Tony Hajjar and Jim Ward (Sparta)
November 2006
Denver

Through the success of previous musical incarnations, going through the industry wringer via label switcheroos and corporate mergers, and a spectrum of personal ups and downs, the members of Sparta have survived lifetimes of experience. Not to mention the exchange of one guitarist (founding member Paul Hinojos) for another (former Engine Down player Keeley Davis). It is at this point that they seem to have come to a climax, a point of balance where their abilities and artistry have become able to effectively channel what they've been through in life. For with their new album Threes (released in October on Hollywood Records), Sparta marks its metamorphosis from a band into musicians—artists serving not an image, an end product, or audience expectations, but bowing to the craft of words and music and the genius to put it all together. Two members of the acclaimed rock band took time out from their first tour in two years to look back at the personal and professional experiences that brought them to the Sparta of today.

TONY HAJJAR

The launch of Threes out into the world held extra significance for Sparta's drummer Tony Hajjar. A short film entitled Eme Nakia is included in special editions of the album and was played in theaters around the country. Eme Nakia is based on Hajjar's life; specifically, the death of his mother after the family escaped Lebanon's civil war in the early 80's and relocated to El Paso, Texas. The decision behind allowing the most private details of one's life to go out into the world is something many artists practice every day, but it's still a move to be lauded for the courage and creativity behind such catharsis.

Sparta has never been a group to hold back, either personally or politically, and an offering like Eme Nakia is ultimate proof of that honesty. Hajjar talked about what this all meant to him, for although he's been in a spotlight for most of his adult life (first with At the Drive-In and now with Sparta), with Eme Nakia he's stripped down for all the world to see.

It's a very courageous thing to put one's story out there, however it may be edited by certain fictional elements, as you've done with the short film. So why was this the right time for you to tell this story?

I didn't know originally that it was the right time because I never thought there was ever gonna be a time to—except for maybe therapy or something, I don't know. (Laughs) You know, everything happens for a reason, I think, and at first the idea was just to do a film about anything. And then, through Jim—he's the one that brought up me doing it about my life. He said, "There's no other subject that we should do a movie on." That's what he originally told me. At first, I was like, "Wow, that's pretty odd," because I'm not the kind of person to really speak out about my life. I feel that everybody else has a way harder life than I could ever have.

But then it just worked out; it was just the perfect time for me to let it all go. It was the hardest thing that I've ever done—mentally, physically, work-wise, in any kind of situation. So it's the most difficult thing I've ever done and for it to be complete and people to actually have seen it now, it's just an amazing feeling for me.

Were you freaking out when the record came out, thinking, "Shit, millions of people are going to have this in their hands now?"

I was more nervous about the movie premiere than I was about it being released on CD. That was home— [the premiere] was a benefit there. So that was the difficult part. I think now that it's out to the general public it just feels really easy now. (Laughs)

What do you feel about Jim saying, "There's no other story that should be told," and using the most personal and painful moments of your life to demonstrate a much more universal subject?

I mean, obviously we didn't plan this, but for all the stuff that's happened...probably a month after I completely finished the film, war broke out again in Lebanon and the country was used as a pawn once more—it was horrible timing. But in the end I just wanted people to know that people do die in war—you don't just hear about them on CNN and then you close your eyes and it's over. I just wanted people to actually see that people do have to flee, people that you know at your local coffee shop or whatever have had a life of fleeing from war, from leaving the Middle East, from leaving Korea, from leaving the Sudan, and escaping and accomplishing something. And I wanted people to realize how lucky we are, all of us, by living here, you know? Hopefully the movie shows a little bit of that, too.

Speaking of being lucky to live here and the need for a safe haven for refugees of war or refugees of any other sort of horrific conditions around the world, there's an awful lot of anti-immigrant sentiment going on, especially now that we're gearing up for elections. How does it feel to be an immigrant and have to hear all of that? What would you say to people whose reaction is, "We need to get these people out of here—there's only so many resources we have for us?

