It’s been almost 15 years since we last heard new music from Pinhead Gunpowder so it would be understandable if you thought we’d seen that last of them. The band, started by Aaron Cometbus in 1991 and rounded out by Billie Joe Armstrong, Bill Schneider, and Jason White (since 1994), recently enjoyed a bit of a resurgence with the reissue of their entire back catalogue by 1-2-3-4 Go! Records.
It came as a bit of surprise though when word started to filter out (shoutout to pacejunkie for being the first with that info) a few weeks ago that Aaron Cometbus was in town and working on new Pinhead Gunpowder material with his old bandmates. While news of that remained pretty well contained, a guest appearance by Jason White on The Dummy Room podcast released last week has poured gasoline on the fire.
Jason joined host Nate Deml in a wide-ranging interview on the many bands he’s been a part of in his career and how he ended up as the touring guitarist in Green Day for the past 23+ years. While the interview didn’t break any news about upcoming Green Day material, it did venture into an interesting discussion about Pinhead Gunpowder.
The first fun fact that came out of the interview was confirmation that the Pinhead Gunpowder song Walkin’ Catastrophe from the Carry The Banner EP which was credited to Jason White was actually written by Billie Joe. At the time, Billie didn’t wanna deal with figuring out the publishing issues with Green Day’s label so he just had Jason take credit for the lyrics.
But where things got interesting is when Deml asks if there’s ever going to be new Pinhead Gunpowder material and Jason responds “Well, funny you should ask. Uh yeah, let me just say we’re working on it and I’m pretty sure you’ll be hearing new Pinhead Gunpowder soon”. Deml then asks if he’ll be singing on the new songs and Jason responds “I will try, I’m working on it right now, to be honest”.
With those comments from Jason and our information on Aaron being in town to work on new material it would seem a release from the band could be imminent. But Jason was also quick to catch himself and say new music would be out “in the next few years”.
I’m gonna take the “in the next few years” comment with a grain of salt here though since the band has only once dropped a full-length album of original material (1997’s excellent Goodbye Ellston Avenue) and have historically preferred to release EPs, some as short as two songs. So in all likelihood, a short EP is what we can expect and if the band’s main lyricist Aaron Cometbus is in town to work on new material you’d have to think he didn’t come empty-handed and has some song ideas.
I also have a hard time believing that a side project that has gotten together as randomly as this one over the last three decades has anything planned out beyond the next few weeks let alone the next few years. So I’m going to hang on to his comment that we’ll be hearing new Pinhead Gunpowder “soon” and keep refreshing my email waiting for that teaser from 1-2-3-4 Go! Records about a mysterious pre-order that we “won’t wanna miss”.
PS. As most of you probably know, Twitter has turned into a dumpster fire since Elon took over. While Meta isn’t much better, we are transitioning to Threads and will be more active over there going forward. So please give us a follow on Threads (@greendayfm) to keep updated on our latest stories.