Congratulations on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the smash hit “Teenage Dirtbag.” How does it feel to have created such an iconic song?
Sometimes I don’t feel like I did, and also that whatever it’s become in terms of what you’ve just said is because of other people; the people who see themselves in the song and continue to keep it alive and make it part of their lives, and come to shows. I talk to my therapist about it sometimes, you know, those terms that get tossed in the context of that kind of thing. We spent a long time not being that band. Most of our career has been spent as a club band, where we do it all ourselves. We get to the gig, set up our gear, drive the van and trailer at night, and know how to fix tires, batteries, and fan belts. But then, of course, somebody comes along and says,
“You’re that legend guy, and I’m like shut up.” It’s interesting and beautiful and scary.
There’s been a huge resurgence of the song (Teenage Dirtbag), and it’s appealed a lot to the younger generation of rock music fans. How do you feel about that?
It blows my mind. It’s part of what we keep learning new (things) about the song, it’s not getting old for us either in that regard. Little kids seeing themselves in it, coming to the show with their parents. It’s all a bit like “Do you have earplugs? Here I do, take some.” (laughing)
It’s a welcome surprise and fun, it’s a change, because we do all requests set lists, i.e.. none. The crowd calls the songs, we ask them to call them, and there’s nothing quite like a ten-year-old kid in the front with their mother screaming “Play Lemonade,” and we’re like “okay”! It’s a bundle of surprises, and we were constantly having to acknowledge that we can’t predict it that way, and amongst each other, we say that all the time. “Man, you never know… maybe that’s gonna happen, maybe Ed Sheeran’s gonna call and he did, and it’s one of those things.”
Are there any particular songs you love to perform or any songs you’re really hoping for the fans to choose?
“Valentine”, “The Fall in Love”, and “Holiday” are a couple of songs from the “Valentine” EP.
“Tipsy is a newer song from 2016; it gets called sometimes, and we like playing that one. It’s sort of a heavy jazz pub sing-along track that was inspired by Liam Payne from before he passed. I had a conversation with him back in 2014 and wrote a song on the heels of it, that song is called “Tipsy” and that’s fun to perform and its always been a heavy song but it’s gotten a bit heavier (since Liam’s passing), its a bit more of a meditation now then it was.
“Lemonade” is fun (to play), like the little kid calling “Lemonade”, that’s always great. That’s the song from our second album, which I thought should have been the first single, but I don’t think the label agreed because it doesn’t sound much like “Teenage Dirtbag.” It sounds like a bit of a different band.
But there’s nothing in the repertoire that bums me out. I’m open to everything.
So with the fan-chosen set list night by night… do you have to rehearse all songs because you don’t know what the crowd will pick?
That’s the downside of doing an all-request set list. You learn eighty songs, you gotta be good with eighty songs, it’s crazy and it’s a work in progress too, we have about forty-five that we can really nail and then maybe another twenty-five that were kinda good enough on, and then there’s like some stragglers that we doubt its gonna get called, but if it does, we should rehearse it.
If the band doesn’t know it, I play it acoustic and off mic, so I just walk to the front of the stage and do it like coffee shop style, which is really terrifying (laughs), but you know I asked for it, didn’t I?
That’s amazing. That’s huge talent and huge memory. Incredible.
Sometimes it’s memory and sometimes it’s ‘forgettery’.
Your tour starts in Ireland and the UK in November. It’s really exciting.
Yeah, the first dates in Dublin. It’s gonna be fun, this is for us a real well, let’s just say we’re bringing something back from back in the day, we’re finalizing that this week and next, there’s gonna be a familiar face who’s gonna be with us on stage doing stuff, it’s very exciting. I think that this version of the band is going to be the nine-piece version of Wheatus, which means we’re gonna crowd these stages right out, it’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be pretty hype. I’m excited.
You’ve played the UK and Ireland before, what are you most looking forward to coming back to?
I have such feelings about shows that we’ve played at “Whelans” in Dublin, I typically break into a little bit of the “Frames” (songs) “Star star”, or “God bless Mom” when we’re in the middle of ‘dirtbag’ somewhere.
