Interview with Crispus Attucks and the Love Muskets: ‘The whole album is streamed to the last scene in Fight Club’

New York-based pop punk duo, Crispus Attucks and the Love Muskets brought out their debut album, Attucks For America, earlier this year, giving us 10 hard-hitting tracks with big singalong choruses exploring issues such as the socio-political environment in the US, mental health and the complex relationship between the state and religion.

Made up of two New York natives, Matt Brescia and Will Beckenhaupt, the duo has garnered a reputation for tackling current affairs through an unflinchingly honest lens. Brescia and Beckenhaupt, who between them have German, Italian, Austrian and Slovenian roots, to name but a few, met in the ninth grade around 24 years ago. ‘I had a friend from grade school who changed schools and became Matt’s friend and he told me to look out for Matt Brescia because he loved Nirvana,’ Beckenhaupt said. ‘So I was like “Where is this Matt Brescia kid, I gotta find him!”‘ They grew up on Long Island, although Brescia has moved further away. Beckenhaupt deadpans: ‘If you look at Long Island as a fish, I’m just south of the fish’s arsehole!’

Their name draws on several historical references. Brescia describes the ‘love muskets’ part as ‘The Sex Pistols made funnier with Colonial terms’. Crispus Attucks is famous for being an Africian American man who escaped slavery, and who went on to become the first American colonist killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770.

‘The album is about social things people are going through, defending yourself, re-understanding our own history’

The album name is a reference to the US political TV drama, The West Wing, and the slogan ‘Bartlet for America’: ‘It was a fun thing in my head,’ Brescia laughed. Beckenhaupt nods: ‘Where a lot of the stuff comes from and the wondering over this, we have some different views but we see that there’s something very broken in the American system. It’s that Fight Club quote, “We’re disenfranchised and we’re pissed”. Something needs to change. We want to wake people up and unite change.’ Brescia joins in: ‘We don’t want to write about girls anymore, we’re both long married at this point, it wouldn’t be genuine. The album is about social things people are going through, defending yourself, re-understanding our own history. The first couple of songs deal directly with political issues.’

He’s referring to the tracks ‘The Holy or the Broken’ and ‘Marla, Look at Me, I’m Really Ok’: ‘The Holy or the Broken’ is about issues such as gerrymandering and corporate control, Brescia explained: ‘At the core of the song is finding our own new meaning in this weird new world, it’s a retribalizing, almost.’

As the song goes: ‘The streets are paved with gold, the shining city on a hill, we’re mourning in America. The yellow-brick road, sold brick by brick to bail out Wall Street, just tell ‘em your price.’

Another track, ’72 Hours’, references three hate crimes in the US that happened over a 72 hour period in 2018, during Trump’s presidency: a man killed two African Americans, seemingly at random, at a Kentucky Kroger store, mail bombs were sent to people who had criticised Trump and a man opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 people attending services. Interestingly, they’ve written it from the perspective of the perpetrator, as the lyrics show: ‘News cycles torturing my mind said I am no victim, but the split screen, dumb-it down-punditry, is eating up at me. I’ve got a plan, queue the cognitive dissonance from the synagogues then the state house steps; the grand conspiracy, come patriots, come paralyze the government.’

‘Closer’ initially started out as quite a different track, according to Brescia: ‘I always had the chorus in my head from the beginning. Being an adult, having my own family, rebuilding the world in my head, the rest of the words came from that. I try to follow the mantra of starting the day by making your bed (the song mentions this), so you’ve got a bit of control in the chaos. There’s the idea of outsourcing your conscience, you know, like Pinocchio. It’s introspective. I had the name from the beginning. Do you know the Nine Inch Nails song ‘Closer’?’ I say that I do and I love it. ‘Well,’ he laughed, ‘this song is the opposite of that wanting to feel closer, we’re all yearning for that’.