I mostly call that the Republican attitude. It's upper-class people that have never cared, have never worried, have never questioned where their next meal is coming from, have never questioned if their gonna have a home to live in, have never questioned anything that is remotely difficult in life. And those are the people I think that complain the loudest because they've never had a worry to deal with. Being a refugee, being a person that came from a country in the midst of war, all I gotta say is that I am lucky—I got in. We did it legally and we got in with real papers, green cards, and eventually got our citizenships. We did it the right way. But other people can't and they need to come out and do it. The thing is that people say that they shouldn't be here and blah-blah-blah, but to me I don't put it much shorter than racism. It's sounds pretty harsh but that's how it comes off to me because people have horrible, horrible lives in other countries sometimes and they're just trying to do better for their family and everybody wants to do better for their family! I just hope that people will wake up to the fact that people need to live a good life the way the rest of us do.

Right—it's human rights rather than anything having to do with money.

Yeah—it's just about brotherhood! It's like seeing a person on the street and knowing for sure that they need help and actually helping them instead of just turning a blind eye to it. That's the sad part for me that people have just forgotten about helping the common man and having the common good, you know?

When you're out among other musicians especially those that get grouped with you guys —you know, punk or whatever genre you wanna call it—and then the kind of fans that are attracted by said bands, do you feel like you're in the minority when you're thinking and talking about stuff like this? Do you feel embarrassed because it's not "cool" per se? There's this perception that a band with such categorization should have and their fans should have and it doesn't always go hand-in-hand with political or social enlightenment.

That's a good point. I think we have the attitude we have about politics and about people because those are the kind of people we are, not the kind of band we are. I've lately been saying that we are not a political band; we are political individuals and if you look at all four of us, some of us speak a lot louder than the rest of us about it. But we never say, "This is what Sparta believes." It's what we believe as humans because beyond being a band we have actual strong feelings about things.

One thing that was really sad to me is about two years ago everybody wanted to be a political band and everybody was writing political songs and everybody wanted to jump on this bandwagon. And now, if we sit there and say that our song "Taking Back Control" has a political edge, it's not cool anymore. And you know what? We're not here to be cool, we're here to prove a point. We're here to show that things do still need to change because we still have the horrible leaders in power. Because wearing a "Vote" shirt every day and being cool and listening to Puff Daddy, that didn't work. And after all that, no one voted. It was just cool—"Let's go to the vote party and hang out!" That's all it turned out to be and the thing is now people are asking us, "Are you guys a political band?" but right now it's not cool to be political; right now it's whatever. But in two years, it's going to be very cool to be political again. And there's a lot of elections that are gonna happen in Congress that that are just as important as our presidential race. But in about two years a lot of bands will start prepping their political songs, but the time is all the time, you know? If you have true beliefs about how the country should be run, the time is all the time, it's not just every four years.

So for you guys there is a separation of Church and State, if you will—you made a conscious decision not to take anything on the road with you in terms of educating people about voting or stuff like that? You just put it into the movie and put it into the album?

We put it into the movie, we put a piece into the album, we put it into our live shows, we put it onto our MySpace site, we try to get people to sign up to Rock the Vote. We do as much as we can at our level and we'll continue figuring out things that we could do without going too far or without doing too little, you know? Just find the right amount that our band could do without killing ourselves while we're doing our jobs.

Exactly. That's one thing that people could forget, that while this is an art for you it is also your job.

Yeah, it's what we do!

What would you do if you couldn't be in this band? How would you make a living?

Well, I have an organic chemistry degree that I got from UTEP and it got me through a lot of jobs after I did finish it. I was teaching high school teachers advanced chemistry so they could teach their high school students labs. I actually substitute taught in the middle of tours—I substitute taught Algebra II and Calculus during tours and I used to get sent to the office because they thought I was a student. (Laughs)

So I guess you've never been ragged on by your family, having them say, "Do something responsible!" because you did it in addition to the music.

Yeah, I did it and I have more of an education than most of them that were complaining. (Laughs)

    Tony Hajjar on the set of Eme Nakia. Photo by Marlene Miller.

Let's go back to the film. How did you work with Joe [Renteria] to write the script? As a filmmaker myself, I know that the process can be pretty exhausting, especially when you're trying to interpret somebody else's story. Why did you decide to work with Joe and how did that come about?

