The Matches Interview - 2007
Shawn: Look out behind you, it has really sharp teeth.
Can you state your name for my recording purposes?
Shawn: My official name is Shawn. S-h-a-w-n Kevin Harris. I play in The Matches.
Do you still do a lot of your own clothes?
Shawn: I do.
Do you sew them?
Shawn: Yeah. I can sew. I can fringe. I’m a thrift store vulture, and I wait for old ladies to die and take their clothes to the thrift store, and I shop in the women’s section. I recently found that women’s-old ladies pajamas-are awesome shirts. You can maybe like, put a different collar of them.
Where do you shop most at? In terms of thrift stores, where are the best ones you’ve found?
Shawn: We were just in Wisconsin. Untapped resource. It’s a gold mine. Seriously. I came out with a shopping cart full. My most recent calling card for clothing is the “Salty Eyes” video that I co-directed, which is our latest video to come out. It’s on our Myspace, et cetera. I did all the outfits for all of us in the video, but it’s a pretty low-lit video, and they’re all black so you can’t really see all the detail that I spent so long working on.
Well it’s the thought that counts.
Shawn: Yeah. My coat had some pretty cool tails on it though, I was excited about those. Kind of like a flair, like a hip flair. I ripped the hell out of it in a show, subsequently.
How did you get started making clothes?
Shawn: I just didn’t like clothes. And figured that I could make something that I like. [laughs] It’s not so much making clothes from scratch, it’s just modifying them to make them a) not like everyone else’s and b) fit me. They’ve got to fit your personality as well as your body, I feel like. I’ve fallen in love with pointy shoes. I don’t make my shoes. I do need to sew them up on the sides though, but sewing leather is just a royal pain. I try not to wear leather, a) because it’s difficult to sew and b) because I enjoy animals. I think this stuff is fake, I don’t know.
Where did you get those from?
Shawn: Carnaby Street in London. It’s actually-I wish I had a hobbit door to there, but I’m kind of glad I don’t because it’s kind of expensive to buy shoes in London. I don’t spend a lot of money on much. I don’t have a lot of money. [laughs] When I do manage to save up money, I do spend it on shoes. It’s my vice.
Well they are very nice shoes.
Shawn: Thank you very much. They need a good polish, but there are a deficit of shoe polishers in the modern world.
What are your favorite songs on your albums?
Shawn: I’m digging the waltz, “Salty Eyes,” on the Warped Tour, just because I don’t think anyone’s ever played a waltz on the Warped Tour. I like assessing the situation, a tour or a show, and seeing where the holes are and filling them. I feel like we’re doing our part in rounding out the tour by playing that song. I feel like you don’t know me, because I like dancing.
Do you think the internet has a negative or positive effect on the quality of music?
Shawn: Positive. Certainly. Although, I mean, The Beatles and Bob Dylan were pretty damn good without it. I guess it probably positively affects the music scene by having more bands readily available to any listener. It doesn’t necessarily make-I don’t know, I feel like the quality of music, thought the bar may be raised a bit, it’s too low. But music’s hard. Art is hard. So, I don’t know.
So you have to work harder to separate yourself from the majority of music that is out there?
Shawn: Yeah. There’s so much that’s good that makes me intimidated, but the quantity of the stuff that’s good is so small in comparison to so much bad stuff. So I try not to hear bad music, because then you can settle for less, because then you can settle for less by saying, “Well this is better than most of that shit.” Whereas like, if I just listed to Cursive, The Ugly Organ, and Sgt. Pepper’s and, I don’t know, Blonde on Blonde or something like that, we would definitely have to make better music. That’s one thing about Warped Tour that I think is bad. I’ll go out and say that. That you hear so much music that it’s easy to think that you’re better.
You still have to strive to be better regardless of what you’re surrounded with.
Shawn: You have to strive not to compare yourself to anything that you’re surrounded with.
How do you feel about elitism in music? Going both ways, from the fan to the bad, and from the band to the fans as well.
Shawn: Elitism?
Yeah. Like, “I’ve liked this band longer, so I’m a better fan.” Or, “My taste in music is better than yours.”
