It’s funny that you mention that because Dave Grohl has a quote that says something along the lines of how some people think that to make it in music, you have to go onto a show like American Idol, America’s Got Talent, The Voice, rather than getting in a garage with your buddies and sucking. Then you get better and better until you become a really good band.
I’ve known these guys since I was 10 or 11, and I get giddy with excitement when we get to go hang out and play music. So the goal for us is to make the best thing that we can make for ourselves. I know if we can do that, it’s good enough to hold up and there will be a crowd that’s into it. I don’t think that we have big hopes of hitting the charts on iTunes. The goal is to make a record every couple of years and keep going, be the old guys that have been playing in a band since we were kids. We also know in our heads what our second and third albums are going to be.

You have it all planned out?
Yeah we’ve got The Country Opera, that will be number two. Then Southern Rock will be number three.

So what about the new EP? What’s that all about?
We got to work with our friend who is a music engineer to produce the record. Oddly enough, it’s a guy that I know from when I used to work a Wendy’s in high school. He went off to learn how to be an engineer and his most recent project is the new Modest Mouse album. He’s a respected, legitimate music guy. He taught us how to make a record that sounds like we sound when we play live, but that’s hard to capture and recreate. It’s like filming for a snowboard or skateboard part. You can do it a million times, then the camera comes on and you have to nail it.

The EP is called The Day I Lost My Life, which is the title of one of the songs on there. There are three songs from our full length record, which will be our first, and we’re putting the big record out at the end of summer. It also has a b-side exclusive that you will only be able to get on the vinyl version. We’re selling 300 of them, which will begin at live shows in Seattle, Portland and Austin in March, then whatever is left we’ll put online to sell from there. The goal there is to meet some new friends that we don’t know and to introduce ourselves. Then the full record is 12 songs, a 12-inch vinyl that will come out at the end of August. If we, as a band, crash and burn tomorrow, but that record makes it out, it will be the best thing that we could have done at this moment in our lives. We all feel pretty firmly about that.

Do you write all of the lyrics for the band?
There are four dudes that all grew up together that we consider the core of the Billies, then what we call the Hired Guns are the people that jam with us or the people on the record. Of the core four, three of us split the writing duties almost down the middle. Our drummer Glenn hasn’t written a song yet but he says that he’s going to write the greatest Lonesome Billies song of all time. We’re just waiting for it. Jeff, Mikey and I all split duties. Jeff wrote the title track, “The Day I Lost My Life,” which is about a guy who runs off to Mexico with his neighbor’s wife and you’re not totally sure if it’s because he was cheating with that woman or if he’s saving that woman from her husband. Jeff also writes the epic story songs about going to Mexico with a horse and a gun. I write all the sad songs about death and darkness, and Mikey writes all of the drinking songs.

Where does the songwriting influence come from?
The Lonesome Billies are characters. We’re not so blatant that it’s a Gwar level of performance, but you can kind of tell once we go on stage. There are bits of every song from our day-to-day lives, but by having these characters that live in a semi-fictional world we can embellish and have some more spectacular stories to tell. The Billies are from this shitty town at the end of the road, it’s kind of like the Australia of the Wild West [laughs]. It’s an old, beat up Western town that could be from the 1970s, or maybe it’s from the 1870s. Sometimes the songs are gunfighter ballads and sometimes the songs are driving a pickup truck down a dirt road with a longneck. So it’s fleshing out that universe. In Useless Bay, the first EP that we did, the title track is about the town; it tells the story of where the Billies came from. We didn’t specifically set out to tell one overarching story with the record, but just tell varied stories from their world. Eventually we want to do a concept album that has a beginning, middle and an end. Something that really is a total narrative from beginning to finish.

I think the idea of the album is a really cool thing that hopefully never goes away.
Yeah, some people say it’s a dying art. Almost like snowboarding or skate movies. But I’m not sure. Vinyl is back and people are buying albums, in some ways I hope it has its own little thing going on.

It’s like the underground is keeping it alive.
Yeah, you also see things on the internet about the makers, the maker community, and people are definitely making zines, printing, and trying to have tangible things that they can put in their hands.

Where do you see The Lonesome Billies going?
I don’t know, to be totally honest. A lot of guys want to go on tour and go for it. You hear about bands going for it, they’re going to try to make it. But I don’t even know exactly what that means. It’s not that it’s unrealistic but it’s really hard to make a living doing that. I have a good job working in snowboarding that I don’t want to lose or leave behind. The goal is to make the best music that we can make that gets us excited and that we are super proud of. I think that we have good musical tastes and if we keep holding ourselves accountable and being critical. When I hear some music, in a song or half a song I can know if I’m going to like that band. So we have to make stuff that holds up for us. Maybe in our lifetime nobody will ever care about it, but if we put it on vinyl it should last for a really long time and we have made our contribution.

Among skateboarders, snowboarders, photographers, or musicians there’s this itch to be creating stuff. The ones that we all seem to like and admire the most are the ones that weren’t trying to be a pro; being professional happened because they were having fun and good at it. So that’s the approach: Have fun, make something that we are excited about and put it out there. Who knows what’s going to happen.

See also: Soundboard: METRIC