Mike from The Ataris on Punk, Positivity, and Returning to Warped Tour Montreal

0:04 This is the Pipe Man here on the Avengers Pipe Man W4CY radio and I'm here. With Mike from the Ataris. Nice. Here at Warped Tour Montreal. Montreal, yes. Oh, my God. We've spoken before. We have. We have. Never in Montreal, though. So here's the first. Never above the border. I know, right? Yeah. What a cool venue, too. It was the easiest festival I ever got into. I walked across the street from my hotel, got on the metro, got off the metro, and I was looking at the media credential.

0:51 That's so crazy. I was like, Okay, well, when we get off the Metro, how are we going to find it? And it was like right there. You know, I haven't played on the island here since 2003 Warped Tour. 2005. 2005 Warped Tour. But it's a special place. It reminds me... The island here.. We played Montreal many times, but the island reminds me of Warped Tour. So it's so good to be back here. It does look so Warped Tour when you come. It looks like it's just a big skateboard park. It does. It does. It's super cool. I like the big, like... ball sculpture that's like all metal and stuff. It's really cool. I thought they were going to ride motorcycles round and round on the inside. Now, see, that would be fun, right?

1:32 Yeah, they did that on Warped. Tour for a few years where the kids would crisscross and they'd ride around. It was pretty wild. That is wild. Yeah. And I heard you talk in another interview about Joe from the Vandals. Yeah. Me and him have been friendly because we've done a few interviews. And I always laugh, and you'll think this story's funny. He knows I won't ask this question, so he'll do an interview. He's like, Pipe Man, don't ask me when the Vandals are coming out with new music. Nobody wants to hear somebody in their 50s writing punk rock music. Right, right, right. He's like the coolest dude. And I like. This is what I like about punk rockers, okay? Because I'm both on the metal side and the punk side.

2:14 Right. Like, he's a lawyer and a punk rocker. That's right. You're a psychologist and a punk rocker. It's like, I just love that idea. Somebody that has gotten a lot of formal education myself and, like, Dexter, like, putting the offspring on hiatus to go to college. That's right. See, I think people don't realize enough about punk rockers that they are very well spoken and very well educated. That even all the stuff they talk about, they know about. Yeah, I think there's a stigma on the early punk rock, like Sid Vicious, right? He wasn't the smartest, you know, the sharpest tool in the shed. And drugs had a lot to do with that, right? But, you know, a lot of my generation of punk rockers, whether it be the singer Greg Raffin from Bad Religion or Milo from The Descendants, Everyone went to college and got.

3:09 Some degrees and still continue it. I actually was accepted a couple of years ago to law school right after COVID because I didn't know how long that was going to last, how long we couldn't play. Joe wrote the letter that helped me get accepted to law school. But then things came back and the band took off again and the resurgence of punk rock is back. I was like, I cannot go to law school, raise my two teenagers and do the band. So I said, okay, I'm going to put that on hiatus. But you never know. I may go back someday. See, and that is what's cool about it because it makes you a more well-rounded person. It definitely does. I tell my kids the same thing. How do you think it changes songwriting?

3:49 Well, I think what it does is it opens up, and I believe this about extended education outside of high school, period. I think what it does is it, as you said, makes you a more well-rounded person. You know more about the world, and you're not so condensed on what you've been taught. And so when you learn about all these things, whether it's psychology or anthropology or just religion. When I was in college, I took lots of great classes on religion. These things open you up that there's a big world out there. And I think the other thing is as successful musicians, all of us that you spoke about have been able to tour the world. When you're outside of your bubble, that's the other thing. We're up here in Montreal right now, and it's French Canada, you know? So you're in a different culture, a different part of the world.

4:47 And I think that also, traveling and experience is just as much a part of that. And it's so true. You're speaking my language because I've been talking about this a lot lately. You know, when you're from America, especially my generation... We're the only free country. It's scary out there. Don't go anywhere. That's right. And I remember the first time I went to Europe, I was like, what the hell were they talking about? That's right. So I go to all these places now and all these different cultures, and I just realized that's what makes you a well-rounded, educated person. Because you can talk all you want about the other side of the world until you're walking over there and experience it. Do you really know what's going on?

5:32 No. Don't. Yeah. You know what they feed you. Get out there. See the world. See other cultures, other human beings. Because at the end of the day, what I've found is we're just all human beings. One race, the human race. We are. And, you know, I'm the first generation born in America. My family comes from Belgium, from Antwerp. And so I grew up with my grandmother and great-grandmother. They were like the matriarchs of the family and like the rocks, right? And they taught us that early. Like, you know, they grew up in Europe during World War II. And so they taught us that there's a big world out there and you never know when shit's going to change on a dime.

