I Interviewed Jason Tate and All He Got Was This Stupid Newsletter (Do Your Part To Save My Journalism Career and Subscribe ASAP) (Human Pursuits 22/1/23)
The Chorus.fm creator on emo's mainstream resurgence, creating meaningful online communities, and the biggest question still facing the scene.
VANCOUVER – The more I think about it, the more I realize this is all Dan Zajac’s fault.
See, if Dan hadn’t gone away on a family vacation in the summer of 2005, he would’ve never bought those Senses Fail, or Taking Back Sunday CDs in Montana or wherever. He would’ve never started Googling the bands, and he certainly would’ve never discovered the extremely emo and extremely online community that was AbsolutePunk-dot-net. He would’ve never read its iconic tagline, Music Mends Broken Hearts, and decided to make an account. And he most definitely would’ve never pressured me to follow suit. In other words, if it weren’t for Dan Zajac, there’s a good chance this whole thing could’ve been avoided. Right down to my skinny jeans, swoopy hair, and lip ring.
The mind reels!!
Of course, that’s not what happened. I joined AbsolutePunk sometime between 2005 and 2006, when emo and pop-punk were still four-letter words that sparked ridicule online and IRL, despite a growing cache. Over the next decade AP, as we called it, became my go-to for music news, even as its community ballooned larger and more toxic. When founder Jason Tate decided, for a variety of reasons, to pull the plug and create something more sustainable, I followed him to greener pastures. It was there, on Chorus (where he also maintains a newsletter), that I shot him a DM requesting an interview. He graciously agreed.
Our conversation, which spanned more than an hour and has been edited and condensed for clarity, touched on his more than 20-year career, his efforts to maintain a work-life balance, the rise of Jack Antonoff, why Calvin and Hobbes is punk, and his relationship with the band-who-must-not-be-named.
And so it seems Dan Zajac once again has had the last laugh.
ES: My fianceé was laughing because I’m never up this early on a Sunday… So I wanted to ask, what is your Sunday routine?
JT: Sunday is the day that we clean around the house… Wake up, make coffee, stare at my phone for a little bit… then usually it’s doing laundry, cleaning, and making sure the house is ready for the week. I’ve always liked the hard reset, and that’s kind of the way that I mentally prepare. Making sure everything is ready to go.
ES: My friend Dan has a theory that there are Sunday morning albums, which are not exactly easy listening, but are different from maybe Thrice or The Academy Is… Do you have anything like that?
JT: Sunday has actually become mostly podcast time. I used to listen to a lot more of them. I went through a big podcast phase and then I went through a big re-introduction to music phase which saw me move away from podcasting a bit... I usually listen to Accidental Tech Podcast or The Talk Show With John Gruber or some sports podcasts I have on rotation. After cleaning I usually go to the gym, and that’s where I’ll put music on. I don’t have a specific band or album or genre that I’d say would be a Sunday-type of music.
ES: How are things going in terms of the day-to-day operations of the website? I know you’re just coming off the scamming attempt that forced us to push this interview back.
JT: Yeah, that was annoying. The gist was that someone was using [the website’s payment] system to test credit cards at a rapid pace… Our supporter system only has a $3 USD charge, it’s a really easy one to use [for that sort of identity theft]. You can see whether or not [the charge] goes through, and if it does, cool, they’re probably using it to do whatever. I had to spend more time than I wanted to go back and fix that entire thing and… make sure there are no problems.
As a whole, the website for a while now has felt very… not hands-off but… it runs as it should… I don’t have to spend a lot of time doing any server maintenance… After the big rewrite and recoding of everything, which would’ve been 2020, maybe 2021… I got the website to a spot where I was comfortable with what it looked like, how it ran, and what it was. It was pretty much the vision in my head… Once it got to that spot, it was like “OK, there isn’t anything pressing that I need to do.” Chorus could just be.
ES: It’s not your full-time gig at the moment, right? You have a job outside of the website?
