Matt LaForge from Mil-Spec

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
You're listening to one hundred words or less with Ray Harrikins.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
What is happening? Everybody? Welcome to another episode of this
podcast in which we talk to people who are involved
in independent music with us creating it, documenting it, whatever
that we decide to do when we get into this
whole di y thing and we feel so compelled to
shape the world around our vision and being like I
want to do this. I'm not asking permission, I'm just

(00:44):
kind of putting it out there and then that impacts
the world in a really cool and great way. And
this person's art has impacted me greatly. I have Matt LaForge,
the guitarist for the Incredible Toronto or the Greater Ontario area,
a hardcore band called Millspeck. Spoiler alert, I have their

(01:05):
record Marathon in my Top ten of twenty twenty three list,
which we will be publishing next week. I know it's
a hotly anticipated episode. That's myself, my friend Joey K. Hill,
and my friend Jeremy Bohm. We always do that because
we've been doing it for my twenty years. I don't
know if we've been talking about records for a very
long time. Regardless, Matt and the band Millspeck are interesting

(01:30):
because like, they're not super active on social media or
active at all, and so Millspeck exists in this world
where it's like if you know, you know, and of
course there's an air of you know, cool factor that
that obviously rubs off on. But when I was thinking
about having someone from Millspeck on, I was like, where
do I even begin. Anyways, good friend of the show,

(01:52):
Joey K. Hill comes to the rescue, and it's like, here,
I can you know, connect with you know, Greg from
locking Out, et cetera, et cetera, because locking Out is
where they put out records on anyways, so I hit
Matt up and then lo and behold. Matt and I
connected many moons ago when we were talking about podcasts
or other things in my professional life. And it was

(02:14):
funny because then he reminded me and I was like, oh, dude,
I totally remember that conversation. I had no idea that
you were, you know, a hardcore kid or in Millspack
for that matter. But anyways, this is a great discussion
and yeah, he's just an incredibly thoughtful dude. And I
had a great time with this. So you can email
the show one hundred words podcast at gmail dot com.

(02:35):
Always appreciate the feedback and just you know, general correspondence.
Always love that. You can also leave a rating and
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(02:56):
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of those things are how you can support the show.
I'm incredibly excited because I get to go to for
the Children Festival, and for those that are uninitiated or unaware,

(03:20):
it's happening this coming weekend in the Greater Los Angeles
area the SOS Productions, which is a brainchild of Nate
from Szababa and many other people. But it's an unbelievable
event because not only do they have incredible bands like
Scowl Movements. I'm trying to think some of the other

(03:42):
headliners Beyond Repair, which is obviously you know, og Throwdown anyways,
a ton of great bands. But the whole premise of
the show is the fact that you need to obviously
bring a toy. When I say obviously, it's like you
look at the flyer and they could not make it
more clear. But it just benefits this amazing, amazing organization

(04:03):
where basically they take all the toys donate it to
kids in need. And I know that sounds like a
very sort of basic thing that most you know, churches
and other places do around this time, but to watch
like the hardcore scene really pour back that love and
that appreciation for the communal aspect, not only of obviously

(04:25):
us gathering in a place to watch bands, but just
the fact that this can also make an impact on
the community at large. I just love this event and
I love what they're doing. So I'm excited to go
this year. And that's what's happening. And yeah, let's dive
into the conversation with Matt from Millsbeck.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Cultivate the.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
I.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
I mean, it was aware of Millspeck, but I really
did not, like completely get grabbed by what you guys
were doing. Until World House, like I just you know,
was like okay, like they're a cool band, Like I
check out, like literally almost everything from this othern Ontario
area just have a large affinity for any any style
of hardcore that comes out of there. And it seems

(05:23):
like and you can obviously probably you know, feel maybe
people paying attention to you more around the release of
that record, But it seems like that's kind of when
people were like, oh, like they've either found their sound
or like they've matured into it or whatever you want to,
you know, journalistically call it. Do you think it was
just you know, a nature of like being able to

(05:46):
do what you guys did as any normal band does,
where it's like you continue to put out releases and
write and all that stuff to get closer to the
sound that you were trying to achieve.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, it definitely went that way. It's hard to know
for sure whether there was a real market increase in
listenership or anything like that or in interest at that
point because well, for one thing, it came out during
the pandemic. It came out September twenty twenty, was supposed
to have come out earlier that spring, and so you know,

(06:19):
we're releasing it in this void. I did some interviews
with a couple of people on the occasion of the release,
and I talked about this, like, when you're in a
lot of bands will know what I'm talking about. When
you were releasing records back then, you had really no idea.
You know, you were fully in the simulacrum of social media,
which we don't even really participate in. So finding sort

(06:39):
of feedback touch points and getting your finger on the
pulse of who actually was paying legitimate attention and how
much the thing was connecting or resonating was really hard
to do. And that was in contrast to two years
earlier when we had done the seven inch the change
of seven Inch, where we got a lot more real
world feedback and we definitely detected since actually not at

(07:01):
the time, but since we sort of detected that there
was a little bit of a split in the in
people who followed our band between the kind of the
seven inch loyalists and kind of new people who came
in for that first LP, which always happens. You know,
there were always the seven inch in demo loyalists, but
I think that there were a lot of people who did, yeah,
who would put it that way. Who said that on

(07:21):
that LP, we kind of found our sound or we realized,
you know, some potential, or we you know, hit a
plateau or a high point on the arc or something.
But there are other people who disagreed, I think, or
I'm pretty sure who said, well, they you know, this
is a little bit more, this is too overwrought. For me,
it's too it's too much of an attempt at being
a or at making a polished record. It's not like

