew that worked on it get educated in real time was kind of a profound experience.
In a lot of ways, True Trans’s micro-doc format feels ahead of its time.
While at the same time, it was held back by the fact that it was AOL, because everyone’s response at the time was like, “It’s AOL? That still exists?” And I’m like, “Yeah? I don’t fucking know.”
Against Me! Lyric That Gets You Every Time
The very last line of the song “Tonight We’re Gonna Give It 35%” off The Disco Before the Breakdown: “If you’d told me about this when I was 15 / I never would have believed it.” Every time I sing that line, it forces a self-awareness in me where I’m like, “Yes, if you had told me about this when I was 15, I never would’ve believed it!” That’s true no matter what is going on in my life, you know? When I played that song onstage in Thessaloniki, I had this profound moment of self-awareness, like, “Holy shit.”
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