Descendents frontman Milo Aukerman embraces his status as ‘not a cool guy anymore’

With their debut LP, Milo Goes to College, Orange County punk band Descendents set the template for what would eventually become the pop-punk subgenre. Their undeniably catchy tunes took what the Ramones did with bubblegum pop and gave it a razor-sharp focus, with fast riffs, confessional and/or goofy lyrics, and songs frequently clocking in at under three minutes–if not shorter.

The long-running group partnered with ORG Music to begin a campaign reissuing Descendents’ back catalog, beginning with a remastered edition of that 1982 album, and as it’s out this week, we hopped on Zoom with frontman Milo Aukerman to discuss the band’s legacy, how they’re still performing to this day, and their longtime connection to the area.

The Pitch: What made you all decide to go with ORG Music for this reissue campaign–was it because of how they’ve handled those Bad Brains reissues?

Milo Aukerman: I think we knew [Andrew Rossiter] from a year, from several years ago. We did the Circle Jerks split either with him or at least he was there, helping us out and yeah, he just seemed like a really together guy, just very energetic and that’s kinda what you want–someone going to bat for you. I just thought the style of the whole Punk Notes thing is pretty cool. I like the style that he’s got with the whole reissue stuff.

What’s it like to go back and get this cleaned up for a new release 43 years later? How much input did you all have and how hands-on were you with the process?

Bill [Stevenson, drums] may have been more hands on than me just ’cause Bill was the guy that was interfacing with Andrew for the most part. I don’t know sonically whether anything changed. I think it’s just the same mix. It was literally just, “Take those tapes and repress ’em,” but we had input in terms of the layout of the album and selecting the pictures.

I did copy editing. Whenever it comes to this stuff, Bill makes all these decisions about all this stuff. And I’m kinda like, “You do that and just send me the copy and I’ll edit it,” and that’s my role in the whole thing.

Over the last decade or so, there’s been a historical appraisal of Descendents, with the Filmage documentary and all of these different lists that have come out when albums like Milo Goes to College celebrated its 40^th a couple years ago. I Don’t Want To Grow Up celebrates its 40^th this year. What’s it like having music that you wrote culturally reappraised as a historical document?

Man, I’ve never even thought about it like that. It’s weird because it does make you think about the time span, and it’s just like, “Wow, okay.” I’m trying to think if, in the ’80s, whether people were looking at music from the ’50s that way. It’s very odd, I think.

I guess it helps that we’re still playing out, ’cause we can still be out there and keeping our face out for people to get into. Part of it is that we play shows and I see all these young people at the shows. I’m just like, “Whoa. This is great,” because first of all, I always love having young people on our shows. It’s like they’re the people we wanna see jamming out to it.

But also, it brings a new generation in and maybe that’s why, over this long period of time, that it’s remained relevant is. It’s not just a one-generation band. It’s a multi-generation band and that’s been completely unexpected. But just the most gratifying thing about all this is, some guy brings this kid to the show and then voila, you’ve got a next generation listening to the Descendents, and it’s great.

Descendents, to me, is a punk rock Cheap Trick in that you guys have been making music and you continue to put out new albums and they continue to be good and relevant to what’s going on. That’s the thing I absolutely love about what you do.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, although we tend to tend to spend a lot of time between releases–which is our current situation again. “When’s the last time you put a record out?” But we definitely have plans on putting another record out, for sure, sooner rather than later, and I think that’s part of what our philosophy as a band is: that we want to we wanna say something about the now as opposed to just kinda like, “Hey, remember those great times back then? Here’s these songs that we played way back when.”

Live, we play a lot of stuff off the Hypercaffium Spazzinate record, which is our most recent release. We feel like any record that we have put out, we can draw from in a live setting and select tracks off of that are worthy, that are ones that we like to play and ones that we think that the people want to hear and I think that’s kind of what we go into every time we make a new record.

We don’t want to just make this like vanity project kind of a thing. We want it to be something that’s, “These are the Descendents in 2025”–well, hopefully 2025, but more like 2026. I’m hoping.

To engage in nostalgia a little bit, Descendents have been coming through Lawrence and Kansas City for the entirety of your career. What keeps bringing you back here and what makes Lawrence or Kansas City a necessary stop for the Descendents when they go out on the road?

