Joey: Okay, the first question is simple. How did you get in hardcore?
Tim: I got in through Pete. I don’t even remember how we met, but as I told you guys in the email, he introduced me to hardcore, basically. We went to someone’s house. I can’t even remember; someone in Evanston, I think, and I heard Earth Crisis for the first time. That was actually the first time I played drums- at that guy’s house. So, yeah, he introduced me to all of that. He was into it [first].
Amal: Do you still play music?
Tim: Yeah, I still play music. I still play drums. I play bass as well, but I have a couple of companies that I own, so I play when I can, you know? It’s a lot harder to be in a band when you’re older because everyone’s got responsibilities. It’s not like when we were teenagers and we could do whatever we wanted.
Amal: Yeah, that makes sense. But you still get to play music [sometimes]?
Tim: Yeah.
Amal: So did you grow up in Chicago then?
Tim: Yeah, I grew up in Glenview, so right next to Wilmette where Pete grew up, and [in the] same school district. So that’s how we met.
Joey: Oh. Did you go to New Trier with him?
Tim: Yeah. He went to New Trier for a little bit, then he got transferred to North Shore Country Day, kind of halfway through.
Kay: And when did you leave Chicago?
Tim: Right after I quit Arma Angelus, in 2001 or 2002 I want to say. But right when I quit that, I left.
Joey: All right. One of your previously mentioned companies is your tattoo and piercing shop, right?
Tim: Yeah.
Joey: So have you ever done any tattoos on either Pete or any other band members, just out of curiosity?
Tim: [LAUGHS] No.
Joey: [Did] you start doing [tattoos] after Arma Angelus?
Tim: Yeah, that was after all of that. [Pete and I] got our first piercings together at this place called Wizards of Ink in Chicago. I don’t even know if it’s still there.
Joey: Oh, that’s cool!
Tim: Yeah, he got his first tattoo there. Everyone that was in Firstborn at the time all got matching three “X” tattoos in Wisconsin before a show. Back then, you had to be 21 to get a tattoo in Chicago, so we had to go to Wisconsin because you only had to be 17 to do it there.
Joey: Wow, really? I thought his first tattoo was technically…I think he said in an interview once that it was like a stick-and-poke of an “X” on his ankle or something.
Tim: Probably.
Joey: But also he has the… Are you saying the first tattoo he got was not his Hardline tattoo, like the “Eco symbol” on the back?
Tim: That, I believe, was his first professional one.
Joey: Yeah. And you remember that?
Tim: I remember that, yeah.
Joey: That’s funny. Did he, like, particularly, ascribe to Hardline? Was he really into the message, or did he just like the symbol?
Tim: No, he was into it back then. He was vegan, straight-edge, you know?
Joey: Interesting. Well, since we’re still on the topic of tattoos: What was your first tattoo?
Tim: It was the three “X”s that I got with [Firstborn].
Joey: And is that what got you into tattooing?
Tim: I’ve always been into tattoos. I mean, a lot of the bands I grew up with had tattoos, so I’ve always liked them.
Joey: And did you start doing [tattoos] right when you left Chicago, or was that way later?
Tim: No, I started out as a piercer, so the tattoos were later on.
Joey: I see.
Amal: So, it seems like Firstborn was rather political. So, what political causes were you interested in and passionate about when you were a member?
Tim: To be honest with you, I wasn’t at all, really. That was more of Pete, you know, he was kind of running the show with that. I was into being straight-edge and hanging with the guys, but I’ve never been really political.
Joey: Were you vegan for a period of time?
Tim: Yeah, we tried. It was hard. I didn’t enjoy it, you know. [LAUGHS]
Joey: Fair enough. You showed us some of the zines that Pete made while in Firstborn. Were you ever into making zines like that as well?
Tim: No, I never made zines. The one that I sent you guys was unfinished. It was never even published.
Joey: Right.
Tim: I have the original copy of it. But throughout that thing, he has a lot of his thoughts and stuff written in it, of how he was thinking back then. There was a lot of animal rights stuff and political stuff in there.
Rachel: It’s so funny that you say that [Pete] just wrote a bunch of stuff down with lyrics, because that’s how he writes now. It’s just the same [process] where he writes thoughts.
Tim: Yeah, he was always writing. And like I said, he was the lifeblood of both bands, really. They were his ideas, and he wrote the lyrics. He came up with a lot of the parts for the music, especially in Firstborn.
Amal: How did you manage to keep all this stuff all these years even after you moved across the country?
Tim: Ah, I just kept it all. All the hardcore stuff I kept. I have literally everything, from, Firstborn to Arma Angelus. I don’t have too many pictures [of Arma Angelus] other than some of the promo stuff we did, but I have a lot of Firstborn.
Joey: I think I have this question later down on the list, but since you mentioned it now, I want to ask it now. Arma Angelus’ very first demo is completely lost. Even Pete himself doesn’t have it. Do you happen to have that?
Tim: Wait, so it’s not The Grave End of the Shovel. It’s the one before that, right?
