JANELLE: Personally, what are some bands whose lyrics have had a great impact on you?
SCOTT: There’s only a couple bands I truly like. I think everyone’s kinda rehashing fuckin’ old shit and everything’s very microwaved, but there’s a few bands that I really tap into: Kurt Cobain’s lyrics, I really tap into Aimee Allen’s lyrics, I really tap into Grinspoon, and I really, really, really enjoy – the only new band I like – is Muse. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the new Nirvana. They’re the only original good thing I’ve heard in a long time. I’m really stoked someone’s doing something fuckin’ beneficial for music.
JANELLE: Who was the second person you mentioned?
SCOTT: Aimee Allen. She’s also my girlfriend. I actually met her through music; she opened up for me on tour and I heard her record and I was blown away by her lyrical content. We ended up getting together (she’s a solo artist) actually on top of it and we just finished our record we made together. The name of the band is Scott and Aimee, and the name of the record is called ‘Sitting in a Tree’. And we just made a record and it’s being mixed right now and it comes out in about March. She was definitely an inspiration lyrically, and she helped me write half the lyrics on the record.
JANELLE: So, that record, what are you guys doing? What style?
SCOTT: It’s a rock record and it’s a duet. Josh Freese played the drum tracks on the record and Justin from Beck played the bass, I played guitar, and we both sing a duet. We basically talk about really controversial things, and it’s a rock record, but done in real kind of pop-writing essence, like verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus chorus. So it’s a duet rock record that I’d have to say is pretty controversial. We talk about some pretty fucked-up shit.
JANELLE: What label is that coming out on?
SCOTT: That is going to be put out on our own record label called Train Records.
JANELLE: One thing I noticed you said in the press release was that [‘Here’s to the Mourning’] is an “evolutionary step” for you guys. Why do you say that?
SCOTT: I just think every record we create is another evolutionary step in our writing process. I just think that not one record sounds like the record previous to it. And the way that comes out is, you know, we started writing songs 10, 15 years ago when all we were influenced by was Bad Religion and then Green Day came in shortly after. …We didn’t have our own identity and we started writing songs mocking our favorite bands. Around the black record we started getting our own sound, and ‘Elva’ we kinda really fleshed and then this record, I think this record truly represents what Unwritten Law is. I think the records previous to ‘Elva’ were demos and the black record was the first good demo, ‘Elva’ was the first record, and this is our sophomore record, is the way I see it.
JANELLE: You mentioned the black record, so I saw an interview when that came out and you said you “wanted to attack every angle of rock that we could and make a solid record from beginning to end.” So, I guess that’s what you’ve been doing for every record now.
SCOTT: I guess in the back of our minds. And at that time, yeah, we were taking elements from – well, not different elements, we’d actually take our influences and apply ‘em to a song individually, so the record wasn’t that cohesive and we kind of more or less honed our skills at songwriting, so we could take our influences without replicating them and apply the things we liked to the song so you’d hear a bit of influence on each song. Like you might hear the poppy bit in the choruses, but you hear the fuckin’ verse riffs in a distorted or Bad Brains riff orientation and you hear the bridges in Deftones half-times and stuff like that. And so we just honed our skills. And like I said before, getting into like as far as songwriting goes, we’ve been writing songs for 15 years – this is the sixth record now – and as becoming fans of newer artists, we all obviously have newer influences, so we apply those to our own songwriting skills as we’re growing as songwriters and then you have what Unwritten Law is.
JANELLE: You guys have had success on radio and stuff, and now you’re doing well with [the new single] “Save Me”, is that important to you guys? Having the success?
SCOTT: Of course it’s important. It makes someone as insecure as me feel validated. I’m truly making music for myself; I’m not lying about that, but I would be lying if [I said] success didn’t make us happy or if it doesn’t make anyone happy for that matter, whether you win the fuckin’ Olympic medal for jacking off. If you’re the best fuckin’ beater-offer on the planet, then you know, you’re probably pretty proud of it. [Laughs] So any kind of success is validated through other people enjoying it or recognizing it obviously would make anyone feel good.
JANELLE: Also about “Save Me”, you collaborated with Linda Perry. What got that going?
