Singer Dan Keyes admits to having selfish motivations for taking a second chance with Recover. “If I don’t get that feeling of being on stage, I’m a depressed individual,” he says. Then again, Recover’s all ages brand of hardcore is inherently self-obsessed, with real-life stories of sex, hanging with friends, and the blurring line between the two.
Off the Record: I just saw that Recover played a show in Austin at the end of last year. Are you guys full-time now?
Dan Keyes: It’s a strange thing. Two of us live up here in New York and the other two live down there. At this point, I think we all kind of have adult lives, so it’s not as easy in some ways as when we started touring as kids, 17-18 years old. We toured our asses off for like five years straight, with literally days to weeks between tours. We took a long break, and now we’re getting back into it. We’re all best friends. We’ve been playing together since we were 11 if you can believe that.
After all these years, we’ll still play a show here or there, and it’s always awesome. I put out two albums on Island Def Jam as Young Love. That was really big for a while. If I had to describe it, it would Lower East Side dance music. It was selling out places, but the type of fans that listen to the pop sound move on so quick. For some reason, with Recover, the fan base just stays and loves us. We built something from the ground floors we were sleeping on, where our fans were having their girlfriends and moms actually cook us breakfast, up to where we’re selling out shows. It created something really special. We’re not going to sell 100,000 copies, but we do have this die-hard fan base that’s going to continue to come to our shows and check out the music.
OTR: Have you started writing new material?
DK: When we played that show, me and Robert were down there for ten days to write music for the new album. It’s super awesome. One more session for us in the same room and we’ll have it. That’s the only way that works. Right now I write music for other people and I’m working on a Dan Keyes EP. Bob [Mann] writes stuff. I tell people it’s like if Townes Van Zandt wrote sweeter music. He’s just Texan to the bone. But something different happens when we get into the same room. We look at each other, and know what’s coming next. It’s the hive mind. And it’s the only time I’ve experienced that.
OTR: A lot of the songs on Challenger have been around for a while. My friend said that he IM’d you in like 2004 for a copy, but it really holds up well and would fit right in on MTV.
DK: I completely agree. It’s kind of a re-release. They’re really special songs, and we were really emotionally connected into all of these, but for one reason or another they didn’t make the album, which meant we didn’t really tour behind them. We’re remastering it and repackaging it with a bunch of bonus material and a “March of the Pigs.” It’s a way of connecting the dots from where we’ve been and where we’d like to go. There’s some stuff on there that no one’s ever heard.
OTR: This May Be the Year I Disappear proved a little too prophetic. You guys should’ve been huge. What happened?
DK: It’s kind of a long shitty story. I’ve had success with major labels, and I’ve had some failures. Basically Strummer had signed the Mars Volta, the Rapture, and Le Tigre, three really great bands but whose albums apparently didn’t sell very well. Gary Gersh was the president, the guy that had signed Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and At the Drive-In. Some people think he’s a crook but I love him to death. He basically explained to us that the label was bankrupt. They still put out the album but it didn’t get any real support. By that time we had toured ourselves to death, and we were tired of getting grouped in with bands that we didn’t care about.
We never really stopped completely, and if it’s up to me we’ll always continue. It wasn’t as big as it should’ve been, but you never know. If this music gets passed down and it means something to one kid years from now, then it was worth it. Sometimes, not all the time, it’s not about being big. We’re going to give it another shot with the next album. We’re going to give it as many shots as possible in our lifetime, just letting the music guide us.
This article appears in January 21 • 2011.