It came about through my cousin Dean. Dean was the original person that I brought the idea up to because he's an actor and a writer. He's a very modest guy, a great actor and writer, but he told me that we needed to bring it up a notch and the first person that he brought up was Joe Renteria. He lives in L.A. so we met with him and had a great meeting—we just completely hit it off and I'll go on next to say that without Joe being part of this film, nothing would have happened. With every situation—"Let's get 12 school chairs for this scene, let's get a pecan orchard..." everything came through Joe. It just wouldn't have been possible with the budget we had. And then for the writing aspect of it, we were off at that point with Sparta, so we would wake up in the morning —both Joe and I wake up really early—and if we didn't meet for coffee, we would just talk on the phone for two hours and share stories. We'd share my stories and we'd share his stories—he had a crazy childhood himself—and we just, I think, shared some therapy and that's how it all worked out. Script after script after script after script, we worked it and we worked it—we're both very, very meticulous, we're big perfectionists, and then we were finally happy with the script. It kept on changing, as you know, during filming. The amount of scripts that I brought to the band, after a while they were like, "You know what, dude? We trust you —stop bringing scripts to us because at this moment we're confused." So they put a lot of trust in Joe and I and that's amazing. Again, without Joe producing and writing this thing, it just wouldn't have been even close to how it came out. I'm so proud of it and I love him—he's a great person.

Was the idea to depict certain scenes using animation always there from the beginning or was that a budgetary decision that you came to through production?

I wanted animation the whole time, but Joe brought it to life. The ideas of how the animation would work and what the actual animation scenes would be is all Joe. I used to ask him, "Wow, where'd you get this idea? Did you dream of this?" (Laughs) It was stuff that I never would think of, me personally, because it's not something I do. We worked with him and Zach Passero in El Paso—everybody recommended him and after talking to him and seeing his reel, he just blew us away. He's a great person and a great animator and he worked with us amazingly well. He understood exactly what we wanted from it and he made it all come to life beautifully.

That's so great. Thank you for the beautiful film and for putting yourself out there.

Thank you very much—I'm glad you said that.

And I'm so glad that you had the strength to let it premiere in El Paso, to let home be the first to see it.

That was the hardest thing I've ever done. When that night was done, I was just like, "Ok, I wanna go on tour and just be a drummer now!" (Laughs)

JIM WARD

As the singer-songwriter for Sparta, Jim Ward has been experimenting with self-expression over the band's two previous records, coming to terms with that craft of melding poetic and musical composition. With Threes, Ward has dug deeper and laid out his own thoughts and feelings more so than ever before—which is fitting given the album's coupling with Hajjar's über-personal display of Eme Nakia.

There was a lot for Ward (as well as Hajjar and Sparta's bassist, Matt Miller) to juggle, starting with their current record label's not-so-effective handling of second album Porcelain in 2004. An exhausting tour followed, fraying nerves and resulting in the departure of guitarist Paul Hinojos, who had been with Ward and Hajjar since their days as At the Drive-In. In frustration, Ward cut the tour short and the future of the band was put on hold while everyone went back home to figure things out.

Ward—who grew up in El Paso, Texas, and resides there with his wife to this day— retreated to the place he'd always known (and frequently referred to in his music) to zero in on what the hell this crazy life was all about and, most critically, whether music was even meant to be part of it for him any longer. During almost two years of writing and thinking and finding an outlet in other projects—such as his gorgeous collaboration with El Paso-based poet Bobby Byrd—Ward decided to give music another chance. In sorting out his own direction and purpose—both in life and music—Ward ended up with a most powerful combination of words and music to live by. And so in discussing Threes, it's not so much about something he's made for anybody else, but what he did to figure out who he was himself.

You guys have been through an awful lot over the past two years so let's dive into the way that the album is reflective of that. Tell me first of all what the record's title and cover art mean.

The title is in reference to life. I think that life happens in threes—at least my life seems to have significance in blocks of threes for some reason. And more than any record I've ever made I felt that this record was a big life change. You know, I grew up doing this, basically, and this was my big transition between leaving the youth behind and finding a little bit more to it, I think. So the whole record is about living. I very early started calling it Threes and just kind of tried to convince people as we went that that's what it should be called.

And what about the imagery?

