The Presidents of the

United States of America

A conversation with Andrew McKeag

(March 2009)

Interview by Amber Henson

It was an absolute delight to talk to Andrew McKeag, the guitbassist of The Presidents of the United States, not just since he was part of a band that I’ve been a fan of for fifteen years, but also because he was very talkative, making for a very easy interview.

I started by telling him I’d been a fan of the band since seventh grade, and a fan of their good friend Weird Al since, well, ever, and that I was therefore pretty excited to talk to a member of the band.  McKeag laughed and answered that it was “too bad you have to talk to me and not the other guys.”  That was not the way I felt at all.  A member since 2004 and a long-time friend of original members Chris Ballew and Jason Finn, McKeag is a President as much as anyone else.

Further reminiscing, I said I had seen the band at the Roxy in March of 2008.  I had a great time at that show, but what was his perspective?  “It was really, really fun.  Playing ‘Kick Out the Jams’ with Wayne Kramer was surreal and amazing.  And then there was playing ‘More Than a Feeling’ with Weird Al.”  That, of course, was one of the highlights of the show for me.”  I asked if he would elaborate on how that came about.  “Before I was in the band, Chris and Al were friends.  They’re both serious musicians and there are a lot of other similarities.  So for the show, we knew we needed to be on stage with Al, we have get him up there and do something since we were all in LA.  We wanted to do something different.  It was pretty easy, ‘More Than a Feeling’ is Chris’ favorite song in the whole world.”

Speaking of songs, what are his favorite songs from the most recent album, These Are the Good Times People? “I really enjoy playing ‘Ghosts are Everywhere’.  ‘Rot in the Sun’, ‘Poor Turtle’ and ‘So Lo So Hi’ are all great pop-rock, bouncy things.  As far as ‘Mixed Up S.O.B’, I played on the record, so it’s awesome to play on your own guitar solo.  Sometimes I half-ass it on Dave [Dederer, the former guitbassist]’s part, because it’s so technically complicated. So I always go for the low hanging fruit.  When it’s my own, I know I’m playing it right.”

And just how does being a guitbassist work?  “So it’s a three string guitar.  And I use it the whole time.  That was one of the first conversations I had with Jason. I played the parts with a three string guitar, and later tried to figure out if the parts were possible with more strings, and the answer is absolutely not.”

What about the creative process?  How is the new guy involved in that?  “We’re like any other rock band.  Sometimes it can take us up to three years to write enough new songs for an album.  And when a song is first thought of, it may not be that much different in the end than how it was when we started.  A lot of the songs are from Chris’ brain, how he sees fit, his words, and he fine tunes them and tweaks them.”

Speaking of Ballew, when was the first time McKeag met him?  “I was in a band, Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver, and we were playing in San Diego.  It was the early nineties, ’94, maybe ’95, and we opened for them.  I had probably met them before, they were well known in Seattle, plus Seattle is one of those scenes were everybody knows each other.  I might have met Jason.  But Dan and I became tight, before I knew Chris.  We were just all friends.  Jason sometimes played on my silly cover bands.” 

And then how did he come to tour with the PotUSA?  “Dave didn’t want to tour.  It was 2004 and they’d just made a new album and were talking about touring with it, and Dave said ‘Wait, touring?  I don’t  want to do that.’  So he would do the big festival stuff, the stuff that was crucial to the band, when they needed the original guy.  After a couple of months of me playing with them on tour, what quickly happened was that songs started to change, which I guess is good, but then there were two versions of songs.  The band, Chris and Jason, were ready to go, but they had to instruct one of us about the changes.  So eventually Dave decided he didn’t want to be there, but there were never any hard feelings.  None at all.”

Clearly the band works really well together now, but what did McKeag think of their first, self-titled album?  “I didn’t understand them, actually,” McKeag laughed, “I knew a lot of people who were fans of theirs and had a really good time at their shows.  But I had yet to see them.  Then I was touring with the band The Teeks as a tech, who were opening for The Presidents.  So I watched them play, and it was such a phenomenon, and I started to understand what this was all about.  And then they were on MTV and in Rolling Stone, and playing at every bar in Seattle to these salivating fans.  I just hadn’t been in on the joke, but it turned out they were really talented and road tested, and they were bringing it every night.”

Doing all my research for the band, I found that McKeag was the only member without a Wikipedia page, so I asked if he wanted to put out a call for his fans to make him a page.  “That’s a good idea.  Make me a Wikipedia page!  Someone out there do it, please!”

Someone who has an extensive Wikipedia page is Weird Al, who directed the band’s single “Mixed Up S.O.B.”. How was it shooting that video?  “It was really fun.  As a kid, watching MTV, I saw his videos and thought they were cool.  I have a friend who was in The Black Crows, and Al did a video of theirs, and I was like ‘Wow, he directs videos?  I didn’t know that.’  And then at one point, while making the album, Chris was going down to LA, and I knew that he would see Al, so I said “See if Al will make a video for us.”  And then he did.  It was two days on the set.  Al can be silly and funny, but he keeps it moving, and he gave us a good amount of shit.”  Here McKeag started to laugh.  “He could see right through me.  He would say ‘Oh, I get it, you’re the cool guitar guy.  Okay, don’t smile then.’  He was great.  He had a vision and he stuck with it.”

How about McKeag on his own?  What does he do when he’s not touring or recording with the band?  “I write songs on my own, and I get time to rehearse them, and there are plans to make some sort of solo record.  I’m in a Humble Pie cover band.  I just like to make as much music as I can.  I only quit my job about a year ago, because I’m making just enough money to exist, with the band and working with a production management company, and booking bands.”

And what about the future?  Is there another album on the horizon?  “Well, Chris just finished his kids solo record.  It has a lot of traditional nursery rhymes, 20 songs.  He had to get out of his system.  So we’re looking towards the end of the year for another album.”

Considering what a politically charged year 2008 was, I wondered if they were getting tired of people expecting the band to be outspoken politically, or if they welcomed the chance to talk about the issues.  “Last year we finally just stopped dodging. It was easy to choose our side.  Actually, right after Obama announced he was going to run, we were going to be headlining a fundraiser for him, and we didn’t want to be responsible for filling the room.  But after that things quickly changed, and then we were begging to play for him, and they said no, but we were happy to have that first opportunity.”

And what’s McKeag listening to right now?  “Well, a lot of Humble Pie, obviously.  My Bloody Valentine, Joni Michell, a lot of funkadelic stuff, and Teddy Thompson, a couple of his records, he’s a friend of mine.”

I thanked him so much for the opportunity, and he said he was glad and that “It’s still really fun, going out and touring.  It’s so funny, because there are so many different kinds of fans.  It really ranges at our concerts, from teenagers to people in their 50s.  We’ll be back doing a States tour in the late spring and on the West Coast in the fall.”

I’ll be there, since it will be the good times, people.