Joey: Even before that. [Pete] wrote about it on a blog post, and he has said something about it having audio of an HBO home movie where a man shoots a watermelon with a gun, or whatever.
Tim: I have to look. I heard about that. I was reading the Wikipedia or something.
Joey: Okay.
Tim: I don’t even remember that. I remember going to record The Grave End of the Shovel at Sean O’Keefe’s studio. And McIllrath was in the band at that point. He recorded on that. The second album, which was a different lineup of a few guys, we went to Boston to record that with Adam from Killswitch Engage.
Joey: Right. Even before Grave End, there was a second demo. This “Watermelon demo” came before that.
Tim: Yeah, that first one, I don’t even remember it. I can look, and if I find out, I’ll send it to you guys.
Joey: Awesome. It’s funny that you mentioned Sean, though. Did we tell you that we met with him?
Lizzie: We interviewed with him at his house.
Joey: It was really cool. And he’s a super sweet guy. He actually told us this story about that recording of The Grave End of the Shovel; he used to be scared of Pete in high school because Pete was like, a “bad kid”. When [Pete] came into the studio, he was like, “Oh, my God, it’s Pete Wentz! He’s gonna beat me up!”
Tim: [LAUGHS] Yeah, I remember those recordings. And yeah, Sean’s a cool guy.
Joey: What was Pete like in his early teen years? How was it like hanging out with him in high school?
Tim: Oh, fine. We skateboarded. Everything was revolved around hardcore, you know?
Joey: Yeah.
Tim: So we went to shows together as a unit, especially the guys in Firstborn. We skateboarded a lot. If we weren’t at shows or we weren’t practicing in my basement, we were skateboarding. So it was one of those three things we were doing.
Joey: Do you remember his crazy blue bowl cut?
Tim: [LAUGHS] Yeah, I remember that. He had dreads too- but a different color there.
Joey: I love that there is video of that blue bowl cut- That there is video evidence.
Tim: What video was that?
Joey: Despair at the Fireside Bowl. Purely out of curiosity, do you have a favorite hairstyle of his?
Tim: Favorite style? I liked what he had in Arma Angelus. It was a little longer and he would put the bed-head stuff in it and spike it up. I think he looks really good with shorter hair.
Lizzie: Were you friends with Andy Hurley at all? He was playing bass at the first show but wasn’t in the band after that. Did you play with him?
Tim: I knew Andy. I wasn’t friends with him. We played shows together, so we would ride in the van together, and he did play that first Arma show. But no, I never had his number or anything like that. I was always the drummer, except right after I quit, I think they recorded a cover song I heard years ago with Andy.
Joey: Yeah, on that Slayer tribute record.
Tim: Oh, and I’ve seen that last show at Hellfest where Patrick was playing drums. But since the inception- Pete and I -we started that band. I was the only drummer throughout the history of that band until the very end.
Joey: So was there a reason why Andy was on bass? Was it just because you were already on drums and so he couldn’t play drums?
Tim: No. After Pete and I started the band, I think we had problems finding people to play. I think Andy just filled in for that. Because after that, then Adam and Dan were recruited.
Joey: I see.
Tim: I think it was just for that show. I can’t quite remember why, but that was the only show that I think Andy played. Karl played other shows with us on guitar. I could be wrong, but yeah.
Lizzie: I can say that in the video of the Novena show, he makes a joke saying that Andy wanted to be in a boy band, which is why he was playing bass. I’m assuming he was just joking, but was there some truth to that? [LAUGHS]
Tim: Those guys back then were listening to a lot of different stuff that I wasn’t listening to. They listened to Weezer and New Found Glory right when it came out. So that’s where all that stuff started with Fall Out Boy. Even back then, they were kind of veering off and I wasn’t quite into that stuff. I wanted to play hardcore. Like I was telling you guys; Earth Crisis, Chokehold, Despair, that style. Kind of how Firstborn was. Once Arma Angelus started getting into a weird metal thing, I wasn’t totally into it, to be honest with you. And that’s why I quit the band. Hardcore at that time was just going in a bunch of different directions.
If you guys listen to the records, especially The Grave End of the Shovel and the one that followed it. Some of those songs have like a million different parts in them that don’t necessarily go together. You could have broken that down and made three songs out of that. So I wasn’t into it for that. There were some good parts, but other than that, [the music] is not memorable for me.
Lizzie: I don’t know if anyone else remembers this, but we found some Chicago punk zine, where Arma Angelus submitted a ton of their records to get reviewed, and the person writing it was like, “This isn’t hardcore. This is just really bad metal.”
Tim: Yeah. It has its moments, but I’m a guy that likes to practice. I like to rehearse and the other guys, they really didn’t. We would write a song and then we’d play that song a week later at a show. I prefer to work on stuff longer.
Joey: [LAUGHS] You probably would have meshed better with Patrick!
Tim: Yeah. I mean, only I met Patrick… I only went to only one Fall Out Boy show ever, and this was probably 2003. They played at Woodfield Mall at the Hollister.
Lizzie: Oh my god! [LAUGHS]
Tim: Were you guys there?
Kay: No, no, there’s video footage of it. [LAUGHS] It’s sort of an iconic show.