(07:43):
the seven inch, which was rougher sounding and a little
bit more tossed off in the way that seven inches
always are. There were definitely two views, at least two views,
is my point. But I think in terms of raw numbers, yeah,
more people listened to World House than had listened to
the seven inch your demo, so that probably indicated that
there was more interest overall, and therefore just you know,

(08:05):
because of math, more more positive feelings toward it in
the aggregate.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
And also I think, and I'm sure you can you've
probably gone through this in your own head where it's
like there are so many times where you know, bands,
especially in the hardcore world, where it's like they release
an amazing demo or seven inch and then like, you know,
just gets lost to the ether. And it doesn't mean
that your excitement for that particular output doesn't get diminished,

(08:33):
But like I almost find myself kind of being like,
all right, I'm gonna wait till a full length comes
out before I really get pop committed to this band,
because like I've had my heart broken so many times
where I'm like, oh, man, like I'm never gonna see
this band or I'm never going to like participate beyond
just like listening to these four songs or whatever.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. You'll hear people
say that, you know, punk is a singles thing or
punk is an EPs thing. That's another thing I talked
about in an interview that I did back then three
years ago. I can't remember who I told, but I
said the same thing. I don't really agree with that.
I think I've just was conditioned by virtue of my
generation at the time. I was born to be an

(09:11):
album listener and an evaluator of bands on the basis
of albums, and so yeah, it doesn't ever seem like
I know what's really what as far as the band goes,
until there's an LP and that I sort of judge
a band's discography on the basis of the full lengths
that they put out.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
And.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Would probably consider a band that doesn't do any full
lengths to be of, you know, in a different category,
to be sort of competing in a different arena. But
the thing about that record was that it was only
eight songs, and we had kind of rushed it into production.
As I recall it, I think we sort of felt
ourselves going down a path that we ended up definitely
going down on the follow up on Marathon, the record

(09:52):
that just came out, where we were getting a little
bit two in our heads and we were writing and
rewriting and revising and revising, and we could sort of
see that kind of lapsing into perpetuity, and sure went
to the looking looking glass, and we could see ourselves,
you know, not being able to escape that pattern. And
I think I was like one of the leaders of

(10:16):
the faction of the band that said, we got to
we got to just call this, We have to go
into the studio with what we have, and we got
to actually make this thing, because if we just keep
obsessing over what it could be, we'll never actually write it,
will never actually record it, and in retrospect, I think
we all agree that we actually did air on the
side of going in a little bit too early, because
you know, for one thing, we didn't have a full

(10:38):
ten or twelve songs. We you know, didn't have a
plan for who was going to produce it. There were
a few things that we would have done differently if
we'd given ourselves more time, But there was a real
danger in giving ourselves too much time. So we didn't
give ourselves too much time. We give ourselves too little time,
and the results are the results. But I know that
it definitely struck a chord with a lot of people.

(10:59):
Sounds like you included it, which I appreciate. So yeah,
you know, we were happy with it. Uh, you're happy
with it. On balance, it's you know, there's like this
sort of parallax effect that you get when you look
back at something that's older than the most recent thing
you put out, that it's always going to suffer by comparison.
I you know, I think that's probably generally true, especially

(11:19):
if the more recent thing is brand new, which our
more recent thing is, right, you'll look back at the
other thing and be like, well, we didn't you know,
there are a lot of things that did the thing
that we should have done in the first thing.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah. Well, and and to your point too, there is
no external pressure for you guys releasing music. And when
I say that, like the pressure is all internal, so
you're not having to be like, oh, we got to
put out a record in order to you know, get
back on tour and like participate.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
There are no stakeholders to satisfying.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, no, right, right, And so to that degree, that's
exactly what you're talking about, where like the only pressure
that is being applied is to ourselves, and if we
continue to do that, this will just be locked in
this you know, vicious cycle sneaking in its tail scenario
where it's like, dude, it just took us eight years
to have eight songs, like this is terrible, Like we

(12:07):
gotta be a little quicker than that.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah, And it represented there was a shift that happened
at some point, like maybe two or three years into
the band, Whereas when it was a new band, we
were trying to kind of adhere to you know, like
demo core principles of writing quickly, recording quickly, not worrying
about how things sounded. You know, being elusive in our songwriting,
not caring too much about originality. And then there's son
of paradigm shift that happened, like somewhere around the seven

(12:30):
is just after it where we started to get you know,
started to get in our heads that we could write
good songs. And that was right, like a mixed blessing
like that was you know, potentially fatal to the band,
because once you start to think along those lines, you know,
there's no end to the to the madness that you
might pursue. So rushing the production of the first album

(12:52):
was an attempt to kind of like keep our heads,
and we didn't do as good a job. By the
way of keeping our heads with the second one, we
will you know, the every kind of tendency and you know,
mental problem that we were worried about forestalling with the
first one kind of came to pass in the second one.
But then again, I think the second one's better, So yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Right, you do you do well. We'll pull apart some
of those threads a little bit later. But I want
to focus on you as a person. Were you actually
born and raised in the I guess Greater Ontario area,
or did you come up somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
I was born in British Columbia, in the west side
of Canada in the mountains, like a little like logging
town then the middle of nowhere. But my parents are
from Ontario. They're from the Ottaway area and that goes
back a few generations on both sides. But they were
not hippies, but they were, you know, they were doing

(13:45):
what a lot of people did in the sixties and
seventies and just go west. Happened in the US, happened
in Canada, like you're young in your in your twenties,
and there's work out west. There's you know, adventure and
opportunity out west, so you go. Then they worked in
the oil fields out in Alberta, and they ended up
for reasons that remained a little bit unclear, forty three
years later in this little logging town in a little

(14:08):
a frame house and like the foothills of the Cooney Mountains,
and I was born there, was there for a little
while and then came back to the Ottawa area, which
as I say, my family's all all hails from. When
I was about three and I grew up not in
Toronto where I now live, but near Ottawa.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Okay, got it. And what was the family structure like
like brothers and sisters? I mean, like you said mom
and dad were present. What did that look like inside
the house?

