A little over a year ago I branched out of Hip Hop for the first time as a photographer and writer sitting down with the lovely and talented Julieta Venegas. I asked her one simple question that I feel needs to be revisited. “What's so hip-hop about folk music?” except this time folk music wasn't the focus, it was ska and who better to ask than the legendary Ska-punk band Reel Big Fish, playing later that day at the iconic Warped Tour.

Johnny Christmas: That is a really great shirt. [I was wearing a mashup Star Wars/Starry Night]

UHH: Thank you, actually just $10 at Kohl's, never ceases to amaze me what you can find there. By the way, my name is Isaac and I'm here with Upcoming Hip Hop. Can you guys introduce yourselves?

JC: My name is Johnny Christmas and I play trumpet in the band Reel Big Fish.

Billy Kottage: My name is Billy Kottage and I play trombone in Reel Big Fish.

UHH: And for our fans, this is a little bit of a veer off the path as we cover mostly hip hop.

BK: I was wondering about that with a name like Upcoming Hip Hop.

UHH: Right, and it's interesting for me because I like to branch out into everything from Mexican Folk to Death Metal and when I've been able to ask artists from these genres I always ask “What's so hip-hop about...?” so, what's so hip-hop about Reel Big Fish?

JC: I think part of our ethos that I really enjoy is getting yourself to not take yourself so seriously. I think that people that take themselves seriously really fuck the world up and if you can point the finger at yourself and say 'this life is really just silly.' You have to go through a lot in life and when you can laugh at yourself and see the folly in life you will have a much better time. It's that counter-culture mentality of giving the middle finger to everyone and saying fuck it.

BK: I was gonna say, we probably stick our middle fingers out as much if not more than most hip-hop groups.

It is hard sometimes to display the attitude of an interview or artist through print, but the members of Reel Big Fish brought a certain silliness into the interview that is commonplace to them. All that aside, they brought up a point that I've often thought about, and that's the counterculture–fuck the world mentality.  Hip-hop wasn't the only counterculture that had ties to Punk and seeing as the X Games were just in town, I thought I would take a chance to talk about the influence from there as well.

UHH: Another interesting counterculture that I am familiar with as it just rolled through town is action sports, more specifically skateboarding. Do you guys follow that at all?

BK: It was definitely on in the back of the tour bus.

JC: That ramp is crazy, my gosh is that ramp crazy.

UHH: I remember last time covering and seeing that in person. I couldn't imagine taking the elevator up much less coming down it.

JC: Oh god no. We were all watching Travis Pastrana jump over Caeser's Fountain on his Indian [motorcycle] that felt like a lead balloon.

UHH: He beat Evil Kenevil's record, right?

JC: Right but that's no big feat [nowadays] because Travis has guys that know physics and know how much his motorcycle weighs and how much he weighs and how fast he needs to go to clear the gap whereas Evil just pinned it and prayed to not die. Not to take anything away from Travis Pastrana, I am just glad that people are smart enough now.

BK: He just tried to defend himself in case Travis Pastrana thinks he's talking shit about him.

I always draw comparisons in my life and in my music. As someone, he transitioned from metal to hip-hop with help from tech n9ne it made sense to me that he made a metal album because he has a lot of elements of metal to his music. There was another element to this band, in particular, that was similar to the path hip-hop artists are taking nowadays.

UHH: Let's get into your music and one thing that stood out to me is how you guys started on a major label but then moved independent. It is something I see a lot in hip-hop nowadays that was a pathway paved by artists like ICP, Tech n9ne, and Atmosphere in the hip-hop game. What were your guys takeaways from being on a major and what drove you to go back to independent?

JC: So being on a major label is expensive. You don't make money on a major label unless you are selling millions and millions of records. They find creative ways to make you spend your advance. They say 'here you want to record a record, we are going to give you $250,000. Giving that to kids that are 20 is a bad idea because you don't know what to do with it so you spend that money on living expenses and production and that money evaporates and then they recoup that money. It was a loan, an advance that they are going to collect on. So what they do is find creative accounting ways to say you never paid back all the money. They end up not giving royalties to artists that have made many many times what they gave them.

BK: There are not a lot of good major label record deals. I don't know too much about the one that Reel Big Fish signed, but that's why Reel Big Fish had to put out so many Greatest Hits records. I think that's one of the reasons Aaron doesn't want to work with major labels anymore because he was young and not necessarily taken advantage of but just didn't know what he was doing at the time. You don't think 'in twenty years I'm gonna wish I had the rights to this stuff', you just see numbers.