JT: Correct. It was my full-time gig, dating back to AbsolutePunk… During the pandemic, two things happened. One, ad revenue was decimated. Ad revenue was cut by 75% in the four months from when the pandemic started… And, as that happened, the other way we make money is through the supporter system, which basically lets people pay for better perks on the website: dark mode, no ads, etc. When the pandemic happened, people cut back on [non-essential] spending. It makes sense, nobody knew what the hell was going on, what the world was going to look like… [At the same time] my wife is a concert violinist and all of a sudden concerts stopped happening… Nobody is asking people to come and play… We had savings and we had ways to make sure we were ok. But that got me thinking, “Is this something that I want to do? Can I keep doing this as my only gig long-term?” [I thought] if the answer to those questions is “No,” now is probably the best time for me to move into the corporate world because this period of time is probably the best I would have for earning potential…
I was also looking to put myself in a position where I could spend less time online… I found myself spending so much time on Twitter…
ES: Have there been any challenges with shifting into more of a traditional workplace? I assume you aren’t the only decision-maker in your new job.
JT: My friends and family joked that I was basically unemployable. I came straight out of college and started AbsolutePunk. I could set my own schedule, I could do whatever the hell I wanted – if I wanted to make a decision, I would. But it’s been interesting to see that a lot of the habits I developed while being self-employed really do work well in a corporate environment. Being very quick at email, squeezing every bit of efficiency out of what I do. Those are the sort of things that do translate very well to [this new] environment. I’m also blessed because the company I work for gives me a lot of autonomy and freedom to make choices. They trust me.
ES: Chris Browder from Mansions told me he thinks every musician should have a 9 to 5 job because it gives you a sense of reality. How has taking a step outside the music world changed your perspective on things? Or has it?
JT: It definitely achieved the overarching goal I had of spending less time on Twitter. It allowed me to step back a little bit, to refocus... It provides a level of consistency and stability that, haven’t had because I was working for myself. Since I was 18 there’s been a low-level anxiety around having to make money every single month... That anxiety being removed is very interesting. It’s the most obvious benefit… that if you give people money they feel better. Laughs.
ES: You were one of the first people I knew who discussed the negative impacts of the internet on their mental health. Did moving from AbsolutePunk to Chorus provide an immediate benefit, or is it something you’re always working on?
JT: It’s something I’m always working on, even with the 9 to 5. By my nature, I’m a workaholic. My brain likes problems, it likes to solve them, it likes to do things. It’s very easy for me to get sucked in and lose track of time. Setting boundaries with work has always been difficult for me, even going back to AbsolutePunk. Finding the right balance to pull me away from whatever I’m working on at the time, and to be able to take time for myself is very important.
Over time, AbsolutePunk itself became mentally draining. A platform of that size, a community of that size, was completely impossible to moderate at the capacity that I felt was responsible. As we see now with basically every social network, they hit a certain size and chaos ensues. It’s very hard to find the right way to moderate and handle stuff like that. As the website grew, and as we saw our music scene reckon with toxic masculinity and abuse… It all came to a head. I realized I was exceptionally stressed all the time… The website was at odds with what I wanted it to be. I either needed to walk away or wipe the slate clean and start something that I’m excited about.
ES: It sounds childish but was it scary to pivot from this established brand into something new?
JT: Yes and no. It’s always scary to make something and put it out into the world. But I was content with either outcome. Chorus would either be a complete failure, and I could walk away knowing that the idea I had in my head is not what the market or audience wanted and that I could still run my own personal blog as I’ve always done… Or, the second option, a smaller group of people will come with me and allow me to have an equilibrium in the forums so that moderation actually works, and I can still make a living. Which is what happened.
A website of AbsolutePunk’s size demands that you’re constantly posting on social media, constantly doing interviews, and always needing to publish. Chorus allows me to set boundaries as I want them to be and gave me permission to run things how I want to.
ES: What are the boundaries for you right now?
JT: AbsolutePunk always wanted to be first. We wanted to break news before it came out… If we weren’t the first place to post about it, we wanted to be the place where everyone came to talk about it [using the forums]... Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit didn’t really exist when the website started, and they quickly became the default place where those conversations would happen. If something happened around a band, everyone would go to their subreddit or Twitter. So for me, it was less about being the place that breaks news… The ideal [Chorus] reader is someone around my age, who is deeply invested in music and the music scene, who has a 9 to 5, and who can only check in once a day. If you don’t check the site for a couple of days, you won’t miss too much. You can check in and see the latest about Andrew McMahon or Fall Out Boy and get a sense of what AbsolutePunk always was, which is my music tastes online… If they use the forums, they are updated more immediately. If news breaks it’s posted there [by the website’s users].