Tim: Yeah, they were kicking the surfboards off of the walls and surfing on them. [LAUGHS] But that’s where I met Patrick. Joe, I knew because he went on tour with us.
Joey: Speaking of that…
Tim: We went on an East Coast and Southern tour, and he was kind of being like a roadie. And I think he filled in for bass too.
Lizzie: Chris. Right? He filled in for Chris.
Tim: Yeah.
Lizzie: We actually knew about that because Joe mentions it in his book. Have you ever read his memoir? Is it accurate?
Tim: I didn’t even know he had a book.
Joey: Yeah, he has a lengthy part about it. About how he got hazed during the whole tour.
Tim: [LAUGHS] He definitely got hazed. That was by Pete.
Joey: Ah. Of course. It’s funny because in the book, he never says who did it specifically. He’s just like, “I got hazed by those guys”.
Tim: Yeah, he did. But, you know, he took it like a man.
Lizzie: And now they’ve been in a band together for 23 years. How the tables turn.
Tim: It is so crazy how that happened. I remember when they were starting all that, Pete asked me if I wanted to be on drums. I said I didn’t want to.
Lizzie: Really?
Tim: Yup. It just wasn’t my style.
Amal: Did you ever come around on pop-punk? Did you enjoy any of Fall Out Boy’s releases?
Tim: I’ve honestly never even listened to a whole album. I don’t have any of the albums. I have a CD that… I don’t know, Pete gave it to me. It’s before they even released anything. I don’t know if you guys know about that.
Lizzie: Is it a demo by chance?
Tim: I don’t know. It’s a burnt CD. And they’ve got fake names listed on it.
Joey: Oh my God! That’s considered extremely rare now. It was actually considered lost for years- like it was not on the Internet. That’s their very first demo CD. The mastered version of that was later used for a split with Project Rocket, but the demo version of that was not on the Internet for probably 15 years, maybe more.
Tim: I guess I have that. I’ve heard stuff off Take This to Your Grave and the other one, Evening Out With Your Girlfriend. I like those two. Of course there’s stuff like “Sugar, We’re Going Down”. That’s a great song. They’re really well-written songs, you know.
Joey: Yeah, but just not your style.
Tim: Not what I wanted to play at the time. I wanted to just play hardcore; that’s what I wanted to do.
Joey: Right. Pivoting back to Firstborn for a second… Pete tells this story about how he used to play guitar before bass, but then he joined a band in high school that needed a bassist, which is why he switched. Was that referring to Firstborn or was that about Justice Coming?
Tim: Yeah, he never played guitar in any of our bands; unfortunately I don’t know anything about that.
Rachel: No worries. I’m curious though, have you spoken with Pete recently at all?
Tim: No. Honestly, I haven’t talked to him since 2004. He invited me to some house party and then he dropped me at my apartment. I was living in Lakeview at the time. I had moved back to the city for a year and yeah, I haven’t talked or seen him since then. I’d love to, but I have not. I talk to Deadxstop every once in a while. I’ve talked to Ryan recently. Have you guys talked to him yet?
Joey: Yeah, we briefly emailed with him, he’s nice.
Tim: Yeah, I hadn’t talked to him or seen him in… Jeez, probably like almost 30 years.
Joey: Wow.
Tim: But yeah, I’ve talked with Ryan and Dan over Instagram recently.
Lizzie: Moving back in time to Justice Coming; What made your first singer so great as you said? You guys seemed really young.
Tim: He just had great stage presence. He had a good voice. I just liked him a lot.
Joey: And you still have no idea what happened to him? He just moved away?
Tim: I have no clue. Pete might be the one to ask about him. He might know. I think part of the problem back then was that it was hard to keep singers because they didn’t have vehicles and they couldn’t get to practice. Adeet had a car so he could definitely make it to practice.
Amal: Also, sorry if this is redundant, but are there any recordings or tapes of when you had Jermaine as the singer?
Tim: No, not unless someone recorded a live show.
Lizzie: And then, were you in any other bands other than Firstborn and Arma Angelus?
Tim: Yeah, I was in a punk band out here called Last Action Zeroes. I recorded an album with them, and I’ve done my own stuff, under Morgan Renegade. It’s more like 80s rock. I’ve recorded two albums under Morgan Renegade- solo albums. Like I said, it’s hard to get people to be in bands that are already in a million bands. They can’t commit. So what I did is just hired studio musicians, paid them their fee and told them what to play and all that. And we just did it that way.
I mean, I want to record another hardcore record; at least another EP. I’m going to do an EP, like a 7-inch real soon. But finding the right people, it’s difficult.
Lizzie: Let us know when it’s out so we can listen to it!
Tim: Totally. And for that, I can’t really hire studio guys because if you don’t play hardcore, it’s just not gonna sound good.
Amal: Okay. Awesome. So Firstborn often played with the mixed-genre hardcore and rap band Stifle. This is a band we are interested in because there’s very little information about them on the Internet. On Stifle’s Fragile, Pete and Firstborn are thanked in the liner notes. Stifle is a pretty unique band. They had a turntable on stage. We are in contact with someone who was in the band, but do you happen to remember anything about them?