Shawn: Most people that think that their taste in music is better than others like music that’s not as popular as the other people like. Which is probably why they’re defensive, or prideful, or something like that. We definitely can’t help but think that our opinion is the right one. That our truth is more true than anyone else’s truth, and when we feel pain, it hurts more than when other people feel pain. Like somebody will stub their toe and be like, “Ow! God, that hurts so bad!” and you’ll be like, “Sorry.” But then when you stub your toe you expect everybody to rush over and coddle you, or something like that. “You don’t understand how much that toe stub hurt!” No, they do understand. There’s my improvising.
Do you think it has any effect on the quality of music?
Shawn: I think it’s something that just exists. Like jealousy exists. It doesn’t really effect love, but it’s still there.
And you can’t get rid of it. It’s there regardless of what you do.
Shawn: Yeah.
What bands have you been trying to catch at Warped?
Shawn: My favorite band just left the tour. They’re from Scotland, they’re called Biffy Clyro They’re my favorite band. They’re great.
They’re not here today?
Shawn: They’re not here today. Sorry. But I would like to tell everybody about them, because my truth is more true than your truth, and you should know that my truth is so true.
And obviously listen to whatever you say to listen to.
Shawn: Yeah, obviously. [laughs]
Anybody else you’ve been checking out?
Shawn: POS is the hip-hop act on the tour that I really like a lot. Street Drum Corps is awesome. Circa Survive is cool. Yeah.
If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would you perform?
Shawn: Sometimes I try to think-
You can go out of the world, too.
Shawn: Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Shawn: I’d probably go to Paris. I’d probably get stuck in the country. And have to live there for a few years.
Accidentally?
Shawn: Yeah.
Lose a passport?
Shawn: Yeah. I’ll have to accidentally make a movie over there too. That’s what I need to do.
All on accident?
Shawn: Yeah. Sometimes I wonder about the Warped Tour. I think and I wonder, what bands are we going to remember in ten years? Like, what bands are going to have careers that last ten years. I mean, Bad Religion obviously, they’ve lasted thirty years. And I clearly remembered by a few generations. But I look at the bands that are playing now, like Hawthorne Heights, who are onstage right now I think, or Bayside or POS or us and I wonder, you know? There’s a jump from the leading current sound to real music, or something like that. I wonder who’s going to make it. You put together this many bands, most of them are not going to. It becomes a fun kind to game to predict who will.
Are you planning on releasing any more singles?
Shawn: I don’t even know what a single is. A single is kind of our record label telling you what songs you should like. [laughs] I guess when we make a video, that means it’s a single.
That works for me.
Shawn: Okay. In essence, when we make a video it means that song had a good video for it. “Salty Eyes,” is actually getting picked up by like, more radio and video right now, so we’re going with that for the summer. I’m working on an animated video for the song “Little Maggots.”
Like drawing animation, or like stop animation?
Shawn: Both. It’s stop-motion animation and that’s traced with charcoal. So it’s kind of a unique style. And I have to have that finished before the next album comes out in early ’08. I’ve been working on that for over a year now.
Are you making progress on it?
Shawn: Oh yeah, yeah.
When do you expect to have it out by?
Shawn: I’ll let you know. I talk about these things in my blog all the time. My blog is thematches.com/blog. People get on my ass about it. I give them shit back. Actually we have a good time on that thing. There’s a couple things up from Warped Tour. I made a little animated short, really simple animation, about one of our signings that had a hilarious thing happen during it.
If you could have any luxury item on tour, what would it be and why?
Shawn: Luxury item? What constitutes a luxury item? Like an airplane?
Sure. You can have an airplane. Something that you normally couldn’t bring with you.
Like an elephant.
Yeah, like an elephant.
Shawn: That’s a luxury item, wow. I guess depending on what part of the world you’re in, yeah. I would probably have-I would probably bring a tiger. Now that we’ve brought in the exotic animal, you say elephant, I think tiger.
Keep people away?
Shawn: Nah, I think I just want something to hug. [laughs]
A tiger?
Shawn: Also the closer you are to death, the more you feel alive. So if it had a tendency to get vicious and scratch people’s eyes out, I would feel more alive.
So your tiger would both serve a purpose of giving you something to hug and improve your quality of life?
