My big brother took me to my first punk show almost 20 years ago. It was Fugazi, and hometown legends Trusty opened at Vino’s in Little Rock, Ark.

When I mentioned to him I would be interviewing Fugazi bassist-gone solo Joe Lally, he laughed and asked me how well I remembered my first Fugazi show, because beforehand, he and his jackass friends got me blind drunk in the parking lot. I remembered the show, I told him, and asked how, at such a young age – I was 13 – we could so deliberately fly in the face of Fugazi’s no drugs, no drink ethic.

“I was a 16-year-old wanna-be punk,” he said. “We smoked cigarettes and we got wasted. That’s what we did. Ninety percent of that crowd was probably shitfaced and I’m sure [Fugazi] really didn’t care.”

Since then, I have seen Fugazi play five or six more shows, and every time I’m positive I was under some kind of influence. And each time, especially when I’ve spoken with an always clear-minded and articulate band member after the show, I’ve been saddled with a bad case of user’s guilt.

And when I met Joe Lally for this interview, I felt it again because minutes before I had just polished off a few pints. That was until I saw his Italian guitar player, Andrea Moscianese, walk up holding a golden bottle of Miller High Life.

“Andrea,” Joe chuckled. “We’re not in New Orleans anymore. You can’t walk around the streets of Atlanta with a beer.”

Joe – and the rest of Fugazi for that matter – may have given up being straight edge, but he hasn’t budged on the band’s historically uncompromising and overarching DIY aesthetic.

The day before, Lally played a benefit show at the Whirling Dervish in New Orleans because he couldn’t bear “to take any money out of that town,” he says. “The great thing was that people came, and the bartender explained what was going on and people gave money.”

Now playing his own songs – naturally driven by his dub-heavy bass – Lally has become the unlikeliest member of his old band to become a musical journeyman. He’s released two albums in as many years, and tours relentlessly – no small feat considering he and his family call Rome, Italy home. For both records, Ian Mackaye and Guy Picciotto of Fugazi have contributed:

“When recording, I’m in a position I can ask those guys to play, and if they’re not busy, they will,” he says. “But playing live is something different anyway. I don’t want the music to be the same as the record; I’d like it to take on the personality of the people I have playing with me. I’ve been traveling around and playing with different people, so I just try to make it work in the different places where we go. Sometimes it’s with a drummer in place, sometimes not.”

This interview took place at the Local in Atlanta over beers and ribs (Lally didn’t partake in the ribs, he’s still vegetarian). Accompanied by drummer Ricardo Lagomasino and Moscianese, the band played the Drunken Unicorn with Edie Sedgwick later in the evening.

Dry Ink: So who do you have here with you?

Joe Lally: Ricardo Lagomasino from Philadelphia who plays in a new project called Altamira and also with Capillary Action, which is how we first played together. And this is Andrea Moscianese – who is in front of this plate of ribs – he’s from Rome and lives in the same neighborhood as me. I’ve been trying to like, stick with a person to play with, and one day also a drummer, but so far it’s me and Andrea, and he has other projects he’s just as involved in in Rome. So as much as I want to try and play with the same people and let it progress because I would like to be able to change the songs once people know the songs well enough, so we can make them different instead of “This is how the song goes” and play the notes…. Um, so, it’s kind of changing.

DI: So what’s the recording process like? The dynamic, recording with your old mates, who, presumably wrote the lion’s share of the Fugazi work?

JL: I’m sorry, before I go into that, Andrea has a new band called Mughen. I try not to leave out any information… He plays for Daniele Sivelstri, who is a kind of popular Italian artist and he plays bass for him, but he has his own projects, too.
Ok, so the deal in the studio with Ian and Guy? It’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful thing because they are people I am used to being around and working with, and, I don’t know, for me my music is still kind of structured the way I understood Fugazi working. It’s somehow underlying similarities, so, I’m happy to be able to work with them because we know each other really well and the aesthetic of what can happen in a song; everything moves so easily. Especially with Eddie (Janney) and Guy, two guitar players who’ve played together for so long… You just sort of roll the tape and they start playing really crazy ass shit, and it’s great. During the last recording session with them, I really just wanted to write a whole record of just rhythm tracks that I could just get them to play over it.

DI: What’s your approach to writing now? The songs are very much wrapped around the bass.

JL: I just try to write them. I don’t know… that’s the best I can do.

DI: Do you write exclusively from the bass? Or when you write a song, are you thinking of other parts?

JL: I don’t know how to play guitar happily, I just play it like a bass. It’s not interesting to me, but the sound of the bass is extremely interesting to me, and that’s the feel that underlies what I’m doing. And, I don’t know… sometimes I have a shaker to keep time. I need a drum set. But it’s kind of about being happy with the bass line, and then I’ll sing to that, or a melody will come first, but I’m playing bass to it, so…

DI: Here’s one interesting unrelated, but sort of related item: I’m recording over an interview I did with Brendan (Canty) when he was here doing the Burn to Shine project.

