Q&A: Bill Stevenson of the Descendents talks punk rock

After a career spanning four decades, legendary punk-rockers the Descendents will perform at 8 Seconds on Saturday at 9 p.m. Radkey and rehasher will provide opening support.

Tickets are available at ticketfly.com for $20 to $38. Doors for the show open at 8 p.m.

We caught up with the Descendents drummer Bill Stevenson to talk about the band, the music and the history behind 40 years of punk rock royalty.

Q: Bill Stevenson, you have solidified yourself as the legendary drummer for the Descendents, a musical powerhouse. But before you were that, who was Bill when he was just a kid?

Bill: Well, for the first several weeks of my life, I was in an incubator because I was born prematurely. Then let’s skip ahead 14 years. I was kind of a nerdy kid in high school… It wasn’t until I met Frank and Tony and the Nolte brothers, Joe and Dave from the band The Last that I started to feel some friendships.

Q: In your interview with Rolling Stone, you guys talked about how punk can mean different things to different people. What is punk to you?

B: You can describe it and you can throw adjectives at it, but thankfully, it can’t quite be pigeon-holed into a little box… Fortunately punk rock’s got a lot of elasticity to it. We are able to tolerate. Like, everyone’s welcome at the door.

Q: I’ve read that you dream songs. Do you really wake up with a song in your head? What is the process for writing your music?

B: Everybody in the band writes roughly a quarter of the stuff…. For my lack of having a good imagination, and for my lack of being a good song craftsman nor being a great poet or lyricist, I do sort of rely on these, well, they’re not dreams. It sounds so stupid because it sounds like I’m making it up. The song just comes into my head… Like you would hear a record, I just hear that.

Q: When did you start writing music?

B: I mean my first songs, of course, I think were very derivative of other bands I was listening to… The first song on “Milo Goes to College,” which is called “Myage,” that’s my first song I wrote… What is it really? It’s cool chord progressions and cool rhythms and drums parts with like, trite high school poetry lyrics. For being 15, that’s not bad!

Q: Over the years you guys have talked about pursuing this idea of “all.” But what does “all” actually mean to you?

B: All is the total extent. All is the utmost possible when nothing else remains. All is a quest; it’s a mentality. It’s not something you check off your checklist for the day or the year or the life…

As a musician, you could see all being the idea that we as musicians have a responsibility to aspire to more than what we inherited... Fortunately, it’s fun. The pure elation of musical discovery, it’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever known.

Q: How has music been an outlet for you throughout your life, and how has that changed over time?

B: In most ways, it actually has not changed one iota, but instead of my writing a song about, you know, I like food and that kind of thing, I may be writing about something quite serious, like say infidelity within a relationship… I think we really know what we are now. Who we are and what we are. When we started we were people, like most teenagers, who were trying to find our personalities. The first EP and the first few albums, those are chronicles of frustrated people trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into the world.

Q: The Descendents have performed on and off for decades. Despite career barriers, medical issues and simply distance, why do you think you guys always find your way back to the band?

B: I think that none of us are the kind of people that spread ourselves real thin in terms of friendships, and so these friendships and these bonds that we have, I think we take them more and more seriously as we get older, not less and less… You know, case and point, when I was really sick, Milo wrote that song “Comeback Kid.” He wrote that when he talked to me the day after I got out of my brain surgery. You know, these are my lifelong friends. These are the people who will be at my death bed with my family. It goes way beyond punk rock.

Q: What has been the most memorable moment of your time with the Descendents?

B: I think the memories I’ll take to my grave are the first few years, the various practice rooms we had. I still remember us in there arguing and bickering at each other and playing. We really learned to play music in the band. None of us really knew how to play music well. We learned together in the band. Those were the magic times…. We had carpet up on the walls and we would put a mattress in front of the door after we shut the door so that no sound could get out. Those were like our treehouses, treehouses for young adults. Those are the things I’ll remember.

Q: “Hypercaffium Spazzinate” was your first album in over a decade. What’s next for you guys?

B: We have a couple handfuls of demos floating around between ourselves, so before too long here we’ll start recording again… I could see us have a new record coming out in a year and a half from now maybe.

Having formed in 1977, the Descendents have had various periods of activity for more than 40 years.