SCOTT: What happened was me and my girlfriend had written that song acoustically and as far as Unwritten Law, we played it and then we had a chorus already written into it and the record label said they didn’t like the chorus, so we started writing choruses and we wrote about eight other choruses to it. And truly I thought there were a couple of them that were really great, but they ended up putting us with Linda Perry because I really wanted to meet her first and foremost. She’s truly one of the original female punkers whether she’s recognized as that or not. She’s a great songwriter and a really fuckin’ cool chick. They offered to get us with The Matrix and some other people and we were like, “No, no, no, no.” And they’re like, “Linda Perry? You wanna write with her?” We’re like, “Yeah, she’s cool.” And we went in a room with her and it was just all three of us. It wasn’t a collaboration on the song; we’d already written the song. We came in and she just helped us change a couple chords in the chorus and then just finished the melody with us. So it was more a collaboration with me and my girlfriend and Linda came in and polished up the chorus.
JANELLE: And also you had [No Doubt’s] Adrian [Young] and [Pulley’s] Tony [Palermo] play drums on the album. So, what did each bring to the band?
SCOTT: Fuckin’ drum kits and drumsticks! [Laughs]
JANELLE: [Acting shocked] Yeah?!
SCOTT: You know what they brought? They brought really good energy. They brought truly really good energy to the recording process, which made it a lot easier, especially in the transition of losing a longtime band member and friend [Wade Youman]. So it was really good to have someone fresh with good energy and really positive in there. And obviously they’re both up to par on their chops. They can both play drums really well. On top of their drumming skills, they brought really good energy to the record, which I’m really most proud of and I think might go under-looked to someone who’s not quite in tune with music the same way I am.
JANELLE: One more question about the record. Why is “Machine” relegated to a secret track? That’s the most hardcore song.
SCOTT: The reason is that we wanted to put all the songs on all the releases in the world, and when you release your record in other territories, like Australia or Europe, in order to release them, you have to have bonus tracks for them – something you can’t get in the States. That’s the reason why they jack up the prices to like fuckin’ 30 or 40 bucks or whatever. So they put a secret track on it. We didn’t wanna rip off the American kids and give the rest of the kids in the world an extra song, so on the American release, we put 11 tracks on there, but then we still put the song on after the eleventh track so the American kids wouldn’t get gypped out of one more song the rest of the world would be getting. And on the U.S. release, the record will have 12 tracks and “Machine” will be listed as track 12. But the same amount of music is on all copies all over the world…
JANELLE: Okay. You guys have been on a couple different labels. Were the transitions always smooth? I know there was something with Epic…
SCOTT: Yeah, we got dropped by Epic and we’d already recorded a record, they’d already paid for it, so we brought it to Interscope and showed it to Tom Wally and he didn’t know what band it was. He just heard the record and said, “Fuck, I need to have this.” So he signed it and then he [found out] this is Unwritten Law, they just got dropped by Epic, so they put out the record. Then we made ‘Elva’, they put that out. I think they had pretty good success with that: “Seein’ Red” was number one and “Up All Night” was number 16 and “Rest of My Life” was number 14 or “Up All Night” was 14 and “Rest of My Life” was 16. It was a success, and then they dropped the record. In the time we said we’d let them release us if they gave us the recordings to the ‘Music in High Places’ record, which we’d already recorded while we were under Interscope or else there’d be some kind of breach of contract and so they gave us that record free. And Jason Flom from Lava really wanted that record, wanted that song “Rest of My Life”, so he picked up the band for that and now we’re on Lava. So after that was released by Lava, they put us in the studio for our next studio record and then here we are.
JANELLE: Also, your press release said you won’t be playing CBGB’s anytime soon because of a smoking incident. Was that just this past November?
SCOTT: Yeah, yeah, it was November. I doubt they’ll have us back there. Yeah, we played a show, and I don’t know, I smoke and I drink. How cliché…! And I was smoking a cigarette in between a song and they fuckin’ turn off my monitors. You know, are you kidding me? This is CBGB’s, the original punk-rock venue, and I’m getting shut down for smoking a fuckin’ Marlboro?! [Yes, NYC has tough smoking laws, and yes, CBGB’s enforces them.]
JANELLE: Yup…
SCOTT: I couldn’t even believe it, so I was a bit like laughing and mocking them. And then a couple songs went by and I smoked a bit of another cigarette and then they turn off all the lights on us. [Laughs] I was like, “Fuck you, then I’m gonna smoke and we’ll play in the dark.” And, yeah, that was the end of CBGB’s and Unwritten Law. At least we can say we did it once.