Tim: I remember playing with them and I remember we buddied up on a lot of shows. That’s how we met Luke. I think Luke was in this band; Luke from The Killer. At least, he was buddies with all of them. Was he in that band?
Joey: No, I don’t believe so.
Tim: They’re good. I remember that. And I think I have their tape still. We played a bunch of shows around the North Shore with them. It’s just hard to remember from, you know, back in 1995.
Joey: [LAUGHS] Yeah, I get it.
Lizzie: So, across different websites, there’s this random list of bands that Pete apparently was in at one point or another. Some of these bands have no available information about them, so we just everyone related to Pete about them to see if you recognize these. When we met with Adeet, he said Pete was in this first band. No one else has remembered it, but it’s a band called 7 Angels of the Apocalypse. Do you recall that?
Tim: Is this before Firstborn?
Lizzie: I honestly don’t know. I don’t think Adeet really remembered the context at all. He just told us that it was a band that he remembered [Pete] was in.
Tim: Could have been. I don’t remember. We had so many different names, too.
Lizzie: And I know that these are really old bands, so we don’t expect people to remember it, but we figured we would ask. Yellow Road Priest is another band. There’s one direct source that says Pete was a member of Yellow Road Priest, but everyone we’ve talked to who remembered the band didn’t remember him being in it.
Tim: I don’t know if he was in it, but I remember the name.
Joey: Okay, finally I’ll show you this on my screen. So there’s a page in Pete’s, yearbook from North Shore. Lizzie is convinced that this is not the name of a band and that it’s just a descriptor or nickname. I’m convinced that it is the name of a band.
Okay, so it’s this picture…
Tim: [LAUGHS] Is that Pete?
Joey: Yeah, that is indeed Pete. This is his senior year spread.
Tim: Oh, that girl. That’s his… I think that was the girl he was dating, his high school girlfriend. [I] forget her name.
Joey: Interesting. But this over here on the side says “I am the real Season of the Devil” next to a picture of him playing.
Tim: I don’t remember it being a band name. I mean he wrote a bunch of stuff, so maybe it has to do with his poetry.
Lizzie: There is a quote from Malcolm X. And it has Earth Crisis lyrics. On the bottom, it has a pentagram on it, which is pretty cool. But I can’t believe his school let him do that. Like, allowing him to use the pentagram.
Tim: Yeah, it was a private school, so that’s odd. He looks so young in that one, playing the bass. His little tag there, too… We all used to go out tagging. I don’t know what that says.
Joey: It says “North”.
Tim: Yeah, yeah, he liked graffiti and tagging and all that he was big into that too.
Amal: Did you guys ever get in trouble?
Tim: No. I don’t remember him getting in any trouble. I didn’t get in trouble for that.
Lizzie: So there is a Glenview Hardcore comp that lists an “x-Firstborn” member on it, but apparently Firstborn didn’t want to participate in the Glenview Hardcore comp because it was a “get-rich-quick-scheme”. Do you remember that happening?
Tim: I own that comp because I heard about it years later and it had Firstborn on it. And I bought it off Ebay, like for 10 bucks. Yeah, it’s the same thing.
Joey: So Kay actually owns it as well.
Tim: Devin, I think, was on there with one of his bands.
Lizzie: Yeah, the song is called “Skate Trash Devil”. He wrote it himself.
Tim: I guess he was in Firstborn for a minute, you know, he wasn’t an original guy. He was always a fill-in guy. Yeah, I think he was in another band called Luke Skawalker.
Joey: Oh! That makes sense because Luke Skawalker is actually on that comp, I believe.
Tim: Yeah, Devin’s a super cool guy, nice guy. But he played guitar for a minute with us. I think we were supposed to be on that. But I think whoever it was, Pete or whoever didn’t get them the demo or the recording in time. That’s what I remember.
Lizzie: They didn’t want to feed into the “capitalist venture” of the compilation. [LAUGHS] That’s so dramatic.
Tim: [LAUGHS] No one got rich off of that thing.
Joey: Yeah, exactly.
Lizzie: So that was the Glenview Hardcore compilation. For some background, we’re very familiar with that scene because of Patrick’s bands. In fact, one of his bands is on the compilation before he was ever in it, Grinding Process. We were curious because on [Firstborn’s] Bandcamp, it says that you guys identify with Wilmette, but there are also mentions of Glenview and Evanston, too. Did you guys come from all over?
Tim: I mean, Pete’s from Wilmette. I’m from Glenview. Ryan’s from Wilmette, Adeet is from, I don’t know, Glenview maybe.
Kay: Adeet went to Glenbrook South. That’s where Patrick also went.
Tim: For a lot of the shows sometimes it’d be just “Chicago Hardcore” or Evanston, you know. A lot of times being from the suburbs wasn’t cool. But Pete was in charge of all that. He had all the connections, he got us all the shows. He was talking to a bunch of older hardcore guys. I never knew any of them but that’s how we got all the shows. He had the connections with all of those guys.
