Dude(tte)s, it’s with great joy I bring you this interview with Patrick Kindlon. I’ve had an email typed up and ready to send to Patrick for a couple months but wanted to wait til after the holidays and to get everything a little settled down. If you don’t know, Patrick is the front-man for Self Defense Family as well as Drug Church. He’s got other musical projects, he’s a comic book writer, he runs a record label called Harm Reduction Records with Jami from Code Orange and he’s a vegan. I really enjoyed getting to chat with Patrick & hope you dig the interview. Without anything further, check out the audio! (If you’re more into reading catch some of my favorite bits below the player here). Oh, and you should also check out the breakfast bagel recipe inspired by the whole Tumblr curfuffle!
The interview features the song “Apport Birds” from Self Defense Family’s full length release “Try Me”. You can get that from Deathwish.
What brought you to veganism? Assuming it was hardcore/punk scene. Was it a particular band or just sort of the general culture?
Kind of none of the above…[in talking about his family’s dog being euthanized due to health issues]…My first thought was just a very simple one which was, “This dog would prefer to be alive.” I started thinking about how the preference isn’t specific to that dog…After that I think I went vegan two days later…I just wasn’t comfortable with killing anything anymore.
What’s eating like on the road?
I have one bandmate who really enjoys cooking. If we stay at someone’s house or something of that nature he’ll get up early and go get ingredients for tofu scramble or something like that. That really helps on costs. We kill ourselves going to Whole Foods. If there’s a Whole Foods or Co-Op in any town…On a short tour we treat ourselves right, we’ll just go to whatever the nice vegan restaurant is. That’s how Self Defense Family does it.
On the vegan breakfast sandwich curfuffle from the Self Defense Family Tumblr
The spot I go down here (San Diego) does one with like a fake meat, an English Muffin, tomato, it’s very basic, but I like it. For me the ultimate is when you actually can do all those…if you have the fake egg. Real eggs now, I worked with someone who overcooked eggs, now I can’t even think about eggs without getting sick. When you overcook eggs it’s the literally the worst smell in the world.
On ‘rights struggles’ in general & activism related things
You need a loud first wave. You gotta be obnoxious. I get and respect that. You can file me under the guy that’s trying to win over the boring middle class…You have to normalize things for the average human being.
You have to convince the old white guy that it’s okay, that it’s not hurting him. That’s where I’m at…you wouldn’t always guess that from the dialogues I have…you can catch me getting pretty dismissive, ha, you know what I mean? For the most part what I try to do, is my little small part of convincing people, is this is not for weirdos. This is…y’know I’m a working person, I’m a presentable working person…I have a lot in common with the fella who gets a deli roll with some bologna on it and goes to his construction job. That guy’s not an alien to me…for me if I can talk to that person on a human level and say, “This is actually normal. Veganism is actually a thing that normal people do that’s not fringe-y or bizarre in any sort of way.”
…So far as I can tell, if I have any role, it’s just trying to convince people this shit’s not as freaky as they think it is.
Every vegan’s run into this before…the guy who says, “I don’t eat vegan food.” And it’s like I’m watching you eat broccoli…but because broccoli comes in shitty Chinese food that dude’s okay with it…but if you’re like, “Here’s some vegan broccoli”…he’ll be like, “Vegan broccoli?! Get that shit away from me!”
What do you think about the future of veganism/animal rights?
I wish that I could say that there’s gonna be a time when every cage will be open and all of that, but not to be negative, and I don’t think anyone should stop there ambitions to make that the reality…
People don’t like to do anything until it’s too late and it’s, uh, it’s gonna be too late for people…
What they’re (people) always looking for is a scientist to say, “You’re all gonna die.” …
That’s not a scientists job, a scientist doesn’t research climate change and say, “We’re all gonna die.” That’s an extrapolation of his research.
I think the reality is if you connect the dots on how quickly we’re destroying the planet my feeling is that we’re going to see a significant dip in quality of life, before we can have that reality…
Self Defense Family has a new collaborative/split with Touché Amoré up for pre-order on Deathwish. They also have a split with Creative Adult up for pre-order there as well. Ask your local comic shop to order We Can Never Go Home. Drug Church has an EP up for pre-order on No Sleep Records. Harm Reduction Records have two new releases for Steel Nation & Eternal sleep, both available for pre-order on Deathwish.