“I don’t know, it’s just the smile on your face kinda, things can happen in Dublin, Cork, and Belfast that don’t happen anywhere else.
The beautiful moments… we’re looking forward to that, and it’s cool because there’s a special moment in every place.
When we’re in Wales sometimes, I play a little bit of “A Thousand Trees” by “Stereophonics” you get a bit of a feel of the local joy, whereas you wouldn’t (with a structured setlist) if you just rocked up with your setlist that you prepared, I’m looking forward to those moments again.
That’s amazing that you pay homage to every place you play; that’s really special. I’m from Dublin, so I can relate to what you’re saying, and I love “Whelans”!
Yeah, it’s a special place, man. This is the first tour we’ve done, there where we’re not doing it because the rooms are bigger, there’s a bit more demand. I almost feel like we should be able to sneak away and do a little cheeky “Whelan’s” show. I’ll talk to somebody (laughing), fingers crossed.
Awesome! Is there anything you miss while you’re touring, like food or pets?
We miss our dog “Cami”, she’s a wonderful little beast pain in the ass, a real rescue. She’s a bit of a mess, but she’s very intelligent and very very friendly. She’s a Pitbull mix, someone dumped her on a couch in a garbage dump in Mississippi, and how anybody did that to this dog is beyond me, but she’s our family, and I’m gonna miss her, that’s gonna be a problem.
I’m gonna miss walking to my local spots in the Bronx here for local food. There’s an Irish deli called “Tienreys”, I’m pretty sure everyone who works there is all from Galway. They’ve imported Cadburys from Ireland, the real thing. The American one is made here, and it’s no good; the Irish version happens to have the highest protein count in the world, as it’s more peanuts and less sugar. A fruit and nut, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, right around the corner, is the best you could get! Being in the Bronx and being able to get something like that, I’m gonna miss that, of course, always. There are a lot of things to miss, but then you catch up on other stuff around, a full Irish breakfast is second to none. You can keep ‘the hockey puck’ (I think he means black pudding!) I’m not doing that, but the rest of it I can’t get enough of.
I always feel like Ireland is a healing place, every time I come there I feel that, even if we’re struggling to get up to ‘Castlederg’ on dirt roads with the tour bus, I feel like we’re in the right place.
I can fully relate! What do you feel has changed, and what’s stayed the same for Wheatus over the years?
We’re still DIY, all this crap you see behind me (pointing to huge monitors and recording equipment) is all what we use to make records, we’re in our home, we’re not in some fancy studio by the hour.. that hasn’t changed. We still set up our own gear on stage, and walk around and ask the audience what they wanna hear in the five or minutes minutes before we start playing.
The changes are that occasionally superstars call me to play in front of sixty-thousand people,(laughing) that’s different… that’s new!
We’re still the same independent band that, for the last thirty years of our touring and making records, we’ve only spent two years with a major label. The majority of what we’ve done is the ninety-eight per cent independent knuckle scraping nightmare, but I wouldn’t have it any other way! We do music the way we want to, and nobody comes and says, let’s try this. It’s one hundred per cent mistakes and success. It’s all one hundred per cent from within.
Amazing. What have been the highlights for you so far?
Oh, there are so many. Our record release party was August 2000, almost twenty-five years to the month now, and we were opening for Joey Ramon and Ronnie Spector at “Ceebee Geebees” (a famous venue in New York). Joey died the next year, so I’ll never forget that.
We opened up for James Brown in Belgium, about a year later in 2001, and he’s the godfather of soul, the real guy.
I remember these moments, like we played at a youth centre in Newry (Northern Ireland), for displaced youth people whose parents had been killed in the Troubles, and we have that on video and i watch that sometimes, and that, that was majestic. That was like no other show. It was a small little youth centre and there was a circle pit that looked like a tornado, these kids really cut loose. It was absolutely majestic.