Lizzie: The funny thing is, Pete doesn’t actually talk a lot about his time in hardcore. I don’t think it’s intentional. I would love to talk to him because there are so many questions about this scene.
Tim: Yeah, I mean he’s huge for Chicago hardcore, that’s for sure.
Amal: Have you heard of the Anti-Matter zine? It’s an amazing hardcore zine on Substack, and the guy who runs it was in Texas is the Reason. I think he does a bit now for Thursday. He recently did an interview with Pete where he opens up about that kind of stuff. It’s a good read.
Tim: Yeah, I haven’t seen it. That’s online?
Joey: We can email it to you.
Tim: Even in interviews he doesn’t talk too much about hardcore? He should though.
Joey: Well he does in this one, and it’s a nice surprise.
Amal: Also in the book Where Are Your Boys Tonight? by Chris Payne, he goes into Arma and Racetraitor. Chris Guttierrez was also interviewed for that book.
Joey: I think it’s more that he doesn’t bring it up, but if someone is like, “Hey, talk about your hardcore roots,” he will.
Tim: Yeah, totally. He has nothing to be ashamed of with any of that.
Lizzie: No, not at all. Do you have any funny or interesting stories from when you were in Firstborn?
Tim: The funniest probably was that one show where we had to sell tickets and we didn’t sell a single one. And we had to go to the guy’s office and he yelled at us.
“The ticket stub I sent you was from our first professional show we played as Justice Coming at The Thirsty Whale. We were supposed to sell tickets in order to be able to play the show. It was a pay for play kind of place and us being hardcore kids we didn’t sell any and just showed up. I remember the owner of the club called us into his office to yell at us. It was pretty funny. We were allowed to play the show regardless and it was the first time being on a big stage with some lighting and production to it. Needless to say we were never asked back because of the low ticket sales.” -Emails with Tim, 11/24/24
Tim: I mean there are so many moments, like driving with Pete in his car.
Lizzie: Yes, that’s what Adeet told us. Pete drove the wrong way on a one-way street, seemingly for the fun of it.
Tim: In his Saab, and he hit the curb, and it fucked the car up, and I think some car was chasing us.
Lizzie: [LAUGHS] [Adeet] actually did tell a story about being in a car chase [after] that first Arma Angelus show. I won’t go into the details, but that was interesting.
Tim: There were a lot of interesting moments. We just had a lot of good times. I wish they didn’t end.
Joey: Adeet is actually still straight-edge. And so he was laughing about how when you’re a dumb kid, you get drunk and do dumb things, but they were doing all those dumb things while sober.
Tim: Yeah, totally.
Kay: So we talked about why you didn’t like Arma’s music, but why did you leave?
Tim: Pete had already started doing Fall Out Boy at the time, so that kind of took away from Arma Angelus. At that point in time, I had no control over any of it, and it was gonna end anyway. I just didn’t like the music. I didn’t like what was going on. I wanted to play Earth Crisis from 94’, 95’. I wanted to play that style, but everything was changing, and those guys wanted to evolve. I don’t really like change like that. I don’t remember how I did it, or who I told, but I did it. A few months later, I literally moved to Arizona. And I didn’t talk to anyone for forever. You know, [Pete] was the first guy I talked to when I moved back to the city.
Amal: And you left in 2002, right?
Tim: Yeah, I think so.
Joey: Okay. Okay. Do you recall why Pete changed the name from Novena to Arma Angelus at all? If there was any specific reason?
Tim: I don’t remember why. I just remember the conversation. So I was like, “What does that mean?” Apparently, it means “weapons of the angels” in Latin. I didn’t like it right away, I’m like, “Okay, that’s cool, I guess”.
Joey: Interesting.
Tim: Yeah, I just wanted to play.
Rachel: What was the transition from Firstborn to Arma Angelus like?
Tim: Firstborn ended when he quit that band. We carried on for a few more shows. I’m a year older than those guys, so I went to college, but we all stayed connected. Once I transferred colleges and I was going into the city, I went to Columbia for the last couple of years in Chicago. And I was living in Wilmette at the time. My grandpa had dementia, so I moved in with him, which was literally a block away from where Pete’s parents lived. I think he was going to like DePaul or something at the time.
Joey: Yeah he was.
Tim: So I called him up and said, “Hey, you want to start a band?” That’s how Arma started. Then we got together, and we figured out people like Dan lived super close to us. Adam and him had played in a band called Everlast. You guys have heard of them, right? We totally idolized them. When I first met Pete, he loved Graham, their bass player. He’d be copying his stage moves, and we’d be stage diving on his bed in his bedroom.
Joey: Aww.
Tim: We loved them. Ryan loved them too. We started Arma Angelus, having those two guys in the band, I thought, “Okay, it’s gonna be like Everlast”. But their tastes changed. So it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for personally, but I’m a team player and I wanted to play.
Joey: Right, right. And I feel like a lot of Fall Out Boy superfans that know that Arma Angelus was a thing, but they’re not super into hardcore and are definitely like, “What the hell is this?”
