However, with over 10 years of history and over 25 or so records, it was time to give The Chubbies their due. Jeannette recently compiled the band's greatest hits on one disc. The ambitious singer-songwriter didn't stop there and also recorded 9 songs acoustically, which have never been heard in this format before.

I got to speak with Jeannette again a few weeks ago and find out some more about The Chubbies and the newly released The Official Greatest Hits.

antiMUSIC: I guess we talked before a little bit about what happened before with your solo record adventure. What was the sequence of events after you moved back home following that and how The Chubbies got started?

Jeannette: Let's see, I moved back home and was broke and I started recording again, just little demos, went to punk rock shows and started to sell them. And Long Gone John got a hold of one and wanted to do a record. But I didn't have a band at the time and I said, well, I don't have a band. It's just me. And I told him what I wanted to do. So I started recording with him. And soon after I got my friend Christene Kings to play drums and the rest is Chubbies history

(Both laugh)

antiMUSIC: The end. Ok, interview's over.

Jeannette: Thanks for talking to me. (laughs)

antiMUSIC: Did you decide or did you know you wanted to start a band right away when you moved home or did you know that you just wanted to play music?

Jeannette: That's a good question. No one's every asked me that one. I didn't know actually. I just wanted to keep doing what I did. And I wanted to play live with a band. It was just really hard when I was growing up there. There was nobody who liked what I liked. It was kind of a metal band sort of place. I like all that power pop and stuff. I liked a lot of soul. Nobody liked it. So it was kind of hard even to find someone to play with. Kind of no one to play with. So I just started recording you know on my own and hoping I would find someone. So I put up ads in record stores. And Christene had answered one and I just decided it would be a cool thing. I did want to tour. I knew I wanted to tour. That was something I had never done. And Christene was up for it, so we just did it. (laughs)

antiMUSIC: How long did this whole process of getting her together, or putting it together and learning material and starting to head out, and do your first practices and your first shows?

Jeannette: I was really fast. Cuz I put "I'm the King" together and I was recording that, and I had a job, and I was recording at night in my bedroom. I met Christene and she had just started playing drums like a few months before. She learned all the songs. She had never sung before. I taught her all the backgrounds. I mean she's really talented. She just picked everything up. I mean literally this was within 8 weeks before we went on a two months tour and she and I had never toured before. And she and I were just, ah, okay, let's do it. And my then boyfriend Matt, everybody called him Matt Phuzz because he was THE guy to go to for shows and touring. He had a band called The Phuzz. We went on tour with his band and there were two bands in one van for two months. It was ridiculous. But you know, it was great. I mean, I learned right then and there. I just threw myself into it, just like I do everything else. And learned how to tour and everything just like that. And so did Christene. And Christene and I, we just loved it. We just wanted to stay on the road.

antiMUSIC: What was the first practice like with her, do you remember?

Jeannette: (laughs) Yeah. Well I auditioned her, in Matt's garage, actually. She came over and at first I was like well? How old was she, like 21. And I thought at the end of the audition, OK. She's got like the basic thing and we had a lot of the same music tastes. And I thought, well, ok, that's cool. The rest of the practices, a lot of them we did at her house in Long Beach. And I would go to her house and I would actually say, ok, this is what the kick does, you know. And here's what this is. I mean we actually went over it piece by piece. We worked our asses off. But you know we were just excited too, to get in a van and go travel to different places. Cuz Southern California is kind of jaded. It's not your friendliest place to play. And going to places that don't get a lot of music, that was more appreciative and open to what we did was great. Because we were doing stuff before anybody did it. And it was, you know, a lot of people around here were just "well, what the hell was that?" And other people were just open to whatever was coming to their town.

antiMUSIC: How did you decide on the band name?

Jeannette: (laughs) Actually Matt named us. We were thinking of something…he said The Super Chubbies. And we said, that's too long. And…The Chubbies, that was kind of an inside dirty joke that…(laughs) we gave people chubbies when we played. (laughs) The name was funny we thought. And I don't know how many times I've heard people say after we came off stage, "You girls aren't chubby." Nah, not really… (laughs) And of course depending on how drunk we were, Christene would say, "Not that kind of chubby!" And it was fun to see the reaction. Oh god!

antiMUSIC: So what were your first few shows like, what were the crowds like and what was the reaction?

Jeannette: Ah, let me think…the first shows, we went up the west coast. And we played a lot of punk collectives. What I had done, I had promoted that record myself, I sent it off to college radio, and I mean I taught myself everything. I was kind of like my own PR firm. And I sent that record out. I called the radio stations, and said, "Yeah, we're going to be in your town." I sent homemade posters through the record stores, when record stores actually existed. The first shows were really...you'd get 15-20 people but super enthusiastic. And we'd have homemade t-shirts and they'd buy all our t-shirts and all our merch and stuff. They were pretty amazing. But it was hard though because we would have to drive 15 hours, play until 2 and 3 in the morning and then, sometimes, sleep for an hour or two, and then drive another 10 hours because a lot of the gigs were far between, as far as miles went, it was tough, you know. I remember thinking, god, the first week, I don't think we got any sleep. And we played basements… we played a basement in Minneapolis that was so humid, it actually rained in the basement.