ES: It almost ends up being a more active, healthy community because there are people who post constantly. Overall, the vibes on the website are very good, at least as far as I can tell.
JT: I think so. There are always going to be ups and downs, and periods of drama and contentment. It’s never perfect. Running a community, and community management as a whole is always in flux, it’s always changing and you have to adapt and move with the times, and the user base. But it does feel to me, at least right now, that there is a good balance between the number of users and everybody understanding the site’s social norms. That took a long time to train people on, especially new users – that there were things that they simply were not going to get away with doing.
ES: Going back to AbsolutePunk’s breaking news model… What was one of the biggest scoops you remember?
JT: If you would’ve asked me five years ago, I may have talked about drama or things that impacted me negatively. Looking at it now, though it’s easier to look at it with fondness. I think about things we did that helped bands, or were part of the scene’s musical history. Premiering the first song from Fall Out Boy’s Infinity on High and then seeing a screenshot of our website on MTV because we got to “leak” the song. Being part of My Chemical Romance’s rollout for Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, and getting to premiere one of those songs. Doing a chat with Paramore that basically tore the website down… Stuff that was around promotion with bands and interacting with them as they went from small to large, and seeing that reflected on the website as more people came in search of information.
In terms of news, when Midtown left Drive-Thru Records… There was the interview Thomas Nassiff did with A Day To Remember when they left Victory Records. There was always drama around those kinds of things and I remember it drummed up a lot of comments.
ES: Do you ever sit back and marvel at the way this scene has gone on to influence broader culture?
JT: Last year was the first time I really reflected on it, both because we’re all getting older, but also because of the whole When We Were Young festival becoming a thing… At the time it always felt like we were outsiders… Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the “real” publications, weren’t giving these artists the time of day, they would passively cover them or mock them… So to see the internet as a whole give them the time of day, and to see all the people who were impacted by that type of music talk about it fondly, has been exciting and interesting. It gives credence to what I always believed, and what I always knew because I could see the raw numbers of how many people were visiting the website… It’s not like it’s due but it’s time for it to be appreciated without the scorn and the mockery that came with it.
ES: What’s one band you think is worth a second look in 2023?
JT: I’m not sure I can think of a band that is still going that I wish more people would listen to. A lot of the stuff I still come back to are bands and artists who were mid-level back then who never quite made it to the mainstream, but sat in our world. The Academy Is… is a good example. Relient K always had great pop songs but never crossed completely over into being one of the biggest bands in the world. Motion City Soundtrack. I was listening to Northstar a couple of days ago… and Pollyanna still holds up as a great scene album from that time. Basically, nobody ever listened to them. Autopilot Off had one major label album that tanked, but is incredible. Those are the bands I return to often with nostalgia. They did not become Fall Out Boy but at the same time, they were releasing great albums.
ES: It’s incredible to think about the influence Decaydance Records had. Pete Wentz was a great A&R in his own way.
JT: I read something at one point where he joked that if a bunch of bands were going to sound like Fall Out Boy he wanted to capitalize off it… I’ve said it before, but it started with blink-182 and everyone wanting to be blink, and then New Found Glory came along and everyone wanted to sound like Jordan Pundik and you had all those whiney vocals and then all of a sudden Patrick Stump came along and changed everything. Everyone wanted to sound like Patrick Stump and Fall Out Boy.
ES: Even Matty from The 1975. Some of those early records have a Patrick Stump flavour on the vocals…
JT: It’s interesting to watch all the bands that were influenced by those bands become more popular. You can see it with The 1975, not just in the types of songs they write, but in the lyrical content, all the way up through the producing itself. Jack Antonoff literally came from this music scene with Steel Train, signed to Drive-Thru Records, and is now arguably the largest record producer in the world. The influence he’s had on music as a whole, a lot of people will say for better or for worse, but that’s still there.