Speaker 1 (14:35):
The standard Canadian upbringing you two mom and dad in
the house, both of them work a little sister, comfortable house,
quiet street, you know, CFL on Sundays hockey. I actually
had a really I was thinking about this. I've heard
you ask this question before, so I was trying to
prep myself a little bit on how I would answer
it and absolutely know how well. I didn't coming up

(14:57):
with something good to say. But one thing that I
was thinking about was that, but you know, we're going
to talk about my exposure to music and stuff like that,
and I really credit a lot of the interest I
later developed in cultural things, specifically music, to you know,
I think I I don't at this stage have a
really romantic idea about how that all happened. That might

(15:17):
just have to do with my own biography. I didn't
have an older brother's sister putting me onto cool stuff.
I didn't live in an area where I was going
to encounter cool people. I had a very very compared
to how I live now, rural early childhood. I didn't
live on a farm, but I lived in a farm area.
My parents were city kids. My dad had grown up
in Ottawa proper. My mom had two up until she

(15:39):
was a little bit older, and both of them actually
ended up in a little lake, a little like you know,
village outside of Ottawa where they met in high school
and moved to, you know, after the sojourn out west,
came home and kind of wanted to continue in that
day and they you know, my dad wanted land. He
was in his twenties, he had a lot of energy.
He wanted to try raising animals, you know. So we

(16:01):
bought some like sixteen acre piece of land with a
little house on it, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded
by farms, and you know, my dad built a chicken
coop and we had hogs for a while. This is
when I'm like three, four, five, six years old. Sure,
I'm like I can remember going to like like barn
sales and agricultural affairs on the weekend and like tractor
pulls with my dad. Like, my dad was a not again,

(16:23):
he wasn't an agricultural person. He had a construction job,
but he was really interested in this, you know, kind
of like pursuing this kind of lifestyle. It didn't end
up taking he was too busy, he didn't have the
time for it didn't make sense for us. And but
you know, there was no we didn't have a lot
of other kids my age in the area. There certainly
was no, you know, anything that you would call a

(16:46):
local culture outside of you know, like you know, like
like church parties and fiddling and things like that. Like
it was very very rural, like it's almost you know,
I'd look back at my own early childhood and like marvel,
how how like four each it was and compared to
how things you know, played out a few years later.

(17:06):
Like I The next move we made when I was
about seven or eight was to like a a little
subdivision of quiet subdivision and two story house that we built,
which was very suburban. It was wasn't in the suburbs.
It was like a in an exurban kind of location,
but it was sort of a suburban type of lifestyle,
suburban kind of house, suburban kind of property. And there

(17:27):
that's when you know, more media started to come into
the picture. We had got cable TV, and you know,
we had got a VCR before we had the VCR.
We were watching video discs. Do you ever watch a
video disc? Not a laser disc, but a video disc?
It was like no, like I've I mean, I worked
to look up this technology. I could watching like Superman
too and like Rodney Dangerfield Back to School on video

(17:48):
disc came in like it was like a twelve by
twelve or thirteen by thirteen inch plastic container or cover
that had like the movie art on it. My dad
would rent the machine that played these things, you know,
every two or three weeks on a Friday, bring it home,
bring it like a box, like a milk crate full
of movies. It'd be like, you know, it'd be like
Brewster's million, Superman one and two, sure, some danger Field

(18:09):
movie that he wanted to watch, and you would put
you would slide the plastic thing into this, you know,
into the the front of the machine. You'd hear a sound,
the sound of the machine sucking the disk in. You'd
take the plastic thing out, and then you'd watch the movie.
I think you had to flip it like a record.
It was like very short lived kind of eight track
as technology. That's how we were living, you know, in

(18:29):
the period I've mentioned before, when I was like three,
four five, and then seventy eight nine, ten years old,
it's a more suburban like existence. There's cable TV, you know,
And I can remember that shift really vividly, like I
did the first thing. I remember turning on the TV
when I was twelve or something when we finally got cable,
because I knew what I missed it was I was missing,

(18:49):
and you know, I was very excited to get cable
after all those years. The first thing that came on
when the cable got hooked up and the switch gout
flipped was like an NBA game, which you never saw
on Canada, and I can remember thinking like, here we go,
here comes the title wave, you know, like I'm finally
gonna get you know, all this stuff is going to
crash over me. All this music and sports and movie
stuff that I knew was out there and I knew
that it was missing right on its way into my

(19:10):
house and as as as indeed it was, and it
kind of, you know, took over my life for up
until now right right.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
No, I love I love painting that picture. When it's
like you start to it's like, yeah, to your point,
if you don't have an older sibling or someone else
that's being able to usher you into things like you're
just you know that there's something like on the other side,
but you don't know what that thing is.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
And then yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
The point I was going to make was that I
have to credit like the mass media for whatever exposure
to whatever cool thing.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
Uh yeah, I ended up finding.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
It's there's there's really no escaping it. It's because of
like much music, the Canadian MTV, It's because of whatever
cool thing you might hear on commercial radio. It's because
it was because of like seeing you know, like uh
watching National Lampoon's Vacation with and hearing Blitz Creekbop on
the soundtrack or something like that. Just seeing the Ramones
and the Simpsons, like these little hints that you would

(20:03):
see in the kind of the mainstream mass media of
the late eighties and early nineties that finally cohere into
something you know, that you can actually figure out or
they head around a couple of years later. What thing
was was the in terms of getting into punk. Yeah,
I was just telling somebody else about this like it.
It never really occurred to me what the trigger was,

