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Artist: Steel Train
Track: I Feel Weird
This track is available on 
[Interview with Steel Train's lead vocalist and songwriter, Jack Antonoff.]
Who are Steel Train?
Steel Train is a band in every sense the we think a band should be. We are best friends. We started this band to make music with each other. It felt great so we decided to make it our lives. Whenever people ask us who we are I always want to ask them what they think we are. I know thats incredibly cheesy, but its true. Our band is defined by the people who listen to us and projest their feelings on our music and us. Its always been more important to me to find out what a song means to me personally, not what its really about to the artist. I hope people who listen find that in our music more than thinking about what we thought of it or why it was written. Those are the bands that mean the most to me, and thats WHO we hope we are.
Why do you create?
Its just what i do. Its just as important to me as anything. Id really have no life if i didnt. The music i make completely defines me and I put everything into it. Ive never been able to be one of those song writters who only put certain things out there and has a whole personal life unkown to listerners. When im working on music its the only place in my life where i feel completely at home. Its the only time when i dont feel a little uncomftorble for some reason. I think everyone wakes up with a strange sick feeling inside them that they cant define. You get out of bed and try to shake it off by doing things you love. Its amazing to me how i feel when im making music. That feeling has never been present anywhere else. Even the greatest joys. The world is a very uncomftorble place and everyone needs a different place that they create to live in a little bit everyday. Otherwise you go crazy and hate everything. I do it cause i have to, like everyone else.
I Feel Weird alludes to 9/11 in its opening lines: “When i was eighteen everything was alive / Then the planes hit the towers / Then she died and he died.” How has life in the Age of Terrorism influenced you as an artist?
9/11 changed everything for me. There is a lot of talk about it in the record, and that has more to do with life after 9/11 then the event itself. For me, 9/11 was a major moment when everything changed in my life. Before then I had things pretty easy, nothing major had happened to me, I was in love ETC… I was in school in NYC on 9/11 and Scott and I watched the towers burn and fall the that day. I remember feeling bizzarre, like nothing would be the same. A few months later my sister died, and right after that my cousin was killed in Iraq, and on the midst of that I fell out of a long term relationship. My life now feels like its all aftermath. For me 9/11 was the begining of everything falling apart. To this day I have to work very hard to not feel terror, I believe Many people do. Although I link 9/11 to all those other things that happened to me, I think many people do see it the way I do. As the end of one time period and the begining of th next. Its a time period we have to be very strong to work through.
In an online interview with Absolute Punk, you summed up the previous phase of your life with this:
The concept of depression is so enraging. You spend all this time feeling awful, and then you spend even more time dwelling on the fact that you feel awful, and then you beat yourself up about it more and more to the point were you don’t even know if you are even depressed anymore. And when it’s all over and you look it in the face… You have nothing to show for it.
Can you give a similarly specific summary of the phase of life you’re currently in?
I’m in a much better place now than I was when writting the record. A major part of the lyrics are that frustration about having depression and becoming so angry that you are “someone who is depressed”. Kinda of like when your reality becomes something you once though was out of the question and you hate yourself for becoming ok with it. I think writting the record was the absolute low point. When I finished was the time that I really started to get things back together. I think its because the songs were the only things that came out of all the darkeness that had any value. After the record was done I was able to look at it and see that all those times amounted to something. That was the moment I let myself free. In still there now,, I feel very proud of the music and thankfull to be in a place where I can understand all of it.
Your cousin was killed in the Iraq War. What do you hope America’s foreign policy will be over the next 5 years?
I don’t know. I wish I knew. I wish I had an amazing Idea that I could talk about. But the truth is, when he was killed all the politics fell away for me. When I think about the war, I think about mark. That may sound selfish, but that’s just what its become for me. I pray that someone more understanding of it all will come along and prevent this from ever happening again. In too emotional about it to have an opinion of value. I’m the guy who lost a family member, which basically makes me the guys who thinks bush should be tortured to death. That argument doesnt bring people together always.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Required Listening, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
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