What guitar equipment do you use live? Sorry about this question but I'm a guitar player so I have to ask...

Live I play Rickenbacker guitars through Marshall 100 watt amps. I love Ricks because they are so percussive and sharp in tone. It can sound like a washboard, it can sound like a piercing treble laser or it can just sound Byrdsy and 60's chiming. It also allows me to cut through Ian's sound which is much thicker, fuller and heavy. He and Joe function like a wall of rhythm and I kind of slice in and out. In the studio I've started using a Fender Twin Reverb. Also every now and then I'll try an effect box, like an MXR distortion or a wah-wah.

I know it's hard to pick something out of a body of work you've been so involved with but do you have a favourite Fugazi track or LP? Feel totally free to skip this one though...

Not really. It's kind of hard for me to judge the songs or the records. it's like judging a body part or internal organ - it just feels like an awkward undertaking to me. That said, I'm proud of our ability to commit to the moment live and I think our next record has some cool texture to it.

My personal favourite is Red Medicine; I guess I come from a noise rock background though, whereas people I know who love more traditional hardcore prefer the earlier LPs. Was there a conscious plan of "Let's do something different" when it came to making Red Medicine?

Red Medicine was kind of an effort to stop treating the studio like a doctor's appointment: unpleasant but necessary. That time we decided to produce it ourselves and just try to expand the palette a bit, including more practise tape material, 8 track demos, just sratify it more geologically. We also recorded each song alone, one at a time so that they would sound distinct from one another and not all cut from the same cloth of sound.

Could you tell me a little about the lyrics to Do You Like Me as they've always intrigued me...

The lyrics to Do You Like Me are kind of a collage of 3 separate ideas. It starts like a love song then veers into a comment on prison construction as growth economy in the USA then derails into a fantasy about this defense contractor's headquarters burning down (Lockheed and Martin Marietta had just merged to create a defense industry titan of terrifying proportion and they opened their headquarters in nearby Bethesda), then the song just spirals back into itself.

What's the new LP like; is it carrying on from Red Medicine or have you taken some kind of radical departure? Any idea when it will be released yet?

The new album will be called End Hits and it will be out in April if all goes well. It's got 13-14 songs on it and I'm not sure how to describe it it's just a continuation of what we've been doing. I really have no concept if it's a departure or not. You decide.

How's the proposed long form film coming along?

The movie we're working on with filmmaker Jem Cohen is very close to completion. It's been in the making since the band began almost and will have 10 years worth of footage in every format from Super 8 to 35mm featuring us playing live, recording, hanging out etc. All the music in it is unique to the film and we recorded a lot of soundtrack for it. It will be sold as a video and with luck we will also strike a filmprint for theatrical showings. It should be about 2 hours long. Right now it's over 3 so we've got some editing yet to do.

This is a question from everyone I know - are you going to come and play live in the UK in the near future? A friend of mine saw you at Brixton Academy last time you came over and is still talking about it 3 years later...

We would like to come back and play but right now we haven't figured out yet what we're going to do. Our drummer is still in the throes of new fatherdom so we're just seeing how things play out. Hopefully we'll do some stuff later this year but really we don't know yet.

What kind of music do you like at the moment? I'm intrigued to know who you would class as influences on Fugazi's music as I can hear traces of all sorts of stuff going on in there; free jazz, hardcore, Public Image Ltd style new wave and Sonic Youth also...

We are all 4 of us voracious music listeners and we cover the full range. Local bands have always been our most immediate influence and inspiration from Bad Brains in the early days to ban ds like Cram-Tech, Cranium and the mAKE-UP now. But pick anything at random and someone in this band will be into it. I like all the stuff you mentioned. We're into the blender approach.

Are you surprised at the levels of "success" you've achieved (in terms of influence) or the amount of time you've been together?

We don't really think in terms of success so much as more practical issues like "can we pull off this tour?", "can we get our record out?" etc. On that level yeah we're pleased because we've done what we set out to do which was to make music on our own terms, to distribute records on our own terms and to tour and play concerts on our terms. I'm shocked that after being in so many bands that lasted barely 9 months we've managed to drag this one on for 10 years but I think it's testimony to our friendship and our ability to talk to and trust each other.

OK; last question: could you tell us a bit about some of the causes you've done benefit shows for recently? We all have a great deal of respect for you playing so many benefits and raising the profile of causes people may not have heard of or had the chance to learn about; not to mention keeping ticket prices down (never more than $5 a show in the USA).

Yeah here in DC we've only ever played benefit shows and the last couple of groups we worked with were: Emmaeus Services For The Aged which basically lends assistance to needy citizens in town who have been allowed to fall through the cracks of our pathetic social services, and The Latin American Youth Center which is a youth center for kids in my neighborhood who also are not served by the city which is more intent on routing and deporting illegal immigrants than taking care of people who live and work here. We tend to focus our support on grassroots organizations who are more immediately benefited by the kind of money we can raise and who are actually working for concrete, demonstrable change in their immediate environments.

Thanks Guy....
Well, that's it. Hope I didn't blather on too much. I enjoyed your questions and thanks for the interest and support. All the best and good luck. Guy

You can get in touch with Fugazi by post at: 3819 Beecher St. NW Washington, DC 20007

This interview was first published in Hee Haw fanzine

See also:
Ian Mackaye interview
Dischord Records interview

interview and photos by Chris Summerlin
Fugazi website