Audioholic Media

When you listen to The Matches there isn’t one particular band that you can compare them to. Sure, you can tell they’ve been influenced by an array of punk, pop, and alternative rock movements, but there isn’t one particular indicator where you make definite connections. In a day and age where music is being mass-produced like Adidas sneakers, it’s comforting to have something else more original than your average shell toe shoe. The good thing about this band is that they’re not afraid to take risks and they’re sure as hell not afraid to put on a good show. These guys are performers. These guys know how to perform.

Audioholic Media: On the Epitaph website, it states that you guys “honed your skills” through guerrilla concert-making, which is pretty admirable. Can you tell us anything about that?

Shawn Harris: Um… We became promoters… sort of… by necessity. We couldn’t really get a show through other promoters so we figured if we booked the show then we could put ourselves on it [slight laughter], you know? We started in the Bay area in California. It was like the generation after Green Day and Rancid had gotten really big from the Bay area, and so it was kind of like the do-it-yourself were more punk scene was opposed to the indie scene. They got really protective. They didn’t want— well, the scene was being exposed to MTV and everything at the time, and so they didn’t want bands that had pop elements. So when we did our shows we realized that we had some pop elements and also some alternative rock elements. So, yeah, we started booking our own shows— That’s really annoying isn’t it?

[Ed. Note: For the first half of the interview, someone outside of the room we were in was doing their warm up vocal exercises. By transcribing this interview I had to listen over someone saying “ah ya ya ya ya” for about ten minutes]

We promoted our shows by playing acoustic guitar outside of other shows in the area. Not with the intention of just drumming and singing but with the intention of doing it in places where we would get kicked out of. Not like libraries, but we would stand right in front of the exit of where a show would let out and when the bouncer would open the back door we’d throw fliers and we would get hauled off by our t-shirts—

[Ed. Note: More distracting noise. But this time louder]

—Yeah, I just lost my train of thought. But, yeah, we just got kicked out of places. We were like nineteen at the time and had just graduated high school, so we would go play at the all girls’ school that was in the area, and the principle there knew us by name. He hated us. He would chase us down the halls and all the girls would be like, “Ahh, there’s boys! There’s boys!” Then we would just throw fliers everywhere and that’s how our shows started selling out in local areas.

AM: Do you think shows like that had an impact with the direction your music was going at the time? For example, fan reaction?

SH: I don’t know. It basically just had an impact on— not artistically— just the fact that we had people coming out to our shows and we were able to start trading shows with other bands. That’s how we started getting outside of our local radius. We would trade shows with bands from, say, Chicago. Plain White T’s was one of the first bands we traded shows with. So, they would give us their Chicago headlining show for support if we would give them support on our Oakland show. We kind of scheduled tours around bands that we had hooked up with in Oakland.

AM: With videos being just as important of an art, where do you all get the visions for your videos? Is it a collaborative effort? Tell us about the creative process.

SH: It’s always a little different. Two of our latest videos, I directed. I have an art company.

AM: OXEN, right?

SH: Yeah, with an Australian artist named Emilee Seymour. She and I directed two of the videos. I actually find that the videos’ conceptions, at times, are completely separate from the songs, and then the right kind of song comes along and then the right kind of idea comes along— and there’s this certain connection that goes, “Oh, those work together”.

AM: Yeah, there seems to be a good balance between the videos I’ve seen of yours.

SH: Thank you. Actually, that’s kind of the same way we write music and lyrics. I kind of write a lot of lyrics separate, without melody, really. We write a lot of music and nonsense words and sometimes those things will align themselves and then it’s like, “Oh, this sort of fits here.” Then things kind of just mold together.

AM: The “Salty Eyes” video received a lot of praise from Alternative Press, Spin, and Rolling Stone. With the Internet being a leading factor into discovery for artists such as yourselves, how do you go about keeping up with what you’ve accomplished? Is there a certain “keeping up with the Jones’” mentality?

SH: We went international to film “Chip Shop”. We figured, “Alright. We’ll go to London, then.” I wouldn’t really view it as a one-upping. I think that could be sort of unhealthy when it comes to art because I think a lot of bands’ records have suffered because they’ve tried to rewrite or one-up their last single, or their last success, even. Once you start putting it into terms of success, and you keep trying to reach that same level of success again— it’s not a formula. It doesn’t work. You kind of just have to look for inspiration and go forward. Some of the stuff you do will be acclaimed and some of it won’t be, but that’s just the nature of the beast.

AM: Your genre of music has a relentless following in terms of its fan base. What I’m trying to say is that they’re so quick to judge change and your music changes from album to album. This is good. If not, I’d be interviewing New Kids On The Block in 2008. Because some people are skittish to change, does that have a factor in the musical progression you all take or is it kind of like a no holds barred kind of approach?

[Ed. note: Take a look at “McDonald’s is great because it all tastes the same”.]

SH: The largest piece of criticism that we get is usually like, “You guys changed a lot.” You know? Or like, “Your old stuff is cool. Why did you change?” You know? And I hear that semi-frequently. That’s pretty much the biggest piece of criticism that we get. I can only really make what work I’m inspired to make. You know what I mean?

AM: Totally.

SH: I like our first record. It reminds me of being seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen when you’re writing and recording. I’m not seventeen anymore, you know what I mean [starts to laugh]? I have to write stuff that I’m feeling right now. But that doesn’t mean that I dislike that record or that style. I think the misconception is that if a band doesn’t play as much of that stuff it must be that they’re writing off that history, or something like that. That’s not what we’re doing.

