Editor’s Note: D.O.A. will be playing at the Firehall Brewery on July 30, 2022, after the band’s earlier scheduled concert last year was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions. This article first appeared in August 2021.
By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The irony of the frontman of hardcore punk band D.O.A. becoming a respectable suit and tie-wearing councillor for Greater Vancouver’s bedroom community of Burnaby is not lost on anyone, least of all Joe Keithley.
For more than 40 years Keithley, or ‘Joey Shithead’ as he was known in the day, has fronted the Vancouver-based band that literally defined the hardcore punk movement.
Punk frontman Joe Keithley shows a respectable side.
Ask anyone in the know, anyone who is a fan of this unique and uncompromising music genre, and they will tell you unequivocally that there are two bands that calibrated the world’s hardcore punk trajectory back in the late-1970s. California’s Black Flag and Vancouver’s D.O.A.
Edgy, high energy, aggressive and jet engine loud it is immensely political, environmental and socially conscious all wound up in a wild performance package. Where the British band, The Clash, was punk, D.O.A. was punk+.
Keithley’s lyrics from the band’s first decade say it all as witnessed by 1981’s ‘Smash the State’ album: “Kill Pierre Trudeau… Kill Ronnie Regan … Kill Margaret Thatcher… Kill them all.” In today’s world, these kinds of lyrics are almost inconceivable.
When I bring up these snippets of his early lyrics Keithley laughs and says he got a lot of coverage on these after he was elected as a Burnaby city councillor in 2018, something that also led to a naturally hilarious appearance on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Change, no change?
I’m speaking with Keithley ahead of D.O.A.’s scheduled performance at Oliver’s Firehall Brewery on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. We talk about how the world has changed, but actually not so much over the course of his ongoing music career. “And now we have Justin Trudeau, so the Trudeau’s are still running the country, some things never change,” he says with a laugh.
But more seriously we talk about the environment, with Keithley noting that the current Fairy Creek logging protests remind him of those around Clayoquot Sound in the mid-1990s.
“I’ve always been interested in trying to change things for the better and I guess you could say I was an unofficial politician before, a cultural politician. Now I’m actually an elected official so I’ve made that jump in a sense but yeah it makes sense because you’re trying to campaign for the things you believe in and campaign against something you think is wrong.”
He got an early start on this road, joining the Green Peace in his youth to protest nuclear weapons.
In our ramble across the landscape of issues confronting Canadian society today, we of course arrive at the First Nations’ doorstep. “I think in light of what’s coming out with the residential schools – we always knew it was horrible but now it’s become even more horrible.”
“I think the country needs to take a great deal of time to deal with that and try to separate the actual real reconciliation as opposed to just lip service which is mostly what’s been going on and I think that First Nations people would probably agree with that,” he says.
Housing crisis
Meanwhile returning to Burnaby, I ask the councillor his thoughts on the ongoing housing crisis – again nothing much has changed over the years. As Keithley notes: “It’s the biggest issue before I got elected and since I got elected and it will be into the future because nobody can afford to live in the Lower Mainland.”
Well, that’s not entirely true, but living in Canada’s most expensive real estate requires a certain ‘means.’ Perhaps another dip into D.O.A.’s lyrics, this time it’s ‘Class War’ with the song not pulling any punches: “I want a war between the rich and the poor.”
While Keithley may sing powerful lyrics, his real power resides in his day job. Housing was in fact Keithley’s key campaign focus and one of the accomplishments he is most satisfied by his time in office so far.
“What we’re trying to do is get more in-fill housing and create some cheaper housing options and more rentals because people just can’t afford that down payment,” he says.
Part of the effort is also focused on trying to get subsidies from both the provincial and federal governments, “to make some of the housing at least for single people, people who are not doing that well economically, seniors and First Nations so that they can actually live in places for a reasonable rent.”
Again, back to the lyrics. In the song ‘Slumlord,’ from the album Hardcore ‘81, Keithley describes a “neighbourhood bully … Waving his finger like a pistol / Flapping his jaw like Adolf Hitler.”
Perhaps apropos given that one of the specific issues Keithley ran on was the so-called ‘demovictions’ in which people were getting kicked out of older, two and three-storey apartments so they could be torn down and replaced by 40- or 50-storey towers. This was a specific problem in the Metrotown area and these people became homeless because there simply was no place for them to go, he says.
Joey Keithley in his element.
“The property was sold, those people are out and they maybe found somewhere else, they maybe lived on someone’s couch or maybe they lived in their car or maybe they couldn’t afford to pay insurance on the car anymore and they lived in a tent.”
The aim was to try and protect vulnerable people and have some sort of sane housing policy which didn’t exist before 2018, he says.
