Lagwagon's Joey Cape Ticks Another Achievement Off The List At BIGSOUND

Although he has been out to Australia many times with his various bands and solo projects over the years, dating back to the mid-'90s, Cape has never come out for a public speaking engagement. That is about to change, as he is joining co-founder of punk record label Fat Wreck Chords Erin Kelly-Burkett in speaking at BIGSOUND in early September.

“That’s definitely a first," he says, "but that’s ok. I have to admit though, when I first heard about it I got a little nervous.”

He'll have a lot to talk about, having spent near 30 years in the music industry. He's even considered documenting those secret histories, although there are a number of factors preventing him from following through with an autobiography, the main one being the fact that his memory of much of that period is just a little dim these days.

“I’ll be in a town and I’ll be walking down the street, I’ll see some place like a restaurant or something and I’ll go, 'Yeah, I know this place,’ but I have NO FUCKING IDEA WHY!” he laughs.

“But yeah, there was a point when I was writing stuff down, stories and stuff,” he continues. "I flirted with the idea of doing my memoirs or something like that. I might be a bit pretentious, but I’ve been doing this a long time, and I got some great stuff to tell. I worked on it for a while, and then I decided I didn’t really want to do that. Most of it was that I struggled to remember.”

Indeed, something else preventing him from fully committing to writing his memoirs is the fact that he is far from done. He is still making music and memories, and touring the world - and will be for quite some time to come. “Between that and the memory," he agrees, "which was shit to begin with. I’m just not sure how accurate it would be.

"I’m still making records,” he carries on. “Any time that I do get, I’m writing music, so that might have to be reserved for when I retire.”

That time seems a long way away at this point, as Cape is just as busy creating and playing music right now as he ever has been. “I’m working on a new solo record, I’m right in the middle of recording a new album right now,” he reveals. “I work on it whenever I’m not on tour. And then Lagwagon, we’re in that early stage of wanting to do something together. There’s plans to do a lot of recording, plus there’s heaps of touring too.

“The plan is by next spring or summer to have a couple of new records out, a solo one and a band one, so I’m excited about all that.”

Cape is definitely not flying all the way out here from the States, speaking for an hour at BIGSOUND, and then turning around and heading home. “We’ve got the thing in Brissie, speaking at BIGSOUND,” he says. “And we’re doing an actual show there, and then another couple of shows that I added for good measure. If we’re coming all the way out there, I think it’s right for us to hit another couple of cities. So it’s just Sydney and Melbourne, that’s all there was time for, I have another tour.

“There were two tours, and Australia just kinda nestled in there nicely between them."