AM: It’s like evolution. The stuff has to grow.

SH: Exactly. Sometimes you have to put a song to rest for a while in order to appreciate it in terms of a live show. Sometimes a song, just through playing it for eight years in a row, becomes such a repetition on stage. The spontaneity of performing it is kind of gone. You end up doing the same moves, the same gestures, all at the exact same times. There’s the performance aspect of it that becomes almost like filling out paperwork. That’s not what we try to hope to convey on stage. But when we put a song to rest for a while and then come back to it, it kind of comes back to the way it sort of was when we first started playing it.

AM: Musicians seem to have a pretty big loyalty to their hometowns. For instance, the Nashville music scene is like a cult. All the Nashville musicians run together and help each other out, which is a good thing because it promotes progression. How would you compare Oakland, in terms of family-like qualities among other musicians?

SH: Yeah. Oakland, surprisingly, has a really good arts community. The scene over there— it was like everyone was helping— like a stepladder— they were all helping each other to the next level. Now that we’re on tour, we’re there much less frequently but we have a really good network when we come home. We’re looking for a bit of a change too. But it is nice to be home. I don’t know how difficult it would be to move. It’s kind of weird when you move, as a band, because people are always like: “Aww! They used to be from Oakland!” You know what I mean? [laughter]

AM: Yeah, that makes sense.

SH: I kind of want to go to Paris or something

AM: That would be sweet.

SH: Yeah… although, now that we have a smart president I kind of want to stay. We actually promised each other if McCain won that we would move out of the country. It would just be an exodus.

[Group laugher]

AM: Did you all do any kind of promotion, in terms of politics? We had an interview with Everybody Else and they were really gung-ho about using their concerts to promote political awareness and voting. Did you all have a part in things like that during this last election?

SH: Yeah, one of the songs on the new record. It’s called “We Are One”. It was kind of written about the forthcoming election. There are like six words in the song. It says, “When we are loud, we are one. When we are one, we are more.” Yeah, we were kind of embarrassed being an international touring band as well as being from America. It got embarrassing when Bush was reelected to actually go over seas. People would look at us and be like, “Wow. You guys are stupid.” It’s hard to say, “Actually, yes. I know 50% of us actually did vote for that guy… again. How is that possible?” It was just really embarrassing, you know what I mean? The image of America and the rest of the world were pretty bad. It was like taking the lowest common denominator of how we see life over here, and throw that on kind of like a big strain over there. Then they’re judging us on Legally Blonde, gangster rap, Kid Rock, Nickelback, Hinder, and our president.

AM: Those are all really bad examples of America, too.

[Group laughter]

SH: I know. It’s like, we’re horrible, you know?

AM: What would you say helped you guys get this far? I mean, it wasn’t a short ride since you guys have been together since ’97.

SH: You know, actually I think a lot of other bands would have broken up by now, but we actually coexist pretty well. We have kind of like a brotherly thing where we’re not going out and getting wasted with each other at sports games like bros but we’re also pretty close in a way where we know each other. I would say that kept us together through the good and bad. We just got a new bass player [Dylan Rowe] but we’re still good friends with Justin [San Souci], who was our bass player since the beginning. He kind of just lost the passion for the road. He kind of wanted to get a dog and live with his girlfriend and we totally respected that. So, it’s really fun being on tour with Dylan because he’s got that renewed excitement about touring and that sort of thing. I mean, I was born to be a gypsy. My mom had it in her and her dad was a rock collector who would just search for rocks.

AM: You guys seem to have a good grasp on your music regardless of being signed to a popular label. You can’t say that about too many bands, but with your guys’ music it sort of shows. Have there been any restrictions or discouragements along the way?

SH: Once in a while we have a little scrimmage with the label, producer, or a mixer. We generally like to do as much work ourselves as we can when it comes to videos or being there for every major step when it comes to recording. I think we annoy some people in that way because we always want to say exactly what’s going on. I know a lot of other bands are a lot less hands-on when it comes to that and just trust the producer more.

AM: That can cause some problems. For instance The Starting Line had a lot of problems with that sort of thing.

SH: Yeah. That’s definitely why we didn’t want to— we had a lot of major label offers when we first started and before we signed with Epitaph. One of our big reasons [to not sign with those major labels], as a band putting out their first CD, like, how much respect or say are you going to get from a label? We were kind of scared that they would take our sound and make us something that we weren’t. You know what I mean? If anything, Epitaph was a really good place to go for things like that. We still have problems and have butted heads because we didn’t want to be told this or that. We won most of our battles [laughs] but we had to concede a few times.

AM: Even though this might discredit my English major, what in the hell is a chip shop?

SH: [Laughs] It’s just a French fry place. They have them in London, the UK, and Australia.

AM: That’s what I figured. The only thing I kept finding online was fish and chips. You guys should add that entry to UrbanDictionary.com because it’s not in there.

SH: Yeah, people always get that title wrong. We kind of had a contest— we were leaking the titles to the songs one at a time with a cryptic illustration and people had to guess the title of the next song. We had the contest with the fans illustrating their own versions of the titles and there were so many pictures of the New York Yankees in automotive chop shops. The Yankees in a chop shop. That’s funny.

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Visit The Matches on MySpace at myspace.com/thematches.
Their newest album, A Band In Hope, is available on iTunes.