And then the world shut down just as you were getting going on the entire thing.
“Yes. Because of all the things I was going through in my personal life, I had started writing a fucking shit-ton of music that I was initially going to use for The Casuals. There were some certain songs, though, that weren’t going to fit in with any of the bands that I play with… and I thought they would maybe translate better with this Billy Bragg [style] thing. I called [studio owner] Michael Rosen up at some point during the pandemic and said, ‘Look, is your studio still up and running?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ll have it running for you.’ We had to mask up and keep our distance, which was fine, and I went in there and recorded six songs – those were the ones that I thought were full-on complete and that I thought would translate in this way. Also, I love EPs. It suits my attention span. You get in and you get out.”
How different is Lars Frederiksen the 50-year-old professional musician from the wayward teenager you were when growing up in Campbell, California?
“Hmm. That’s a good fucking question. As we get older, things that we used to put importance on become unimportant. There are stories that I attached myself to as a kid, and these stories – whether they were true, or elaborated, or false – I attached myself to them as a way to survive. But the funny thing was is that I am always a spiritual person – I don’t mean religious, which is a completely different thing. I’m talking about spirituality, about the oceans and the trees. Perhaps it’s the Viking in me. It’s always been there. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve been presented with the same exact fucking situations over and over again. I was presented with the situation where I was getting divorced from my first wife and my brother died. Then, years later, I’m getting divorced from my second wife and my mother dies. And it’s the same kind of thing. What are you gonna do this time? Having had that rug pulled away from me, I realise that the things that I clung to in the past aren’t helping me. What’s more, they’re creating more division between me and other people. I’m not someone who wants separation; there’s too much separation already.”