The peripatetic punk musician Conan Neutron has been a successful name in the American punk scene for decades. In his tenure, he has toured, written, recorded in various acts, and collaborated with artists like Buzz Osborne, Mike Watt, Dale Crover, Vern Rumsey, and David Pajo. He also hosts the podcast Conan Neutron’s Protonic Reversal, where he interviews many artists who inspired him growing up.

“My life was intrinsically changed for the better, my life ethos defined by music and all things surrounding music. What I do, this is my entry into giving that back,” Conan tells Post-Burnout of his love of music and why he became a musician. “I’m not saying that everyone should do what I do – good luck, if you were to try – because I did all kinds of terrible things wrong, but it’s also like, what do you do with that knowledge? What do you do with those mistakes? I try to come at things with a position of curiosity more than judgment these days, and that’s a change you can make! You literally have to make a decision!”

Conan claims that part of his success can be attributed to his nomadic circumstances in early life. “I had a pretty chaotic childhood,” he says. “We moved around a lot, I didn’t have a lot of structure, so most of the structures and systems are things that I made myself, so that set me up well for the D.I.Y. world, the punk rock world of organising, setting up shows, booking tours, blah, blah, blah. All the things you have to do when you’re in the music world.

“I have a head that’s very suited for that, based on my deeply chaotic upbringing. [Laughs] So, how I got there is not the best, but I did get there. And another epiphany was, ‘Oh, some people just have a normal childhood with a mother and a father and a home that is the same home for their entire childhood.’ Not me! But, also, why is touring so easy for me? I dunno. Maybe because wherever I’m at, that’s where home is, you know?”

The opportunities to tour across the U.S. at a tender age made Conan evolve and expand as a person. He explains, “I grew up in a working-class, progressive family, and I definitely was raised up to treat people with respect and equality, but I can’t overstate how much my world expanded just by going to different places and seeing different people and seeing different things, and seeing material conditions that are not my own and understanding them and, in some cases, not understanding them [Laughs] and later figuring it out, and that is something that really helped establish my adult identity of who I am and what I care about.

“And I know not everyone’s going to have that experience, but it makes me sad that there are people that have never been outside thirty miles of where they were born. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God! That sounds like a death sentence to me! What is your life? What have you done? Nothing?’ And some people just don’t like travelling; fine. I’m just saying that it’s a big, wide world out there, and there’s a lot of enrichment that can happen just by getting out.”

Now celebrating its tenth anniversary is Conan’s latest band, Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends, which he began after being well-versed in the world of music to both reflect on his time as a musician and to expand the parameters within which he could play. The current line-up features (The) Melvins’ drummer Dale Crover and Tony Ash, the former guitarist of the Louisville post-hardcore band Coliseum.  

“When I started it, I didn’t have the idea to start this long-lived ‘Conan Neutron, final-form band’ or anything,” Conan says of the Secret Friends. “I was just like, ‘Oh, let’s see if I can make a record, more or less, on my own, asterisk, caveat,’ right? Like, if I had known at the time, I never would have called it a sentence-long band name, you know? I think it’s a great band name, but I guess I’m going to be asking people to spell the entire thing out until the day I die. Cool.

“I didn’t have any expectations at all, but it turns out that through the framework of doing it – of writing the songs and recording the songs at… ‘Advanced age’ might not be the correct word, but not young – I figured it out, quite late. But I did figure it out. ‘Hey, at least he figured it out, eventually!’”

With growth and maturity, Conan freed himself up to allow this project to incorporate all elements of his interests, even those his younger self would have scorned. “This is a rock band, and I don’t need any hyphens with other words in front of it [Laughs] about that, because it’s a rock band,” Conan declares. “But, somehow, just ‘rock music,’ the only time you hear it is if it’s these shameless, soulless imitators, like your Greta Van Fleets, your Wolfmothers. It’s like, ‘Cool, man. I have those records, too. I’d rather just listen to those, and it’s not just Civil War reenactment to me!’ [Laughs]

“[…] But I have to say that it’s a big, weird rock band, right? So, it’s informed by this world of punk rock, and post-punk, and noise rock, and yada, yada, yada, but it’s a big, weird rock band. We played at the Wisconsin State Fair, and it was wonderful! ‘Thanks for being a big rock band,’ which is the first time that’s literally ever happened! And it’s interesting because I feel like a lot of our fellow travellers are from the more noisier part of the world or the more punky part of the world, and it gets over there too, don’t get me wrong, but when I think of it, I think it’s a big, weird rock band, along the lines of stuff like Queen or Sabbath or AC/DC or whatnot, but it’s also coming from a world where Fugazi, Melvins, Gang of Four, and Sparks and all these other bands exist, as well.