(20:23):
because people, you know, want to know, people ask people
talk about that like how you know, what finally got
you on the path to being into punk and hardcore
or whatever. And for me, it was like the first
side of Incesticide. You know that the Nirvana collection of course,
which didn't sound like you know, Society of Incesticide obviously
doesn't sound like they're other records because it's a lot

(20:44):
more you know, it's that's there.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
You know, that's them doing you know, punk rock.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
So the little things like that would just sort of
show up through the mass media, and I have to
you know, a lot of people will talk about like
you say, the older brother or the guy who you
know who wrote graffiti or wrote a skateboard in the neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
I just didn't have that.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
I was gonna have to like piece things together by
renting movies and you know, watching cable TV.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, no, I love that. And I think too, I mean,
because I if I'm not mistaken, like we're probably same generation,
like you know, roughly round forty. And I think that
that was so because we existed as we were coming
up with the you know, pivotal ages of whatever between
eight to fifteen, Like it was such a monoculture era

(21:25):
that like any little piece of something that seemed interesting.
All you tried to do was just be like, oh,
I got to record one hundred and twenty minutes on VHS,
you know, for like you just start to find those
little fissures and like, but the only way that that
thing would have ever come across our desk is through,
to your point, the mass media, and like that's incredibly important.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, you would just take this like you know, you would,
You would take everything in and then you know'd you
you know, the dump truck would show up at your
house and dump all the culture in your front yard
and then you'd have to go out and pick through it.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Totally.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah, that's all you did.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
You spend hours and hours and hours just trying to
find something that it was actually cool.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Totally totally, And I always love that that feeling of
like you, I mean, I can't illustrate it better from
a picture perspective the way you described it, just like
sifting through garbage, because like you do end up latching
onto things that, by no stretch of the imagination are
quote unquote cool. But because you found it at a

(22:27):
certain time, you were just like, no, actually I really
like this, and like devoid of context, You're just like, yeah,
I'm sorry, I like this. Whatever I like, I always
look back at, like, you know, depending on when you
got into the Misfits, it's like, you know, the Michael
Graves era. Most people are just like, dude, that's trash.
But if you got into it them like sorry, that's
the era that you got into it.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, Andrew from the singer from Millspec's a big Graves guy,
like things would, things would come to you and from
weird directions and from weird sources too. Like I remember
the first time I ever heard about rap music, The
first time I've ever heard about rap music was like
in nineteen eighty Evan or something. And back then, Canada
we're talking about Canada. Canada was a much more kind
of distinct media environment and popular culture. And back then

(23:08):
even then, even that recently than it is now, just
because the way that the media works, like it was
not really the case that you could get everything that
would be on American air through you know, the meeting channels.
You could get a lot of it, but not all
of it. You know, you could get most of the
network shows, but not all of them. Meat here, most
of the popular music, but not all of it. You'd
see most of the movies, but not all of them. Yeah,

(23:31):
that's changed now you can see everything. But back then,
you know, there was certainly no rap radio or hip
hop radio where I was from, and there was not much.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
You know, there's.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
No other real way that you're going to hear about it.
So I'm seven years old them in second grade, and
this is how I hear about rap music. There was
like some theme day at the school I'm going to,
and you know, grade two, like I say, as we
say up here in that second grade, nope, and you
sign up for some workshops. It was some you know,
it was some like we don't do school today, we
don't do classes today, We're going to do workshops. And
one of the ones that I signed up for was

(24:03):
this music module called like the Basics of rock and
Roll or something like that, where the idea was these
seventy eight year old kids. You'd go to the classroom,
kids from all different classes, kids from different ages, and
a guest, like a parent volunteer, would come in and
write a song with you. And this parent was this guy,
Jack Donovan, who was like, you know, you know, like
these local pillars of the community. You know the people

(24:24):
who like own the like the auto dealership, or you know,
like the hardware store, the grocery store, like the local gentry.
You know, like when Trump got elected, people would talk
about it was actually like the snowmobile dealers that elected them.
It wasn't the coal miners. Like guys like that who
were you know, like real pillars of the community. They
sponsor all the teams. You know, they play the organ
at the hockey game or you know, at the football
game or something like that. A guy like that, and

(24:46):
he had all kinds like yeah, I think he did
sell cars. I'm not sure what business he was in,
but he'd like show up to his son's soccer games.
I played on the same team. He'd be wearing a
three piece suit. Like my dad got a kick out
of this guy. Anyway, he's doing this module because I
guess he could play the piano when he had a
music sideline. I think he DJed wedding and stuff like that.
And so we get going. He's all right, kids, let's go,
let's let's write some lyrics. What do you what are
you thinking about? And so we write write these lyrics. Anyway,

(25:06):
long story short, the song that these seven and eight
year old kids put together has this kind of like
talking cadence. He's like, this sounds kind of like a
rap song, he asked me, and that was the first
time I had ever heard about rap music. And I
go home and I, you know, I ask my mom
what it is and she didn't know. But so, you know,
there's like a wonder you know, six or eight or
twelve month lag between hearing the term and actually hearing

(25:28):
the music. And that was you know, the next two
or three years of my life. I was obsessed with
rap music and the but the kernel of it was
planted by this like you know, like local clown.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Right you hear you heard the words of it, and
you were.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Just like a guy who sold like you know, a
guy who sold like farm equipment or something.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
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Speaker 3 (26:50):
Let's go.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
So, like you said, your progression through music, like you're
articulating through mass media. What kind of kid did you
find yourself being, like, you know, sports person, you know,
did you like school? I mean, obviously for Okay, got it.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
I was in a real kind of like a you know,
like I mentioned the guy at the soccer game like.
It was a very jock town, yep. And the same
guy I mentioned was, you know, heavily involved in local
like minor hockey and stuff like that. So it was
like a real, real, uh jock kind of town. I
wasn't a jock kid because I was too much of
a shrinking violet and too shy, and jocks aren't shy
and retiring, which I was. But I love sports and