Shawn: Yeah. Like a good tiger should.
How do you feel about the quality of music today? As a whole?
Shawn: It’s alright.
Is it on the rise?
Shawn: I listen to a lot of music, and I think that I hate music. [laughs] And then I hear some music and I remember that I love music. So hopefully music that we make makes more people remember that they love music than think that they hate it. That’s really the goal.
Do you think the quality of music is going up or going down?
Shawn: When you love music, it can remind you that you love your life, that you love life.
Do you think that that should be the intent of music? Or should music have an intent?
Shawn: Music could have any of a million intents that the creators intend for it. But that’s kind of an encompassing one, whether it’s a political song or a love song, it can still remind you of some reason to not drown yourself at the current moment. What was the question?
I forget. Oh, quality of music today. Do you think it’s going up or going down?
Shawn: I’m inclined to say that it has been better. I’m inclined to say that in the seventies and late sixties there was a higher quality of music, but I wasn’t around then, but I don’t know all of the littler bands, the trendy bands, the ones that were having all their one-hit wonders, all the bands that are on the festival and not on the radio, all I know of that era. are the bands that lasted. So of course the bands that lasted from the sixties and seventies are way better than a lot of bands that we’re on tour with. But those are the ones that lasted. So I don’t know, we’ll see. I think the eighties was kind of a dark period. [laughs] But maybe we’re above that now, I’m not sure. I think the nineties were somewhat high actually.
How about compared to recent years? Like from 2000 to now? Is it getting better or kind of staying?
Shawn: It might be getting a little better. With every screamo band that disappears it gets a little better, in my opinion. [laughs] Bands with stronger songwriting aesthetics are becoming more popular, I guess. That’s good. Whether you like them or not. Like the Descemberists become a mainstream band is good for songwriting, whether you dig their sound or not.
Anything you want to say to fans, people in general, the world, the internet, whatever?
Shawn: Look out behind you, it has really sharp teeth.
Feel free to use these pictures--I make the watermarks unobstructive on purpose. However, if you use them, please link back. I have slightly bigger versions as well, if you would like to use those. Thank you!
Can you state your name for my recording purposes?
Shawn: My official name is Shawn. S-h-a-w-n Kevin Harris. I play in The Matches.
Do you still do a lot of your own clothes?
Shawn: I do.
Do you sew them?
Shawn: Yeah. I can sew. I can fringe. I’m a thrift store vulture, and I wait for old ladies to die and take their clothes to the thrift store, and I shop in the women’s section. I recently found that women’s-old ladies pajamas-are awesome shirts. You can maybe like, put a different collar of them.
Where do you shop most at? In terms of thrift stores, where are the best ones you’ve found?
Shawn: We were just in Wisconsin. Untapped resource. It’s a gold mine. Seriously. I came out with a shopping cart full. My most recent calling card for clothing is the “Salty Eyes” video that I co-directed, which is our latest video to come out. It’s on our Myspace, et cetera. I did all the outfits for all of us in the video, but it’s a pretty low-lit video, and they’re all black so you can’t really see all the detail that I spent so long working on.
Well it’s the thought that counts.
Shawn: Yeah. My coat had some pretty cool tails on it though, I was excited about those. Kind of like a flair, like a hip flair. I ripped the hell out of it in a show, subsequently.
How did you get started making clothes?
Shawn: I just didn’t like clothes. And figured that I could make something that I like. [laughs] It’s not so much making clothes from scratch, it’s just modifying them to make them a) not like everyone else’s and b) fit me. They’ve got to fit your personality as well as your body, I feel like. I’ve fallen in love with pointy shoes. I don’t make my shoes. I do need to sew them up on the sides though, but sewing leather is just a royal pain. I try not to wear leather, a) because it’s difficult to sew and b) because I enjoy animals. I think this stuff is fake, I don’t know.
Where did you get those from?
Shawn: Carnaby Street in London. It’s actually-I wish I had a hobbit door to there, but I’m kind of glad I don’t because it’s kind of expensive to buy shoes in London. I don’t spend a lot of money on much. I don’t have a lot of money. [laughs] When I do manage to save up money, I do spend it on shoes. It’s my vice.
