After Jeff Rosenstock was announced to play at Pitchfork last summer, a lot of folks seemed to be looking forward to a train-wreck collision between a scruffy DIY punk who’d spent most of his career giving away his music for free and a big-budget festival crowded with corporate sponsors.
Rosenstock also recently signed to Polyvinyl Records, after a couple releases on SideOneDummy—another big change for an artist who insisted for years on giving away his own music and keeping anything remotely corporate at arm’s length. When he’s made choices that could compromise his hard-earned DIY integrity, though, he’s made them carefully. His newest album, January’s Post-, is a pay-what-you-want download on Bandcamp, and 10 percent of the proceeds from its digital sales benefit the rebuilding efforts of Defend Puerto Rico. Rosenstock is also sticking with an approach he believes contributed to his grassroots success: making his shows affordable and all-ages. Advance tickets to his show at Logan Square Auditorium on Thursday, April 26, are sold out, but they only cost $15—and that’s on the high side for him.
POST- by Jeff Rosenstock Do you see that as a special set in your long career? It seemed to have some unique moments—the pay disclosure, the Trump piñata, the smaller festival crowd responding so well to the tunes. Well, the Trump thing actually came from our guitarist, Mike [Hugeneor]. He just thought it would be really funny for the festival. In terms of the crowd, it may have been small for a festival, but that was a huge crowd for us! That may have been the biggest crowd we ever played to, and I didn’t even think anyone would be there. It really felt nice being up there, but I think we all just tried to do what we always do.
Jeff Rosenstock at Madison Square Garden. Tickets starting at $120. I can see it. Well, I will say this. I saw Phish at Madison Square Garden, and they did a system where all the tickets cost the same and entered you into a lottery. The lottery determined where you sat in the venue in terms of floor seats or nosebleeds. I thought that was a pretty cool system, and everyone seemed very happy about it. So maybe one day! But probably not. We’ll see if Madison Square Garden will do $15 tickets.
I think the political climate has definitely contributed toward many people feeling that way. People seem to be looking for that thing that gets them out of bed even more now.
You’re also writing songs for Craig of the Creek, a new show that debuted on Cartoon Network last month. Did you approach writing music for a cartoon differently than the writing process you’ve already described? What’s different about this is that I have a deadline. With a record, we’re waiting for inspiration or deciding if we even want to record in a given year. For Craig of the Creek, I’ve got to finish an episode that has a date for TV! It’s been really fun, but it is a completely different process. However, it doesn’t feel super unfamiliar to me, in the sense that it still involves me sitting around and trying to come up with something that feels good. The writers of the show really want me to capture emotion, but I already get emotional with cartoons anyway, so that’s not a problem. The Simpsons or Bob’s Burgers or Adventure Time can get to me.