The artwork is a guy named David Calderly; he's a designer from New York and he sort of has a darkness to him that we liked because I think this album is kind of darker than most of the stuff we've done. We wanted something that you would see maybe in a gallery, not necessarily a rock band cover, and we didn't want our name giant on it or anything like that—we just wanted it to be what it was. I like the idea that everybody I talk to has a different take on what they think the cover means, which I prefer, because I don't really want to shove it down people's throats. I like the idea of it being art instead of dictating a message necessarily. So some people think it represents all the things that have happened to us and even though they're around us, they never took us down. But yeah, I don't really know exactly how I feel. I just think it's pretty. (Laughs)

It is pretty but it's also very sinister, like you said. And there is a darkness to the album but it's more of a subtlety that I prefer to what you just said, dictating a sound, like, "This is angry and you should be angered by this song!" or, "This is fun and you should have fun with it!" or whatever. There are times when I'll listen to a track off Threes like "Translations" and it'll make me really happy because it's so well put together, but then there are times when it'll make me think about all these things that you're talking about, life and its meaning,and it's a really sad song. So it's a great piece of art in that way.

Thank you!

Prepartion for the album took place in El Paso. Where was the warehouse you guys were working in?

It was, um...what street is it? It's one street north of Texas. It was basically sort of Cotton and Alameda, right behind the train tracks where the El Paso Import Company is.

And what was the process of deciding to be there—besides the fact that it's cheap and home for you—then convincing the rest of the band to go?

Early on I wanted to make a sort of epic record and I thought the best way to do that was to find an epic place to start to build it. I drew inspiration from that movie Rattle and Hum that U2. There's a scene where you go in [to a warehouse] and the Edge is playing that song and you just see the equipment in that big, open space. I felt like if we started that way, then we could end that way, but if we didn't start that way, it would be difficult to make something out of nothing.

You talk in other interviews about having to take a break from things, having to figure some of your own shit out. But when you were ready to get back into it, were the other guys ready? Was there ever any point of danger between the three of you guys and did you ever ask, "Are we gonna go on?"

Yeah. It was touch-and-go. I mean, I don't mean to be overdramatic about it, but I was pretty fragile when it came to like the business side of what we do. I was so burned out that I didn't... I so badly wanted just to be in love with music again and that's what I was having trouble with.

So we started doing things in just really small steps and that was the only way that it was going to go on. We would sort of take a step—like I flew to Los Angeles and I stayed at Tony's house and me and Tony and Matt wrote for a week to see if we could or wanted to still do it. And every time we would do something I'd come back home and re-think everything and say, "Is this really what I wanna do? Because I don't wanna lead people on; I don't wanna have to leave a tour again." So it was just very small increments —that's why it took so long. I mean, it took long on our scale.

Do you feel like you had enough time off? You came out with something really amazing, but did it come after enough time to change the way you do things in the future

Yeah, it did. We tour more than I'm sure I really would like to, but that's also just part of the life. I mean, you get to make records, you have to go on tour. And I love being on tour; you just end up being gone for so long sometimes. But I'm totally not complaining. So I just try and be conscious of my life as well as the band. It's really easy to lose yourself in it.

Well, it is because it's not like a normal day job— you can't go home at the end of the day and be done with it.

Yeah, exactly! It's pretty much you're on all the time, and even when you're home, there's 400 emails a day about the next six months of your life. It can be a job, but it's ok. It's the best job I could think of!

During your time off, did you fall into that mode of thinking, like, "I'm just going to go work at the 7-11 or the mall and be done with it and have a normal life!"

I don't know if I ever got around to thinking more than just trying to get out of this kind of shadow I was in. There were definitely long conversations in my family about, "Is this lifestyle detrimental or is this still something that you want to do?" You know what I mean? Is this a bonus in life or is this starting to become... Like I missed the birth of my niece; I come home from tour and she doesn't really know who I am anymore. You just start thinking about the future. So yeah, there were a lot of discussions of like, "I don't know, I guess I could go to school or something, but, really, this is what I do." And I think I would be crazy if I didn't do this.

Well, yes, it probably would make you crazy if you needed to get it out.

Yeah!

But I guess that's the hard part to figure out. We reach that point when we turn 30 and everyone else around us doing normal things; they have mortgages and kids and marriages.

Yep, that's exactly what happened.

And it's like, "What the hell am I doing?"

