Some bands are just synonymous with a good time, and Less Than Jake have to be right up there at the top of the list. There isn’t a secret to their success except for staying the course, putting together the highest energy shows possible, and keeping it humble. “How old are we now?” Vocalist Chris DeMakes jokes. “Thirty-four years I think the band's been around. We get to still travel to other countries, such as your lovely country, to play to adoring punters and I couldn't be happier. It's just amazing to be able to still be doing this this far into my life. I don't think anybody in the band imagined that we'd still be able to cross the pond and there'd be people that want to see us play.”

In fact, they’ll be back on this side of the Atlantic very soon with their ‘Rock n Roll Circus’ tour.  So will they be bringing clowns, acrobats and dancing bears along? “Well, you know, we’ve always had a very fun theme to our shows. It’s always been kind of circus like anything goes. When our audience was way younger, as we were back when we started out last century, it was kind of anything goes at punk shows back then. Not everybody had a mobile phone camera at their disposal. Nobody did, so you would get away with things. My son – he’s nine years old – he asked me, “Dad, did anybody ever get naked at your shows before?” I just looked at him and I kind of looked at the ground and I was just like, “more times than I ever wanted to see”. Why the circus? No two shows of Less Than Jakes have ever been scripted. We don’t go out there and it’s like, ‘okay, after the third song, you’re going to say, hello London, how are you?’ I mean, there’s people that have that written on their set list. We’ve never subscribed to that. We started out in dive pubs, playing to our friends in garages,” he uses the British pronunciation, elongating the ‘ah’, “I’m giving the respect. I’m trying to use the proper vernacular. It’s always been ‘anything goes’ on our stage and we thought the circus theme would be fun.” 

If we’re talking clowns, there’s an unexpected one in their recent history. Less Than Jake collaborated with Ice Nine Kills on their Pennywise themed track ‘IT is The End’, a collaboration which no one saw coming. “It all stems from Warped Tour,” explains DeMakes, “and he [Ice Nine Kills frontman Spencer Charnas] would have the horn players from Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake come out. He wanted to have horns and had ideas for horns. He’s a ska kid. When Ice Nine Kills started, they were a ska punk band. They don’t have any recordings from that time, but that’s what he wanted to do. It just morphed into this whole horror genre that he’s kind of dominated in my opinion. You had your Rob Zombies and your Alice Coopers and Marilyn Manson, but I think that he’s taken it to a whole other level.”

“I would love to [work with Ice Nine Kills again]. In fact, Spencer hit me up six months ago asking if I would sing on something for him. So I’m still waiting. You know what? You just reminded me to text him.” DeMakes sets a reminder on his phone and continues. “I’ve gotten to know Spencer real well since then. I host a songwriting podcast and I’ve had him on a couple times to talk about a couple of his songs. So I’d love to do something with him.” 

The last we heard from Less Than Jake in the studio without any horror theatrics was a little over a year ago when ‘Uncharted’ was released, and DeMakes is still a fan of his latest album. “I feel good about it. I hear the songs probably more often than I want to because we need to release some new music, so all our social media posts, we keep tagging those songs. But, you know, it’s always hindsight is 20-20. The songs are good. And, you know, the audience dictates that really, regardless of what I feel about it or what the guys feel. We played songs before that were, or wrote songs before that we were so excited to get into the live setting and they just lay there, just dead. Dead in the water. You’re sitting there questioning yourself as to why and when there’s other stuff that you play, but the new stuff’s been really well received.”

‘Uncharted’, both when it came out and re-listening now, feels like a strikingly optimistic album. “I don’t know if we had an optimistic frame of mind writing it, but you know, we went out to record with Bill and Jason… Bill Stephenson plays drums, of course, in Descendants and Jason Livermore. They’ve ran the Blasting Room out in Fort Collins, Colorado. It’s a wonderful studio, and they’ve recorded everybody under the sun from Rise Against to Descendants to Suicide Machines to NOFX, so there was that element that was fun. We had a great time while we were out there. It was the dead of winter. It was snow everywhere, but we managed to have a great time. I think that comes through. I’ve always maintained you can feel that in music, what headspace the artist was in.”

“[Of the tracks on ‘Uncharted’] I like’ Walking Pipebomb’ a lot. I think ‘Brand New Day’ came out great. ‘Sunny Side’ is another favourite from that one. I like ‘Not My Problem’. You know, I liked all of them really. ‘Dead Days’ is a great song as well. I’d like to get that one brushed up and play live. It’s a cool tune. But yeah, I’m proud of all of them. Actually, we played every one on the record except ‘Shake Loose the Truth’. We haven’t played that live. ‘Dead Days’, Roger [Lima] and I played acoustic last year.” 

The good news is that there will be a new Less Than Jake release this year, but sadly not a full length record, as the vocalist explains. “Yeah, we just recorded, it’s not going to be a full album, but we recorded five songs in December that we’re going to sprinkle around this year. I know that we have… there’s a compilation we’re going to be doing, a split record we’re going to be doing with another band. We’re going to give them two or three songs to a band in Japan. I can’t really divulge yet what that’s all about. And in fact, I don’t really know what it’s all exactly about quite yet. So we’re still waiting for that to be finalised and we’ll send you other songs around and hopefully we’ll have some new music out in the next couple months.” We also won’t be able to hear the new songs on the ‘Rock n Roll Circus’ tour so we’ll just have to be patient for a little while longer. “On this run, no, they won’t be released yet. We’re going to go out there for ninety minutes and we just want to want to punish everybody with the songs they know.”

“We’re playing to more people now than ever. Our fans, twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago, they got into us. They were fifteen then. Now they’re forty, forty-five, thirty-five maybe on the younger side, but they’re bringing their kids. They’ve been bringing their kids and now their kids are old enough to really be into it, so we’re seeing full families show up. I see the grey hair, old man that’s in his sixties rocking out,” he rubs his own hair, laughing, “His son is there who’s thirty five and then his son’s there who’s thirteen, fourteen years old. So in that aspect, things go through cycles. I’ve always said that the passage of time creates memories and creates what we’re talking about. You wouldn’t know until the time passed.”

“I give this example all the time. I remember I saw the Rolling Stones; they were fifty five years old at this time. It was 1989, and I was sixteen. I’m going, ‘these guys are gonna die any day now’. I mean, Keith Richards didn’t look too good in 89, and they’re still doing it. So we had no goalpost to kind of shoot for. You didn’t know. And like I said earlier, when I started the band, I didn’t think we’d be doing this past, playing to our buddies somewhere, just having a few beers and writing some songs.” 

Maybe it’s his attitude of taking each day as it comes that’s made Less Than Jake such an enduring source of fun in the world. Either way, the ska-punk icons won’t be slowing down any time soon, and we’ll be able to see for ourselves when the Rock n Roll Circus comes to town.

KATE ALLVEY

Catch Less Than Jake on tour across the UK this month with Bouncing Souls and Bar Stool Preachers