Interview: Scott Russo of Unwritten Law
2011 was not exactly the year of Unwritten Law. They lost two members in an inter-band punch-up over a game of little league baseball. Swan, their first album in six years, was met with a fairly universal “meh” by a bunch of critics. They almost had to cancel a tour, recruit new members, and somehow re-establish a fan base.
Yet, when I catch UL’s singer and songwriter Scott Russo at the beginning of January, he’s as chipper as he’s ever sounded. He’s excited over a football game on TV and he gives me pretty good colour commentary on what’s happening from the other side of the world. His team loses. He doesn’t care. He’s just excited to still be making music and to be making his way to Australia for the Soundwave festival and sideshows this month.
The Soundwave festival will be the first time we get to see the new incarnation of Unwritten Law – but it’s not the first time we’re going to be hearing songs from Swan. Tell me about those songs and playing them with your new bandmates.
The dynamic really hasn’t changed because I write a majority of the material. What has transpired since we got the new boys [Kevin Besignano and Derik Envy replaced Steve Morris and Pat Kim on guitar and bass, respectively] in is that we’ve been able to play more of the songs from Swan. The only real dynamic change is that the new guys play it live like it sounds on the record. For some reason, PK and Steve and I all loved songs like ‘Superbad’ from the last record, but for some reason it wouldn’t translate live. Derik and Kevin and I have figured a way to play it live so it sounds mean. And also, they’re a lot better singers than Steve and PK were – so we can have three-part harmonies. Everyone has their own take on what’s going on, but the people who are coming to the shows are coming away pleased.
What happened with PK and Steve? Can we talk about that?
I never want to take anything away from Steve and PK. They’re my brothers and shit happens and we’d been in the band touring together for 22 years. They had families and they were done touring, so it was just a wrap for them. The bottom line is that the band has to carry on, and I wasn’t going to do it without people I loved. Kevin has been our guitar technician for years, and he played guitar for my other band. It was a really hard thing to swallow, but it would have been even harder to swallow to not play anymore because a couple of the guys didn’t want to tour.
That record was initially billed as a swan song for the band. Are we past the point of that now? Are you looking toward the band’s future again?
We’re definitely continuing. We had been on a hiatus for about six years – we did a tour in support of our greatest hits album and then a tour of Australia every other year. Touring wasn’t an option for us because people had families and they just didn’t want to go out on the road. Now everybody is down to tour. That’s what we’re looking at now. There’s no reason for us to stop now because everyone wants to keep going.
When Swan came out last year you were quoted as saying that it was the record that was going to define your legacy as a band. How do you feel about that now?
Today, it’s easily my favourite record that we’ve put out as a band. I spent a lot more time on the record – sixteen months in my home studio. It’s a part of me. I think that when anyone looks back at our catalogue ten years from now, if you played every record back to back, Swan will be the one that sticks out. It has everything that I want to hear out of an Unwritten Law album – I still put it on at home and listen, whereas it’s hard to do that with the other ones. It’s the pinnacle of our catalogue.
Do you also feel like there’s a new legacy to be explored with Derik and Kevin, now?
This is what I think. Unwritten Law have always been the underdog. Every time we’ve put out a record there have always been people talking shit. I just feel like every record that we put out has to trump the one that has come before. In life, you get better at everything you do with practise and I definitely feel that way about songwriting. In my opinion, my craft has gotten better.
It’s interesting that you mention being the underdog. To me, it seems like you guys are never short on adversity and turmoil. Do you agree?
Yeah. I can say that that’s honestly the truth.
Was there ever a time when you wanted to throw it in?
When Wade [Youman, drums] was in the band, there were a lot of drugs being used, and a lot of people struggling with addiction. It was too much to even comprehend. We struggled writing – we started [2005 LP] Here’s To The Mourning right around the time that Wade was asked to leave or get help, and at that point, it was really really hard to go to the studio and write with complete, blown-out drug addictions. At that point I wasn’t in the mood to do Unwritten Law anymore. It was hard on the heart and the soul watching the homies go down that path of addiction. I don’t want to take anything away from Wade, because he’s still my brother and we still hang out, but it was a breath of fresh air not to have to deal with the high ups and low lows that come along with drug addiction. It was nice to come out of that.
Then we more or less went on hiatus for a long time. After having such a good time recording everything from Swan, we took it on the road and it was like nothing had changed – we were back in that same funk as we were when we were touring Mourning, except this time everyone had familles instead of drug problems. We were having conversations about touring Japan, Europe and Australia, and there were rumblings of ‘well … I don’t want to go to Europe if there isn’t much money involved, I don’t want to do that …’, which is completely understandable given that everybody have families to support. My kids are grown up so it’s a bit easier for me.
At that time we were worried about making Warped tour. We were booked for Warped, but I was pretty sure that the boys weren’t going to make it. We ended up getting in a fight, and that was a wrap. And so at that point, Kevin stepped in, and we’ve been really up and running ever since.