(27:26):
I was obsessed with them to this day. Like sports,
I'll never you know, I'll never be able to quit them.
They'll they'll be a part of my life till the
day I die, no matter how obnoxious, how stupid, how
much of a time suck. And it was all it
all started and you know, you know, in childhood, so
I played hockey, I played baseball, and that was really
where my head was at until I don't know, I

(27:47):
guess probably junior high, you know, twelve thirteen. And that's
probably that's true for a lot of people like you.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Kind of have.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
An early childhood that's you know, maybe not too concerned
with culture that in that changes once you know, you
get old enough to care about that stuff. And there's
all kinds of obvious reasons why you start to care
at that age. Yeah, definitely a sports kid, you know,
not not a distinguished athlete, but perfectly you know. It
was like tall, you know, a tall enough kid, a
sturdy enough kid that I was fine, you know, I

(28:17):
was so I was able to you know, I played
sports all seasons, sure, until.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
You participated right right, And so as you started to
dive into the more you know, independent leaning stuff and
like going to shows and everything like that was what
attracted you to it? Was it the you know, simple
act of obviously the energy, you know, was what what
spoke to you.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Well, it took a while at first that wasn't attracted
to it at all, like I was, but I had,
like I had a real I had a real ambivalent
feelings about it.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
As a kid, I remember like like.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Uh, heavy music, loud music, cool music, music that could
be coded as dangerous, you know, especially in the eighties,
I was, you know, I was fascinated by it, as
everybody was, but I was all recoiling from it because
it just didn't seem to be the kind of thing
that like a kid like me should would have any
business with. And I was, you know, I didn't like
I like I said, I really like rap in the

(29:10):
late eighties because I really hated the like I hated
the hair metal of the eighties, Like I really hated it.
Like I was like a real kind of like stuffy,
kind of reactionary about it. I'm like, oh, that's filthy.
Like I had this real revulsion towards kind of the
guitar music of the eighties, sure, because it was you know,
it was sort it was like shabby and dirty and
you know for like you know, and like I didn't

(29:31):
I couldn't understand the kids in my class who you know,
identified with it. I had a really hard time with it.
So I gravitated to rap music, which was like verbal
and kind of you know, from another place and another culture,
and it was kind of felt like my own thing.
And then when you know, guitar music started to change,
which you know has been talked about a million times.
But when that started to happen, and people kind of

(29:54):
in my age Cohort circa nineteen ninety one ninety two
started to move from you know, euro dance pop or
rap music or like you know, really really you know,
commercial rap music back to guitar music. Because of Nirvana
and Pearl jam and all of that. At first, I
was really resistant. I'm like, well, this doesn't have anything
to do with me. This is like, you know, this

(30:15):
is like what cool kids are going to get into,
and I'm going to have to you know, I'm going
to have to make other arrangements. So at first I
was really really worried about it, Like I was worried
what I was going to do with this kind of
guitar music resurgence, because I didn't feel like I was
fit to participate. But meanwhile, I'm like developing an interest
in the music itself.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
I like it.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
I'm paying a lot of attention to it. I'm watching
the videos, I'm listening to the radio. I know that
I like it, and I'm trying to figure out what
am I going to do about this? I like this music,
but I'm you know, I'm too much of a you know,
I'm too much of a dewe do be part of it,
because you know it's not for people like me. Like
I had this real internal struggle.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
It got to the.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Point where I remember, like the breaking point was when
I was in grade eight. I think there's like the
June of nineteen ninety four, like the end of grade
eight for me, the end of junior high end.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Of an era.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
There was you know the dough Boys, that Canadian band.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Oh yeah, from Montreal.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
They were hot shit at the time in Canada because
their major label debut was out crushed. That's the that's
the one with all their big songs on it. You know,
the shine fixed me all those songs. And they were
big kind of like not big stars, but they were
like Much Music, there were big much music artists. Much
Music played them all the time. Much Music would like
run contests to like meet the dough Boys, get you know,

(31:28):
get tickets, get backstage passes, get a you know, get
a plane tickets to go see them in Montreal, like
they would. They were really pushing them as stars on
Much Music, not really on radio, but definitely Much music.
So they were like a known quantity. And they were
doing this tour, like a b market tour of Canada,
including the Hockey Arena like fifty yards away from the
elementary school I went to. And of course everybody in

(31:50):
the school is like geeked to go. This is like
I say, ninety four, this kind of music is really
cool now. People, even my age thirteen fourteen are starting
their own bands, like this is the used to be
and I really want to go, but I remember I
just didn't, you know, I just kind of didn't have
the guts. I like it was desperate to go. And
then you know, I was talking to friends of mine
about him.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Like should we go?

