Unwritten Law: Seein' red no more

Unwritten Law saves itself from post-success turmoil

By Mike Prevatt

Steve Morris is having a Fugazi moment. The guitarist of the San Diego-based punk/pop quintet Unwritten Law is talking about his band's current, three-week-long national tour--priced at $10 a ticket for most of the stops--and gets wind of how some modern rock buzz bands are charging fans $30 or more at theater-sized gigs.

"Really?! Goddamn, that's a fucking ripoff!" says Morris. "Thirty dollars to see fucking Interpol? Are you kidding me? I'm not saying [the band] is greedy, but that's just fucking lame. If you ever pay $30 to see Unwritten Law, come [backstage] and kick my ass."

Perhaps Morris' tirade is better understood in light of Unwritten Law's current tour. Fresh from having completed the recording of its sixth album, Here's to the Mourning, the band decided to hit the road to not only freshen up before the album's release--set for February--but to remind fans and gig-goers that the band is alive and well.

It's been 2 1/2 years since Unwritten Law last toured, and in that time, a lot has changed for the band--mostly because of its new label, Lava (a subsidiary of Atlantic and Warner Music), and the success of its 2002 hit single, "Seein' Red," which was the No. 1 song on modern rock radio stations for four weeks. That drove sales of its Elva album to the 400,000 mark. Apparently, that wasn't enough for its then-label Interscope, which found itself with a new president and, according to Morris, didn't properly promote a second single.

"From a marketing and business standpoint, that's just stupid, you know what I mean?" he says. "They were making money, and then they were like, uh, we don't need anymore! So when our contract was up, we were just sitting there thinking, please drop us, please drop us! They dropped us, and we got a new record deal with a better label, another signing bonus and a fresh start. I don't want to be on a label that doesn't give a fuck--I want a label that actually cares."

After that, the band began writing for another album, when it hooked up with Lava. Around that time, its manager, Bill Silva, worked a wrong number to the band's advantage and scored an acoustic gig for MTV. Lava ended up releasing that performance in 2003 as Music in High Places. "All that we did was record what we do late at night when we're drunk and on drugs--seriously!" says Morris.

Now that Unwritten Law had a label backing it, it began making a new studio album in earnest. However, new issues arose. Founding drummer Wade Youman left the band, replaced by Tony Palermo (formerly of the Jealous Sound). The band also changed management. And its least favorite song from the recording sessions, "Save Me," was Lava's first choice for the kickoff single.

"We ended up having nine or 10 vocal versions and four or five musical versions of that song, and we literally got to the point where [we] didn't even fucking know which one was good anymore," says Morris. "So the record company and our manager were like, `Why don't we bring in [songwriter] Linda Perry to shed some light on the song, and hear someone else's point of view?' We were like, cool, gave her the song, she came up with the chorus part and we were like, fuck, that's cool! It was fresh and new to us, and it sounded the best at the time."

Not surprisingly, Unwritten Law is using its current tour to preview "Save Me" and other tracks from Here's to the Mourning, which Morris describes as surprisingly upbeat given the tumult before and at the start of its recording.

"By the end, the album itself is a testimony of what we were doing at that time, and it kind of came out with a happier vibe," says Morris. "It might seem like there's a lot of angst on the record, but in the end it's more of a celebration, I guess. We're in a lighter place now."