This Is How You Bleed in Audio: A Conversation with Shawn Harris of The Matches

Photo by Brianna Livesay

In the early 2000s, Shawn Harris and The Matches wanted to be way more than local boys. At the time, they were called The Locals—an indie band from Chicago with the same name hit them with a lawsuit, forcing a name change—and they touted shows that were representative of the heart and excitement Bay Area bands were capable of. Their shows packed enough excitement that longtime fans started coining the term "L3" for "live, loud, and local."

The Matches lacked the toxic masculinity of hardcore punk and instead reveled in a range of emotions from pleasure to confusion. Their shows reflected the rest of the city: a diverse gathering of all different people and listeners. The band carved a niche in the scene, with an attitude and sass that spiritually connected them to bands like NoFX and Green Day. Their work ethic and live unpredictability would go onto catch the ears of Epitaph, who signed the Bay Area Boys and re-released their debut E. Von Dahl Killed The Locals.

Like fire to paper, the band burned bright and fast. Their Epitaph follow-up Decomposer, which they're now re-releasing on vinyl for the first time, featured production from all-stars like Tim Armstrong, Mark Hoppus, John Feldmann, and more. The record built on their previous music, and songs like "Papercut Skin" pushed singer Shawn Harris's estranged voice to new levels of weird-catchiness. They took song elements that were popular in the scene at the time and subverted them: "Sunburn Vs. Rhinovirus" took almost-breakdowns into chaotic moments of self-doubt, Harris yelling "I'm de-de-decomposing!" frenetically over ten-ton riffs. The record led the group to new heights, landing them on marquee pop-punk tours and magazine covers. But after a third full-length album, The Matches extinguished as fast as they lit.

The band's years of inactivity ended in 2014, and they released an EP that stood as some of their most accomplished work. Last December, the band played two back-to-back nights at San Francisco's historic venue The Fillmore. If venues were stadiums, The Fillmore is the band's home court, the place Shawn used to prepare nachos for concertgoers years prior, as well as the the club where he would go on to play the band's final show before hiatus.

At the reunion show, that original feeling—live, loud, and local—hadn't been extinguished from anybody. It was a family reunion for Bay Area punk; Ryan Noble of Link80 looked on from the crowd, and MC Lars joined the band onstage for their classic collaboration "Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock." In the midst of one of their earliest tracks "Audio Blood," Harris enchanted the crowd into crouching down for its quietest parts. For a moment, every single person in the room was whisked away to days past. The sweat of being packed shoulder to shoulder with other kids, melting with everybody else to the music. The lyrics "This is how we bleed in audio" felt more unifying than ever: No matter where people were off to the next day, for one night everyone could feel like more than local boys.

We spoke to Shawn Harris before the show to discuss the band's career and find out what's next.

Noisey: I’ve been following you guys for a bit. I remember the first time I saw you guys was at that Epitaph tour with Escape The Fate, and in researching this interview I read a bunch of old Punknews, Absolutepunk posts from the early 2000s. So back then, was there a kind of unifying vision that defined the band and the scene you wanted to be in?
Shawn Harris: No. But on the other side of that coin, I’d say everything has sort of worked out the way I would have planned if I knew to plan. Like for instance, keeping the rights to our first record and the only reason you’d want to do that would be to rerelease it. And the only reason to rerelease something is if you planned on still being popular. But we had never really planned on being popular in the sense that ten years from when we’d started we would be a stadium band. We always wanted to be like The Pixies or something. [Laughs] Which is an anomaly, you can’t plan on that. We kind of lucked and tripped into our own version of what I’d call success. Ten years into a project.

You can’t really ask for more. I remember you guys started out playing outside of other bands’ shows, right?
Yeah. We actually took it to a further level when we first started. We were a year out of high school, and we were in the same sort of conundrum. When we started we were a normal local band and there wasn’t anything that particularly set us apart. But we kind of learned how to fill those shoes of being a real local band and making fliers and that kind of stuff. Which felt cool for three or four months, and then we realized we needed to do something beyond this, something more had to happen. We convinced a local venue where we could put ourselves in a position of curation. It makes you the epicenter of a little scene if you’re able to create a scene. So maybe that’ll help us and set us apart.

