Some bands change members more often than most people change their underwear. There are bands that have gradually replaced everyone but the lead singer, making for a de facto solo project. There are others that have replaced every member including the frontperson and continue to soldier on, a move that I like to refer to as “pulling a Menudo.” But for Bad Cop Bad Cop, a band that had long had four big personalities and three different singer/songwriters (Stacey Dee, Linh Le, and Jennie Cotterill), a single band member change is a seismic shift. With the departure of Cotterill and the addition of Alex Windsor, the feminist powerhouse traded a skilled singer/songwriter for a badass guitarist.
Still, despite the change, on the band’s fourth album Lighten Up—out September 19 as one of the first collaborations in the new partnership between Hopeless Records and Fat Wreck Chords—Bad Cop Bad Cop are still a collective of four big personalities who work together, with no one member standing out as the primary creative force.
We sat down with guitarist and vocalist Stacey Dee to discuss the new album and the changing face of Bad Cop Bad Cop.
All right, so you were talking about your new album, Lighten Up, which I’ve been listening to. I really like it. You’ve gone through a lineup change with this album. A lot of bands change lineups, and it’s not a big deal. But I’ve always thought of Bad Cop Bad Cop is really four people working equally with really big personalities, and putting that all into the music. Has the lineup change made a big difference when you were making this album?
I do think that the lineup change has made a difference. We, of course, are missing some of Jenny’s songwriting and singing, but we have added a great force of nature with Alex in terms of guitar playing and writing. (On) this record, we actually really got to make it together, as opposed to being separated and recording without each other in the room. This was a record where we actually really worked together on every single bit of it. It’s awesome.
You said in in a statement that was in the press release we got that this was the first album where you got to do everything you wanted to do. In that sense, would you call this your favorite record that you made?
Yes, so much. This was the first time I had (middle) fingers in the air going, ‘I don’t care what anybody else thinks about it. I don’t care what anybody else is doing. All I give a fuck about is this our band, our project, our shit.’ I used to really give a fuck what everybody that we worked with would say to us or want us to do. And it made it not as original and authentic. I think that this record really is our best authentic selves, and that’s awesome.
It definitely seems like a more personal album in a lot of ways than some of the things you’ve done before as well. Would you say that?
I don’t know if you know much about my band, or our stories, or even my story, but I went through this massive life change. It’s coming up on 10 years now, and after I made the life change, and I found a real, positive, happy life, I was scared to touch on some of the things that were in my past that made my life miserable and sad and scary. So I wrote a lot of very powerful songs and songs that were unapologetically strong because I had to be, but this record, I was finally strong enough (and) enough time had passed where I was able to go back and touch on some of the things that made me be unapologetically strong.
When I got the album, I saw that the last song was called “Johnny Appleseed,” and my first thought was, it would be cool if that was a Joe Strummer cover, but I’m sure it can’t be. They wouldn’t do that. That song requires, like, a flute and a violin and all that. I’m sure it’s not that. And it was, and it was great cover. I’m a big Joe Strummer fan. What made you want to single that one out?
I just love that song so, so, so, so, so, so, so much. I mean, it’s one of my favorite songs ever, and when we were recording the record, (at) the last minute I go, “I don’t think that we have the whole record yet.” I know we’ve never done a cover—Well, we did a “Crowd” (by Operation Ivy) cover many, many years ago for a comp, and we did a sublime cover for a comp—but never something for our own personal records. And I was like, ‘I think we could do it,’ and we did it our way. We didn’t try to do it exactly like them because you can’t; that song’s perfect. But to do it our way, I thought, was really cool.
Even going into singing it, Johnny Carey, who we sang the record with, I was like, “OK, let me go outside and get see if I can channel Joe to come in here and give it my best Joe impression.” And he goes, “I don’t know if we want to do that. Where’s Stacey in all of this? You love this song, and I think Joe would would love it if you did it your own way vocally as well.’ And so I was like, “All right.” I just started going down the path with it and, God, I just love that song so much.
Alex didn’t play lead guitar on it. One of our best friends, AJ Mejia, he played the lead on it, and was really great to get him to play on a song, because he’s been touring with us since the very, very beginning. He’s been our tech and has toured with us all over the world. And then my boyfriend, he played the acoustic guitar at the end. He was just sitting there fucking around with it, and it just was this perfect blend of AJ playing the lead and the acoustic guitar that I was like, “What was that? Save that.” And we had it. I was like, “That’s gotta be the end.”
Then, at the very end, you hear the bees buzzing in my backyard, and you hear my little kitty, Hammy. Hammy made the record. After such a personal record, and with, like, us begging humanity to try to find some of the good stuff in life and not just focus on all this, it just felt like that was such a good reminder. That song, it’s like, if you want the good stuff, quit killing all the bees, man! It’s a cry. And I thought it was just a wonderful way to wrap the record up and have the whole thing make sense.
I’m also a big underground rap fan, and I always love to see rap and rock artists come together. And I love 2Mex. So I was really glad to see that collaboration on the album. How did that collaboration come about?