‘I owe my drumming style to Dave Grohl’

They recorded the album at home, with both of them singing and playing guitar on the tracks, with most of the remaining parts programmed in. However, that will change going forward because Beckenhaupt has bought himself an electronic drum kit, which I can see just behind him. ‘It’s got 50 kits built in,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I’m still tweaking the sound but I love big drums. I’ve got two 24 inch bass drums. You hit them and it’s like someone slamming you in the back with a paddle. So (he gets up and comes back), these are normal drumsticks (he shows me) and these are what I use (he shows me what look like enormous rolling pins), I use marching band sticks, they’re like baseball bats. I owe my drumming style to Dave Grohl. He used to use 2B sticks but he’ll hit the drums with the heavier end of the stick!’

Next up, they will work on three acoustic versions of tracks from the album, ‘The Holy or the Broken’, ’72 Hours’ and ‘By the Better Angels’. Going forward, they say that they will likely release songs, including singles from their album, in three song batches. ‘We have stuff that’s almost done, it just needs to be fine tuned,’ Beckenhaupt said. ‘It’s about mental health and the PTSD of soldiers, this means a lot to me because I was in the military for five years. It’s meant to be therapeutic for me but I hope it helps somebody. We have another two albums of songs we could record.’

They also have quire different inspirations: ‘For the most part, we have different backgrounds where we draw inspiration from, I have more heavy metal/thrash roots and he likes pop punk, we were in an emo band together once.’

Beckenhaupt is a fan of The Year of the Locust hard rock band in Northport, New York and Silence & Light, a band formed in New York in 2017 by US Special Operations veterans who set out to create music that would raise awareness about the plethora of issues facing veterans, including mental health problems. Band members include former Nirvana and Soundgarden guitarist, Jason Everman. Beckenhaupt also plays in another band, Inherit the Earth.

‘They changed my paradigm regarding what songwriting should be’

Growing up, they both listened to Long Island bands such as Taking Back Sunday and Brand New. ‘My influences are from all over,’ Brescia said. ‘I’m really into Conor Oberst for the songwriting, I’ve been really into Frank Turner, the whole grunge era, so Pearl Jam, Radiohead, they changed my paradigm regarding what songwriting should be. I like Weezer and his songwriting, the catchiness and poppiness.’ Beckenhaupt is laughing, so I ask him if he’s not a Weezer fan. ‘We like a lot of the same bands, like Weezer and Sunny Day Real Estate. My main influences were Children of Bodom (a Finnish melodic death metal band), I was devastated when Alexi (their frontman) died. My first concert was Pantera.’

If they could tour with anyone, Brescia chooses Green Day: ‘They came to my college campus once and there was a chance for someone to play with them, so I waited in line but I didn’t get picked. That was the closest I’ve got to sharing the stage with Green Day!’ Beckenhaupt is quick to say Foo Fighters: ‘I love Dave Grohl, he was such an inspiration to me.’ I tell him that Dave Grohl is right at the top of my dream interview list. ‘Ohhhh, I would pay to see and watch you interview him! When he writes, Dave says he learned a lot from Kurt Cobain. His songs have the rainbow of emotions.’ We chat for a while about how brilliant their latest album, Medicine At Midnight, is. ‘I love it, the way all of those songs sound. I’m trying not to let it monopolise my time or the next 4-5 songs I write will sound like them,’ Beckenhaupt said.

If he could hear their music featured anywhere, Brescia picks the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton movie, Fight Club: ”The Holy or the Broken’ or ‘By the Better Angels’, it would be awesome to hear those in a Fight Club movie or a show where everybody’s about to be fucked up! Actually, the whole album is streamed to the last scene in Fight Club. Our ‘Marla, Look at Me, I’m Really Ok’ comes from that last scene in the movie where Ed Norton has shot himself and Marla (played by Helena Bonham Carter) asks him if he’s ok and this is what he says. So when the buildings are blowing up, they could play us instead of The Pixies’ song!’

(Photo from left to right: Matt and Will)