Sean Wheeler on Being a Crybaby and How They Turned X's John Doe into a Fan

Photo by Brian Kasnyik

Sean Wheeler (right) and Zander Schloss.

​Sean Wheeler and Zander Schloss represent two eras of punk rock. Schloss gained his punk success in the early stages of the Los Angeles scene as a bassist for the Circle Jerks. Wheeler is the rowdy frontman of Throw Rag, which formed in Salton Sea, California during a subsequent wave of punk in the early '90s. The pair met when Throw Rag toured with Circle Jerks, and collaborated unofficially off and on for a few years until they became a bonafide music duo around 2005.

The Americana acoustic duo spoke to us in anticipation of their Coach House show Wednesday, an early stop on their new tour with X. Some of the interview was featured in our print edition, which you can read here, but as Wheeler said, he's "gabby" and there was no way to fit all of the notable things he had to say into the allotted space.

So here's a continuation. Some of his responses don't really fit in with the preceding questions because, as Wheeler warned, he has a stream of consciousness way of thinking. "You'll have to reel me in otherwise you'll have three hours of tape to work through," he said. The tape counter read 49:07 at that point. 

OC Weekly: What's new since we last spoke in 2009?

Sean Wheeler: We went to Europe last February for about six weeks. We've just been running around in circles trying to get people to hear what we're doin'. 

How was Europe?

Europe was great, actually. We went to Germany and Austria and Czechoslovakia. We stayed in the Basque country for about a week; that was beautiful. We did a lot a lot of shows in punk squats because of our background. But what we're doing now is different than what we did back then. Early on there was a little fear-- "Oh they're not going to like this because it's nothing at all like what we were doing in the past." But they loved it. Every night we got encored almost.

People just like music if it's good. It doesn't have to be any sorta kinda thing. Sometimes I worry people are going to be stuck in a genre just because they look like they "belong" to a genre. What I've learned is that if the music's not bad people generally respond positively and that was the case.

I have some friends that say you should have been doing this [project] the whole time. It just depends what you're looking for. Punk rock is great for partying and all -- I get it. This is just a little deeper than I usually get to play.