Tim: Yeah, I’ve read some of the things on YouTube, like, “I can’t believe that’s Pete singing”.
Lizzie: Honestly, what’s crazy is that as a FOB fan, I started listening to Arma and I like metal music and I think I know what YouTube upload you’re talking about. It has a picture of him on it, right?
Joey: Sleeplessness is Rest From Nightmares.
Tim: Karl did that cover, Andy’s friend.
Lizzie: So is that Pete on the cover? Cause it kind of looks like him.
Joey: But there’s no tattoos. I thought it was a girl.
Tim: That’s not a girl or Pete. I think that’s Karl, actually.
Joey: [LAUGHS] Oh, my bad.
Tim: Long hair, super skinny. Yeah, he made it. It was a bit disturbing too.
Joey: Yeah, I know right? Like, the inside has a murder scene, it’s crazy.
Tim: I don’t know how they came up with that or where it came from, but that all comes from Pete’s head.
Joey: Interesting. So obviously you weren’t a fan of the type of music that you were making in Arma Angelus. Did you ever write anything that you played, or did you just show up and play?
Tim: I would come up with drum beats, but, yeah, for that band, I did not really write any parts at all. A lot of that stuff probably would have required a lot more double bass than I was capable of or didn’t want to play. I could do some double bass, but it was not my thing. I did not like the blast beats and all that. That’s probably where that music was going, or would have gone if I would have been that type of drummer, you know? Andy would have been probably better for what they were trying to do back then.
Lizzie: Did you write a lot of drum parts and music for Firstborn? What did you exactly write?
Tim: Yeah, I helped with one song. Pete had two different songs and we put them together. I remember doing that with him with the lyrics. But as far as writing lyrics, that was all Pete. Pete and Ryan would come up with the parts.
Joey: So we talked a little bit about Joe being hazed. Just to clarify, since I had this question written next, you said that Pete did it, but did anyone else? Did you do it too?
Tim: I think probably everyone did a little bit, everyone probably was joking with him at one point or another. But [Pete] was the main perpetrator.
Joey: I just picture a very comedic scene, like they’re giving him wedgies and shit.
Tim: [LAUGHS] No, I never did that.
Lizzie: His memoir is very dramatic, and it’s questionable at some points. If you remember touring at all with Joe, according to his own memoir, he was very much a fanboy of the bands you guys were in. Do you remember anything about him, or what he was like as a band member or as a fan?
Tim: Yeah, he wasn’t really a band member at all he was a roadie on that tour. I know he filled in for Chris a couple of times. He wanted to be involved in hardcore, and he liked the band, I guess. He was out there helping us set up and tear down and all of that.
Amal: He was only 15, so much younger than the rest of Arma. How did you guys end up touring with a 15-year-old?
Tim: I have no clue. That wasn’t my decision. He was just Pete’s friend- I don’t even know why his parents let him go with us.
Lizzie: Joe said Pete convinced his parents to let Joe go.
Tim: If you guys remember, Fall Out Boy toured with that white van, the one that crashed. Do you remember that?
Lizzie: Yes, yes.
Tim: That white van was the van that my parents bought for Arma Angelus to tour in.
Lizzie: Wow.
Tim: Yeah, that was the same van. It didn’t have AC in it. We were driving in the summer to Florida, it was rough. Touring when you’re in a hardcore band and doing a long tour like that sucks. You don’t get paid. A lot of the shows we went to, they didn’t promote it. So there may be five people there. We got stiffed a bunch. You don’t get hotels or anything; we had to sleep in the van, or in people’s houses if they invited us over. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen the pictures from when we stayed in a girl’s dorm. Chris has a bunch of them on his Instagram.
Amal: [LAUGHS] Yes.
Tim: A bunch of women’s underwear and all of that. Yeah.
Joey: So we were actually talking about this last night. Arma Angelus had a LiveJournal, if you remember what that is.
Tim: I don’t remember that.
Joey: It was a blogging site. All the old Arma Angelus journal entries are mostly written by Pete. There are some from Adam and one from Chris. But there’s some funny things on there. I know it definitely talks about when you guys toured and went to Canada; that the inside of the van walls had ice forming due to the cold, and you’d have to shave it off. Chris had a LiveJournal as well. He posted a lot on there. and he also told the whole story of the “Panty Raid”.
Tim: Yeah. I’ll tell you. We were on tour, and we stayed at a sorority house. All the girls had gone home for Christmas. You know, we’re idiots. We stay there and we start going through all their drawers. Guys are finding vibrators and everything you can imagine. And then they start trying on their underwear. It was silly.
Joey: I think Chris said in his post that they designated one of the rooms the “masturbation room” or something like that.
Tim: I mean, I didn’t partake in that, [LAUGHS] but yeah, we found movies. The girls had “movies”, you know. I think some of them went in there to watch the movies.
Amal: I feel like this is a good segue into the next question: Do you have any funny stories about like touring with Arma? Chris and Pete in particular seem like they got up to interesting activities.
Tim: The funniest story is probably the “Panty Raid”. I mean, we did go to Canada; we opened for Hatebreed. People are really nice in Canada. We played CBGB twice.
