In Conversation: Mike Bingham of Spiritual Cramp
After six years, Spiritual Cramp made a deceptively complex debut album worthy of the wait. Mike Bingham has been working on himself for at least as long. It turns out he's deceptively complex, too.
With last year’s release of their self-titled debut, Spiritual Cramp crystallized a sound that embodies street punk, hardcore, and mod music with the kind of versatility that can handle a wide range of subject matter—adding dimensions that we rarely get to see in one band, much less one album. Before this interview, I’d never met singer Mike Bingham before, but almost immediately after we started, that all made sense: He reminds me so much of the kinds of people I met when I first got into hardcore—the tough kids with the soft hearts who lived for this culture. These were the kids with the work ethic to make things happen, but they also quite often set the tone.
Despite going on seven years since the release of Mass Hysteria, Spiritual Cramp’s debut 7” for React! Records, it felt important to me to start the conversation in the way back—to look for the foundations, to trace the journey (and the mistakes), to understand the personal vision, and to locate Mike somewhere in his own evolution. Much has changed since that first record, and he’ll be the first person to tell you that some of the “old Mikes” have worn out their welcome.
You’ve repeatedly described yourself as a “guarded person.” So I was kind of wondering: What the hell you were thinking when you agreed to let me ask you questions?
MIKE: Well, I’m a guarded person with people that I need to be guarded with [laughs]. But I also think that I have a pretty good gauge as to who I need to be guarded with. I live in Los Angeles, and I think that it’s very important to have that guard up at all times here. I spent a lot of my life running around thinking that if I could make enough friends or find the validation I was looking for, through accolades in music and art, that those things would satiate whatever was inside of me that I was looking to satiate. But as I got older, I realized those things were not going to scratch the itch. And all I was really doing was running around giving away too much of myself to people who didn’t deserve it. This light really switched on when I got sober. When I read your interviews, I can tell that I am able to maybe be a little more transparent with you, one-on-one, than I would be with someone else because it feels like there’s thoughtfulness to the way you compose your questions.
I think maybe that comes from the idea that ever since I started doing interviews, I’ve always made it a point to go against the idea that the person doing the interview should be a neutral prompter. I sort of embrace the idea that I’m willing to share as much as you are. I think that’s one of the reasons people tend to reciprocate with me.
MIKE: Man, maybe that is it. I didn’t consider that. I’ve done a lot of interviews, and some of them being the higher-impact interviews, where you’re sitting there really trying to be honest and you’re just looking back at this person and thinking, “You have no understanding of who I am or what I’m talking about.” And it doesn’t matter. They’re going to write the piece and it will be fine. I’ve never been completely dunked on. But maybe that’s why whatever it is that you’re doing resonates with me. I knew coming into this interview that I felt safe and I don’t always feel that way. I knew that today I was like, I’m going to really try to be honest with this person and have a real conversation.
I love that. And thank you. So maybe we should start with a major point of commonality between the two of us—which is that I’ve heard you describe your childhood with two words: “poor” and “religious.” That’s kind of my whole deal [laughs]. So I wanted to talk about your experience with living under those two very oppressive thumbs, because I actually think most people assume that the religious part is the more oppressive thumb, but for me, growing up without money was more defining in a lot of ways.
MIKE: I think you’re right. I grew up in really kind of ugly apartments in a town called Vancouver, Washington, which is just across the river from Portland. It’s for sure the kind of town where you can get into methamphetamines… so, yeah, my life could have gone a lot differently. It was tough.
Let me back up a little bit and just preface this all by saying that my life is really, really amazing now. I’m married. I have a beautiful home. I’m sober. I’m content. I’m spiritual. I’m in good shape. My band is flourishing. I have everything that I have ever wanted. But as a six-year-old who was living in apartments, it was hard because all I really wanted was to live this life where I felt supported. I wanted to do things like play basketball on the school team. I wanted to skateboard and have cool clothing. But in order to do that, you have to have access to resources and resources come from money and time—and my family didn’t really have either of those things to offer. We lacked an economic base. So that lack of a base kind of helped me develop into this character who ran around thinking I could fulfill myself and fulfill my own self-love with people, places, and things.