“Sometimes, you hear that in the arrangements. I feel like on this record, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of new wave,’ and it’s like, ‘Well, yeah, there’s a lot of really cool ideas that are there, it doesn’t have to be ‘80s pop.’ You can implement that in the same thing with heavy riffs.”

Beyond the artists listed, Conan also says that the project takes influence from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as comedy from Bill Hicks, the Starz show Party Down, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, HBO’s Mr. Show with Bob and David, This is Spinal Tap, and the Coen Brothers.

Conan admits that this medley of influence may have struck his younger self as “pretentious,” but adds, “22-year-old Conan Nuetron would probably be like, ‘These riffs are awesome, these songs are good!’, but all of the things that got me there, he’d be like, ‘Oh, no!’ I was very certain of myself, let’s put it that way.”

At the end of March, the Secret Friends released their sixth studio album, The Way of the Neutron, which inscribes a lot of lessons that Conan had learnt along the way into condensed and digestible advice for fellow musicians. “I didn’t walk into making this record like, ‘Oh, here’s going to be my mission statement and life ethos of the world,’ at all, but what I noticed was that the songs seemed to be birds of a feather, ‘Oh, this kind of seems to be a thing. OK.’,” Conan explains.

“Then I thought about what inspired me to do it in the first place, and from a larger perspective, it was the idea of, ‘I’ve been doing this stuff, doing it as best I can, and people get something out of it. Cool,’ and now I know this can be more. So, there’s something to be said about flying the flag. Light it up, keep it lit, here it is! I was subconsciously doing it, anyway, and that’s why on the last song on the record, ‘The Way,’ I was like, ‘OK, I guess I’ll just literally spell it out.’ [Laughs] Go line-by-line. I was like, ‘Well, hell, man, if you’re going to do it, do it. Don’t do it halfway.’

“If there’s anything we can say about what I do, I definitely fully commit, but part of that is questioning what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and I’ve been in a position where I’ve been able to advise, mentor… – I don’t know the correct term – …younger bands, some of which have become successful, and I think of the people that I had to talk to at the time, and I just want to pay that back.

“That’s what punk rock is to me, or D.I.Y., or whatever the hell we’re calling it now: You’re helping each other out. ‘Hey, by the way, I can’t tell you the correct way to do it, but here’s how not to do it!’, which is almost more important. So, all these songs, it’s this pugnacious perseverance, which is the world now. Just getting up in the morning and facing the day is an actual battle, half the time.”

Dealing with the real and banal was Conan’s goal with the material. “For me, there’s perspective solutions presented within the record, which are usually boiled down to, ‘Find what you love and do it, and minimise the hassle, knowing that we do, indeed, live in a society’,” laughs Conan.

“You know, you have to have jobs unless you’re independently wealthy, which, good on you, I guess. Just find value in that, and find value in the good fight of doing it, which is not an exciting story, I guess, to tell. [Laughs] Because it’s always like, ‘The zombie apocalypse!’ No, no! We live in the mundane apocalypse! Like, we live in the most mundane apocalypse you could ever imagine. The banality is real.

“[…] I’m not sitting here, trying to be a Billy Bragg or something, [Laughs] but here’s an outline for, ‘Don’t take any guff from these swine,’ as the great Hunter S. Thompson once said, but also it has to go beyond that, too. Where do you go from there while still acknowledging the world that we live in? I’ve struggled a little bit with being seen as someone with answers. I might have a couple of answers, but none of us have all the answers. Anyone who does say they have all the answers are probably trying to sell you something, frankly, and they might be a cult!

“But in living life in the world of creativity, and, somehow, keeping it sustainable – which blows my mind sometimes. and I’m the one doing it [Laughs] – there is value to figuring that out and figuring out what works for you, because what works for me doesn’t work for everyone else, and that’s something I’m very quick to say: ‘If you want to know how I got to where I’m at, literally just be me, and that’s not going to happen, so you have to figure out what works for you and how that works for you. That said, here are some things that I would suggest!’ [Laughs]”

Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends’ latest album, The Way of the Neutron, is out now to stream and purchase. You can keep up with the band through their website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.