Joey: Wait, twice?
Tim: Oh, yeah, I remember. Twice.
Joey: Around the same time?
Tim: No, two different times. The Syracuse New Year’s show, we played that a few times. We played Hellfest a couple of times too.
Joey: I can’t believe you played CBGB’s twice because the one CBGB show is very well known. There’s footage of it in the FOB bonus videos. But I don’t think anyone has ever documented the fact that there was another performance there.
Tim: Yeah, I’m almost 100% sure. Chris would confirm that. You should ask him.
Lizzie: Okay, I guess that my next question is relevant because you mentioned how Arma wasn’t getting promoted at all and you were on like two different record labels. How did you get signed? And then, no one was putting in the effort to promote you. I feel like that’s a failure on their part. Someone’s getting fired.
Tim: Happy Couples Never Last. I think that guy was out of Indiana, and pretty much I think he just paid for us to record. That was the extent of that. The next label was Eulogy. New Found Glory was on that label before. We all signed that. I still have that contract, by the way.
Lizzie: Oh, wow. Pete said that he made his dad look at the contract because his dad’s a lawyer.
Tim: Yeah. They promoted somewhat. But I always thought it should have been promoted a little more than that. We didn’t get any tour support. They paid for it to be recorded, but I think they retained all the rights and they didn’t give us any money to go on the road or anything.
Lizzie: Yeah, I know that because I know that Chris was fighting to get Sleeplessness is Rest From Nightmares on streaming. He finally did that two or three years ago. It was always on Apple Music, but I guess on Spotify he was having problems because of legal stuff. But that makes sense.
Tim: Yeah. I don’t know where Arma Angelus falls in Chicago hardcore. I don’t even know what people even think about it. You guys would know more than me.
Joey: It’s mostly known because of Pete’s connection and talked about mostly by Fall Out Boy fans. So that’s why most of the comments on the videos will be from Fall Out Boy fans asking, “What the fuck is this?”
Tim: Pete got so huge. It’s mainly big because of that. Otherwise, it’s kind of whatever, you know?
Joey: We find appeal in it though, at least for me. I mean, some of us were already into hardcore. Lizzie, you like some hardcore. But, for me, I was not into hardcore at all. For you guys, it was like, “Oh, I listened to a Hatebreed record and that’s where I learned about hardcore,” whatever. Arma Angelus was my Hatebreed. And so it was cool to me in that sense that it may not be my favorite music, but it introduced me to the hardcore scene.
Tim: We actually recorded that album a couple of days before 9/11 happened. I remember that because I went down to Boston to record my drum parts. That’s always what you record first. Then I left the day before September 11th. So I actually flew out of Boston into New York out of that same airport that the guys flew out of to bomb the towers.
Joey: Wow.
Lizzie: Crazy. I know Chris and Pete have the whole story about them being stuck in a hotel room at that time. Pete said that he never told his parents that he was going out on tour, so they thought he was dog-sitting in Chicago when that happened. Pete’s parents didn’t even know that he was out there. I don’t know why he had to lie at that ripe age of 20-something.
Tim: I don’t remember that at all.
Joey: We find a lot of stuff on the Wayback Machine. Obviously Firstborn didn’t have a website or anything, but Arma did. Arma’s old website wasn’t saved very well and is basically broken, so we want to know more about it. Do you remember anything about the website?
Tim: I don’t even remember using a website.
Joey: Well you did. [LAUGHS]
Lizzie: You were originally hosted on Happy Couples Never Last’s website. Then there was this Chicago hardcore website Arma used to be hosted out of.
Tim: All of that stuff would have been Pete. I didn’t even have a computer back then. He was on AOL chat rooms. He was always on that. LiveJournal or whatever- message board stuff. Yeah, that was all him.
Joey: All right.
Tim: Yeah. My first cell phone was a Sidekick, in 2006 maybe. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t have any of that stuff.
Lizzie: Do you still have any Arma merch left over?
Tim: I might have a hoodie. I know Chris made some stuff for the Catcade. He sent me one. I have stickers. I have unopened CDs.
Lizzie: Oh, you should send us pictures.
Tim: Do you guys own those CDs?
Lizzie: I have one CD. I have Sleeplessness.
Joey: They’re not easy to come by.
Tim: I can send you pictures of all that. The contract, too.
Lizzie: Yes, the contract! That would be cool.
Tim: Yeah, that was before we thought about money or any of that stuff. We just would have signed anything, you know?
Rachel: You haven’t spoken to Pete in a while, but have you gotten the chance to keep in touch with any other Arma members?
Tim: Chris I talk to every once in a while. I talk to Dan Binaei. Adam… I haven’t talked to him in a long time. Have you guys talked to Adam at all?
Joey: No.
Lizzie: Adam is an English teacher now.
Joey: We weren’t able to find a reliable contact for him.
Tim: Yeah, honestly, I’d love to talk to Pete, but I don’t know where his head’s at- If he wants to. Not like we had a falling out or anything at all.
