Sib-mple Times: Totally Crushed Out v. Joe Sib
by Ryan Pangilinan

Unless you were born super late into the game, Californian Joe Sib has fronted awesome bands like Wax and, one of my favorite pop-punk groups, 22 Jacks. In addition to contributing actual danceable jams, Sib is also the co-founder of SideOneDummy Records, which has had a more than respectable output of records from the likes of The Gaslight Anthem, Broadway Calls, Suicide Machines, Bedouin Soundclash, The Sounds, Piebald, and tons more.

Sib has recently gotten back out on stage performing his one-man show “California Calling,” in which he describes the day he discovered punk rock within a 70-minute block. It’s also complete with a dance number set to the “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtrack and do-not-miss story about The Ramones.

Before the show, Sib sat down with TCO to talk about show’s origins and the benefits of being a punk rock dad.

Totally Crushed Out: So you were in 22 Jacks and Wax and now you’re doing this show, where you’re telling humorous stories. What was the impetus of doing that?

Joe Sib: I wanted to get back on stage. I hadn’t been on stage since 22 Jacks and I missed being out on the road. Obviously with SideOneDummy [and] I have two kids – a six year old and a nine year old – and I got a wife, at 43 years old, I just can’t hop in a van with four guys and take it out on the road. I just missed getting on stage. I was like, “Man, how can I figure out a way to get back up there?” Because being in a band is just not in the cards for me, in the sense of I love the music, but I can’t get that many people together, and it’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of effort. I always had an idea of doing a show with photographs for years, for 10 years.

In 2010, I actually started writing some ideas down, I made this CD called “True Stories, Bad Ideas” that I was just giving to bands that stopped by SideOne and would hang out. That CD started circulating around and it had about four or five stories on there and people were asking “Are you ever gonna do these live? I would love to see you do it live.” And I was like, “You know what? This might be the chance to do this.”

I saw some of the videos online earlier. Rollins has been doing the punk-spoken word thing, but this is not like that at all. The best part of it, from the clips that I saw, is that you don’t leave feeling bummed out at all.

Thank you. I’ve always come from the positive. It’s that PMA that HR and the Bad Brains taught me all about. Rollins and Jello Biafra are two artists and musicians that I have so much respect for. When I started doing this show, there was going to be this comparison, not that I’m even in that league at all as those two guys, but I am from the punk rock community and the thing I always tell people is that my story and what “California Calling” is all about is what Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra did it. They were on stage, they were breaking ground. I was a kid, I grew up in the suburbs of Northern California and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when punk rock hit the suburbs and I was on the frontline, watching it all.

My whole show is about getting the chance to experience punk rock in that second generation and getting to see guys like Henry Rollins and the Dead Kennedys. Even though my show isn’t about Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, it’s about growing up in a particular time when punk rock hit the suburbs….

You’re doing it in a format that’s cool. I’ve felt that SideOneDummy has been ahead of the curve, especially when compared to other labels. You did “The Show” 10 years ago and it was weird because it had all my favorite bands and at the time, I would only hear those bands on skate videos, in the background.

I loved doing “The Show.”

But I wished back then that there were more people doing video zines and now, it’s the norm. SideOneDummy preceded that by at least a decade.

When we started SideOneDummy, Bill and I never dreamed that we would never work with the bands that we have AND be around for 16 years. If you would have said that to us then, that we would be working with bands like Flogging Molly, Gaslight Anthem, Bedouin Soundclash, Chuck Ragan, 7 Seconds, The Sounds, we would’ve been like, “How is that even possible?”

Now to look back on all of that, I feel so grateful and doing this show, out on the road, and talking about those experiences make know how lucky I am, how grateful I am, to be doing all of this and it comes back to this one particular moment in time….

Doing “California Calling” – a one-man show — it’s obviously slightly easier than trying to tour with a band and run a label and have a family.

I would say that doing the show is way harder than being in a band. Setting it up is way easier. I was always used to running on stage with four other guys, when I first started doing this, I was like “Whoa, I don’t have a band with me.” Then I realized that the photographs I have in the show, kind of end up being the band and I lean on those photographs. When I first started doing the show I had, like, 40 photographs. Tonight, I have 67.

The show definitely has a theme, do you know how you want to follow this up?

Yeah, with “California Calling” it’s definitely the first installment…. In the future, to do this kind of show, you have to live and experience life, you have to keep traveling and experience new things. The next thing I’d like to do as a show is based on how I’ve been with my wife for 21 years and I’m the father of two children and I want to go from “California Calling,” where that ends, to being on the road, never going off the road, gonna tour for the rest of my life – having that turn into “Wow, now I’m a guy with a mortgage and I’m 43 years old.” How do you not turn off that switch in your head? How do you sit on a flight with other people your age and not have anything in common with them? Because they don’t want to talk about the first release from Code of Honor or how they saw Flogging Molly.

I’m doing the same thing that I did in my twenties, but I’m not drinking and partying like I did, but I’m 43 and at a show. There’s this weird thing when you’re talking to other men and women that are 43 years old and you’re like “Wow, these people sound really, really old.” Like I met someone on a flight and he was like 39, 38 and he looked like he was 50 years old and what he was interested in and what we were talking about was just so foreign to me, I was like, “I’m so lucky that I love what I do” because if I was selling insurance or doing accounting, I would be so miserable and that would show on my face.

California Calling: Joe Sib from Ethan H. Minsker on Vimeo.

You can check out more info on the show on the California Calling website.