Laura Jane Grace talked with Rolling Stone:
The last few years haven’t been all that hot for Grace, to be honest. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, Against Me! had just signed with Linda Perry as their new manager; though they’d been growing apart for a while, there was talk of making their first new album since 2016. But then lockdown happened, and everything crumbled further. Bandmates were clashing, getting a PPP loan proved difficult, and, she says, management was pressuring the band to do Zoom livestreams, which Grace loathed. All that, combined with the viper pit that is social media, led to her blocking everyone (including her bandmates) and retreating into her loneliness. It didn’t help that she only got her tween child every other month — splitting time with the kid’s mother, Heather Gabel. Three-hour baths became the norm for Grace, as well as week-long acid trips and punishing daily runs. “We didn’t have a fight, but we all stopped talking,” she says of her bandmates. “It’s been this big fucking open wound where all the people in my life disappeared.”