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Like it's gonna be kind of sketchy, Like is it
gonna be bad? Are we gonna get you know, are
people gonna beat us up? Is it gonna be cool
if we go? Like I just didn't know what to do.
I was like, really really torn. A friend of mine
wanted to go. I remember the night of he called me,
He's like, are we gonna go? And again like this
was five minutes away from my house, uh and a
stone's throw from my school, and I was so torn
up about it and didn't know what to do.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
I remember this.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
I went up to the backyard of my house and
my mom was there gardening. And my mom wasn't too
invested in any of this stuff yet because I was
too young, but even she could tell what was going on.
I remember her saying to me, She's like, I really
think you should.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Go to this show.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Was like, stop being so nervous Matt.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Like. I was such a you know, such a like
a like a hand wringing, little like fusspot of a kid,
and I didn't go.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
I just didn't.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
I'm just like, no, it's gonna be weird. I won't
be welcome there. Something bad's gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
So I too risky.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, I just like it was too neurotic to go
see the dough Boys at fourteen at the local hockey arena,
which is like a major regret. But from that point on,
I like turned over a relief. I'm like, I can't
do this anymore. I have to actually, you know, just
admit that I like this shit, and I have to
just you know, try to make a guy. I have
to participate it. I have to start going to these shows.
I have to start making friends with these people. I

(33:22):
have to start putting myself out there, which I started
to do because it just didn't come naturally to me
to be like a you know, to be social in
any way, and certainly not that way.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Sure. Yeah, I just thought, yeah, there's there's so much
of that that I really I Yeah, I think many
people can identify like that. When you always look back
with rose colored glasses. To your experience, there are somebody
of those moments that you just like simply forget about
where you're just like, oh, yeah, like I was actually
scared getting pushed into a moshpit or whatever. It's like, yeah,

(33:52):
of course, like you know, those are normal feelings and
the idea that like, yeah, I shouldn't go to a
sketchy show. Like even at your age, it was like yeah, yeah,
of course, like you should be hanging out with adults,
Like there's so many things that could go wrong.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
All the kids in the school yard were like, you know,
there were you know, kids who are twelve or thirteen
or fourteen, Like there's such you know, there's such posers.
They're like, oh, we're gonna sell fake acid. We're gonna
we're gonna drink, you know, we're gonna like they're making
all these they're cooking up all of these schemes, just
like in a cold sweat, you know, listening to all
these conversations, wondering what am I gonna do? When I

(34:24):
showed with the show and my friends were selling fake
acid and they're all drunk and they're all you know,
they're all getting high because I even at that age,
I was you know, I was you know, had a
real aversion to any of that stuff. So I was
like it was like it was a panic for weeks,
and I, yeah, get the show.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
I have been people.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
I've told people that I went to that show. I like,
I've I've lied about it in like in my adult life,
and I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Then.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
I'm coming clean now. I didn't go.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
I didn't go, even despite my mom's protestations, despite having
friends who are willing to go, despite you know, living
five minutes away from the venue. I didn't go see
the dough Boys at the you know, the peak of
their powers in my home.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, well that's good. I'm glad you can come clean here.
When you started, like when did you start noticing, for
lack of a better term, like the local scene as
it were. I mean, I know, me being from California,
like I became so obsessed with I mean, you know,
chokeol grade, swore, like basically anything from that area. And

(35:23):
I just found it so mesmerizing for me being across
the country and feeling like, oh, it's just so weird,
Like this whole southern Ontario scene just seems to be
having you know, not just even a moment, but just
like seems to be churning out so much stuff. When
did you become I guess aware of all the stuff
that was happening around you.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
That probably happened a little bit later because Ottawa, like
things were still more regionalized then even then in the nineties,
and Shiloh was a different ecosystem completely. The Ottawa area,
you know, like which I was part of, uh I
was part of. That solar system was very distinct from
the southern Ontario solar system. You know, there was like
enough space between them, you know, like a four or

(36:04):
five hour drive that it was really hard to know,
especially if you didn't exactly have your ear to the ground,
as was the case with me back then. What was
going on then in like the midnight. So the local
scene that I became aware of was hyper local, Like
I'm talking about the you know, the high school bands
in the little town like population five thousand where I
went to school. But it was like a flourishing scene,

(36:26):
as a lot of those towns were at the time.
Like the thing to do back then if you were
young was playing a band. So there was plenty of
stuff happening locally that could hold your attention if you
were really really young and just starting to get your bearings.
But what did start to happen was national bands would
start to come through, Like the kids in Elmont, Ontario,
which is the name of the town, started doing They
started like they booked Propagandi in ninety five or ninety six.

(36:48):
They booked you know, DA a year or two before that.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
Snf you.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
So like that's the kind of thing that started to happen,
Like the the national band started to play, you know,
ten minutes from my house, and I did go to
those shows, and uh it was sort of by a
reverse process where the national bands show up that I
started to realize what was going on locally. Like around
that time, there was another show that I didn't go

(37:13):
to that I should have gone to, which was Fugazi
who played with shot Maker and Ocard you know them.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Oh but dude, shot shot Makers. Yeah, just all like
they are such a overlooked band. I mean, I know
everybody says this about like every band that existed the nineties,
but like they for sure, so yeah, I understand.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
And they were the kings of Ottawa, Like Ottawa was
you know that sound or that kind of that sound
broadly construed like that ebulition sound, which they were uh
you know they represented a wing of was like a
real you know, Ottawa was a real citadel for that stuff,
you know, you know, Santa Barbara was in Philly was.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Of course, so we got shot shot, Scal shot scalone.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
And Scalon ran the scene and shout Maker his boys.
But anyway, they he did a Fugazi show in ninety
five that I didn't go too, not because I wissed
out in this case, but because I didn't have ride,
didn't have anybody to go with. My friend who was
supposed to go with got you know, got laid up
at football practice the you know, the day before something.
So it did end up working out. But I bring
that up because it was for Gazi who we wanted
to go see. But it was shot Maker in o

(38:17):
Car that we found out about, so it probably would
have been around then. And it was because of seeing
flyers for national bands both in the city of Ottawa
and in the like outlying areas. Like I say, bands
like Propaganda would play and then the openers would be
you know, we get put onto the openers who were
like the big local players that way, and that was
like a mid that was happening in the mid nineties,

