Interview - Joey Cape of Lagwagon - 19th January 2026

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19 Jan

Bridget Herlihy talks to Joey Cape from Lagwagon about touring and the 30th anniversary of their fan-favourite third album, Hoss.

Time is fleeting. Just ask Joey Cape, frontman of legendary American punk band Lagwagon. Formed in 1990 in California, the raucous quintet have to date released nine studio albums, a live album, an EP and several compilations of B-sides and demos. November 2025 marked 30 years since the release of the band’s third album, Hoss, an LP that has remained a firm fan favourite over the last three decades. This significant milestone is being aptly celebrated with a tour that is set to reach the Antipodes in early February, with shows in Auckland and Wellington.

Regular visitors to New Zealand, Lagwagon have toured here three times in the last six years alone. Cape recalls Aotearoa fondly, but is amused that he doesn’t recall the exact years the band has visited. One tour that has stuck in his memory was in March 2020, when the band ‘nearly became Australians’ after almost being stranded there when international travel shut down. Yet the band managed to scramble and make it home, with Cape unexpectedly returning to his childhood hometown of Santa Barbara, where he chose to settle. Despite being winter, it's a balmy day in the American Riviera when I caught up with Cape about Lagwagon reaching another significant anniversary and their forthcoming tour.

Lagwagon - Hoss 30th Anniversary Tour

Bridget: It may be winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but it looks like a beautiful summer’s day where you are in Santa Barbara.

Joey: It's just beautiful. I'd been 20-something years up in San Francisco. I immediately fell in love with this place again. It's like the Riviera with beaches. It's not affordable, but I managed to sort of, you know, pull a trick off. I've managed to be here for a while. It's really great.

Bridget: How are things? You and the band are about to go on tour again to celebrate Hoss turning 30; are you keen to travel outside of the US and have a change of scene?

Joey: We're doing our best to set records over here. It's kind of embarrassing. I mean, what's the truth? What's not true? What's real and what's not real is a very, very difficult thing to find in our culture anyway, and maybe in a lot of cultures. I'm doing my best. I try to be politically active as much as I can, and my daughter's really into it. You know, go to the marches and things like that. The No Kings marches and things like that, but it really does feel like half of the country is drinking this Kool-Aid, you know?

I will say, really recently there's some positive change happening. Some of the house of cards is starting to fall. The bunch of psychos are turning on each other.

But it's hard to give credit to the left as well here. I mean, politicians in general… I don't think I've felt differently about this since the ‘80s. There's no great white or great black or great hope. There's no great hope coming, in my opinion. It's just a big messed up thing we've gotten ourselves into. It's too complex.

Bridget: Fortunately, you will get a respite with Lagwagon’s forthcoming shows in New Zealand and Australia.

Joey: I think the last time we were there was in 2023. That's what someone told me earlier. I can never remember or keep track. I mean, it's once every two years. That's great, though. We're thrilled. The truth of the matter is the band goes where people ask us to go. It's always been the same when we've been offered a tour in Australasia. There's nobody in my band that's not going to go, ‘Fuck yeah, let's go’! We love it there.

Bridget: It gets a little hot in February, but it's still just awesome.

Joey: We all grew up in California, so beach towns are pretty much a win-win for us. In Australia, they've got all those beach towns that just talk with a funny accent.

Bridget: Having New Zealand included in this run of Australaisan shows is fantastic – especially when so many artists seem to be bypassing us now, even though we are only a couple of hours away from Australia, which is likely due to the sheer cost of touring at the moment.

Joey: I feel like it's strange that bands do that, because you're all the way in that part of the world. If we're all the way there, we can kill two birds with one stone. If we can go we generally attach that to the tour, and we always have a great time. The thing that confuses me is when we go to Western Australia but we don't go to Jakarta or Bali. We never go to Indonesia, and that's, like, only two hours away by plane. It's right there. And we've gotten offers to play there, but we've never done that. I'm not sure why.

Bridget: You will need to make sure that happens at some point, both for yourselves and the fans. The more places you can visit and play the better, surely?

Joey: We'd better hurry up. I know!