Yeah—it was seeing 30 coming at me with the biggest push of like, "Fuck, I don't know if I wanna be 32 and be supporting a record." It was like, "If I don't make a good enough record, then I won't do this anymore." So that was my whole thing and I questioned it all the way until the end: "I don't know if this is good enough, I don't know if this is worth living this way." And when [the album] was done, it was! (Laughs)

And what mattered was that it had to be good on your standards, not the press, not fans, not anyone else but you.

Right!

So this was crisis beyond losing the muse, not necessarily an artistic crisis—this was like a life decision.

Oh, yeah, totally! More than anything. When I was on tour and I left, it was because I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to be. I didn't feel like it was real to me at that point. I just felt tired. I felt like we were on this racetrack and I didn't wanna be there anymore. But now it's just perspective, really.

It seems like there were things that were contributing to that feeling and one of the points I've heard you talk about is the way that Porcelain was handled by Geffen. I'm wondering why you decided to trust another pretty major label—for all intents and purposes in that it's part of Disney—and not go out on a limb and do it yourself?

I think because you have to have faith. If you don't have faith then there's no point. I mean, I wouldn't know what to do without faith. I've been on a lot of labels and I've had some really great success and I've had some pretty miserable times. I can't say because Geffen lost us in the shuffle and didn't really seem to care that every label would do that.

I guess you have to keep from being cynical and that is what your faith is for.

Right. Exactly.

How have things changed now that Keeley is a part of the band? How has it changed the songwriting and how has it changed your focus about subject matter for songs, especially in regard to El Paso since he's not from there?

I think we just lucked out more than we could ever have imagined. I mean, right from the get-go he came in when it was a pretty dark period for us, especially the three of us. It's amazing that somebody can just come in and be around so much darkness and it not phase him at all, really. Or at least he didn't show any sign of it. He sort of became the bright spot, you know?

We hadn't really written together so it was more just like hanging out for a few days, though we knew each other from touring before that. Then when we started writing, he moved into my house for three months and with that you just get to know somebody slowly. We would eat dinner every night together, we would watch movies, he would go with me to see my nephew's football games at Morehead. (Laughs) And it was just like, "Here's a crash course into my world and it's either going to work or it's not." I think that's the only way it could be. And it's funny because when we played at the Viper Room—we had this little warm-up show— the only weird thing about it was how normal it felt and I think it's because we'd been playing together for a year pretty much. We're roommates on tour so he's actually sitting three feet away from me as I talk about him.

So that's why you're only saying good things about him.

Yeah, when he leaves I'll talk shit. (Laughs) No, it's nice and our band's in really good shape right now.

Let's talk about Dave Bassett as a producer and how you found him. You know, I was looking at his credits and going, "Hmm, that's different." So why him and how did he guide you?

We finished writing the record in L.A.—we were there for about a month in February [2006] while I was finishing the lyrics and vocals and stuff—and about twice or three times a week we'd go and meet with producers, sometimes four times a week. I think we met everybody who's ever made a record, it felt like. We definitely had some guys that we liked and we thought, "Yeah, we'll make the record with him and I can imagine it being this sort of record."

Then our A&R guy, Jeffrey Weiss, said, "Would you just come and meet one more?" It was like a Friday and we had to decide that day, right? But he said, "Will you just come by and meet with this guy who made a record for us? He's pretty unknown but I strongly believe in him." Jeffrey Weiss owns, I don't know, like a billion records and knows everything about every record every made, pretty much. I really respect his opinion and he's very opinionated, so if he said that we should meet him then we certainly would try and meet him. So we did and hung out for a while; he was a nice guy and we listened to some of the stuff [Dave] had done.

[Dave] did a record for this singer-songwriter that he kind of developed and it had this anti-chorus... You know, my whole life I've written big, giant choruses with big guitars, super-loud and screaming. And this song was pretty rockin', then it got to this chorus and just dropped out like a cavity and I was floored because it was amazing! I think right then I was pretty much sold.