In my experience, it felt like there were two experiences at play: there is the experience of being poor, and then there is the experience of being conscious of being poor. Like, I don’t know if you had an experience like this, but I remember one year when I was taken to a store and told that I could only get one present for Christmas. I wanted to get a Casio-type keyboard and the store had two keyboards on offer. One of the keyboards was more expensive than the other, and it was clearly the one I wanted, but I very consciously pretended to get excited about the cheaper keyboard because I knew my parents couldn’t really afford the other one. They told me I could get whatever I wanted, but I still had that consciousness of being poor that made me want to help them.
MIKE: How old were you when that happened?
Maybe seven or eight.
MIKE: Yeah… I mean, I have a hard time relating to even that. This is a delicate thing to speak about. Like, I didn’t even really have Christmas. I was so busy just trying to survive that I did not have a moment to even begin to think consciously, if that makes any sense at all. I walked around like a bug for 26 years until I walked into a therapist’s office for the first time and we did some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Actually, I do have kind of a similar story, except it was different because I didn’t have any empathy for it. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was probably about six or seven, and we went to a CVS or some sort of pharmacy by our house. There was a Michael Jordan toy from the movie Space Jam. This toy must have been three dollars, right? It was just one of those little toys that we got when we were children. So I went up to my dad and I said, “Dad, I want this Space Jam toy!” And I don’t remember what he said verbatim, but he basically explained to me that he didn’t have any money and he couldn’t purchase it for me. At the time, I was disappointed. I just wanted what I wanted, and I thought, Why can’t I ever have what I want? But if you think about it, that toy was like three dollars and 50 cents. That motherfucker must have been broke! That’s crazy, dude.
My wife is the opposite. She grew up really middle- and working-class, and her parents are very thoughtful and hardworking people. They’re just great people. And my wife is just this beautiful, well-adjusted, extremely thoughtful and hardworking person. She met me when we were really young, so she knew what was happening. We’ve been together for nineteen years; I’m 36 now. But I’ll put it this way: Her family was the first family I ever had a real Christmas with—like, in the truest sense of the word, where you wake up on Christmas morning and you open gifts that people give you. Now, in retrospect, I feel like I have all this empathy and all this awareness about it, but I feel like I lost a lot of time.
Would you say punk is the first piece of your identity that felt like it was really yours?
MIKE: I think that if I had to be honest, that first piece would be skateboarding. But immediately through skateboarding, I heard a NOFX song. And I heard Rancid. And I was never very good at skateboarding. I was awful, actually [laughs].
I do think punk was the first thing that I felt would define the rest of my life though. I knew that I would wear punk band shirts forever. Once I had my first real connection with the music, I knew that it would be something I would pine over and obsess over. I didn’t obsess over skateboarding. Skating was a hobby for me. Punk was the first thing where I wanted to drown and suffocate myself in a pool of it and never come out. I didn’t learn any ideals from skateboarding. I didn’t learn how to live my whole life from skateboarding. Punk is really where I learned how to live my whole life.
How much of the identity that you thought you were adopting as a kid holds up to the way you view it now?
MIKE: I think it just evolved. Because at first, to me, it was the big anarchy symbol in red on the back of a leather jacket. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to throw glass bottles at everything. I wanted to steal. I wanted to fight. And then someone said, “You should read a copy of The People’s History of the United States.” So I started getting into more political bands like the Subhumans. There were these corners that were turning. But initially it was just anger and outrage and viciousness—that’s what I latched onto. That didn’t hold up very well. But I think that if the thirteen-year-old version of me were able to look at the life that I live right now, that version of me would be like, “Wow. You must be having fun.” That’s all I could ever ask for. Because I’m still punk as fuck. I truly believe in it. I still steal from Whole Foods all the time [laughs]. I’m still who it is that I set out to be. I’m just conscious of my actions now and I can be thoughtful and intentional—and I didn’t used to be.
I just want to interject here that I’m happy you’re able to talk about this stuff very frankly, because I read something you said once that made me feel like you were going to withdraw. You said, “A lot of bands use their troubled experiences to create traction in the press, and I’ve always found that to be distasteful.” So while I get what you’re saying, I also feel that, for me, as an artist, I personally have a nagging desire to feel understood. I feel like that's why I started playing music in the first place. And I honestly don’t think you can understand me without knowing something about where I come from. Is that something you feel?