This isn't new and it isn't genre specific. Major labels have had damaging effects in the name of greed for years. NWA was driven apart by it, Hed PE won't play any tracks from their label days to spite them (or maybe they just flat out can't) and you are seeing a shift, at least in hip-hop, to independent labels. Kendrick Lamar on TDE, Chance the Rapper with Instruments and of course legends like Atmosphere and their label Rhymesayers. While being independent is similar, you often see a fuck the majors mentality, which appeared prevalent in Johnny's recap of label life, in hip-hop too from songs like Tech n9ne's “Industry is Punks” to Lil Uzi Vert's very outspoken interviews about his own major that he is still a part of. This new era of music is available through Spotify and youtube and elsewhere has put more power into the artist's hands, but because of the money that these streaming companies and others will still take out in order to promote and sell your music and brand, the major way of making money in the music industry continues to be to tour. Tech n9ne spends half the year playing shows and the other half planning them, something the Reel Big Fish was not only familiar with but accustom to.

UHH: You get guys like Tech n9ne who came off a 66-day tour and then jumped a flight to Australia only to come back and start a fall tour. And honestly, I don't know how you guys do it.

JC: If you can keep perspective I think it helps. Billy and I went to music school so it was at least partially our dreams to make a living playing our instruments from the get-go. And one, we get to play our instruments for a living. We get to play in a great band that plays music that makes people happy. You can play in the Boston Orchestra and you aren't going to make people happy like you do at a Reel Big Fish show. It's a whole different ball game. There is no crowd surfing at a Boston Symphony, not even the Boston Pops. You just remember how lucky you are to do this. You may see the bus and think 'Oh! They're Rich.' Most of the money we make goes towards the bus so that we can keep touring. It's a labor of love and I'm privileged to do it.

'We get to play in a great band that plays music that makes people happy.' I often find certain phrases sticking with me throughout and interview and after, but this is one that I have felt before. This sentence is why I go to shows, why I take photos, why I have a song playing throughout 90% of my day. When I hear music that truly makes me happy, my first thought is to share it with others and spread that raw emotion. When I take a photo I want it to make others feel the feeling I get standing ten feet from the artists I love. With this being the end of Warped Tour it was time for everyone to move on to their next place in life, and I was looking forward to seeing what the guys in Reel Big Fish had in store for the near future.

UHH: What do you guys have coming up after Warped Tour finishes?

JC: Billy would love to tell you what we can't talk about.

BK: We have a new record that is coming out. In the Fall... maybe. I'm not supposed to talk about it.

JC: It was supposed to come out before this tour.

BK: I don't really know. I don't have any details, but it's done.

JC: It may be called “Life Sucks, Let's Dance.”

BK: If we all die in a plane crash it will still be in existence.

JC: Maybe it would blow up if we all died.

BK: No way its in the cloud.

JC: No I mean the record would be a huge success.

BK: Yeah like that rapper that just died. He was shot. That dude broke like every record in the universe the day after he died.

UHH: Yeah, XXXtentacion. I couldn't believe it. I was a fan of his music and then saw his views go from like 60 million to 400 million. [JC: Woaaaaah]

BK: I think he set a Spotify record for like 1.6 Billion Streams in a day [JC: Woooaaaah], and sad that he was just shot in his car.

JC: Just by some random person?

UHH: There are some rumors and theories but yeah, they went to steal a handbag he had. Gucci handbag worth a ton of money and these guys ran up on him. And he had a bit of a rough past and a brutal upbringing. [BK: He had beat a lady] And the really fucked up thing is that people are taking a video of this 19-year-old kid dying and it may not have saved him but..

BK: No one checked to see if he was alive. Dude gets shot and everyone standing there like this [mimicked taking a video.] All just fucking videotaping.

JC: That's why I stay away from the internet.

UHH: Yeah I still haven't seen the video, I couldn't handle that.

[silent pause for a few seconds]

JC: Well that wraps up this interview! [laugh] Go to the googles and type in Reel Big Fish. You can find our website, facebook, twitter thang. You can find our [BK: Christian Mingle] Snapchat, YouPorn [BK: Farmer's Only, Brazzers], Tinder.... Instagram. That's the one. We will be on tour in the fall and then doing a Further Fall Tour with Less Than Jake in the UK.

Never in my life did I imagine I would be backstage at Warped Tour talking to Johnny Christmas about Xxxtentacion. The beauty in life is that we are never ready for the things we remember most. Hip-hop is the music of life and the stories we live, usually in a very direct form. Ska/Punk/Metal tend to tell the stories of life through metaphor and made up stories, but music, in general, is so powerful because of its relatability and whether it's direct or indirect, the stories we hear build the lives we lead and vice versa. Sitting down with two members of such an iconic band made me remember once again why I love to do what I do. 'We get to play in a great band that plays music that makes people happy' and I get to cover these bands that have done just that throughout my lifetime.