ES: If you had told me 10 years ago that the guy from fun. would be the producer du jour for every major pop star and have a bunch of critically acclaimed albums under his belt, I’m not sure I would have believed you.
JT: His talent was undeniable from the beginning. Like, I loved those early Steeltrain albums. But I don’t think anyone would have predicted what his career would have ended up doing… I struggle to come up with someone who has had more influence in the past 5 years… I don’t think anyone in the early 2000s would have said our music scene at the time would have that kind of impact.
ES: AbsolutePunk was an early champion of The 1975, it’s where I learned about them for the first time, and it’s interesting to see Matty be this emo stalwart. Like, he knows all of the references…
JT: That’s been something that has been interesting to watch over the years as well. The people who came from our music scene and how they’ve carried that forward. I’ve interviewed him before, so I know he’s heard of the website. No idea if he was using it. But he seems to come from this world… And now he’s just a troll poster on the internet.
ES: One thing that’s thrown me for a loop is seeing them be embraced by millions of people. For a long time, your website was one of the few places where people could talk about The 1975 without shit posting. They were understood by the user base really early on. And again we’re seeing other publications catch on and say “Oh this is pretty good.”
JT: In a weird way, that’s been a continuous throughput on the website. I never thought, like, blink-182 was the next Bob Dylan. But I was writing, thinking, “I like this band. Nobody is taking this band seriously, I think they should.” And then you see blink-182 release a single that has been number one for 11 weeks on alternative radio. Obviously huge massive tours that are selling out. They resonated with a lot of people. I was right about that.
When it comes to other bands that I knew the big publications were not taking seriously – Jimmy Eat World, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, fun., the Format – these weird kids with their skinny jeans and eyeliner and depressing lyrics, I could see it was resonating… that it was important. Me and my friends wanted to write about them, and we did. To see now, years later, people come back to that… it’s like what we’re seeing with those early 1975 albums. Us saying “These guys are writing really good songs, and there’s more to them than they’ve shown far.” And the albums they released subsequently, and the critical response, I think validates that.
ES: You’re a bit of a collector. I wanted to ask, what is the strangest piece of scene memorabilia in your collection right now?
JT: Strangest is an interesting question. When Fall Out Boy released Save Rock and Roll they sent out bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey with a promotional sticker for the album on the front. I have that on the table out there. I have some signed drum heads I have no idea do with that are sitting in the closet. There’s a painting from the band The Matches, I don’t know you if you remember them?
ES: Yes.
JT: They were very artistic... It’s a painting of two dinosaurs having sex that they gave me after being out on tour once. That’s framed and sitting in a closet somewhere.
ES: I don’t want to take up too much more of your time. What is one piece of advice you would give younger Jason?
JT: It’s funny, I think about it and it’s exactly the type of advice younger Jason wouldn’t listen to… But it would be that you should be more willing to admit that you are wrong. Like, to understand that what you are thinking right now is not what you are going to think for the rest of your life. The convictions you have are not universal absolutes, they are not things that are going to be steady forever… To be malleable with that, and to always be questioning your own prior beliefs.
Younger Jason needed to be the best, needed to be huge, and needed to have a giant audience following everything he was writing. It took me until 8 years ago to realize that was a dream I had when I was 15. I was sitting here at 35 thinking “I don’t want that at all.” There’s no part of me that has that goal, no part of me that wants to be driven by that. But I was still allowing myself to be driven by that idea I had as a kid… Letting myself be brought down because I thought it was “a goal of mine.” I wish I would’ve realized earlier that I did not need to be stuck to these ideas that I had, and that I should always be evaluating these things. Like, what do I want to do now? What do I want to do moving forward? I hope Jason of now can take that advice and try to apply it on a more regular basis.
ES: That reminds me… I’ve always been interested in your relationship with Bill Waterson. I know you’re a big Calvin and Hobbes fan. I have a theory that he’s maybe the most punk person on the planet. He just does things his own way. Has he been an influence on your career?