MIKE: Yeah. I could understand why that might be something you bring up for sure. I think I was probably thinking about this one band that was spinning a narrative of how “we all live in a practice studio together” and “we all have no money,” and it was just total bullshit. Everyone who knew them knew it was just a fake narrative—but it worked really well. So I remember seeing that and thinking, I don’t want to spin a narrative of poverty to get traction for my art. I don’t actually have access to anything. If this doesn’t work out for me, I’m in big trouble. At the same time, I do understand the idea of wanting to be seen. But if you look at our lyrics, that’s where I’m seen. I’m seen through my art.
There’s also a difference between creating a false narrative and sharing a piece of yourself that’s true.
MIKE: I think that I was just afraid of sharing that piece of myself because I don’t ever want to enter the “Poverty Olympics,” right? Where some person out there is like, “I knew you, and your grandparents had a house!”—you know what I mean [laughs]. It’s like when you start running your mouth about stuff like that, other people are gonna be out there with their monocle. I don’t need that.
Which is where the “guarded” part comes in.
MIKE: Exactly.
I feel like I’ve gotten less guarded over the years because I’ve realized that if I am the one putting myself out there as much as I possibly can be, no one can use any of it against me.
MIKE: It’s just so transparent.
It just feels like my life is what it is. People can argue with me about the details of a story, but the substance—that’s my experience.
MIKE: Right. You know, I think that you have to know who you really are in order to tell an honest story about yourself. And I think it’s taken me a long time to figure out who I really was. Because I think you’re right. Why else would someone like me go around being so extremely guarded about who they really are? It’s just because I’m afraid that I’m not being as honest as I should be. Maybe I’m afraid of other people’s perceptions. Or maybe I’m afraid of my own shortcomings. I don’t know. But if I don’t put any of my real honest story out there for the most part, then I don’t have to talk to anyone about it.
Sometimes I don’t want to talk to anyone about anything. I feel safe with my wife. I feel safe with my friend Kerry [McCoy] from Deafheaven. That’s a safety person for me. I have these people in my life who understand me and love me for who I truly am—and not everyone is going to do that. I spent a lot of time where… I really want to be liked, you know? But if I don’t risk certain things, then I don’t have to worry about being liked because people will never know.
Wanting to be liked is an exhausting proposition.
MIKE: It is. It’s unsustainable. But I don’t think that my validity or my identity is dependent on being perceived anymore. It was for a long time because that’s just desperately what I needed. I was never even perceived as a child, but now I am fucking perceived. I see it. And now that I have it, I can look at it and be like, “That didn’t work either.” So now that I know that doesn’t work, I can wake up at 5 a.m. every morning, I can sit, and I can be thankful for all the things that I do have. I can give my wife a hug and I can make sure that when I take a sip of that first cup of coffee in the morning, that I really taste it. And then after this interview, when I go down to the park with my dog and I play fetch with him, I will enjoy that moment. That type of freedom is the only freedom I care about anymore.
A little earlier you said that if this doesn’t work out for you, you’re in big trouble. I always joke with younger artists that I’m the Ghost of Christmas Future—like I’m a cautionary tale [laughs]. You’re in your thirties, right?
MIKE: Yeah, I’m 36.
OK, yeah. I turn 50 this year, and that comes with a lot of fucking fear and stress because I have lived a life in punk, and every now and then, I get reminded that I am basically unhireable. How I’ve even managed to live the life I lead is beyond me.
MIKE: With help, you know? With homies.
That’s true.
MIKE: I don’t know you, but you strike me as resourceful. Listen, if you’re 50 years old and you’re about to go on tour with your band, you are a resourceful person. The way you are conducting Anti-Matter? I see that beacon from a mile away. When I see someone doing what it is that you’re doing… you’re doing it all yourself. I know what you’re doing.
There are other people like that I’ve met along my way. Evan [Wivell], who played in a band called Mindset, he did a label called React! Records. Same type of tenacity, same type of aim. So you’re not unhireable. You, of all people, could be a millionaire [laughs]. It’s just that you choose to play music because it’s what calls you and you choose to. That’s how we choose to live our lives.
One thing about Spiritual Cramp that’s interesting to me is how you’ve been very open about the internal structure of the band, where you’ve talked about it being—not necessarily hierarchical, but just very designated. Like, everyone plays their roles. Did that develop over time or was it baked in from the start?