“The towers are still going up but accommodation and new apartments have to be found for every single person that was in one of those apartments before the big towers can go up,” that’s one part of it he says. The other – a rental rate protection plan – is another key piece that is fully operating now. Keithley is rightly proud of these achievements.
It does beg the question as to whether he will take another stab at running for more senior levels of government have tried before for the Green Party. “I have run provincially four times and I failed every time! I would think about it but I’m pretty happy being a city counsellor right now.
“This is a pretty good combo because I live 10 minutes from City Hall and I can manage D.O.A. shows in between Council so that’s pretty good. Maybe down the road I wouldn’t rule out running for a seat in a more senior level of government but right now I’m going to run for reelection in Council in 2022 so right now that’s all I’ve got my sights set on,” he says.
As he notes there is far more opportunity to provide input as there are only eight councillors and one mayor, “so you can actually express your opinion and not be slapped down because you’re not towing the party line.”
This is a thorn in his side and indeed one that festers in the larger population as well. “People say, ‘well I voted for this person and they said they were going to do this but now they’re doing exactly the opposite because they’re just following the party line.’”
“I think the way to change politics into a positive thing so everyone doesn’t look at it as a horrible thing is to actually elect people that will speak their minds and do what they promised for their constituents.”
But he admits this is a rare combination these days “and that’s why I think we need more politicians from different backgrounds… previously it was just people with political science degrees or lawyers and to me, that’s not a wide enough look at how society is made up. We need to get new blood in there whether they’re old or young, whatever race, whatever gender, we need to mix the whole thing up,” he says.
Back to the music
Clearly caught up in the politician’s spell, I turn the conversation back to music and of course, Keithley is keen to oblige.
I wonder out loud whether D.O.A. ever stopped. The answer is pretty much no. “We had a couple of retirement tours – one in 1990 that lasted for about a year and then one in 2013 that lasted for about three months,” he laughs.
“We started in ‘78 so I guess we’re getting to 43 years of D.O.A. now and I’ve really been playing in D.O.A. the whole time except for like two years, something like that.”
He runs the numbers for me: 4,000 shows on five continents in 47 different countries. He adds that when they were “young and in our prime – that’s eons ago!” they played 250 shows a year.
For the last 20 years, they’ve been averaging 50-70 shows a year including playing in Europe, Asia (Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Taipei and cities in mainland China) and of course North America. Not bad for a bunch of ageing Boomers!
Speaking of which, in a music world dominated by hip hop and R&B, just what exactly is the fan base today I wonder?
“You’d be surprised,” he says, “half the people at the show are people my age, and I just became a senior citizen! So like 20 years ago we would get people saying ‘my older brother or my older sister told me about you guys and now I get, ‘my dad told me you guys are f—ing great’,” he laughs adding that the majority of people that show up are aged between 20 and 30.
“The people that are my age, some of them still show up but it’s pretty hard on the ears! Old punks don’t go to the mosh pit, they stand at the back,” he says with a hearty laugh. It’s one thing to be an ‘old punk’ in the audience, but what about the ‘old punks’ on stage I wonder aloud. I mean this is high-energy stuff, surely exhausting to perform in one’s 20’s, let alone mid-60’s
“It’s got to be ferocious and honestly I’m at the age that I’m not taking any of this for granted. I know that anytime I go to a town this might be the last time I get there so I’m gonna put everything I’ve got into the show that’s a really key thing because I think people see an old band, classic rock band or whatever . . . sometimes they kind of pick up a vibe if the band is just going through the motions and it’s just up there for a payday.
“Most of the people that I grew up with they played live and part of the thing was getting people excited with your music and riling them up and that’s a great thing when people get excited.”
When asked about current music trends Keithley is decidedly less outspoken. “Music always changes it’s not for me to comment on styles, whether that is good or this is bad because tastes change.” He does briefly wonder whether there might be a small resurgence of “hard rock, metal all that kind of thing” on the back of pandemic-induced frustration and pent-up energy.
The question as to why D.O.A. is playing in Oliver naturally comes up and as it turns out this will be the second gig the band has played there. “It was just a total fluke last time. Sid [Ruhland] contacted me and said hey do you guys want to play up here and I thought ‘oh okay I’ve never stopped in Oliver before except to get gas or something!’ The show turned out to be a complete riot! It was great to have this outdoor tent set up and it was packed, it was a great time,” he says speaking of the gig two years ago.
This upcoming show in Oliver will be the first weekend back on the road since the pandemic put a stop to public performances and as the 40th anniversary of its best-selling album Hardcore ‘81, the band will play it cover-to-cover for the first time ever in a live performance.