Both: (laughs)

Jeannette: Oh, that happened in Mississippi…Biloxi, Mississippi, there was this place called the Little House, which literally was a single wide mobile home and all…man, a lot of famous bands came through there. And when we were all just starting out—not that we were one of the famous ones!---but a lot of real famous bands came through there. That place used to rain too because it's Biloxi Mississippi and it's so humid it was ridiculous. We actually had to stop sometimes, go outside to catch our breath and then come back in and finish. There would be, you know, a hundred kids packed into this little trailer in the middle of the swamp. Those were the first shows. We played parks, basements, parties, ah man, just anybody who would have us, lots of record stores, some clubs. The first (time) we played Canada, we played Victoria, the college up there and that was one of our finer gigs. That was actually a great, great gig. But most of them? Basements, you know, things like that.

antiMUSIC: How were these people hearing about you at the time? Why would they book you and why were these kids coming down?

Jeannette: You know, I don't know. That's a good question. I think, if they heard us, they were curious and they liked us. You know, we put on a good show. (laughs).

antiMUSIC: So was it hard for you to become the front person and talk to the audience as well?

Jeannette: No, really. It took me five seconds. I feel very comfortable up there. I have no problem. I just--it's funny--in every other part of my life, I'm probably a real jerk about stuff when it goes wrong, and I'm real impatient. But up there, you know, things go wrong, your cords go out…I had a bass amp that kept blowing up. I'm real good under pressure up there, I'm real forgiving. You know Christene and I would mess up, and you learn how to keep the show going. And you learn…because you only have so many minutes up there and you're there to give something back hopefully. That's kind of why you do it. And there's just no time for nonsense and ego, and all that. So I've never had a problem, I don't get nervous. I'm excited. Sometimes I can't wait for the other bands to get off the stage. I'm like, come on you guys, how many times are you going to play it? (laughs) Because we'd sometimes play with five bands a night. That's a lot of bands.

antiMUSIC: From what I've read, you've got something like over 20 releases by The Chubbies.

Jeannette: Maybe 25, I've lost count.

antiMUSIC: Wow, is that including all 12 inches, or sort of full length records?

Jeannette: Full length is probably about, let me see, 11 of the full length and EPs, and there's a lot of compilations, singles, lots of 7 inches and you know, we're on a lot of different indie labels. You know when they ask, and give us money to record it, we would do it, but that would also…like we did an Italian one, and that brought us to Italy. We did one in Finland, one in France, and that to us was a ticket to tour. So we tried to do as many recordings as we could; when someone asked we were there.

antiMUSIC: How did you manage to remain so prolific all the time when you were touring?

Jeannette: You know, it's a switch that never goes off with me. I'm a machine when it comes to that stuff. I just constantly write. It still makes me extremely happy. Like this morning I was driving to work and I was writing something new. It's always been a natural kind of little tick in my head.

antiMUSIC: I heard you opened for Madonna at one point. Is that true?

Jeannette: No. (laughs) Who told you that? I love those stories though. (laughs) We opened for The Offspring. When I was a songwriter, they commissioned me to write songs for Madonna, Taylor Dane, people like that. That's all I did all day, was sit in a studio and write songs. You know record my songs by me for two years—and I would have people like Peter Asher…. All these famous writers would critique me and say, you need to do this, this and that. And that's another place I have no ego. I'm like, okay, let's do it. I'm still learning my craft. I wanted to learn and do the best that I could. And they would say we've got a spot for Madonna we need to fill. And I would literally study her life and what she was doing and try to write a song from her mouth. They would always come back that they were too personal. She didn't want to get that deep. I was, like ok (sighs). I never got accepted. All my songs were turned down because they were too inside and I was really working hard too to make these people want to sing something that meant something to them. I think singers, a lot of times, if they wanted to get that deep then they would be songwriters. They didn't want that, they just wanted something that was, I don't know, lighter. Which was fine. That's totally understandable. And that's a whole other talent. Because there are writers out there who can do that.

antiMUSIC: You've just released the official greatest hits of The Chubbies. Have you had a lot of interest from people wanting one central disk of all their favorites?