MIKE: It was baked in from the start of our fifth practice. That’s when that happened. I had just finished a long tour with a band I was in called Creative Adult. That band was a democratic band. I wanted to keep going. I had ideas for what I thought that band should be, but me and the singer, God bless him—he’s a genius and he’s an incredible human being—but we had different ideas on what we thought should be happening with the band. And at the time, I wasn’t willing to compromise. Now I realize that compromise would have made for a better partnership, but we ended that band.
Then we started Spiritual Cramp. My friend who I started the band with, Stewart Kuhlo—who is still one of my best friends but is no longer in the band—he said, “Mike, you need to be in a leadership role.” Stewart has a track history of working in successful companies, so he was urging me to take ownership of that leadership role. But it’s like what you said earlier: It’s not very common for things like defined leadership to make their way into the arts because it’s “supposed to be” organic. And so what happened was that we started playing. We played a couple of shows where there was no defined leadership. And then we started getting more show offers. We got offered this tour with Turnstile, The Story So Far, and Drug Church. It would be our first time out of the Bay Area, and my really good friend Will [Levy] from The Story So Far hit me up and was like, “Hey, I want to put you on these shows, man.” Our 7-inch wasn’t even out yet. But then one of the other members of the band came to me and said, “I don’t think we should be doing these shows.” They had other ideas about what they wanted to do with the band. But [after Creative Adult], I thought I was starting my own band. Stewart and Mike, the bass player, we were all locked in, but I never defined it to the other two guys. So it was like, “Oh shit. I have to explain this to people. It has to be talked about or else I’m going to have to have democratic discussions with more people, and I’m not doing that anymore. I’m going to be in charge of something.”
So yeah, I’m the leader of Spiritual Cramp and everyone knows it and it works well. What great organizations don’t have leaders? But it only works if you have trust in your leadership. The people in my band need to trust me and I am lucky enough that I have all these sharp people who want to work with me.
If I’m honest, I know very few bands that work in a purely democratic model that feel like they are functioning at a high level [laughs]. I mean, it can work, but it necessitates a kind of person and a type of dynamic between people. I like the use of the word “team” because I don’t know if most bands really think of themselves in that way. And that’s a helpful way to look at it because there is usually some sort of leadership in a team. Like, if you’re playing sports and there is no one making a play, what the fuck is everyone going to do?
MIKE: Yeah, I mean, if you zoom out a little bit, it’s just that when human beings get together to accomplish an objective, there has to be some sort of tactical strategy behind it, I think.
OK. Can I assume you read the year-end thing I did with Jeremy Bolm where we talk about “Herbert’s on Holiday”?
MIKE: Me? Reading my band’s reviews? I would never [laughs]. I may have glazed over it.
How did I do on my lyrical close reading?
MIKE: That’s exactly what it was. That’s exactly what that song is about. I think some of the best artists in the world are writing the simplest songs on the Earth. If you’re familiar with Sam Cooke, the soul artist, go listen to any of those songs. The chorus or the hook on any of these songs is the most surface-level thing you’ll ever read. It’s like, “Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I love you. I love you.” I’m not self-conscious at all about that. I think it’s kind of a cheat code. It doesn’t need to be something that you have to break open and dissect. I got enough of that. Let me give you something sweet.
That’s kind of like what I was saying before. I want to set out who I am out in front of everyone so that I don’t have to go and create some fake narrative. It’s like, “Just read the lyrics to my band and look at the artwork.” If you do, you can see that I’m sarcastic. You can see that I’m deeply emotional. You can see that I want to be perceived as tough. You can see who I am from these songs, and that’s all I want. I just want to be seen for my art. I’m proud of it.
But the way you described “Herbert’s on Holiday,” it’s like, yeah. You totally understand exactly what happened to me. I met this person. They showed me unconditional love. By being shown unconditional love, I was given strength. Now I am able to take care of this person. It’s as simple as that. It’s a song for them. When they read it, I want that person to cry. I want other people to cry. I want it to be that simple.
A song like “Catch a Hot One” is also arguably straightforward enough, but you were in a different place when you wrote it—you were in your addiction—and now it’s a part of you.
MIKE: Yeah.
How is that aging with you?
MIKE: That will always serve as a snapshot to a point in my life that I want to remember. I think that putting something like that out there provides accountability to myself. That song was written during a really, really bad period of my life. It was during the pandemic. At this point my drug addiction had become no holds barred, gloves off. I was secretly doing cocaine all the time. I remember writing it in my backyard when I was hungover. I had been up all night doing drugs by myself without anyone else. I feel like that’s something I will always be OK talking about; it’s like I have a responsibility to talk about that.
