If you ever dipped your toe into the punk rock stew, you inevitably got a little Bouncing Souls on you. This band has been around the scene for 20 years now and they are holding steady as one of the most hard working, rocking, always relevant bands out there. It was my pleasure to interview bass player, Bryan Kienlen to hear how the years have been treating him as an icon of the scene.

If you were forced to go back in time and change the name of the band, what would it be called?

Bryan Kienlen: Slayer?

Being able to make great rock music for 20 years is quite an accomplishment. What does it feel like to be at this place in your life, still making records, still hitting the road?

Bryan Kienlen: It feels like success.  The fact that I have been able to live my wildest dreams, see the world, meet (and continue to be surrounded by) the most amazing people, and to have never lost touch with certain spiritual priorities I had as a kid; I’ve held on to that sense of inspiration and thus “stayed young” all these years.  Total success!

Ghosts on the Boardwalk really captures the “sound” of the Bouncing Souls, how do you define it?

Bryan Kienlen: It’s hard to define exactly, I feel like we’re just vehicles for songs to flow through.  That is to say, we sort of let them write themselves through us, our job is to let it flow and not judge them too hard as it’s happening.  Some songs turn out better than others, but we’re just trying to do the best we can.  Ultimately, everything we record does have a sort of Bouncing Souls accent to it I guess, as every band develops it’s own sort of voice.  Time will tell how this record fares in the grand scheme of things, I’ve been enjoying it so far.  And yet, I’m ready to write some new stuff.

Have you ever or would you ever play with a side project?

Bryan Kienlen: Pete (Bouncing Souls) and I started a band with some friends called “Roadside Prophets”.  It’s yours truly on bass, Pete on guitar, Dave Hause of The Loved Ones on vocals, Tad and Bobby from The Hold Steady on lead guitar and drums.  Killer line-up, and we’ve had a couple practices already.  The problem is, all the members are from very busy bands so there’s been almost no time to get the Roadside Prophets off the ground unfortunately.

The Bouncing Souls, I believe more than other bands, has this rich history of people connecting with the band and the songs through tattoos? I’m sure this is flattering but when you design new graphics does it feel like a huge responsibility?

Bryan Kienlen: It’s funny, all the way back to the beginning of the band, I was getting into tattooing at the same time I was drawing our first logo and T-shirt designs.  A lot of the art therefore looked like something you might get tattooed as well. (we got the first Bouncing Souls tattoos ourselves haha).  Now all these years later, there is a rich lineage of Bouncing Souls tattoos, we even have galleries of them on our Myspace and now Facebook pages.  It has actually inspired me to get back into tattooing.  Now I work at a shop 3 days a week in NJ called Immortal Ink.  Get a Souls tattoo by yours truly!  (shameless plug: www.bryankienlen.com sorry!)

What’s the one thing in 2010 that you are looking forward to most?

Bryan Kienlen: Expanding personally on every level.

What are the three songs in your ipod that you think people would find shocking?

Bryan Kienlen: I don’t know if there’s anything I have that would be shocking.  That is to say that I listen to a very wide variety of stuff.  I really enjoy listening to Ennio Morricone.  There’s a CD called The Legendary Westerns of Ennio Morricone”.  He did the soundtracks to Sergio Leone’s classic “spaghetti westerns” like “Fist Full of Dollars”.  Lately I’ve been pretty obsessed with Slayer too.  But guess that’s not shocking, sorry!  I really dig David Allen Coe, and old outlaw country, (Willie, Johnny, Waylon, etc) it’s my dad’s music.  It’s not punk to like your dad’s music or to like old country haha!  Fuck rules anyway.

I love punk, good metal, (Slayer), classic rock, I dig oldschool hip-hop, I’m all over the place.

After all these years how do you stay sane on the road?

Bryan Kienlen: I arrived at a point where anywhere I am at any given moment really feels about the same to me.  I look for the beauty and fun-potential wherever I am.   I know it sounds like a cliché but life really is short and flying right by, so I try to live the shit out of it as much as possible.  I like to travel and to be in different situations and forms of energy, maybe it helps to prevent stagnation even if it’s just mental or emotional stagnation.

Craziest punk rock moment…I’m sure you’ve had a few?

Bryan Kienlen: I’ve been a complete menace over the last 20+ years for sure.  Unfortunately those golden moments of total recklessness are all but lost to time, my memory of them is shot thanks to whatever I may have been drinking, smoking and/or sniffing that night.  I’ve led a colorful life to be sure, the problem is that most of the craziest memories aren’t much more than flashes in a fog to me haha.  It’s about being there anyway, about the moment.  Maybe you’ll be there to catch the next one!

Check out the Bouncing Souls on tour now:

04.15.10 – Munich, D
04.16.10 – Leipzig, D
04.17.10 – Kapfenberg, A
04.18.10 – Zurich, CH
04.19.10 – Freiburg, D
04.21.10 – Bochum, D
04.22.10 – Bremen, D
04.23.10 – Paris, F
04.24.10 – Meerhout, D
04.25.10 – Saarbrucken, D
04.26.10 – Hamburg, D
04.27.10 – Berlin, D
04.29.10 – Rotterdam, NL
04.30.10 – Venlo, NL
05.02.10 – Athens, GR
06.25.10 – Los Angeles, CA
06.26.10 – San Francisco, CA
06.27.10 – Ventura, CA
06.29.10 – Phoenix, AZ
06.30.10 – Las Crues, NM
07.01.10 – San Antonio, TX
07.02.10 – Houston, TX
07.03.10 – Dallas, TX
07.05.10 – St. Louis, MO
07.06.10 – Indianapolis, IN
07.07.10 – Pittsburgh, PA
07.08.10 – Cleveland, OH
07.09.10 – Toronto, ON
07.10.10 – Montreal, QC
07.11.10 – Hartord, CT
07.13.10 – Boston, MA
07.14.10 – Buffalo, NY
07.15.10 – Scranton, PA
07.16.10 – Philadelphia, PA

Interview by Barbie Brady, Photos by Mike McLaughlin