JL: Oh cool, that’s right, you know, I didn’t even know… I read on this tour, I guess it was in Athens, I read a blurb in the paper… no it was that Vice that was in the van. Anyway, I was like, what? But that’s really cool. I think it’s an awesome project.

DI: When did you start your solo project?

JL: Well, it was… .Whether I wanted to or not, I had to. When Fugazi decided not to play, which I totally agreed with, I was like, ‘Holy shit, now what the hell am I going to do?’ Because all I really wanted to do was to be able to return to places where we know people and be playing music around people. I have a daughter and live in Italy, so it’s, you know, too hard to see bands, and I’ve seen a gazillion bands and live shows, so I don’t need to do that that badly as much as I need to write, and that experience is the same to me. Just being around people and live music is a particular thing, you know, so I’m trying to fulfill that. I was hearing music in my head and I was hearing melodies, lyrics, vocal melodies… so it took me a while to figure out how to make it all work, and to really be satisfied with what I was doing because before, with Fugazi deciding not to play, less than a year later I left town, and before I left town I made a quick tape to get down my ideas with Ian, and Ryan Nelson was working across the street, he came over and, like, played drums and I just spit out a bunch of ideas. But, really, those came out the same way on the first record… the same ideas kind of went down.
So really, I figured out what a song was, and what was going to make me happy with a song. Mainly, I just didn’t want a bunch of clutter; I’m kind of tired of trying to navigate through a two guitar band like Fugazi, writing, like really dense – that’s the way it seemed when we were writing. So I’ve been trying to keep it simple. It’s how I heard it my head.

DI: You seem to be touring an awful lot, how is it now, considering your home base is in Italy and your band is, sort of, moveable parts?

JL: Well, it’s fantastic. I’ve played with Ricardo before, I’ve played with Andrea – we did some practicing since December, and we ‘re trying to prepare for going away to Brazil in January; so we did that, we played the Brazilian shows, and that was the first time we played together; so in other words, everyone had their versions of how things went, and.. it’s been great. I should mention that I pick nice people to tour with, so, it’s very easy… it’s been great.

DI: How is the response overseas?

JL: Good. I mean, it’s kind of the same everywhere, it’s people who know Fugazi come out to see the guy from Fugazi, but they don’t really expect that it’s going to be anything like Fugazi – I don’t think they expect it to be. I think they want it to be something different. Literally, just a couple times – and I’ve played quite a bit of shows now – have people asked for [a Fugazi song]. All through England, not one peep, and there are a lot of Fugazi fans there. I didn’t even realize, because when you’re playing in Fugazi and all these people are yelling at you, it doesn’t really come across as love. But when I was there, my god, everyone was so sweet and respectful.

DI: I bet someone will yell “Play some Fugazi!” tonight. In fact, my wife said the first thing I should do when we met was walk up to you playing the air bass singing out the Waiting Room bass line.

JL: Ha ha ha. That would be a first. Actually the last time I mentioned anyone asking for Fugazi, the following show, someone did – and he was actually standing next to the guy I was talking about it to.

DI: Maybe I’ll plant somebody tonight to keep the streak alive and give you guys something to laugh about the rest of the way. Or hell, I’ll do it.

JL: You should.

DI: I’d be too embarrassed. So logistically, it must get hair pulling – travelling from Italy… hooking up with different musicians, etcetera?

JL: It’s expensive to come to the States, it’s a lot of overhead and it’s pretty harsh, and I’m finding it out on this tour. Everybody knew what they were in for, um, I don’t know, I might actually have to find a drummer in America who’s not so busy. I have to keep planning how it’s going to work, bringing these guys from Italy, that’s the problem, I can’t afford to bring them. So planning is key. I just found out there’s a band in Australia who, I think they brought Mike Watt there, Mike Watt played with them, but they sent me files of them playing all my first record, and it sounds exactly like the record. So I’m seriously considering – if I can find a promoter – it’s only one plane flight they have to cover.

DI: That’s pretty interesting if you could really make it operate like that – you just jet about and play and improvise with other musicians. You’d be like a jazz bandleader?

JL: I’m really fortunate when I can, you know, I don’t want to play the music like the record. But that would be one of those instances where it would be fine. But yeah, that’s kind of the idea.
I’m working toward my third record, and I’ve got a bunch of songs I’m trying to get happy with. I’m definitely going to take my time, it’s the classic third album where you’re supposed to do things differently, but.. I don’t know, I just do what I do.

DI: How is living in Italy? It must suck.

JL: It’s crazy because I’m just in my own little world. I have a daughter – It’s a scenery change. It’s wonderful, really. I can’t work there, though.