JT: I’ve made the argument before… that Bill Waterson is potentially one of the greatest writers of our generation. It’s a comic, yes, but the literary aspects and quality of Calvin and Hobbes… Gun to my head, it’s one of my favourite pieces of art ever. I love it. But I think the way Bill Waterson has maybe influenced me most is by his desire to say “No,” to things. He was the person who didn’t want to license [his work], who knew when he wanted to stop and wasn’t beholden to squeezing every last dollar out of his creation. That was something younger me didn’t do. I sold AbsolutePunk to another company [SpinMedia Group] and saw it go extremely badly. But in the latter part of my life, I have changed to the idea that I don’t want to squeeze every last penny out of every single thing. To be able to say no, to be able to do what sounds right to me… And to have the moral compass to say “This is what I believe is right, this is what I’m going to do.” I think that’s a big part of his career and his legacy. Being able to say no, and therefore keep control of his creation.
ES: And that’s why he’s so punk. I would feel remiss if I didn’t ask you about Brand New because they were such a big part of AbsolutePunk’s story.
I’m wondering if you ever reflect on what happened with Brand New, and the way they exited the scene, the chaos surrounding that exit, and the fact that they remain controversial on the website’s forums. Where do you sit with that? They were my favourite band for such a long time.
[Editor’s note: In 2017 Brand New frontman Jesse Lacey was accused of sexual misconduct, including allegations from two women who shared accounts of sexual harassment, manipulative behavior, and child grooming on Lacey’s part. The allegations have not been tested in court.]
JT: They were my favourite band as well… But I haven’t listened to them since [the allegations against frontman Jesse Lacey broke]. I haven’t even curiously put on an album. They were a band I put on when I needed to feel better, or to zone out. They were like a comfort blanket to me.
What I’m most disappointed in is the reaction to everything that happened. Basically, a bunch of women said “I was abused.” There was a small response. Those women were then harassed online, and to this day continue to be harassed online. And nobody tried to stop that… No matter what else happens, and no matter how strongly people may feel about the band, and no matter how much I may want to listen to them, I know for a fact, because I have talked to them, that these women continue to be harassed by Brand New fans. Members of Brand New could have put a stop to that, they could’ve said something. The fact that nothing was said is something I have a very difficult time with… [The band and their team know] they have a rabid fan base… They knew what could happen there. It happened, and nobody was like “Do not harass women online,” which seems like the bare minimum of something somebody could’ve said to help and make these people’s lives better…
I have no idea what that band is going to do in the future. Given a global pandemic, given how many other bands are reuniting, if they showed up on a festival it would not surprise me. But it would also not surprise me if we never hear from them ever again…
I know for a fact festivals have reached out to them to try and get them to play. So far they have said no. But my personal relationship with that band is so coloured by the conversations I’ve had with women who are being harassed… Death threats, horrible shit being said to them. It’s hard for me to remove those conversations and things I’ve seen from the music and the band as a whole…
There are bands that are problematic or troublesome that I have been able to listen to and have some intellectual understanding with myself about how I will relate to the music. Brand New is not [currently one of those bands]… Every year I wonder if I will return to one of their albums and every year I don’t. I just never reach for it. Maybe that will change.
ES: I didn’t know the harassment was ongoing.
JT: It would’ve been about a year ago. I got a message from someone who found out people on the Brand New subreddit were trying to find her address so they could send her messages and try to find stuff out about her… That to me is so far over the line.
ES: It’s sort of an unfortunate testament to your website… You would never know the levels of toxicity that still exist… You’ve done a good job weening it out of the system, despite how prevalent it is across the music scene.
JT: I think that’s been one of the hardest things, and one of the biggest questions facing our music scene: how to reconcile that? There are people who can completely turn it off, it doesn’t impact them, they don’t even think about it… And some people who can’t at all… Who think the art that someone creates is because of the artist, and who they are is built into the creation. I think I lean towards the latter, without going to the full extreme… My thought process has always been that I will deal with it on a personal level, but publicly I don’t want to promote something like that. If I ever was going to listen to Brand New again, I would not be posting about the band. I would not be promoting them. People can do whatever they like. The world sucks, whatever you need to do to get through the day – do it. But when it comes to advocating for those kinds of people, that’s where I personally draw the line.
Jason Tate is the founder of Chorus and AbsolutePunk (RIP). He lives in Portland, OR.