6:14 No doubt. My grandmother used to say the only thing constant in life is change. Exactly. That's a good one. Right? That's why you're so well-rounded yourself. Well, thank you. And then, so how do you feel now that you've gotten a psychology degree of what punk rock music does for people's mental health? Well, you know, the degree is there, but what I see out there, and this comes with getting older too, is that When we're on stage, we make people happy. I look out there and I only see smiling, happy faces. And really, that's what I want to do. As we get older, we want to leave our mark on the world.

6:56 We want people to enjoy what you do. If there's two things we can take with us at the end, it's love and happiness. And so I want to do something in life that makes people happy. And when I'm on stage, I know I'm doing that. There you go. And it makes you happy, too. Oh, yeah, absolutely. To me, it's the best therapy for you, the artist, and me, the listener. We're both getting that juice, that energy that makes us feel great and escape the world. You know, I was on Warped Tour Long Beach like two, three weeks ago, and my two teenagers are on the side of the stage, and I walk off stage, and it was such a great feeling. It was just like 2005. 2003 all over again and I told them if you would have told me when I was your age that I'd be jumping up and down at 57 years old on stage in front of a bunch of kids I'd told you you're crazy but here I am and I still love.

7:50 It that's like me I bring not only my kids but my grandkids to festivals with me And they all laugh because nobody can keep up with me. And I'm 59. Why can't you keep up with me at these festivals? My youngest daughter, like halfway through the first day, she's like, Dad, I don't know how you do this every weekend. I'm done. Yeah, yeah. And me, I don't know how I don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes you come alive. It makes you alive. And that's why you look so great is because in your heart, you're a young man. Exactly. You don't let age define you. And that's really what it's about. I think so too. And like, I think everything's mindset. I'm sure you're like, you're like me where, uh, you look at guys that you went to high school with.

8:33 And you're like, damn, they look old, you know? So, uh, I do that a lot. Some of them I'm like, yeah, thank God I didn't do the things they did. Cause look at them now, you know, or I can't look at them now. I would say rock and roll keeps you young, right? No doubt about it, man. Especially when you're in an environment like Warped Tour, like it's just so killer. It's killer that you guys are here. Now, I also want to talk about, now, had I not taken the Metro here today, and I was in my car, I would be listening to a song by you guys. Oh, awesome, awesome. You know, and tell us about that song. Car Song is our first new single in 17 years. It came out last year.

9:13 It did really well on alternative radio and with our fan base. It was like a.. A throwback to our heyday to a 2003 So Long Astoria record which is our most successful record and it's about nostalgia like most of our songs but my singer likes to drive he drove here from Vancouver Canada to Montreal and so we all fly right but he drives and so he takes the imagery he spends that time alone in the car to write his lyrics and he's really hard on himself And he wants his lyrics to be positive. That's one thing I can always say about our band is our lyrics are always positive and they make you see something visceral, right? And so he does that.

9:56 And so when he drives, car song is sort of a driving song, you know? it's a song about about seeing what you see out there whether it's burned out factories and shopping malls to to whatever's happening. Out there and i love that because i'm also a motivational speaker so to me the positive like Who needs the negative? The positive is where we look like this now. Exactly. And that's why my specialty at Cal State Northridge, where I went to college, was positive psychology. Nice. So it's really. An emerging side wave of psychology. And it's really, if you're positive, then you project positivity. The people around you pick up on that. And you can get the things you want by thinking positive about it.

10:42 Absolutely. Tell us about the autobiography. So I wrote a book about my life. It's called The Hero Dies in This One. The hero is my father. He died in a car accident when I was 19. But he was the one that was instilled in me that you can attain great things if you believe in it, if you put your mind to it. But my life has been full of ups and downs from getting in trouble with the law and having.. A dot-com company. I went to federal prison, but I've had success in music, in business. So I was abandoned by my mother at six, and my dad came in. So it's a great story. It's funny, and it's also sad, and it's also exciting.

11:26 And there's some great stories about celebrities, our time in Hollywood when.. When Astoria was.. When we were on MTV and TRL and all that stuff, I went to Kelly Osbourne's 21st birthday party and danced with Paris Hilton. There's all kinds of great stories in there. So it runs the gambit. Nice. It comes out spring of next year, same time as our new record, Revolution Summer, which is our first record in 19 years. Wow. Yeah, so.. How's it feel to put out new music 19 years later? It's really great. A car song is on that record. It was sort of the teaser to that. And we had to work on a record deal that we were not happy with. We got out of that and we're just getting ready to release the record next year.

12:10 I love it. Well, and man, I'm so excited you're here at Warped Tour Montreal. Me too. And it's been an absolute pleasure talking again. Thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'll talk to you again. No doubt. All right. Thank you for listening to The Adventures of Pikeman on W4CY Radio.