I mean, it probably is the reiteration of memories that that come from playing here, because, really–in the mid ’80s, Lawrence was the only place in Kansas where you could play a show because the Outhouse existed, you know? It’s like, “We’re going to Kansas. We’re goin’ to the Outhouse. Yay!” So we played the Outhouse many times.

It’s just a very memorable club. It’s just very gross and the bathrooms are disgusting and it’s out in the middle of a cornfield somewhere and, and so yeah, it’s just got that great Kansas vibe to it and so we will say, “Hey, we’re gonna play Kansas. We’re gonna play Lawrence on this tour,” and then everyone’s like, “The Outhouse!” and of course we know we’re not playing the Outhouse, but it’s just kind of like, if you had a good vibe there before, you’ll have it again.

With this reissue, these aren’t songs that you’re pulling out of the vault. Many of these tracks have been staples of your live set, for ever and ever. Going back and revisiting the album, what are the songs that you don’t play that really stick out in your mind from Milo Goes to College?

Well, there’s a few that Frank [Navetta, former guitarist] wrote that are some of his first songs ever and they reflect a time in the Descendents where the band was much more like ’60s jangle pop focused. Those are the kind of songs where they’re great, but they don’t reflect what we then became. Basically, they were holdovers from the very early period.

I think “Statue of Liberty” and “Parents” are the two big examples of that, where Frank was just really into like, “Hey, I wanna play my open chords and have it sound folky.” Bill calls ’em the church chords and I mean, I write those songs all the time. I still do to this day but if we have a song that is church chordy, we’ll try to beef it up and make it more aggressive and make it a Descendents song, but those songs we just kept as is, so they went on the record and then they left the set pretty soon after that because I think we were like, “We got this whole new thing going with ‘I Wanna Be a Bear’ and ‘Myage’ and we’re not gonna play those other ones.”

Milo Aukerman. // facebook.com/thedescendents

When did you first adopt the strap water bottle carrier? I know you’ve always had the Croakies to keep your glasses on. As someone who also wears hornrimmed glasses, I’m aware they get sweaty and come off, but what made you adopt this “I will have my water on me and my glasses will stay on my face” accouterments? It seems like a very practical punk rock thing.

It started because when we got back together for what, at this point, is our longest stint together, which is from 2011. From 2011 ’til now, it’s been pretty constant. That coincided with some mishaps in 2011, 2012, where I lost my voice and canceled shows and it was kind of like, “I gotta step up my game.”

Hydration became such an important thing at that point. I need to be like hydrating before the gig, after the gig, during the gig. I need to be in doing all that hydration. I started realizing, I can’t even barely hydrate. I can’t even take a drink of water during the set. Our songs are just so wham bam, thank you, ma’am all the way through, there’s no break. You just gotta go from one to the next so I decided I should be wearing my water.

The first solution was a Camelbak, one of those backpacks. The dork factor of that was off the charts. You can’t get any more dork than that. And so then after a while I thought, maybe I could not be such a dork and do something different. experimented with all kinds of different hydration things. Like, runners can buy these cuffs–these wrist wristbands that have water in them. I used one of those for a gig where I was drinking out of a wrist cuffs, and then I just happened on this thing at REI, which was the sling that carries your water bottle.

That’s perfect. It’s completely simple. It’s easy. You don’t have to clean it or anything. It’s just a sling separate from the bottle and all that. And then my wife–she’s here too, so she can comment on this–my wife said, “That’s pretty dorky still. That’s pretty damn dorky. Maybe not as dorky as a Camelbak, but yeah, you’re still the geek,” and then I go, “Oh yeah, I’ll show you.” And then she told me to trick it out.

Robin Andreasen: Yeah. It’s hundred percent tongue in cheek. It’s meant to be dorky still.

Milo: So she said, “Trick it out,” and I said, “Okay,” and I went to Michael’s Art Mart or whatever, and got the studs and made it all punk rock or whatever. And then I thought, “Yeah, this makes it cool, but you’re still a dork because you’re a dork trying to be cool.” You can’t get away from it if you’re gonna carry your water, you’re just gonna be a dork, I guess is the way it works.

It works out so well, though. The other thing I like about it is when I get on stage and Stephen [Egerton] comes on, strolls out straps on his guitar, and Karl [Alvarez] comes out, straps on his bass, and I come out and I strap on my water, it’s kind of funny that way. It’s a fun little schtick that I do.

The remastered edition Descendents’ Milo Goes to College is available from ORG Music this week.