MERCER: I never really felt part of the New York scene. We certainly played there and made our reputation in New York, but we felt a lot of the bands were kind of rehashing what the had been done before, so we felt kind of separate from that. Also, a lot of bands from that period in New York weren’t really from New York, but had moved there from somewhere else.  We were from New Jersey and we stayed in New Jersey, so that also kept us separate.  But nobody really set out to make an alternative New York scene at Maxwell’s.  It just sort of happened on its own, I guess.  Rents were cheap.  Bands started to look at the outer boroughs of New York as a place to live. And Hoboken was a distinctive, good town with a college that could support music.
 
ROCKER: There’s a very different scene in Hoboken today. How does that make you feel?
 
MERCER:  I still like to play there.  It’s my favorite place, really.  A lot of fond memories, and still the kind of club where people go 100% focused on music.  It’s not about picking up girls or, you know, getting drunk or nutted out.  It’s really kind of serious music people.
 
ROCKER: Back then you used to wear a cardigan and look kind of nerdy on stage, was that part of your look at the beginning?
 
MERCER:  Yeah, I guess it was partially a reaction to the whole glitter thing. You know, we were big fans of The Modern Lovers. I had seen them open for The New York Dolls on New Year’s Eve.
 
ROCKER: At Maxwell’s?
 
MERCER:  Yeah.  And it was such a juxtaposition, it was just, you know, the changing of the guard, and obviously the glitter thing was on its way out.
 
ROCKER: Was it fun when you got back together and started playing?
 
MERCER:  Oh, definitely.  We wouldn’t have done it otherwise.  I mean, that’s pretty much why we broke up, because it wasn’t fun any longer.
 
ROCKER: Was there a clash of personalities?
 
MERCER:  No, it was the business side.  We had signed to a semi-major label, and they were really independent, but sort of on the cusp of being a major label.  And the Only Life record did real well, and we had a good relationship with the company, and then they got bought out by Polygram, and eventually Universal.  So all the people we had built a relationship with had left the company, and new people came in, and didn’t really know about the band, and didn’t seem to care too much, and you know, it was all about the money, and we were being compared to other bands, and in order to be successful, you have to go to that next level, and it just put a lot of pressure on us.
 
ROCKER: When the band broke up and Bill moved, he went to Florida.  Is that right?
 
MERCER:  Yeah.
 
ROCKER: Where did he move in Florida?
 
MERCER: Daytona, His parents and some members of his family live there. Basically he got a job offer. And apparently it was too good to pass up.
 
ROCKER: What was he doing?
 
MERCER:  Working at Disney World.
 
ROCKER: Disney World?
 
MERCER:  Yeah, he’s still there.  So he drives up.
 
ROCKER: I’m getting this weird image of you guys playing Disney World, sort of like when you were cast as the high school reunion band in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild.
 
MERCER:  We could be playing “It’s a Small World”.
 
ROCKER: Yeah.  [LAUGHTER]  That’s right.
 
MERCER:  We should do a cover.
 
ROCKER: Definitely! Come to think of it, playing at Disney World might be appropriate in some way. After all, you’re all parents now.
 
MERCER:  Yeah, except for Dave.
 
ROCKER: Have you ever thought about doing a kids’ album?
 
MERCER:  No.  Our kids are older, actually, except Brenda’s son is still pretty young.
 
Actually, we all started having kids  around the time we broke up.  That was another thing that made it difficult to continue – we had families.  It was hard economically to justify it.
 
ROCKER: I assume most of you had some kind of day job as well.
 
MERCER:  Well, early on, we sort of balanced the two. It was really only around the time we broke up that we’d made it a full time thing. I guess that added to the pressure.
 
ROCKER: What did you do before The Feelies?
 
MERCER:  I worked at a newspaper.
 
ROCKER: As a writer?
 
MERCER:  A little bit of everything.  I did some reviews, record reviews, movie reviews.  I had a hard time giving bad reviews to music.
 
ROCKER: Other than that, and the fact that you don’t do long tours, what is the biggest difference now compared to when you were originally together?
 
MERCER:  You’re really asking me to compare it to different stages.  Each album had its own circumstances surrounding it.  And each had a little bit of a different perspective. I think, now, we don’t take things for granted.  We realize what a special situation we’re in, to have a friendship with the people in the band, and we realize it could stop again at any point.  So we want to enjoy it while it’s there.  We appreciate it more, I think.
 
ROCKER: What do your kids think about the band now that you’re touring again?
 
MERCER:  They’re not huge fans.  They actually come to the shows, but it’s more for the whole experience of getting to go backstage and everything.  I think they like the music, but it’s not, something they’re going to put on their iPods and listen to.
 
ROCKER: What do they listen to?
 
MERCER:  Well, my fifteen-year-old son used to like ‘90s music, grunge stuff.  But recently, through Rock Band and Guitar Hero, he’s gotten more into the ‘60s and ‘70s.  He’s been buying a lot of old records.  He just picked up Who’s Next.  And a girl his age that he knows, recommended Volunteers by the Jefferson Airplane, which I couldn’t believe, a fifteen-year-old girl recommending that.  Because it’s one of my favorite records. So he got that.  I don’t think he liked it too much, but he’s open minded.
 
ROCKER: Does he go through your record collection?
 
MERCER:  A little bit.  He actually was curious how many records we had, and we came up with some guestimate, and he went and counted and it turned out to be probably about ten times what we thought.  I think it was maybe 1,000, I don’t know.
 
ROCKER: How does it feel to be back on the stage?
 
MERCER:  It’s fun.  We pace ourselves.  We really haven’t done any major touring or anything.  The most we play is two nights in a row.  Take a couple of weeks off.
 
ROCKER: Obviously you’re older. And I think you can hear that reflected on the album itself.
 
MERCER:  Yeah, I mean, there are some songs that are fast and distorted, and some that are slow and acoustic.  But if you look at the previous four albums, they had all that.
 
ROCKER: It sounds what you do isn’t all that conscious.  You just do what you feel like.
 
MERCER:  Yeah.  If you have to work at it, it’s sort of an indication that something’s not right.  It’s always been organic.
 
ROCKER: If you had to boil it down to one thing, what would you want people to know about The Feelies?
 
MERCER:  I guess that our motives are the same as always – to have fun and play music with our friends.