After the first show, we realized we had no idea how to be promoters, and so we had like our parents’ friends’ kids come as a favor. We got a hundred people there, and that was exactly the number of people the venue said they’d let us do the show. And so after that, I remember being like “yes we made it to a hundred!” And afterwards I remember talking to Justin being like “fuck, we won’t hit it again because they weren’t really fans.” And that was our big favor, so it was like “how do we do this?” So we figured we’d find where other people our age were, and we’re like “well a lot of them a year younger are in school.” So we took an acoustic guitar, a stack of flyers and went to the halls of St. Marys’ in Piedmont and a bunch of local high schools, and before the bell rang we were running into classes in session, chucking a wad of flyers into a teacher’s classroom that’s teaching, and running down the hall strumming the guitar while singing our silly little punk songs. We got chased off a bunch of campuses, and it was like “fuck this is probably the worst idea we’ve ever had.” And the next show, there were 400 people lined up at the door! It was like, holy shit that worked! And I saw people from that scene try to replicate it, and it worked about half as much than when we originally did it.

You have to luck into that idea which might be a bad idea which would be a good idea, and if I could trace why our band got anywhere I’d say it was that. Because we were promoting those shows, so when those started going off and people started lining up for L3, then kind of the focus went towards us with Epitaph going “what’s this scene going on in the Bay Area? Why is Gilman drawing less than some other little start up venue?” And they came up and were like “oh, it’s these guys’ show.” We could barely play, like we broke all of our amps at every show, I spent more time crowd surfing than playing my guitar. I couldn’t really tell you how to play a power chord at the time; we barely could play. But we put on this show that people came to and they freaked out, so I started focusing on lyrics and making songs have more substantial content. Luckily everything started coming together right around the time people outside of the Bay and in the industry started paying attention. There were bands in the Bay Area that were better than our band. I mean there still are. (Laughs) But we lucked into that stupid idea that worked, and that’s why we’re here ten years later; everything kind of snowballed.

Is it still fun crowdsurfing?
It’s awesome. (Laughs) It’s great. I always look back at that switch that flipped, that stupid thing running through schools and playing outside of other shows. I remember we had a map on the wall in Justin’s bedroom, and we’d put pushpins where all the schools and concerts were, with little dates on them. We were pretty dedicated until it just ran itself, but we tried to carry that ethos beyond. Once we started playing Warped Tour and more “legitimate” venues and concerts we’d try to still have parking lot concerts. We’re very aware we found our niche being anti-rockstar, and we had to find out ways to keep being anti-the thing we were on the road or what we were becoming. If you don’t keep pushing the snowball it’ll stop.

It was always really funny to me that you’ve fell into like the emo-scene of the mid 2000s because sonically like if there was some wind of fate, I imagine you guys could’ve been one of those Brooklyn-hipster dance punk acts.
Yeah. (Laughs) That was always one of our issues, we took a lot of pieces of things we liked so it always felt like whoever we toured with we were in one way a fit, and in one way totally not a fit. It is funny you pointed out that everyone you talk to was “we were the odd ones out! We were the different ones!” But that’s also true, especially if you’re talking to bands that are still around ten years later, they’re generally the bands that have done something interesting to have people give a shit at this point. I guess, I don’t know!

When did you start singing in general and messing with your voice?
My first instrument was the flute, and I couldn’t sing while I played that, which is why I wanted to stop playing that, 'cause I wanted to write songs. So as soon as I switched over to guitar, I put most of my life’s attention to songwriting, and not neccesarily singing well because I wouldn’t say that I’m a learned singer. But I like to sing, and always have sung, and I’d say I’ve developed a style.

Did you realize you were capable of that style?
Nah, it was meandering, it was going from one branch to the other I’m sure. Can you go more specifically what you mean?

I listened to that Forgive Durden record the other day, and your section on it was clearly like your singing style ramped up to ten.
Oh yeah, that’s the ultimate example. When I was a kid, I really liked to act and do animation. So I thought I was going to do cartoons and make their voices, and I’ve always enjoyed pushing a character in a vocal. And in essence that’s what I do with a vocal, probably my voice that I sing with in The Matches is a weird remnant imitation of mine of Billie Joe Armstrong, Tim Armstrong, a David Bowie. And sometimes I put Roy Orbison in the back of my head when I want it to be a little prettier. But all of those things mesh together and make something that isn’t necessarily pretty, but it all works together.

What was it like after The Matches stopped being a band?
I was immediately in another band. (Laughs) Right after the band broke up I immediately went into Maniac. I was always like “well if The Matches stop playing I’ll just move to Australia,” and when it ended I took a year and moved to Australia. I kind of set it up so I didn’t have to experience being a “musician” ever. Even after Maniac I started a new band before Jake left the country, that was Fortress Social Club, so I had a rock and roll band to play in with some of the same members of Maniac, and now I’ve got the solo stuff.