(38:37):
really high school for me. And it was sort of
by that process, and then then that the next phase
was I was I was a little resistant to that
stuff because the sound wasn't quite right.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
You know.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
I was interested in f Gazzi because there was such
a big deal, but shot Maker in No Car when
I was fifteen was just not what I was checking for.
It's not the sound I wanted, no way, And I
think a lot of a lot of people our age
kind of maybe got caught up in that, like it
just that wasn't going to work if you were fifteen
or sixteen. It was perfect if you were in college,
you like, if you're twenty one and you know, entering
a more pseudo intellectual period of your life or a

(39:10):
heavier period of your life, it was perfect. But it
was just a little bit too sophisticated for me at
that age, a little bit too of strus so it
didn't connect exactly. And it was that was like I say,
that was what was popping in Ottawa, Like that's what
was happening locally. It was one of the major centers
for it worldwide because because of Scout. Scown also had

(39:31):
a show on local community radio where he would just
play that stuff. Like somebody told me. A friend of
mine was just like, oh, you have to listen Monday night,
you know, ten o'clock on CKCU, the Carlton University station.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
There this punk show.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
It's great, you gotta listen to it. I tape it
every week. I tune in and it's like, you know,
Sleepy Time Trio, and it's you know, it's like Universal
Order of Armageddon. It's early his hero is gone. It's
just like I'm like, what the fuck, Like it's all
so crazy, Like the ship Back was so crazy. It
was like the last real you know, that period was
like the last real avant garde period in some ways

(40:07):
for punk, and it was just nothing, like it was
so non traditional. It was so you know, it's so
outside of what you expect outside of genreck conventions. It
was just I didn't know what to make of it.
So the local scene was like kind of inscrutable to
me at that age. So again I was like relying
on national touring bands like Fat and Nepitaph stuff, which
I was obsessed with at the time because the local
scene was just too you know, too heady to to

(40:30):
up its own ass. The music was too complicated, you know,
too deconstructed. It was you know, I'd have come to
respect and love all that stuff retrospectively now, but back then,
not the right age, not the right time.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
No no, And honestly, like I up until you are
saying the comparison between you know, Ottawa and Santa Barbara
here in California, Like I never I never made that connection,
but it's total. I mean, it's so true because like
I mean, in southern California, it definitely was that same
vibe whereas you know, me coming up in the Orange

(41:04):
County hardcore scene or what have you. Like, there was
definitely a bright line between the idea of like watching
yafet Coto and watching like Throwdown for obvious reasons like sonically,
but like I could totally see being, you know, immersed
in what you were being immersed in where you're just
like this is way too obtuse, Like how could I
don't I don't understand this, Like angular guitars, Like where's

(41:25):
the punk beats? Bro?

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, I don't know what the lyrics are about, you know,
Like I mean I understood that it was like challenging,
and then challenging was good. And I understand that it
was deconstructive, and then that was good. I understand it.
I understood it to be, like, you know, to be
kind of like a modernist, avant garde type of project,
which was you know, I credited, but I just like,
on an emotional level, it did nothing for me. It
was kind of meant not to do. You know, it

(41:47):
sort of meant to be, you know, operated at a
bit of a metal level. Like it wasn't supposed to
make an easy, you know, an emotional appeal. That was
the whole point of it to some of it. You know,
some of it was a little bit more you know,
macition sentimental and melodramatic, but a lot of it was,
you know, it was you know, the whole point of
it was to kind of keep the listener at arm's
length emotionally. Yeah, and when you're like a fifteen year old,

(42:08):
who's you know, you just kind of want easy emotionality
in your music a lot of the time. And that
wasn't you know, you're barking up the wrong tree there,
but sure was the same thing. And like in California.
What you would have which we didn't have in Autowa.
You'd have like, you know, you would have traditionalists and
old schoolers and badasses kind of holding the line probably
by playing in traditional bands or playing in more straightforward bands.

(42:29):
And Auto was just was just too small of a scene.
Like there was kind of one thing going on at
any one time, and when that was going on, there
wasn't much of an answer for it locally.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
So yeah, you'd have any options, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
You didn't have any options.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah, So there was no like that youth crew stuff
that started on the East coast, right revival stuff and
like around the same time ninety five ninety six, Like
it took forever, like it took me and my friends
to make that trickle up to where to where I
was from. It wasn't it wasn't you know, it wasn't
in the uh, it wasn't in the local offering at

(43:03):
any level.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
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Evil Greed. When you started to, you know, witness these

(44:48):
bands and watch them play and obviously go to you know,
smaller shows and DIY stuff, did you immediately want to
play in a band? Or again, was that kind of
something you had to warm up to like or did
your mom have to you to play in a band? Oh?

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, he did the same exact set said in the
row sees you know like I could never I could
you know, I could never play an instrument. I would
never even dare you know? I don't have it. I'm
I'm left handed for one thing.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I'm very encore, like I would talk myself out of it,
like on the front end, completely sure. But what ended
up happening was a very close friend of mine who
I grew up in, who grew up on my street, Nate.
He had a different personality. He was a lot more industrious,
He was a lot bolder. He and I were getting
into this stuff at the same time, and he did
what you know, more well adjusted kids do and started

(45:36):
to pick things up for himself. Like he you know,
he immediately started to play guitar, and he wanted to
put together a band. But it was, like I say,
it was a small group of us in this little
excerp that we were from, and he didn't have a
lot of options. Like I'm talking by now, late nineties,
and the kind of band he wants to start just
you know, inspired by the you know, that kind of

(45:59):
youth grew revival stuff of late ninety stuff, you know,
ten yard fight, floor punch. He wants to do that
kind of band, and that's what I like too. He's
got a couple of other people lined up who are
you know, halfway into it, and he and he's gonna
write the songs and play guitar, and he's wondering what
he's gonna do about the frontman situation. And I'm standing
right there being like, hey, you know, you know, damn well,