He left and we started saying, "I don't know, I think maybe we should meet somebody else," and I just said, "You know what? Fuck it—I want him. I want him to do the record." It's like this new way we have of doing things—do it and if people fight for it, then great; if not, then let's just move on. So it was this faith thing. He's a songwriter as well and that's what I really wanted to improve on this record, my lyric writing, and I needed somebody that would push me, that knew when I was doing less than I could. He did that for sure—during preproduction he would come to my hotel room in the morning and we'd just sit and write for two hours. I would read him what I was doing or sometimes I'd be forced to sit and play and sing—which I've never done before, it's really awkward. But now Keeley and I walk into a radio station and sit down and play songs on acoustics and walk out like nothing. And without Dave doing what he did, I wouldn't be here—he really, really gave me the confidence to go quieter and to be simple. Like "Translations"—that's like the most naked I've ever been, musically or sonically.

Back in 2004, you told me that you'd been working with a vocal coach. Did you work with him throughout Threes in order to be quieter like you've described or had you figured out that register by this point?

No, that was one of the things that happened when I left the tour and went home—I started recording songs myself at my house. I found that I function a certain way and...not that I couldn't benefit from going to vocal coaches, but I think the best thing was I just wrote for like ten months at my house, stuff that no one will ever hear. I would just be home and record songs and force myself to work while my wife was at work, just ‘cause I wanted to write. It wasn't for anybody or for anything; it was just to get better at it.

The reason why I bring up the vocals is that a huge amount of the reaction to Threes are comments about your vocals having a different quality, not just being quieter.

Honestly, it was just me working on being better. I'm glad—my favorite compliments are those things because I'm proudest of the steps that I took to get there.

Let's talk a little bit about the project that you did with Bobbie Byrd during this off-time of yours. What did that project do for you?

It was...like freedom. One of the things I was so frustrated with at the end of the Porcelain tour was so many people around, so many decisions, so much compromise, and not really getting love from the label but feeling like I'm bending over backwards for this record, you know? It was so frustrating! Going home and finding the tapes [for Bobby's project] at my parent's house, I was like, "God, I always say I'm gonna finish this but now I'm just gonna go home and start." And the minute I started, it was like... I mean, it took me a long time and I actually finished in the middle of writing the Sparta record—I finished in November of last year—but it was like having a hobby. (Laughs) I don't have a hobby—I don't really do anything. My life is consumed by this and I sometimes forget that playing music is actually really, really fun. So at that period, it was like, "Hey, you know what? I can play drums on this song because no one's going to tell me I can't! If it sucks, I don't care! I'm going to make it the way I wanna make it." Bobby had recorded the stuff in 2001, so he'd pretty much given up hope on me doing anything with it. (Laughs) But then I started bringing him songs and he really tripped out. He's really funny; he's one of my heroes and that I get to have this new sort of relationship with him is pretty awesome.

It sounds incredible. That's something that artists dream about—when you have a big influence or mentor like that, it's empowering to be able to deliver with your art something on par with theirs.

Yeah, it's been just a blast. And when we did it, we didn't assume anyone would buy it or like it or do anything, but the reaction's been crazy so far.

Since Bobby's poetry speaks so much about El Paso, what's the reaction been like from people who are not from the area?

It's hard to say; I put a few songs on MySpace and I've gotten a few comments since then. It's been weird because people are like, "I like your band but I'm a poetry major and this is mind-blowing!" You connect with people on the level that they're available for, so when you do something new that branches out, maybe more into that territory for that one person, then it's cool.

Yeah, it totally made me cry thinking of El Paso. I listened to it thinking, "I need to move back home and write poetry!"

Yeah, you do! (Laughs) I'm kidding—it's my firm belief to not tell people to move.

Actually, my 30's crisis right now is about how I've been in L.A. for ten years, writing and making movies, and now I'm wondering, "Is it worth it? Is it the right thing?" It's exactly what you were going through.

Yeah, you've gotta stop and re-evaluate and when you do that, the outcomes are incredible. It's worth all the shit; it's worth all the pain that you go through to get from A to B because when you get there it's amazing.

I guess this is why I perpetuate the journalism and talk to people like you so I can get this kind of advice.

(Laughs) It is! But I'm sure it's a common belief that it's easier to stay where you're at and worry and fret about what might happen than it is to really go out and try and drop it. I mean, I put friendships on the line when I left [the tour] and not everybody came back from that break. But I think in long run it's totally worth it.

Segueing into the short film, tell me how you pitched the idea for it to Hollywood Records. It's a pretty unusual request, I would say.

