Interview with The Matches: upcoming Australia tour, writing the world’s best song & more

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THE MATCHES are dusting off the cobwebs and are packing their bags and heading to our shores this January. Fans are invited to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of their breakthrough debut album ‘E. Von Dhal Killed The Locals’ playing the album from start to finish whilst including other classics.

Now, the original line up of Justin SanSouci, Jon Devoto, Matthew Whalen and Shawn Harris are in their early thirties are coming together to honour their now adult Australian fans and nostalgias with a one off tour, performing the album that kick started it all in their favourite country.

When they started out doing one show to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of ‘E. Von Dahl Killed The Locals’ it  became something they never expected and having  sold out shows all across the USA, now it has led them back to Australia.

Don’t miss one of the most electrifying live bands you’ll ever see. This is a party you don’t want to miss.

‘’Erratic, Wild, Entertaining and completely unpredictable’’– The Dwarf

‘’During the last encore song “Audio Blood,” everyone in the audience crouched at the bridge, and at the pound of the final chorus – flared up and burst into chaos, truly living out the lyrics of loving live shows.’’ – The Owl Mag

TOUR DATES:

FRIDAY JANUARY 9TH  – AMPLIFIER BAR, PERTH 18+
Tickets available at http://www.oztix.com.au

SATURDAY JANUARY 10TH  –FOWLERS LIVE, ADELAIDE 18+
Tickets available at http://www.oztix.com.au | http://www.moshtix.com.au

THURSDAY JANUARY 15TH –BRIGHTSIDE, BRISBANE  18+
Tickets available at http://www.oztix.com.au

FRIDAY JANUARY 16TH –OXFORD ART  FACTORY , SYDNEY  18+
Tickets available at http://www.oztix.com.au | http://www.moshtix.com.au

SATURDAY JANUARY 17th  –THE CORNER HOTEL , MELBOURNE 18+
Tickets available http://www.cornerhotel.com  |  http://www.oztix.com.au

PRESENTED BY SELECT TOURING & TAPERJEAN TOURING

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INTERVIEW WITH SHAWN HARRIS FROM THE MATCHES
Words: Jen Rees

Hi Shawn, it’s Jen here from Music Injection. How are you going?
Shawn: Great how are you?
Not too bad thanks. What time is it where you are?
Ah darkness time! Maybe eight or nine? Not too late.
Do you have a show tonight?
No we have the night off, we just finished four shows in a row, in California. We fly out to Chicago and New York in a couple of days so I have a few days off here.
Wonderful!

You guys formed way back in 1999, the pretty much typical high school band, did it ever occur to you that you would be playing to sell out shows way in to the future?
There is a tricky question, it was definitely a hope or goal of ours however the prospect of that happening did not look very good from the start. Somehow eventually we completely stumbled into this in the weirdest way, I guess of creating a lasting career. I mean we were scrap as hell back in the old days, we just graduated high school and I would just take our guitars and run around to all of the other high schools where our friends were still in school and we would just run through classrooms and throw flyers at teachers. Then they would chase us off the campuses, I mean it was really scrappy it was nothing that you would see. There was not like a textbook on how to become a big band and how to tell people about our band. It was pre-MySpace days so it was like it did not saying that were on course to have a sold out 10 year reunion show. Until a few years into what we were doing we had a pretty big impact on the music scene in California where we are from. We ended up doing a show and booking bands. We got the go-ahead to do some shows in a warehouse in Oakland and there weren’t really a lot of shows in the East Bay everyone was going out to San Francisco. We were like F&*k this we need to have shows where we live. We had kids that had to drive 45 minutes to see the show we said no this is five minutes away from our house. So we started doing that we became the punk rock pacemakers of that time in our area, which was why we end up having a career that lasted.

A personal question now…..Your goal has been mentioned that you want to have written the world’s best song, which is a great goal to have.
(Shawn laughs) I don’t know if I got there but it never hurts to try.
There is still time Shawn! (both laughing)
Thank you!
What concept do you think that would be about for a song like that?
Oh man if I knew I would rather just go ahead and write it, that’s interesting though because the inclination is to write a huge song like culturally shifting that, is what happening in the world right now. A unifying song that everyone could sing together, like an anthem. When you say on the right best song ever that’s the kind of thing that you think of. However, I feel like every success that I’ve ever had has connected with people because how specific it is and The Matches is a perfect example. We wrote about really specific and unimportant things that happened that happened in our lives because our lives didn’t feel terribly important. So all I can write about is what I know. Like I am not living through a apartheid or culturally significant shift, like it’s not 1969, this is just like some year that is passed, that is not getting in history book. So that’s what we wrote about, we wrote about the girl at the street and like getting in a fight with the guy from London. Like that, those are the songs ended up being big is we thought F&*k you. The best shot at being universal is being specific as possible and sometimes you luck out. If it’s too specific then you have something really popular on your hands, I feel like it’s obvious when you try to write a popular song, when I hear that people do it that makes my stomach turn over. I don’t wanna do that. We will see if I luck in to it. At some point you are right I did say that I want to write the best song but now I’m saying that the intention and the hope of doing that is out of my hands. I just need to keep writing about my life and maybe I will luck into it. (Shawn laughing)

The Matches went on Hiatus in 2009, what did you and the others get up to in that time?
I ended up moving out to Australia not long after the hiatus to start a band with Jake from Something with Numbers. That band was called Maniac. I lived over there for a year and a half almost then my visa ran out so then Jake came over to the US and we did a couple of US tours and then some more recording over here and a bunch of shows and then his visa ran out and now we are just Skype friends. (Shawn laughing) Jake is one of my best friends and we had a great time with that. Matt actually went back to school he was always very business orientated and that was actually a nickname for him ‘Business’ Justin became a painter and he is doing amazing work now and John runs a recording studio in the Bay Area. So some of us are still doing music full-time and Justin are still doing creative stuff and Matt was always our booking agent and our touring manager and he is kept that up as well.

