Interview: Senior Discount's Chuck Staton

Senior Discount has been playing the local punk scene since 2004. To celebrate that commonly recognized milestone of eleven years (their steel anniversary according to Wikipedia in case you wanted to get them a gift) Senior Discount will be performing as Blink-182 at The Met on July 31. Joining them for a night of punk covers will be Premier a Yellowcard, Sound Off as Green Day and members of The Pogs, Bad Larry, Pickle Spill: Aisle 6 and Riley as Goldfinger.

We caught up with Senior Discount’s Chuck Staton to talk about what makes eleven years significant and why making each show a spectacle matters.

Providence Monthly: Do you guys do annual anniversary shows? Why an eleventh anniversary?

Chuck Staton: We’ve done a couple. Our first show that we considered the beginning of the band was in 2004 at Lupo’s with Monty’s Fan Club. They became Monty RI, but they were big. They were on Def Jam records, they were from the area, and they were our entrance into the local scene. They were huge for us. They taught us how to promote and we learned everything from them. The next year we did an anniversary show, and I think we did maybe three over the eleven years. It’s not like we never do it, but we don’t always do it.

So this is like your fourth annual eleventh anniversary show?

Exactly. It’s almost like we try to do it, but they way we work as a band is if a national show comes and we want to open it we have to drop everything, but if we look a couple months out and there’s nothing on the horizon we’ll do a show where we’re headlining. We rarely ever do that. So having an anniversary is a good reason to.

Do you prefer to open for bigger acts over headlining?

Yeah. The way I look at it is what you should be doing when you’re not super huge is trying to find new people. We opened for Anti-Flag recently and that’s a great example. It brought out a ton of people, a lot of new people for us, and I’d rather just open for those bands and do shows that are 30-40 minutes and get to new people. I feel like if you’re a regional or independent band and you have a show in the place where you came up it should be a celebration of something. I don’t like the idea of a band being like “We played a show last month, and we’re going to play another show this month,” and it’s just them headlining again. It seems like that should be rare.

Is the idea to keep people from burning out on you?

That’s the thing, it’s hard to battle that when you’re independent and you’re playing in the same area a lot.

So what spurred the idea of you guys playing a show as a different band?

One is that we try to do different things, either when we have a really big show or a headlining set. One of the things we did at Club Hell for a headlining show was we changed into hillbilly outfits and did bluegrass versions of our thrashiest songs and a bluegrass cover or “Paper Planes” by MIA. We want our big shows to be a ones where someone can say, “That was the show where they did this,” as opposed to some old songs, some new songs and a cover. I want it to be an event.

So why Blink-182?

They inspired us to start a band. We grew up with Enema of the State, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, all those huge singles, like "What’s My Age Again." Those all came out when I was in high school and I was the perfect age for that. They sang songs about stuff we cared about. And they were so funny. We thought that was a big part of being in a band and we considered ourselves to be funny guys. We’re a punk band, which is hard because for different people that means something completely different. I love Suicide Machine and Leftover Crack, but I love pop music and I love pop punk like Green Day and Blink-182.

Where does that sense of humor come into play? You have your podcast and you all make short videos...

We started making short films before there was even a band. I was probably in eighth grade when we started making short films with a camera that we found. The first thing we ever filmed were these parody music videos, so it’s always been tied together for me. I loved comedy and storytelling, and as I’ve gone on as much as I love songwriting what I love about it is the storytelling. And that translates to the podcast and the videos. Blink-182, Reel Big Fish, all these bands had stage banter that I thought was so great. I felt like that was a link to my personality; I like to joke around, I like to be self-deprecating and those bands tied that in. The comedy is equally important to me.

So what’s the takeaway for you guys with this anniversary show?

The idea is to get new people out, people who aren’t a part of the scene or don’t know about it because at one point that’s who we were. The way you used to promote was you got out in the streets, talked to people, and now I think with social media it’s just inviting your friends and the people who already like your band. It’s diminishing returns. People get into music and then they get out of it, and that’s okay, but there has to be a turn over. Now we’re all promoting to the same friends you’re not reaching anyone new. We’re trying to figure out how to do that. Obviously it’s a lot easier and more comfortable to sit at your desk and send out Facebook invites than going out and meeting people, but we’re trying to break out. We’re doing interviews, we’re posting flyers, talking to people.

To a lot of people, being punk rock means not putting any work in, and to me it never meant that. Being a musician meant putting work in, and the kind of music you played had nothing to do with your ideals [related to work]. I want to put on better and different shows and reach new people.