Jeannette: Well, yeah. With it seemed to be the same, pretty much 10 songs, 11 songs, that people came up with that were their favorites. "Oh, that's my favorite", or "Oh I played that at my wedding", "I played that at my graduation" or whatever. And I think a lot of them are shocking. I can't believe some of the ones they really like. And some of them are obvious, like "When I Was Your Girlfriend" and "Play Me". I mean you can't get them out of your head. But people did keep asking, and I said, you know what? I'm going to do this. And then I went ahead, because you can't just give them that, you've got to give them a little extra. I went ahead and recording nine acoustic versions of some of my favorites, and added it to it. So there are nine never-before-heard songs on there.

antiMUSIC: Yeah. It's amazing. There are 22 tracks on there. You're not cheating anyone by any stretch of the imagination. Can we talk quickly about a couple of the songs…starting maybe with "Play Me"?

Jeannette: "Play Me". I think one of the coolest things was when we went to Italy, they were singing it, and they didn't speak English and they were singing "Play Me" back to us. And Christene and I thought, "wow, that's amazing". We were very… because of my lyrical content, I get a lot more attention than a lot of punk bands did. With a band that's known for their lyrics, you know, going to a place that doesn't speak English, how in the hell are we going to translate this? And it did. Apparently it did. I think that was one of the coolest memories for "Play Me". And then one of the guys who booked the tour, he played it at his wedding which was very cool. And then "When I was Your Girlfriend", when that one came out. It was such a strange thing. College radio picked it up so fast, I think because it's got a relentless hook in it. And everyone has said at one point in time, "when I was your girlfriend, you were a lucky man"….if you were a girl. (laughs) It just really hit a common note with everyone and I thought that was cool. All of a sudden it was being played on all this college radio, and I thought, wow this is cool. That was kind of a first for me, you know, for it to be so easy.

antiMUSIC: "Vegas Song" and "Johnny Breathe" are two of my favorites.

Jeannette: Mine too. "Vegas Song" is probably my favorite Chubbies song. We were on tour in Vegas, at my favorite, favorite place to play. We were at Kelly Benway's house; she had this ranch house in Vegas on this big piece of land and we would do a show at the store and at her house. The same night. And there would be 250 kids and it would be ridiculous. One of the kids was starting a label, and he wanted to do a recording just right then and there of "Kid", and we started playing "Kid" by The Pretenders and they recorded and then I started messing around with the chords for "Vegas Song" and I started writing it, right then and there, and it's like 2 in the morning, and I say to Christene, "I want to play this song, I want to write this song." And we never do that. And we wrote the song, right then and there and it was very fast. It was just one of those ones where you go, yeah, that works.

antiMUSIC: So is this the end of The Chubbies?

Jeannette: I just saw Christene last weekend actually. (laughs) And she's had a couple of projects and she and I are still best friends. We've thought about it and we've been getting asked to play quite a bit and we keep thinking about it because it would be fun to just get out there and do it. If enough people want us to I can't see how we can say no. It's way too much fun.

antiMUSIC: So it would just be going out and playing your stuff live or would you possibly be writing new stuff along the way?

Jeannette: We might. We can't just fire each other that way so we might. You never know.

antiMUSIC: I'm not going to tie you up any more…I know you've got to go. So I guess in closing, what's next for Jeannette…the Josephine record?

Jeannette: Yeah, I'm working on the Josephine Outlaw King. I'm writing it now and I'm having the best time. Because I had kind of immersed myself in this world, I've never done this before. Where it's me but I've given her, her own life and her own thing and it's actually my own life drama (laughs) pretty much and I'm adding songs. It's pretty amazing. So I can't wait to get this album going.

antiMUSIC: Excellent. So how far along are you do you think?

Jeannette: All the songs are pretty much in my head; I've added a couple more and I started recording just the first one yesterday, actually.

antiMUSIC: Excellent. So probably some time early next year?

Jeannette: Yeah. I guess so. And I've got a video coming up.

antiMUSIC: Of?

Jeannette: I haven't told anybody this, but it's going to be AWESOME. What we're doing is, we're taking excerpts from Old Ranch Party…it's this old TV show that had rockabilly people on it, like Johnny Cash and Wanda Jackson and we've taken these people out and we're putting me in.

antiMUSIC: Awesome.

Jeannette: (laughs) And we've been working on that. That should be out hopefully by January.

antiMUSIC: Wow.

Jeannette: Yeah.

antiMUSIC: What do you plan on doing with that, what song…

Jeannette: Oh, it's going to be "You Don't Know".

antiMUSIC: Oh, awesome. Cool. I really can't wait to see that.

Jeannette: (laughs) Cool.

antiMUSIC: And so you're working on Josephine. I guess with the two young ones, no live shows, eh?

Jeannette: Ah, the babies. Yeah, I've got the two busy boys.

antiMUSIC: I can imagine you're tied up. But still…maybe next summer?

Jeannette: I would love to. I would LOVE to. My aunt moved up there. She's very close actually to Victoria. I would love to go see her up there. I'm quite sure that would be great. That would be awesome.

antiMUSIC: Ok, I won't tie you up. Thanks for doing this.

Jeannette: Ok, thanks Morley. Talk to you soon.