I’m so happy to hear that you’re an underground hip hop fan, because I am as well. I grew up, I would say, listening to more underground hip hop than punk, when I was in my early teens and stuff. I’m about to be 50, and hip-hop just had its 50-year anniversary. So I really have come up with that as a it was a new genre music, and I was around for it. One of my best friends growing up is a guy named Noel DeMello. He goes by Deeskee. And Deeskee had created a whole network called LA to the Bay and was making hip hop in the trailer park I grew up in in Half Moon Bay, California, in the late 80s, early 90s. I’ve got a picture of him, Dee, at one of my dance parties at the trailer park rec hall. But anyways, so Deeskee, he moved down to LA before I did. And then when I I moved to LA in 2006, when he found out I was in town, he was like, “Get up here. I’m going to get you working. I need to make sure that you stay out of trouble.”
So I got up there, and I started singing on tons of underground hip hop records and a lot of Grim Image stuff. It was 2Mex; it was The Visionaries; we had a group together called The Returners, which was 2Mex, Die (Young), Deeskee, and I, the four of us that put out a record. And then Noel and I started a project called Knives and Gasoline. I even moved my little brother into the house. So my brother lived with 2Mex, and so it was just big family stuff. And over the years, we’ve done different things together. I sang on different things for them.
And then Alex (2Mex) has got a lot of health issues going on, but his perspective in it all is just still so positive and so wonderful. I’d been going over to see him and hang out and make sure that everything was going OK with him. And he was like, I want you to sing on this song with me for one of his records that he just put out, Hang On, Alex. It’s a song with Ceschi from Codefendants, 2Mex, and I on Alex’s record Hang On, Alex.
And then I really wanted him to do “Note to Self” because what a statement when you’re looking at a shortened life and all that kind of stuff. How do you still stay positive when it could just tear you completely apart. And so I was like, ‘OK, so here’s the thing.’ And he was like, ‘I got, got it.’ He can’t really see, so he memorized the whole thing. It’s what he does now. He just memorizes all of it. And he laid it down for us right then and there. And I just thought that’s so great.
And my boyfriend, Michael, he produced our record, and he was like, ‘You should be like, “This is 2Mex,”‘ but instead, he goes, “Hi, I’m Troy McClure.” And I just laughed my ass off. And I go, “That has to stay!” Blood Flows Red on the Highway and The Man Who Wouldn’t Die. So fucking great. Yeah, so we’ve just been fucking family for years and years. Last 15 years or 18 years I’ve been in LA, I’ve been working with 2Mex and all of those dudes. It’s been pretty great.
This is one of the first records to migrate over from Fat Wreck to Hopeless Records as part of the new partnership. Did that affect the way the album was made?
It didn’t affect the way the album was made at all because when the album was made, we were still on regular Fat Wreck Chords, and so, quite honestly, like I was saying earlier, when I was like, “I can’t care if Mike’s gonna like this. I can’t care if anybody’s gonna like this. I just need to push through and believe in us,” and all that kind of stuff. So when I finally showed Mike the record, he said, “Fuck you for making the best record of your life without my help,” which I thought was pretty fucking cool. And then he loved the record, and Erin, they all think it’s our best record, and I completely and totally agree with them.
And when they put us in the deal going over to Hopeless, that Hopeless was to work this record, Mike has told me that he asked Louis for a favor to really make sure that this record gets a shot. And so Hopeless has been great. Their entire team has been wonderful.
The only thing that happened was that, because of the merger, I mean, the record could have come out last October, and then it was going to come out in February, and then it was going to come out in April, and then it was going to be out for July, our last tour. But it didn’t happen. I was like “Guys, we may only get a single out,” and that’s what happened. The single came out the day our tour started. But people were so stoked on it that even at our first show, when we started playing it, people were singing it. That was really very cool. That was the only thing.
But the Hopeless team has been fantastic. We just did a little acoustic set at the Vans Warped Tour, and their whole team came, Louis came, and I got to finally meet him in person, and all the rest of the crew, and they’ve just been wonderful. It’s just been great.
As we’re talking now, we’re about, it’s about a month, I think, until the record comes out. Is that right?
A month and a half about, yeah.
What’s next for the band? Now I know you’ve got some tour dates scheduled, right?
Yes, next is we leave for an East Coast tour that starts on the 23rd of September. The record comes out on September 19, so it’ll actually be our record release tour, but on the East Coast. And then after that, we’re home for a couple weeks, and then we go right back out to Europe to do a headline tour in Europe. So it’ll be great to just keep working.
So that’s all the questions I had. Was there anything else you wanted to plug or mention that I didn’t go over?
I think that this is just our favorite record, and we love it so much, and we hope you love it too, and that’s it.
Lighten Up is out tomorrow, and you can preorder it from Fat Wreck Chords. Follow Bad Cop Bad Cop on Facebook and Instagram for future updates.
Photo Credit: Liz Wiltshire
