Talking about lyrics is usually a bad idea, but I don’t think I can avoid it in your case. What’s your writing process like for these songs?
Usually Tad will come in with a riff. I write lyrics all the time, a couple pages a day—a free-association kind of thing. I do a lot of rewriting where I’ll just keep recopying the song and I’ll come up with things that way. I’ll write the first verse, then turn the page and write the first verse again and then I’ll keep going and maybe get the second verse.

That rewriting process is probably what makes the lyrics so dense.
That’s exactly it. I’m always thinking of what I can fit in. And a lot of that density is due to the fact that we don’t have traditional choruses, so it feels like everything is wrapping around, and it keeps coming and doesn’t come up for air.

The new record seems inspired by growing up in Minneapolis.
The first record was really off the cuff. We did it in six days. This record took almost a month and was very deliberate. It has a lot of themes of being in a suburban place and also being Catholic, two things that were very much a part of me growing up.

I read an interview where you were discussing your lyrics, and you said something about how people probably don’t really think Chuck Palahniuk goes around choking in restaurants. I think this album might prompt the question of whether you’ve gone to AA or NA.
I was thinking about how these are desperate characters whose lives change quickly, and because of that they make an interesting story that moves along. One of the things I think the record is about being stuck out in the suburbs, pre-Internet. When I started to go to hardcore shows, I would ride my bike to the bus, and then take the bus downtown. That was me taking action. Before the Internet and cell phones, I felt like the urban myth—the things that got passed along in an oral tradition—was stronger. “Stevie Nix” is sort of about that. You heard about how Rod Stewart got his stomach pumped because he blew all the dudes in his band. Everyone heard that, nobody knew who started it, and these were the facts that were available. When I started going to shows, I’d walk down the street and I’d see a poster that said the Descendents are coming. May 29th. It appeared out of nowhere. They weren’t on MTV, and magazines didn’t feature this kind of music. So it kind of appeared mystically or magically.

I wanted to ask you about some of the specific places and names mentioned on the record. One of them is Lowertown.
There is a Lowertown in St. Paul, but I’m not sure where it is. A cool place to go and hang out in Minneapolis as a teenager was Uptown. That’s where you would go to smoke cigarettes or be punk or whatever. So Lowertown I kind of imagine as being the opposite of that.

What about Penetration Park?
I was thinking of Loring Park in Minneapolis, which is a cruising place where you’d go to have anonymous sex. You don’t walk through there at night.

Philadelphia has Judy Garland Park, which is where you go cruising for gay sex.
[Laughs]. Well, Loring Park is not as well-named as that. Judy Garland is from Minnesota—or Frances Gumm, her real name.

There’s a drug dealer named Charlemagne.
That’s just sort of a pimp name, you know? Like someone who would wear a purple suit, a second-generation drug dealer.

I have some knowledge of abusing over-the-counter drugs, but I’ve never heard of taking Feminax.
Do you know what it is?

Is it for menstrual cramps?
Yeah, and it’s only sold in Europe. I don’t know how people got into it, but they started bringing back boxes of it. It has codeine in it, so you do get a buzz off of it. It’s a real-life thing.

Since we’re doing a Minneapolis-themed issue, I heard you had a story that involves the Replacements, Smog and some coincidence during your teenage years.
On the inside of The Shit Hits The Fans cassette, it said, “Write to Bill Callahan. Believe it or not, there’s a fanzine about us.” I couldn’t believe someone would have a fanzine just about the Replacements. So I wrote Bill Callahan a letter and sent him some stamps. The ‘zine was called Willpower, and he did six issues. They were really funny—they’d have cartoons about the Replacements he drew, and it was extremely comedic. We’d write back and forth—it wasn’t like a super-detailed pen-pal thing, but we were friendly—and eventually he started doing another ’zine and I went to college. I don’t remember how I put two and two together, but years later I discovered he was the guy in Smog.