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Pep-Rock: What’s your name and what do you do in the band?
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| Shawn: I’m Shawn and I play guitar and I sing in The Matches. |
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| Pep-Rock: How’s the tour going so far? |
| Shawn : (laughs). Do you ask that from a “How’s the album selling and how are the shows going?” viewpoint or “How are we dealing on the bus?!” |
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Pep-Rock: Ahh, we’ll go for both.
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| Shawn : Well, we’ve already sold like twice as many albums as our record label has sold, it’s stupid, they haven’t sold like anything and then we come over here and we’re selling like 50 CDs a show and that’s so good. We were looking forward to coming over here and hanging out with the guys from Reel Big Fish like we did last year and we have been doing but we’ve also been working our asses off being our own PR guys and selling our own CDs which is the way I think it should be anyway. It’s weird cos like you see your friend’s bands like My Chemical Romance and you’re playing above them on the Warped Tour and then suddenly they hit the big time and we’re still trying to sell our CDs like crazy at our shows. |
Pep-Rock: Their success has been crazy hasn’t it?
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| Shawn : Yeah but they totally deserve it. |
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Pep-Rock: How are the shows going in terms of audience response?
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| Shawn: They’re going real well. For three days I didn’t wear my lucky sweater so those days were a little bit off. But now it’s back, I laundered my sweater in the sink, I couldn’t get all of the stink off it but I got most of it out. Hopefully I didn’t launder out the luck – that sweater can do no wrong, it’s awesome. It’s a green thing with like holes all over it, it’s worn ragged. I wear shirts underneath it obviously cos I’m not Anthony Kiedis or Iggy Pop…although talking of naked we’re thinking of setting up suicideboys.com… |
| Pep-Rock: Boys posing naked for the sake of ‘art’ then? |
| Shawn : Yeah. Totally naked. |
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| Pep-Rock: Are there any bands around today who you think are overrated? |
| Shawn : Yeah there’s fucking loads. They’re all from over this side of the water though… |
| Pep-Rock: Ooh, who? |
| Shawn : Well…I hate Franz Ferdinand with a passion, they fucking suck. |
| Pep-Rock: What about Coldplay? |
| Shawn: Oh man, I don’t like them either. Everything they play is totally overrated. They just seem to water down Radiohead…you know how Weezer were accused of like watering down Nirvana? Coldplay have just pissed all over Radiohead… |
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| Pep-Rock: Did you know Coldplay recently got really bad press and album reviews in America? |
| Shawn : Really? Oh good. X and Y got so hyped. |
| Pep-Rock: From what I heard it sounds like lift music. |
| Shawn : Yeah totally…I really like high definition stuff, probably the best thing to come out of the UK, or anywhere in a long time is Muse, they’re ridiculously talented – super high fucking definition, dead quiet to sudden mind blowing stuff. All of us in the band love them. The Radiohead comparisons really piss me off, it’s one thing to say that a band has been influenced or has elements of one band…Matt Bellamy had such an awesome voice, he’s in Thom Yorke’s vocal range but Muse are just so awesome. |
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| Pep-Rock: Who do you consider your influences? |
| Shawn: Oh a ton of stuff, it’s ever changing. Justin (bassist) has his foot stuck steadfast in the 90s so he brings in our Nirvana, Green Day and Rancid influences but they’re a bunch of my favourite bands too. But then Matt (drummer) and I get nearly every new album that comes out, we try to stay cutting edge but then Justin drags us back into the past. I stay away from naming bands cos I like to think there’s no one we particularly sound like. It’s weird, in America all the Warped Tour bands are classed as the same, they don’t have specific genres, they’re just known as ‘Warped Tour’ bands whereas I heard that over here you guys class a band such as Taking Back Sunday as ‘emo’ and My Chemical Romance as ‘rock’…it’s surprising cos we don’t do that in the States. |
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| Pep-Rock: Any up and coming bands, maybe fresh off the Warped Tour, that you’d recommend? |
| Shawn: I heard this really good band from Washington called The Fall of Troy – I don’t have the whole album yet but they sound awesome. I dunno…lately I’ve been ripping the arms and legs off all our songs and piecing them back together in different forms so I’ve been listening to a lot of classic stuff…I dunno…I don’t wanna say what… |
| Pep-Rock: Oh, go on… |
Shawn: (laughs) No, I dunno, just stuff that has lasted like 20 or 30 years… |
| Pep-Rock: Nothing wrong with that! |
| Shawn: I know…it’s just the rest of the band don’t like me saying that cos we don’t sound so cool (laughs). I’ve been writing all these song structures out lately…actually I’ve been listening to The Strokes a lot lately, which is kind of funny cos you think we’re the sort of band who’d have nothing to do with The Strokes but they have some fucking awesome song structures. Not to get music dorky or anything but I’ve been writing all the structures out and they are fucking bad ass. Really fucking cool. Weird as shit, you couldn’t imagine how bizarrely laid out they are. |
| Pep-Rock: Do you feel like a lot of British bands, for example bands that you mentioned earlier like Franz Ferdinand, are trying to rip off bands like The Strokes? |
| Shawn: Yeah I mean the Kaiser Chiefs, their album is fucking boring and number five in the charts. |
