Longtime punk practitioners MxPx play the Ogden Theatre on Thursday.
There is silence on the other end of the line. Suddenly, the dead air is cut with an unfamiliar language, a sputtered jumble of French or maybe Portuguese. I hang up the receiver, and the phone rings again. This time it’s an equally confused Tommy Rat, road manager for MxPx.
Even in the age of wireless technology, lines still get crossed, and somehow, somewhere, a third party has seeped into our introduction. The line clears, and Tommy hands the phone to drummer Yuri Ruley, who is wide awake and brimming with the goods on what MxPx has been up over the last few months.
Coming off summer tour dates with California legends Rancid, MxPx is now on the road with Lagwagon in support of their eighth studio album, “Secret Weapon.” (The band stops by the Ogden Theatre on Thursday.)
Released from their relationship with A&M Records after seven years, MxPx have come full-circle, putting out their latest LP on Tooth and Nail Records, the place where the band began in 1993. I caught a few minutes with Ruley via a shaky phone connection and he filled me in on the band’s recent re-signing with Tooth and Nail, some cool guest appearances on their latest release, and why the band has stayed strong for so long.
When asked about the recent label-jump situation, Ruley says “(MxPx) weren’t big enough for the label (A&M) to really care about us, but we were big enough to keep around. After three records, we asked to be done, called it quits with A&M, and went to a friend’s label, SideOneDummy.”
From there, MxPx put out “Panic,” but remained an unsigned act in the midst of a full-fledged career. Conveniently, the label that launched MxPx’s decade-plus long career, Tooth and Nail Records, came calling, interested in re-releasing old material. The label wanted to add new tracks, but the relationship between the two parties was strained. This is where manager Tommy Rat came in, acting as a mediator in the situation.
“Tommy was trying to figure out if we could reestablish a relationship with Tooth and Nail, since they owned such a huge part of our catalog. He reached out to the label, and it turned out to be pretty easy, “ Ruley says of the reunion.
“We started working on the ‘Let it Happen’ re-release. In that process, (Tooth and Nail) asked if we would be interested in doing a full-length record. We thought, ‘Wow, that would be crazy,’ just because of our history with the label. They made a great offer, so we signed with them and put out ‘Secret Weapon,’ and went back to Aaron Sprinkle, the guy who produced our first record (‘Pokinatcha’, 1993).
“Aaron does a lot of work with Tooth and Nail, and since we had recorded with him before, it was just something we wanted to have happen,” Ruley says. “We had worked with Aaron on a few tracks for the ‘Let it Happen’ re-release, and he is just a good producer to work with.”
MxPx were still in high school when they first recorded with Sprinkle, but the producer himself was only 19.
“He (Sprinkle) said to us, ‘You know, when I worked on your first record, I lied about how much I knew about sound. I just wanted to get my foot in the door!’ But he became quite established, and has worked with a lot of other great bands (Anberlin, Beth Orton, and Pedro the Lion, among others). He’s also a good musician. When a producer’s a musician, they have that intuition.”
“Secret Weapon” saw MxPx collaborating with the likes of Superdrag vocalist Jon Davis, Bad Religion’s Brian Baker, Benji Madden of Good Charlotte and more.
Ruley says of the work with Davis: “We were huge Superdrag fans, starting when we worked with Jerry Finn (producer) on ‘The Ever Passing moment.’ He had done (Superdrag’s) ‘Head Trip in Every Key’ and that was one of our favorite records. We got to know Superdrag a little bit, seeing them play and hanging out with them in Seattle. We were sort ‘co-fans’ of each other’s bands, which was cool.”
Now on tour with Lagwagon, another band who went from the mentor to peer position for MxPx, Ruley admits it’s still exciting to know his band gets to share the stage with guys they’ve looked up to since their teens.
“When we were in high school, these (Lagwagon and Rancid) were bands we listened to. It’s not that they’re that much older, but they’re just old enough that I remember hearing Lagwagon for the first time. It was just all so new and exciting and dangerous. That was my birth into punk, and Lagwagon, Rancid, NOFX and a lot of the Fat bands (Fat Wreck Chords) were the bands that were there for me.”
Ruley is quick to strike a humble note about the tours and experiences with his forefathers-turned-contemporaries. “For us though, it’s like an honor. We’ve been friends with Tim and Lars (of Rancid) for a long time, and it’s awesome that they asked us to do it. There’s a mutual respect there.”
Seeing MxPx play this past summer with as much fervor and electricity as the first time I saw them as a 16-year-old girl wandering the Warped Tour, I wondered: how does a band who started when they were barely old enough to drive keep working together for over 15 years?
“It’s like asking your grandparents why they’ve been married for so long. I can’t put my finger on exactly why,” Ruley says of the deep relationship. “The three of us aren’t arm-in-arm, skipping down the street on daily basis, but we are good friends. We’ve been through so much together… it’s complicated in a lot of ways. We’re grown-ups now, even though we play punk rock for a living.
“When we started MxPx, it wasn’t a ‘just for fun’ thing; it was serious. I have to credit Mike (Herrera) for driving the train. He was like, ‘this is the real deal,’ and I was the same way. We maintained the energy to keep surviving, and mainly we just love getting up on stage and playing for people. There’s always new stuff happening for us, so it doesn’t feel like we’re beating a dead horse. No matter what happens, we get up on stage and it’s just the three of us, and that’s why we keep doing it. We have a chemistry.”
Ruley’s heartfelt modesty about his band is perhaps what makes MxPx most appealing; they are just three guys who like playing music together, and love doing it for other people.
“We may not be there best band in the world, but we have this energy that only we create together. There’s something there. We all play with other people, but it’s not the same. I love playing music and I love playing in other projects, but MxPx is it.
Ruley sums up his relationship and the devotion to the music he loves simply and modestly. “MxPx is the band I was supposed to be in. It’s cosmic.”
Catch MxPx in Denver on Thursday, Sept. 25 at the Ogden Theatre with Lagwagon.
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