So there was never a desk job?
No, never. Well, I wouldn’t say that I couldn’t do that, but I’d say I probably won’t. I think that I could be pretty happy doing anything in this world, but I spent so long being a songwriter and musician that I think my best bet would be to keep going at that because I’d be comparatively shitty at everything else. I got a nice start on this so I might as well finish it out.

Are you glad the band took a break?
Yes, absolutely. I see it as, we were in a structure in terms of the bands around us and the way the people were recording and distributing music that felt shaky. It felt like there was going to be a schism and a shattering, that there would be a lot more bands and labels, or maybe even no labels. We had dabbled in self-recording and the gear was getting cheaper and cheaper, it was easier to make a bedroom recording that might be a great record. Towards the end of The Matches I was experimenting with a lot more of my own recordings and working on becoming an engineer, producer of my own stuff. So that’s where I took Maniac. I felt like we stepped outside of a structure that didn’t have a strong foundation and let it collapse, and now we’re stepping back in. There’s some rebuilding going on, like Spotify is in place and we understand the distribution methods. I got to navigate those with smaller bands, and I think if we had a longer contract with Epitaph it would’ve been confusing. They were trying to play ball with the majors, I know that’s kind of their responsibility, but I’m glad to be an independent musician and have The Matches be an indie band too. I’m sure no label would be like “yeah just make a seven-inch, put it out and play two shows this year.” It’s not really sustainable when you have the record label’s families to feed. But for us, if we had this little side-job that’s this kind of blue collar thing for two months out of the year, I’m stoked on it.

What were the songs most concerned with when you were starting?
There’s some stuff that’s standard relationship fare, and there’s a lot of stuff where I’m just trying to piece apart my current state whether it’s discontent, depression, admiration, just trying to pick it apart. An early one I remember to be kind of a turning point was off E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals. I remember sitting in my room, I had a roommate here in San Francisco, and I came home and found him in the bathtub and he had taken all the pills in our house. He’d been a real weird roommate before that, and I didn’t like him. But when he tried to take his life then I had all these conflicted feelings. I felt really bad for pretty much ignoring him. I avoided him as much as possible when he really needs a friend. Before that I thought “oh that’s pathetic, he’s chain smoking on the fire escape and it stinks in here. Do something, go to work, get out of bed!” And then realizing within myself there were all kinds of ways I tear myself down, I don’t have the love for life all hours of the day. We’re all equally self-preservative and destructive at the same time, and that was kind of a big realization for me at age 20. So I try to bring any thought as adequate fodder for a story.

What do you think the darkest Matches song is?
The song I probably wrote in the darkest time was the first song off Decomposer, “Salty Eyes.” I had just gotten everything I wished for in the world. I wanted to be in a band, I wanted to leave the Bay Area, I wanted to go on tour, I wanted people to like music that I had created, I wanted it to be heard, people to think it would be awesome, and that’s all I dreamt of in my teenage years. And then I got all of it. Signed to Epitaph, got on Warped Tour, which is the biggest tour you can get on as a psuedo-punk band. And I fucking hated it. I was out there, and it was noise all day long and it was like why did I want to come out here? Nothing made sense anymore, and I was just so bummed. Like is this the lesson of wishing, you get what you wanted and it’s not actually what you wanted? Fuck that. (Laughs) And I was so bummed, and so I was out in the middle of the woods after playing a show on Warped Tour, trying to get away from the sound of it. I kept walking and walking trying to get away from the sound but you could still hear them ringing. Which is probably why we toured with a lot of emo bands because I am prone to weeping at times. And I wrote this song. But you asked me what was the darkest songs, and that comes to mind because that took me out of one of the darkest conundrums of my life. I made a waltz, I made a ballad, it was not a punk song. And it made me feel better. I liked the song, I liked to sing it, it was pretty, it was quiet. If anyone played loud over it, you couldn’t hear it. That was the craziest thing we could do, sign to Epitaph and start our follow-up with a really delicate waltz. That turned my view of what I was doing around, I felt like I had the reins in my hand. I think that’s what’s great about art, when you make it and when you listen to it there’s a process. There’s a transformation, if you’re the same at the end of it as the beginning it’s unsuccessful. Unless it’s a surf song in the chase scene in a movie.

Do you feel content with what The Matches have done?
Unfortunately I’m always going to want more. (Laughs) But who knows in what way or what form. I like the process. If I’m not into the process, I’ll either put it on pause or get out of it. When the opportunity came back for the process to be different, I became interested again. But I’ll write songs everyday til’ I’ll die. I don’t know if you’ll hear them, but that’s kind of second tier in my importance.

The band is releasing their 2006 record Decomposer'or the first time ever on vinyl, along with a second LP of demos, and a 20-page "fanzine" from Shawn. Pre-order it right here.

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