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| Pep-Rock: What’s the worst gig you’ve ever played? |
| Shawn: That’d probably have to be at The Nights of Columbus in Pennsylvania. Justin got really pissed off in the middle of the set, he couldn’t get his gear to work or something…we were waiting and waiting for him then we thought we’d better just start the song with just the three of us cos Justin wouldn’t look our way and he was shouting “Fuck you!” He just got really angry…he came up and then fucking kicked me, I hit my face on the microphone and fell off the stage, then he took his bass guitar, threw it into the drum set and stormed off stage. So there we are, the drum set has like the guitar through it, Jon runs away scared…this is in the middle of our set and this was before we’d been properly signed and there were like two or three record labels to see us there that day… |
| Pep-Rock: I bet they all wanted to sign you up… |
| Shawn: Yeah they did! No, I’m serious! Anyway we were like “Err, fuck, well I guess we’re done…” then Justin comes back on stage, grabs the mic and shouts, “I’M FUCKING ANGRY!” and everyone in the crowd looks fucking scared! And he’s going…”I WANT YOU TO SAY IT WITH ME…ON THE COUNT OF THREE…ONE...TWO…THREE….I’M FUCKING ANGRY!” and everyone in the crowd’s like “I’m…err…fucking…angry…” like real timid… |
| Pep-Rock: Who were you playing with? |
| Shawn : (laughs) That was Reel Big Fish as well actually, like three summers ago on our first big tour as The Matches. |
| Pep-Rock: Was the drum kit ruined? |
Shawn: Nah, he just broke a head or something, Matt couldn’t have played anymore of the set on it but it was ok. All gigs are bad when I don’t wear my lucky sweater. |
| Pep-Rock: What makes the sweater lucky? |
| Shawn : I dunno, it’s just fucking magic. |
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| Pep-Rock: Have you got any crazy fan stories? |
| Shawn: Oh I’ve got tons… |
| Pep-Rock: Oh dear…are there any big differences between American and British fans? |
| Shawn : (angrily) Yeah! The British fans always want my fucking hat (picks up a vintage black bowler hat), my fucking bowler cap. I’ve had this for years… |
| Pep-Rock: And no one’s stolen it?! |
Shawn: Well, not successfully…Man, you Brits love the hat! Next time we come here I swear we’re bringing these for merch, kids are always like (puts on amazing Cockney accent, think Fagin from Oliver Twist) “Let me get your ‘at mate!” I can’t fucking explain. People always ask me to give it to them and I’m like fuck off! It was like a hundred dollars where I got it five years ago and I’ve been wearing it like constantly for two years…anyway, the crazy fan story? I think this was also in Pennsylvania…man that place sucks! Yeah…there was this girl at the show and man, I NEVER let people wear my hat and this girl was like..
“Let me try your hat!”
And I thought, man…I shouldn’t be such a dick about my hat, she looks alright, she has like a Matches shirt, Matches bag, she likes out band, she’s not gonna piss us off, right? So she’s got my hat on and I’m like…
“I’m gonna go sign some autographs, don’t go anywhere, ok?”
A minute later, I come back….she’s gone. So I go running outside, I look all over the venue and I don’t see her so to everyone I’m like “have you seen my hat?!” and then I notice this girl’s got in a car! I’m like “Nooooo!” and I can’t exactly get in our tour bus with trailer and drive after her…so I grab this guy who has like this sleeveless shirt on and I see he’s got a Matches tattoo so I’m thinking hey this guy’ll do me a favour! So I’m like…
“Dude! Can you do me a favour?”
He says, “Yeah, I’d love to!”
We jump in his car and we drive to McDonalds which is nearby and I recognise some of the girls in there as they were with the girl who stole my hat, so I’m like…
“Has anyone seen my hat?!”
And they’re like, “I dunno…”
So anyway I noticed their phones on the table so I picked one of them up and ran out…I remembered the hat girl’s name so I look through this phone, find her number and phone it and I’m like…
“Hey! Where you at?”
She’s like…”Who’s this?”
I say, “Where are you?”
She replies, “At home…”
And I say, “FUCK YOU! This is Shawn, you have my hat, BITCH!”
And she’s like, “Oh…I had to go, my ride came….”
And I’m like, “Fuck you! I want my hat back and I’m gonna call you all the time til I get it, I have your friend’s phone and she’s not gonna get it back til I get my hat back so turn the car right around and come back…”
And she says, “Oh my god, ok, I’ll give it back, but I can’t turn round, I’m 15, I can’t drive…”
And I say “Well fucking get the person driving to come back!”
And she says, “I can’t, my parents are asleep in bed…”
So I say, “Well tell me your fucking address then!” and I grab the tattoo guy and we start driving…and she’s still on the phone going…
“I’m so sorry!”
And I say, “Ok, if you wanna be cool with me, here’s what we’re gonna do, you’re gonna get two paper bags and make us two lunches, we want fruit snacks, diet cokes, a sandwich…I’m vegetarian so please don’t put any meat in there, oh and no mayo, an apple and banana would be nice…”.
We got to her house and she gave me back my hat and two lunches. |
| Pep-Rock: Were the lunches nice? |
| Shawn: Yeah, they were awesome. Oh man, yeah, also… I get back to the venue and this other girl drives up in her car and she’s like “Hey!” and then she jumps out of her car and steals this cheap acoustic guitar I have by me…anyway I notice her car and the keys are still in the ignition so I fucking took her car and drove it around, I took some people to McDonalds, I was gone for like half an hour…I came back and she willingly gave me my guitar. |
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| Pep-Rock: Wow. It’s nice to see revenge is sweet…okay Shawn well thanks for your time and stories…good luck with the rest of the tour and look after your hat. |
| Shawn: Thanks |
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| To find out more about The Matches - Click Here |