Well they are very nice shoes.
Shawn: Thank you very much. They need a good polish, but there are a deficit of shoe polishers in the modern world.
What are your favorite songs on your albums?
Shawn: I’m digging the waltz, “Salty Eyes,” on the Warped Tour, just because I don’t think anyone’s ever played a waltz on the Warped Tour. I like assessing the situation, a tour or a show, and seeing where the holes are and filling them. I feel like we’re doing our part in rounding out the tour by playing that song. I feel like you don’t know me, because I like dancing.
Do you think the internet has a negative or positive effect on the quality of music?
Shawn: Positive. Certainly. Although, I mean, The Beatles and Bob Dylan were pretty damn good without it. I guess it probably positively affects the music scene by having more bands readily available to any listener. It doesn’t necessarily make-I don’t know, I feel like the quality of music, thought the bar may be raised a bit, it’s too low. But music’s hard. Art is hard. So, I don’t know.
So you have to work harder to separate yourself from the majority of music that is out there?
Shawn: Yeah. There’s so much that’s good that makes me intimidated, but the quantity of the stuff that’s good is so small in comparison to so much bad stuff. So I try not to hear bad music, because then you can settle for less, because then you can settle for less by saying, “Well this is better than most of that shit.” Whereas like, if I just listed to Cursive, The Ugly Organ, and Sgt. Pepper’s and, I don’t know, Blonde on Blonde or something like that, we would definitely have to make better music. That’s one thing about Warped Tour that I think is bad. I’ll go out and say that. That you hear so much music that it’s easy to think that you’re better.
You still have to strive to be better regardless of what you’re surrounded with.
Shawn: You have to strive not to compare yourself to anything that you’re surrounded with.
How do you feel about elitism in music? Going both ways, from the fan to the bad, and from the band to the fans as well.
Shawn: Elitism?
Yeah. Like, “I’ve liked this band longer, so I’m a better fan.” Or, “My taste in music is better than yours.”
Shawn: Most people that think that their taste in music is better than others like music that’s not as popular as the other people like. Which is probably why they’re defensive, or prideful, or something like that. We definitely can’t help but think that our opinion is the right one. That our truth is more true than anyone else’s truth, and when we feel pain, it hurts more than when other people feel pain. Like somebody will stub their toe and be like, “Ow! God, that hurts so bad!” and you’ll be like, “Sorry.” But then when you stub your toe you expect everybody to rush over and coddle you, or something like that. “You don’t understand how much that toe stub hurt!” No, they do understand. There’s my improvising.
Do you think it has any effect on the quality of music?
Shawn: I think it’s something that just exists. Like jealousy exists. It doesn’t really effect love, but it’s still there.
And you can’t get rid of it. It’s there regardless of what you do.
Shawn: Yeah.
What bands have you been trying to catch at Warped?
Shawn: My favorite band just left the tour. They’re from Scotland, they’re called Biffy Clyro They’re my favorite band. They’re great.
They’re not here today?
Shawn: They’re not here today. Sorry. But I would like to tell everybody about them, because my truth is more true than your truth, and you should know that my truth is so true.
And obviously listen to whatever you say to listen to.
Shawn: Yeah, obviously. [laughs]
Anybody else you’ve been checking out?
Shawn: POS is the hip-hop act on the tour that I really like a lot. Street Drum Corps is awesome. Circa Survive is cool. Yeah.
If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would you perform?
Shawn: Sometimes I try to think-
You can go out of the world, too.
Shawn: Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Shawn: I’d probably go to Paris. I’d probably get stuck in the country. And have to live there for a few years.
Accidentally?
Shawn: Yeah.
Lose a passport?
Shawn: Yeah. I’ll have to accidentally make a movie over there too. That’s what I need to do.
All on accident?
Shawn: Yeah. Sometimes I wonder about the Warped Tour. I think and I wonder, what bands are we going to remember in ten years? Like, what bands are going to have careers that last ten years. I mean, Bad Religion obviously, they’ve lasted thirty years. And I clearly remembered by a few generations. But I look at the bands that are playing now, like Hawthorne Heights, who are onstage right now I think, or Bayside or POS or us and I wonder, you know? There’s a jump from the leading current sound to real music, or something like that. I wonder who’s going to make it. You put together this many bands, most of them are not going to. It becomes a fun kind to game to predict who will.