You caused a bit of a stir when you started posting old photos on Facebook and Twitter and some fans were pretty happy! How stoked were you that there was still so much interest and you have now on a US tour when the plan was to have one show?
It was a bit of a surprise certainly and you just never know how those things are going to go, yeah I was stoked. (laughing) I seriously want a better answer for you that the whole thing was just really surprising. We kept adding things and they kept selling out and to tour Australia, welI would take any excuse to come out Australia.

I just watched a video you posted on your Facebook page, the crowd look insane! Is this what the crowds have been like?
Yeah they are, especially the Bay Area crowds I mean we were their band really. That is where we broke and these people were the people that made us break. Everyone is still proud of that scene and what came out of that and we managed to just luck out, one of the lasting things that came out of it I guess. But now it is even crazier as I thought, these are adults, it was one thing to have a show in front of a bunch to 16-year-olds that was like Normandy with people coming over the barriers and people crowd surfing over the barriers, I will stop the war references right now. Now it is the exact same thing but these people are all like schoolteachers, bankers and working for trade companies. These are adults just pouring over the barricades and crowd surfing. It was nuts. My wife was crowd surfing it was crazy! (Laughing)

I notice in your press release and we have just spoken about it that your favourite country is Australia? Love that! Can you tell me why? I mean what is not to love about Australia!
Yes sure I can. When I first arrived in Australia when I did my first tour there, I stepped off the plane and instantly made like 15 friends. It feels really good to connect with people, I was wondering what people were so friendly here maybe you don’t realise that that in the States, people are dickheads here and keep to themselves. I realised pretty quickly that culturally over there you work just enough to make enough money to hang out with your friends and do the stuff that you love doing, whether it is to go to shows or to write songs or just going to the pub and hanging out, whatever it is that you dig doing you work and so you can afford to do that. Then you do as much as that as possible. It is an unheard of concept in America. It is like an unspoken rule that you work as much as possible here non-stop all the time. Then once in awhile you get time to hang out. Pretty much when people have enough time to hang out over here they don’t know what to do because they work so much, they go and get pissed and black out. My friends and astrologers are so relaxed. A friend just came and visited from Australia and I never heard anyone have this response to my question, my first question to him was “Dude what have you been up to?” He said “Absolutely nothing” (laughing) and he was like so proud, I have never heard of anyone to be proud of doing nothing, never heard that before. When someone asked me where I’ve been doing I feel like it’s a challenge and I feel like I have to say I’ve been busy and that I have to prove it such as I’ve been working with this band I’ve being writing that song. I feel like I have to prove that I haven’t been wasting my life, he was like dude I have done nothing and he was just proud that he had just enough money to travel and hang out with his friends. I was like !an! (he is a bit of an extreme individual) but I’d say that that would sum up the core difference between Australians and Americans. I love that about Australians, I feel like I was born with that sensibility and I feel like I connected, I feel like I was Australian born. But my Visa ran out, I lived in Sydney to years. But then I get kicked out so I need another excuse to come over! (Laughing)
Yes you do! Comes in our next time it’s so much better than Sydney!

The title of your album ‘E. Von Dhal Killed The Locals’ was a bit of revenge to Yvonne Doll and having to change your name to The Matches, how did that all end up? Or did you just feel good that you named the album that?
(Laughing) yeah we never heard from them again, we had to change our name from the Locals to the Matches because they sent us some letters from lawyers saying we had to change the band name. Likely it was before that we put out our first full-length album, it wasn’t too big of a deal to change our band name, I think The Matches ended up being better, anyway so it was all right with us and it gave us a unified villain and you know a common enemy goes a long way. We just sort of cartoonized  the whole thing which was fun. I mean punk rock would not punk rock without someone to point the middle finger up at right? (Laughing) Absolutely!

For this tour you are playing the whole album, is that right?
We have done that for all the shows so far and I think that’s what we’re doing in Australia but in Australia we broke after the second album, or at least we came over to support the second album. So we will mix it up a bit.

Can we expect other hits to be played as well? Like…Papercut Skin, Salty Eyes and Wake the Sun.
Yeah for sure.

Will you play Audio Blood last and get everyone to crouch then jump up at the chorus?
(Laughing) How have you ever even heard of that???? That was done thing that we style that was the audience, we have never said do this…… We never did it ourselves on stage,that was a thing the audience did but there are all these things at the crowd would do, and they would just invent more, I don’t know who was spearheading these but they did start moving geographically, we would see crowds in Chicago crouching down and we would think how did you guys know that? It was crazy. The last track on our record, one the main parts of the song is hummed and the crowd started meowing instead of humming (both laughing) it was so bizarre and we were like STOP! You are like ruining our song , you are making a mockery out of this song! But it just happened so we were like oh just f&*k it, this is a song with meows in it. (both laughing)
I was at a Zebrahead show recently and we did that during on song. You know the guys from Zebrahead don’t you, you did a song with them.
Yeah I do.
Well this united the crowd.
They must of stole that of us! (Laughing) But that was not ours to begin with. Haha. They must of stole that from our fans!

Will you get a chance to do some sight seeing down here?
Yeah definitely. I’m going to stay on for about a week after. So I can have a bit of fun.
What and do nothing too? (Laughing)

Well I could chat all day but we have run out of time. Thanks for all the laughs! I better say goodbye. I will be at your Melbourne show and look forward to catching up then.Thanks Shawn.
Great talking to you Jen
Cya.