Then about five years after we had played that show, I saw one of the kids “Connor” showed up at the Belfast arena show, when we were opening for “Busted”, with nine-thousand people there and I’ll never forget his face, because I can see him from about thirty yards out, in the crowd, his friends were picking him up… it was him and he had grown up, and I shouted on the mic “Connor’s here!” in front of nine-thousand people, (laughing) from this little youth centre, and the connection was like “omg what is music?” That shit’s burned in.
Those are the moments you couldn’t forget if you were forced to, even if they tried to brainwash you with the CIA pills, you couldn’t forget that stuff.
There’s a rich tale to look back on definitely, always.
That story gave me absolute chills. You must have made such a huge difference to those young people.
Man, I mean….they made a difference in our lives, I’ll never forget that, it’s impossible to forget that.
Beautiful…. and knowing what u know now and having had that experience, what advice would you give to your teenage self?
Tell everybody to fuck off sooner! Do whatever you want earlier. Do not go to college, it’s a waste of time and money. Get all of the gear that you need to make a record, and learn how to use it sooner. Keep working at the fish market and save up all your cash, and spend it on gear, and then make the record ten years earlier and start your career ten years earlier. But I was on a conveyor belt, my parents didn’t do music, well they were musicians but hobby musicians, they weren’t tryna be professional, they didn’t know anything about the professional world of playing music, and I had to figure that out on my own and what I know now if I could go back drop out…
I’ve these dreams sometimes that I’m in High School or I’m in College, and I understand and realize that I’m gonna write these songs and live this life, and I say, you know what, it’s alright, teacher and I leave the classroom, and I know it’s alright, everything is going to be fine, I know what to do, and I don’t have to do any of that stuff, I just have to go and make music, that’s a dream that I would tell people what to do.
You’ve got to work your ass off, to make sure it doesn’t go wrong, you’re risking dying in the gutter every second, but that’s what I would tell myself to do.
That’s great advice also for up-and-coming musicians, so thank you for sharing! What does the future hold for Wheatus?
We’re making a new record in 2026, three of the songs are already out; a song called “Michelle”, a song called “Tipsy” I already mentioned, and another called “Lullaby”. It’s experimental heavy Jazz, Pop standards, very accessible sing-along stuff that’s also quite complicated and tricky, and produced like a metal record, those are the goals, we have to figure out how to make that record and how have to invent that hybrid.
We did it with the first album, where I wanted the verses to sound like Paul Simon and James Taylor, who did it, and the choruses to erupt, turn into this Rush, Metallica, Dinosaur Junior, sound we’re working to make the hybrid.
There’s a movie coming out called “You Might Die”, which is about the worst years of our touring, the more difficult shit. The problem is we don’t know how to end that movie, cos things keep happening to change the ending.
What started out as a band like this might be over next year, is now this band just did a spot with Ed Sheeran, so I don’t know how to reconcile those two. I’m not the one making the film, but the filmmaker texted me saying “Ed, Sheeran, huh? We gotta talk!” (laughing)
Things keep changing; if there’s a story to be told at all, it might have to wait until I’m dead, no time soon, I think.
The seventh studio album is still pending; it’s all written, all the songs are done, one of which, I even dreamt that Prince was singing it to me because it was his new single, so I woke up and wrote it down, so we’ll figure out how that all gets recorded in 2026. We’ve got a lot of work to do; we have to make it happen correctly. It’s a hell of a reboot this whole 25th anniversary. It’s crazy.
Amazing that Prince is coming to you in your dreams and giving you inspiration. What more could you ask for?
Nothing, cant ask for anything better then that. Well I could ask for him to be alive again? That would be something.
That’s true.
In lieu of that, keep invading my dreams, oh purple one!
Brendan wanted to share his gratitude with the fans. He stated;
I want to give gratitude for the continued support to keep doing this weird dream that we have, you know what you’re asking people to support on, its face is rather preposterous. “I’m gonna stand on stage and play my songs and you’re gonna pay me.” The gratitude to be able to do that is intense and intensifying, and I gotta find new ways to express it because we put better stuff out, or freebies, pay it back.
Collabs are also on the horizon, and also for the first time ever, everything that we’ve ever made is on vinyl, so go get it!
Link to everything Wheatus-related we spoke about.