The Descendents

Wed 8th Dec, 2010 in Features

Pop punk was born in 1978 when The Descendents first began to play shows around the US West Coast. 32 years later, the band will play their first shows in Australia and founder/drummer/producer Bill Stevenson is excited about the trip, especially after the year he has had. “It’ll be fun, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be in the third week of December and in the third week of December last year, I was laying in a hospital with an oxygen tube in my nose. Now a year on I get to play a show in Australia and it’ll be kick ass!!”

After undergoing neurosurgery, Stevenson feels reinvigorated and excited about playing and producing music again – he’s just spent 14 hours in the studio producing the next Rise Against album. “I am doing amazingly well. People say I remind them of when I was in my late teens/early twenties. Just driving everyone crazy with too much energy and too much hyperactivity.”

After another lengthy hiatus, the band were offered a spot on the inaugural No Sleep Til festival and according to Stevenson, it’s the first time things have fallen into place to get the band down to Australia. “In the early days it was the money never worked out, we didn’t have the ability to pay for the flights without dipping into our own pockets to get down there. Then when we got popular enough that they wanted us down there and would pay for us to come, it never fitted into our schedules. This time it just so happened to, we got this really good offer to do these shows so we were like “yeah, why not, lets do them!”.

The band will only be paying three shows of the festival and this is due to vocalist Milo Aukerman’s other career as a biochemist and having limited time off available. “Milo only had a week off from work, so this is how many show we could do. But I think it will be cool, it’ll be fun. If people really want to see us down there, they can make it to one of the shows hopefully…unless you live in Perth, that’ll suck majorly and I apologize for that!”

Stevenson and some of his band mates are no strangers to these shores, as his other band All (featuring Descendents guitarist Stephen Egerton and bassist Karl Avalrez and singer Chad Price) have toured a few times including the last Warped Tour. This time around Stevenson is looking forward to catch up with good friend ex-Bodyjar vocalist Cam Baines. “I think he’s going to travel around with us and maybe do some candid filming.” Their friendship goes back to when Bill mixed a Bodyjar EP and even helped out All, stepping in on vocal duties for a show – as Stevenson explains “Chad and I put the air conditioner on full blast in the hotel and we never turned it off all night. We woke up the next morning and Chad couldn’t talk because the air had been dried out and he couldn’t talk so that night Cameron sang for us.”

With over thirty years in the scene I wondered what Stevenson remembers of the very first Descendents show. “The first actual show we played was in a club…no it was a rented hall that Black Flag rented. So it was Descendents, The Reactionaries who later became The Minutemen, The Alley Cats and Black Flag….wow I actually remembered all 4 bands! Man, our first show had bands that we were either involved in or inspired us to play. That’s crazy, you know I’ve never thought about it like that until I was 47!”

Catch The Descendents on the No Sleep Til tour:
Friday 17th December Showgrounds, Melbourne
Saturday 18th December – The Entertainment Quarter, Sydney
Sunday 19th December – RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane