In Their Own Words… with Mike Girard of The Fools

As a small crowd awaits The Fools to take the stage on a sunny afternoon in July, there’s a friendly vibe among fans seated in the rows of lawn chairs in the parking lot at Renegade’s Pub in Georgetown, Mass. 

The Fools, the biggest thing to come out of Ipswich, Mass., since fried clams, are the featured act at a summer block party. It’s clear most of these folks came specifically to see their local heroes. Some are sporting T-shirts: “Fooling Fans for 50 Years.”

They’re about to hear The Fools perform a set that includes songs from the band’s new album, “More of Everything.” 

In true Fools fashion, the collection of band-written originals is an undefinable blend of punky rockers, crowd-ready sing-alongs, quirky stories about aliens and time travel, Roy Orbison-inspired ballads and country-tinged love songs. 

The band that nearly became superstars — with videos on MTV and a tour with Van Halen — has somehow outlasted nearly all the ’70s and ’80s bands who used to hire them as an opening act. Even the big record label that fired them after two albums is gone.

While the lineup has shuffled over the years, the current incarnation of The Fools features three founding members: lead singer Mike Girard and guitarists Rich Bartlett and Stacey Pedrick. They’re joined by bassist Eric Adamson and drummer Leo Black.

Today is going to be a good day for The Fools, whose antics are being chronicled for an upcoming documentary about the band. But as Girard confirms privately during a break between sets, there’s an elephant in the room. That elephant is in the form of a chicken, the one emblazoned on the flashy rock star shirts Adamson and Pedrick are wearing.

While plastic souvenirs of said chicken can be purchased for $15 at the band’s merch table, there will be no “Psycho Chicken” on the menu today. The Fools will be skipping their parody of the Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer” at this family-friendly event. No F-bombs allowed.

It makes perfect sense. The song that first got The Fools’ attention on Boston radio stations like the dearly departed WBCN was left off their major label debut, “Sold Out.” (It was tucked inside the album as a bonus 45.) 

For this show, the fans will have to settle for a run-through of the band’s other best-known songs, including “It’s a Night for Beautiful Girls,” a reggae-flavored track that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, and long-time set staples like “I Won’t Grow Up,” a Ramones-style take on the Peter Pan song, and “Life Sucks, Then You Die,” the song that ultimately led Girard and his wife, Ginny, to move to New Hampshire. (Two other members reside in New Hampshire: Bartlett in Exeter and Adamson in Rochester.)

Girard has lived in Kensington since the early ’80s. We sat down for lunch with him at Street in Exeter to talk about the band’s new album and the books he’s written about his rock star adventures — “Psycho Chicken & Other Foolish Tales” and “A Fool in Time,” which blends a time travel arc with the band’s history. (His third book, “A Fool’s Errand,” is science fiction.) 

The Fools perform Nov. 27 at Tupelo Music Hall in Derry. In the meantime, the band is hosting a “flog” golf tournament Oct. 10 at Apple Hill Golf Course in East Kingston to benefit Ernie Boch Jr.’s Music Drives Us  foundation.

New Hampshire Magazine: In “Psycho Chicken & Other Foolish Tales,” you talk about the band’s early days. What was it like for a local band to get radio airplay in Boston? 

Mike Girard: I would hate to be trying to start now as a young band. Back then, WBCN and WAAF (in Worcester) had an ear to the street. There were clubs with venues in every town — Ipswich had two, for God’s sake, a small town like that. You really could learn how to play, and you could work a whole lot. Even if you weren’t that great, maybe you’d play a whole week and everybody gets a hundred bucks. 

NHM: How would you compare your CD-release show at the Georgetown block party to the party at the Crane Mansion in Ipswich the Fools staged in 1978 to celebrate getting signed to a major label? 

MG: The cool thing about the recent one is we hadn’t put out anything probably since 2011. When Karl (Preusser), the guy doing the documentary, showed up a couple years ago and wanted to do something, he happened to mention, “Is there any new music coming up?” That inspired us to put some stuff out and start writing again. 

But in terms of a comparison, the Castle Hill thing was as close to a debacle without being a debacle as anything could be. We sent out invitations to 200 people, and that included local media, radio stations, family members, best friends … and we ended up with close to a thousand people there.

NHM: How long have you lived in New Hampshire?

Fools guitarist Stacey Pedrick, right, sports a “Psycho Chicken” shirt at a July show in Georgetown, Mass., as does bassist Eric Adamson, left of Pedrick. Photo by Mike Cote

MG: My wife and I were living in Ipswich until 1986. Around that time, the “World Dance Party” album came out. It’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody. And we were living close to the center of town on a side street. It was like 3 o’clock in the morning, and apparently WBCN was playing “Life Sucks, Then You Die.” Somebody pulled up right in front of our house and just blasted it. It wasn’t done to be a dick or anything. It was like, “Mike’s gonna love this.” 

Around that time, we decided to relocate. In some ways, relocating also allowed me to keep recreating myself. Sometimes if you grow up in a small town and you stay there, everybody makes an assumption about who you are based on how you’ve always been.

NHM: The Georgetown show attracted long-time Fools fans. You could see women dancing who were singing along to the songs. How does that feel now compared to when you first started playing those songs?

MG: I remember 20 years ago people bringing either their kids or their parents, and now in some cases, it’s the grandparents bringing their grandchildren. At a show like that you could come in at any age, but it’s pretty wild to feel that generational thing. Not to sound sappy, but I feel honored by it. I feel as if they’re part of a family that got created more by them than by us.

NHM: In “The Watchers,” you sing about aliens warning us not to mess things up. Do you remain hopeful that we won’t?

MG: These are dark times, and I see certain things as bringing light. It’s important to try to be a light bringer right now, so I hope it’s a humorous song about a kind of a desperate situation.

NHM: How have you kept your voice healthy all these years? When you performed “Just Give Up,” which I heard for the first time in Georgetown, you held that note at the end like Roy Orbison in “Running Scared.” (The Fools nearly hit the Top 40 with a cover version of that song in 1981).

MG: I’ve never stopped singing. I sing because I like to sing. I’d sing whether I was in a band or not. But the first seven or eight years that we played, we didn’t have any monitors so I was always trying to hear myself in the room.

NHM: “The Last Rodeo” could only have been written by someone who has been around for a while. It’s a rare love song that addresses how things take on a greater meaning as we age. What sparked that song?

MG: I wrote that song for my wife as well as the other one I wrote strictly for her, “I Fell Into Your Eyes.” One woman who told me she’s been a fan for a million years said, “ ‘The Last Rodeo’ made me cry because it seems like you guys are gonna stop.” 

I said, “Well, everything stops, but look at it this way. The ‘Last Rodeo’ could be about how you are finally with the person you’re meant to be with.”