Bridget: A key factor that must make it easier for you to tour is that you don't have large stage setups to move around.

Joey: Yeah, our setup is pretty simple. We play on rented gear. We bring our guitars and the drummer brings a few things, and I bring a microphone. It's pretty basic stuff, otherwise there is so much baggage to bring. It's kind of a cool thing about the level we're at; we've always been able to do those things. I've said this many, many times, but we just go where people ask us to go. If people ask us, we go, and it's fantastic. The energy's there and the audience is into it. If there's a synergy and it's active, then I don't need anything else. That's it. That's what makes it.

Bridget: How does it feel to have Lagwagon’s third album, Hoss, turn 30 years old?

Joey: Well, obviously there's a little part of us that knows we're getting old. It's our third record.

I'm not sure I feel much of anything about it. It's making me think about the record a little more. I'm talking about it a lot now to people. It's a record that we made and people liked it. Our fans connected with it somehow more than other records. It's nice to be able to do it.

When bands started doing album tours, we kind of rejected the idea for a long time. Then there was a point where I was like, ‘Let's just try it’. And we actually really enjoyed it. So we've done a few of our albums over the years, and Hoss was, I think, the first one. We played these little club shows, like tiny ones, and played Hoss in its entirety. It was super fun. It is an album that is represented larger than any other album in our setlist, generally speaking. We may have nine songs from Hoss in a 23-song set, and every other album pales in comparison. It's just got a lot of tunes on it that work for a live show. So it's a good one for that.

Bridget: Why do you think it has potentially resonated with the fans more than the other albums?

Joey: You know, I don't know. I have theories, but I say this a lot too… I feel like I've done so many interviews, I feel like every time I'm talking, I go, ‘How many times are you going to say that, Joey?’ Our fans are the people who love this band. I don't even like to call them fans… people who follow our band are really loyal and dedicated, and they understand my band a lot of the time. They understand it better than I do, because I don't sit around thinking about myself that much. I don't want to… it's hard enough to do the interviews, to be honest. But yeah, the fans know. So generally, wherever we play, certain songs just work better live. I mean, sometimes the band gets really bored, and we have to throw in some [different] stuff. We have to be happy, we have to be excited, or the show's going to stink. But there's certain songs that are just always going to be in the setlist, and a few of them are on Hoss. No matter what, you keep thinking, ‘God, we've been playing this song for 30 years. When are we going to play it one night, and everybody's going to be like, “Nah”?’

Bridget: Some musicians must get so sick of playing the ‘hits’ that they're so well known for. But you're absolutely right. The band's got to be enjoying it, otherwise the performance can lack energy, and it’s obvious to the audience.

Joey: Well, it is two parts. It's what people react to, so the synergy is better. The synergy is the whole thing that makes the show good. Everybody's got to be having a good time. So that means we've got to dig it too. And lucky for us, I think the ones that like the sound of violins… We can't really do a set without playing violins on Hoss. That's always in our set. It's just always in our set. But I don't know why… it doesn't bore me. I don't think it bores any of us. I think we play it, and everybody's like, right on!

But there are definitely songs that we'll play, play, play, and then one day somebody will just say it. Everybody's thinking it, but one guy will be brave enough to go ‘man, I'm over this song’. You've got to love that guy. But we work it out. We keep ourselves happy, and we keep the set exciting. That's the main thing.

Bridget: Will you have a specific format for the set during the shows in Australia and New Zealand? Will the album be played in its entirety from start to finish, or is it more of a case of what the band feels like on the night?

Joey: It depends. But generally we're playing Hoss. The last song on that record is called Ride the Snake. It's a really slow, droning song about heroin addiction. It's kind of doomy. From there, you've got to go to a banger right after that song. That kind of sets up where to go and what to do. And then there's songs [from the other albums] that we would close with most nights, because they just sound like the last song on the set. It's fun, because when you play a whole record, you have all the other records to choose from. You can make this kind of little mini ‘best of’ kind of set.

And then when we get to the tour and someone says, ‘Maybe we could do this’. And so as long as we know it, we play it. We know a lot of our songs. Ultimately, it is whatever keeps it exciting!