You want to talk about honest narratives about who I am and where I come from? This is one that I think I need to be honest about. I’ll tell you why: During the pandemic, I would spend a lot of time on my phone. I remember a friend posting about the fact that they got sober. They had a year sober, and I remember sitting there looking at my phone, being like, “How did you do that?” That was the first spark of looking at something and thinking, “I wonder if that guy can do it, maybe I can do it.” So I hope that, no matter what, for the rest of my life and for as long as anyone listens to my records, maybe someone will listen to that [song], and then maybe they’ll go and research me. Maybe they’ll find this interview. Maybe there’s some hope for someone else in a song like that. When you’re deep in addiction like that, you don’t think anyone could ever understand. It’s so isolating. You think you’re so unique. You have such a low self-opinion. So I think it’s important to have that flag raised: Not the one about being poor. The one about drug addiction.
The song itself is very visceral to me. I can literally feel your anxiety in it. Even just the lyrics about always getting into fights, always lying to your wife—there’s something about it that feels almost too real. When you perform it live, do you feel like you’re still living inside of that anxiety?
MIKE: We’ve never actually played it live. Ever. We’ve never played that song all in a room together other than during the pandemic. When we do finally play it, though, I think I will. For sure. I will always be the person that I was when I wrote that song. I’m just sober now.
OK, I’ll end with this. You once said that, “Spiritual Cramp lyrics are in the space between that projection of myself and who I really am.” Have you ever considered it important to make those two pieces fit into a more cohesive Mike?
MIKE: OK, so this is a crazy question. [Pauses] But the answer is no. That, to me, implies absorbing and becoming one. And I can’t become one with the projection of myself that I thought I was going to once be. That’s not going to be good for anyone. The projection of who I wanted to be is not a soft and gentle person; it’s a person who has got something to prove. And who I am right here today, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. But in order to step out on that stage to become the larger version of myself that I become when I’m [performing], that part has to stay on stage. He can’t come home with me. He’s not allowed to lie in bed and drink coffee with my wife.
On some level, it feels like you’re interpreting the idea of wholeness as an ideal, as opposed to a messy, complicated self.
MIKE: Yeah.
For me, I think about it as copping to the fact that I am not always the amazing person I want to be. That all of these things that mess me up and complicate me are still there and I can’t pretend they’re not. Shoving them into a corner doesn’t work. So I have to figure out some way to find a place for them, to understand their role in the way I am.
MIKE: I think I use my band as a way to process that. Very subconsciously. But you know, as I get older, and as I get better at living, you kind of start to discover which parts of that person even need to stay around anymore. The parts of myself that helped define the first version of Spiritual Cramp, they’re probably long gone. That was like six years ago. What part of myself is going to replace them now? I’m not sure. I don’t want the guy who is looking to start a fist-fight to be in my house anymore. But at the same time, I still feel like I need that armor and I’m not sure why.
I mean, this literally goes back to the beginning of the conversation, where we were talking about your hesitance to embrace certain narratives because you feel some kind of way about them. So what I’m getting from you is that there’s this sense that you have a very clear idea of the person that you believe you are. But when your expression doesn’t match, you think there must be something wrong with the expression. But maybe the expression is actually telling you more about who you are than you think.
MIKE: Yeah. It’s like, I’m fighting against where it is that I think I need to go versus who I actually was and maybe will be sometimes.
And I’m saying it’s OK to be a lot of things. Like, I’m still a street kid at heart. And I’m also a sensitive, emo queer kid [laughs]. It’s not supposed to make sense. You’re not a character in a book. You’re not flat.
MIKE: You never went to school for therapy or anything like that?
No [laughs]. I have a Bachelor’s in English and Adolescent Education and a Master’s in Linguistics.
MIKE: Well, you’re really good at pulling all of this together. This is the best interview I’ve ever done. I’m just going to say that. This is the most fun I’ve ever had.
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These interviews are always insightful and informative, but I think this is the first one I've read that was actually transformative....to see the subject of the interview come away with the potential for a different understanding of themselves, goddamn.
Well damn. This was a glorious way to spend my Friday morning. Paired perfectly with coffee and listening to their new LP. Thanks for sharing.