Joey: Just based on the types of things he and Patrick have said recently relating to hardcore, they have been going back to the roots of all of that stuff. One of my favorite parts of FOBAT has been reconnecting people somewhat. Old band members, bands affiliated with that band, and then band members between those bands. It’s pretty cool to see. It’s crazy how much just reaching out and saying “hi” does.
Tim: Honestly, I never thought I’d be talking about Firstborn ever.
Lizzie: We’re talking to Patrick currently. He was like, “You should really get in touch with the people who were in Firstborn”. He said that was Pete’s really big band, almost as if it was as popular as Arma Angelus. That really intrigued us, so that’s mainly why we went searching for you all.
Tim: I never wanted Firstborn to end, you know?
Lizzie: Yeah.
Joey: We won’t hold you for too much longer. So, the Firstborn demo that you sent the pictures of- you have that still, right?
Tim: The original pictures?
Joey: Yeah, the one with the green cover.
Tim: Oh, yeah. Where Pete’s lying down on the ground. We played the church in Glenview.
Joey: Is that the audio from that online? It’s not available anywhere publicly, and we’ve been looking.
Tim: Isn’t it on Bandcamp?
Joey: No, that is something different.
Tim: That’s something different? Because I thought it was four songs from those group of songs.
Lizzie: No, I’m pretty sure. I can look at the first one. So it’s an LP that was unreleased, it has 11 tracks.
Tim: Some of those songs were on the EP, if not all of them, are on there.
Joey: They are, but are they the exact same recordings, or different recordings of the same songs?
Tim: I think they’re the same. I have it somewhere, but it’s on tape, so I don’t know how good it’s gonna sound. Never had a vinyl. I wish we had vinyl. I have a bunch of VHS tapes. I got to go through them and send them to you- a lot of them are just us skateboarding.
Joey: We would love that.
Tim: I’ll see what I have, but I know Ryan probably has the original master of that demo.
Amal: You kind of touched on this a bit, but the Arma Angelus LiveJournal was pretty dramatic towards the end. It’s still online if you ever want to look at it.
Tim: I’ve never read any of that.
Joey: It’s interesting! [LAUGHS]
Amal: So you were around for the break-up of the band? Was it tense?
Tim: No, it was my own thing. They didn’t know how I was feeling. Certain people in the band were a bit of control freaks at the time.
Like I said, I had no control. I had no say in anything- the way I wanted it to go. It wasn’t my thing. I didn’t want to be involved with it at that point. And Pete had already started doing Fall Out Boy, so at that point in time I was a little pissed about that. Not anymore at all. But back then I was because I wanted our thing to be the main focus. I was 100% on board with what we were doing. I wanted to keep doing it, but he started branching off. It took time away from the main band. I could see the writing was on the wall, and it was only a matter of time. So I was just like, “I can’t do it anymore”. I needed to get out of Chicago, basically.
Amal: That’s totally fair.
Tim: There was no animosity or arguing or anything. I don’t even know who I told or if I told someone. But I think I just said I was gonna move. And that was it. He had already, like I said, started Fall Out Boy, so I figured he’s probably happy. Back then, Andy and him, I remember we were on tour, and Weezer had just released “Buddy Holly”. I remember they were all singing it on the bus, going crazy.
They loved it, right? Back then I was like, “What the hell’s going on here, guys?” I was not into it back then. I can appreciate it now, but back then, it was hardcore or nothing, you know?
Lizzie: How do you feel about ska music?
Tim: I was never a fan of ska music at all.
Lizzie: [LAUGHS] A lot of guys, including Pete, in the hardcore scene would dunk on ska music. Patrick was and is super into it.
Tim: I don’t think it sucks. It’s just not my thing. I know those guys were listening to that stuff all the way back then. That’s why Andy’s the perfect drummer for that band because sure, he loves metal, but he also loves punk and all that other stuff. Weezer, New Found Glory, all that stuff.
Joey: All right, well, that was our last question. Did anyone else want to say anything?
Amal: How the hell did Fall Out Boy get your parent’s van?
Tim: After the [Arma Angelus] tour, I think our van was broken down for a little bit. We just gave it to [Pete]. My dad bought it for us. It was cheap. I don’t even think it was a thousand bucks- it had holes in it. We had to repair it. My parents just gave it to Pete because it was just sitting on the street, and I didn’t even live there at the time.
Amal: Why did you record in Boston?
Tim: Because we had a good opportunity to record with Adam. I don’t know why we didn’t go with Sean again. We should have. but, he was in Killswitch Engage. That was a big deal at the time. Pete set all that up.
Lizzie: I found it so fascinating that Pete was younger than everyone in many of the bands he played with. Was that just him being good at being social and networking?
Tim: Yeah, it was all networking. He would go to a show in New York for a day and not tell his parents, or just go to Indiana to see Birthright. Like I said, he had all the connections. He met other people all around the United States and even in Europe for that matter. That’s how we were able to even go on tour and get on some of the shows we got.
Joey: Wow, Europe! God, I would have hated to have been his parents. Well, I think that’s it. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It makes our day.
Tim: Yeah, absolutely. You guys are all really so nice. Have a good night.