(Laughs) Yeah, it was really kind of an awkward conversation. We sat down and said, "We have this idea and we're not exactly sure what we wanna do but we wanna make some sort of film that's gonna go along with the record," and they said, "Ok." Tony put a ton of work into it before we ever really sat down [with Hollywood] and I remember sitting in the marketing director's office with Tony and his cousin and the original director who ended up not working out, just sitting there watching these guys try and pitch this idea of a movie to record marketing people. And I think the thing that got them excited was that these days you have to be really creative with the way you get your record out, so strictly from the business standpoint they said, "Ok, this is probably worth the money," because it's a different story than just the regular, "We made a record and a documentary about making the record." So I think they were willing to give us a chance. Honestly, the great thing about Hollywood is that they let us do that. Basically, the deal we have with Hollywood right now is if we ask for something and tell them that's what we wanna do, we've been doing this long enough that they know that we know what we're doing and they give us the room for it. And I think until we fuck up they're gonna back us. So far, we're batting 1000 and I wanna keep it that way. And we're from El Paso—we don't take advantage of shit! We weren't raised to say, "Oh, we need $50,000 to make a movie," and then each of us kept $10,000, you know? It's not what we do—we spend our own money.

Thematically, was there any subversiveness to the film about your political beliefs?

No. I was doing vocals when they were filming and stuff so I saw the final cut first; I didn't wanna see anything until it was done because I had to write music for it and I didn't want to be tainted by anything. I just wanted to see it and write to that. And the thing that I got out of it was hope —that's it. Just this incredible story of what you can do with your life if you believe, if you have faith. And I think that's the common goal, the thread between the record and the movie and me and Tony and everybody in the band—this sort of hope and redemption and faith.

And Tony's really sensitive about people thinking it's a "Poor Tony" story. I'm like, "Dude, I don't think anyone sees it that way—it's inspiring!"

Exactly. It's so daring in being one person's specific story that it manages to have universal resonance to it.

Yeah, that's so bizarre, too, because when I saw it, there was a lot of stuff that Tony's never talked to me about before that was in the film. It's like he went from never saying anything about it to making a movie about it! But it was really good for him; it was huge therapy, I'm sure he mentioned that.

Do you feel the same way when you put a record out that you've contributed all the lyrics to, words so wholly based on you?

Oh, yeah. It's weird—I read this interview with somebody who said, "Doing interviews is basically the same as going to therapy without paying." But making records is the same thing for me. Everything I write about, even if it's fiction, is from my head. I like to call it re-broadcasting. I sort of take in the world, then I filter it and rebroadcast it. Then people take that and filter it and then rebroadcast it back and I'm totally fascinated by it.

Do you ever think about the opinion that artists shouldn't be talking about some of the stuff that you guys talk about a lot, basically politics? The fact your political or social concerns don't have validity due to the perception that somebody has of you as an artist versus you telling them something that anybody should be aware of and the dilemma of getting beyond that perception, saying, "I'm not just an artist spewing hot air—I'm a person just like you and you need to listen to what I have to say."

Yeah! The thing is I have a megaphone and I don't wanna be anyone I'm not; I am who I am—and that's part of getting to this age, too, when you start feeling a little more comfortable with that and saying, "I don't have to please everybody"— I'm outspoken, I'm super-passionate, I'm emotional, it's the way I was built. And part of that is politics and social issues and I don't think it's a responsibility; I don't do it because I feel obligated to do it, I do it because I would do it. I'm saying the same things I'd be saying if I was just a waiter or at a bar after work talking to my friends, only I do it on a platform.

And people never criticize you for speaking about politics or issues unless they disagree. So it's not like someone's like, "I totally agree with you, but you really should just stick to being in a band." It's always like, "You're an idiot because you think blah-blah-blah." I'm like, "Well, you totally have that opinion. I don't really care. Get a bigger megaphone."

I mean, I don't read online four hours a day what's going on in the world. A lot of it's just my gut, like golden rule stuff to me. I can't sit down and discuss the Cabinet of the United States right now, but I can tell you that I'm meeting kids coming back from Iraq and their minds are blown. They're going to our shows and they're these little kids—18- or 19-year-old guys... I don't care who the defense secretary is. I don't want our country to represent ourselves in the world this way.

Read more about Jim's collaboration with Bobby Byrd.

Sparta can be found online at www.spartamusic.com.