Are you planning on releasing any more singles?
Shawn: I don’t even know what a single is. A single is kind of our record label telling you what songs you should like. [laughs] I guess when we make a video, that means it’s a single.
That works for me.
Shawn: Okay. In essence, when we make a video it means that song had a good video for it. “Salty Eyes,” is actually getting picked up by like, more radio and video right now, so we’re going with that for the summer. I’m working on an animated video for the song “Little Maggots.”
Like drawing animation, or like stop animation?
Shawn: Both. It’s stop-motion animation and that’s traced with charcoal. So it’s kind of a unique style. And I have to have that finished before the next album comes out in early ’08. I’ve been working on that for over a year now.
Are you making progress on it?
Shawn: Oh yeah, yeah.
When do you expect to have it out by?
Shawn: I’ll let you know. I talk about these things in my blog all the time. My blog is thematches.com/blog. People get on my ass about it. I give them shit back. Actually we have a good time on that thing. There’s a couple things up from Warped Tour. I made a little animated short, really simple animation, about one of our signings that had a hilarious thing happen during it.
If you could have any luxury item on tour, what would it be and why?
Shawn: Luxury item? What constitutes a luxury item? Like an airplane?
Sure. You can have an airplane. Something that you normally couldn’t bring with you.
Like an elephant.
Yeah, like an elephant.
Shawn: That’s a luxury item, wow. I guess depending on what part of the world you’re in, yeah. I would probably have-I would probably bring a tiger. Now that we’ve brought in the exotic animal, you say elephant, I think tiger.
Keep people away?
Shawn: Nah, I think I just want something to hug. [laughs]
A tiger?
Shawn: Also the closer you are to death, the more you feel alive. So if it had a tendency to get vicious and scratch people’s eyes out, I would feel more alive.
So your tiger would both serve a purpose of giving you something to hug and improve your quality of life?
Shawn: Yeah. Like a good tiger should.
How do you feel about the quality of music today? As a whole?
Shawn: It’s alright.
Is it on the rise?
Shawn: I listen to a lot of music, and I think that I hate music. [laughs] And then I hear some music and I remember that I love music. So hopefully music that we make makes more people remember that they love music than think that they hate it. That’s really the goal.
Do you think the quality of music is going up or going down?
Shawn: When you love music, it can remind you that you love your life, that you love life.
Do you think that that should be the intent of music? Or should music have an intent?
Shawn: Music could have any of a million intents that the creators intend for it. But that’s kind of an encompassing one, whether it’s a political song or a love song, it can still remind you of some reason to not drown yourself at the current moment. What was the question?
I forget. Oh, quality of music today. Do you think it’s going up or going down?
Shawn: I’m inclined to say that it has been better. I’m inclined to say that in the seventies and late sixties there was a higher quality of music, but I wasn’t around then, but I don’t know all of the littler bands, the trendy bands, the ones that were having all their one-hit wonders, all the bands that are on the festival and not on the radio, all I know of that era. are the bands that lasted. So of course the bands that lasted from the sixties and seventies are way better than a lot of bands that we’re on tour with. But those are the ones that lasted. So I don’t know, we’ll see. I think the eighties was kind of a dark period. [laughs] But maybe we’re above that now, I’m not sure. I think the nineties were somewhat high actually.
How about compared to recent years? Like from 2000 to now? Is it getting better or kind of staying?
Shawn: It might be getting a little better. With every screamo band that disappears it gets a little better, in my opinion. [laughs] Bands with stronger songwriting aesthetics are becoming more popular, I guess. That’s good. Whether you like them or not. Like the Descemberists become a mainstream band is good for songwriting, whether you dig their sound or not.
Anything you want to say to fans, people in general, the world, the internet, whatever?
Shawn: Look out behind you, it has really sharp teeth.
Feel free to use these pictures--I make the watermarks unobstructive on purpose. However, if you use them, please link back. I have slightly bigger versions as well, if you would like to use those. Thank you!