(46:19):
I can't play an instrument. So if there's you know,
if there's an opening, I'm one job only. And so
that's that's what ended up happening. I joined his band
as a singer in ninety eight or so, and I
think it was against his better judgment because I didn't
you know, I don't, especially then, I didn't cut the
figure of like the of the uh like Revelation record,

(46:39):
straight edge to front man like I was lanky. I was,
you know, tall, gangly. I had red hair like I
didn't have. You know, I didn't have you didn't have
a lot of the right figure. I didn't have the
voice and the look is very important, you know, absolutely rearly.
My friend Nate was imagining somebody with like, you know,
a prominent brow, a muscular build. Of course, you know,
like like a like piercing eyes. I didn't have any

(46:59):
of the things. So he's like, all right, you know,
my voice wasn't that good, but he was. He was
a good friend. He let me do it, and we
you know, we did. We did that band from that point,
like I say, ninety eight ish to two oh three,
Like it was like a case with the high school
band or the late high school band or the early
college band goes for way longer than it should, like
it takes sure it doesn't break up, and it doesn't

(47:20):
break up in three months like it should. So that
was I wanted to do a band, too afraid to
do it, saw an opening very uncharacteristically kind of like
inserted myself into it and uh uh, and had a
good experience.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
It was as it turned out, wasn't you know? It
wasn't nearly as nerve racking or as horrible as I
thought it was going to be. It was, you know,
it was very rewarding, but it was I did. It
wasn't until much later that I attempted to play an
instrument because I carried that that, you know, all those
hang ups for you know, years afterward.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Yeah, oh for sure, for sure. And did you what
was your I guess to this day, like, what's your
most I guess extensive touring experience?

Speaker 3 (48:06):
Not much? I did you know?

Speaker 1 (48:08):
That band was called from this day forward? At first
then we had to change the name because of the
Equavision band this day forward then we were called Miles
Between Us. And we did an LP very very late
in the game with Think Fast and stuff, so we
like got out there a little bit, but we never
toured more four more than a week or so at
a time. East Coast and we mainly did weekends, but

(48:28):
like I say, it was like a four year you
know slog of trying to get traction with the band
that you know, probably should have broken up after four weeks.
So there were a lot of weekends, a lot of trips,
a lot of ill advised you know, decisions, made a
lot of a lot of recordings, but no tour longer
than a couple of weeks, probably just one week or
ten days. And then around the same time or towards

(48:51):
the end of that, when I was in my early
twenties finishing university. I did one full US tour at
that time, but it wasn't with my own band. I
filled in for a band who were called Rochester. They
were called the Disaster. I don't know if you've ever
heard of them, but they're like, oh yeah, kid, dynamite thing.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
We were friends with them.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
They had a tour lined up, this singer couldn't do
it sing I had a job and kind of like
bailed on them in the last minute and they.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Asked me, and so I did that.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
So I ended up doing that was my one and
only I think to this day, like full you know,
full us d I y six weeks in the Van Tour,
which I'd always wanted to do sure and was happy
to do. And they weren't a well known band, but
they were pretty good at booking good shows like they
and they had you know, enough friends to put together
a full US tour that was worth going on. Like

(49:34):
there was a stretch with Modern Life is War, so
people were at those shows. There was a stretch with
strike anywhere in California. So those were pretty good shows.
Like one of them was at the one of them
was at the Troubadour, and then there was one at
Cha Cafe, and like so I got to play all
those places, one at one at Gilmant Street, so like
I got you know, I got to play those venues

(49:55):
with that band. But that's the only time I ever
did that. That was a long time ago. That was
twenty two thousand and three, in those six weeks, doing
it the old fashioned way and.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
Not yet my own man, right.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Right, right, Well, I mean it's cool that you got to,
you know, have those experiences, and obviously, like just just
the experience of touring and playing shows and stuff like
that will inform what you can do, especially you know
now with what you're doing with Millspack where it's like
this actually dovetails into a question I was gonna ask
a little bit later, but the idea of like when
you play shows now, which are obviously, you know, more

(50:27):
few and far between, Like do you feel I guess
the I mean, no matter what, just at least according
to your personality, you probably feel the way to the shows.
But like, are they are they more special to you
because you know you obviously don't play them that often.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Yeah, I think it cuts both ways, Like you know,
they are more precious because they get to do them
less often. But at the same time, and I've always
loved playing live, like even I like, I've never even
minded playing bad shows, Like I just like playing. There's
some people who really get, you know, demoralized when they
have to play where they would have to play in

(51:01):
front of five people or something. You know, it was
never my preference to have that situation, but never bothered
me too much. I was just was able to make
the best of it. So I always took to playing live.
I always like doing it and I still do, and
the opportunities are definitely more precious now. But you know,
at the same time, I'm a lot older than I
used to be, So the landscape has changed that the

(51:22):
there's enough about shows now that are different than they
used to be and were for a long time that
I don't quite feel the same way about them because
I just don't, like, I'm not involved in that youth
culture anymore, you know, So I've kind of had to,
you know, let a certain amount of it go, let
a certain amount of sentimental attachment to it go, because
it's just not doesn't belong to me in the same way.
And and there's you know, they're also just like physically,

(51:44):
you know, like I can't stay up as late. I
don't you know, I don't have enough as much tolerance
for crowds and noise and all that kind of shit,
Like I'm I'm laming out as a middle aged person.
So there's that cuts one way, But the kind of
like the sentimental attachment that does remain cuts the other way.
And like my just you know, general fun that we're
playing live cuts the other way. So it probably on
balance shakes out in favor of Yeah, the shows feel

(52:07):
a little bit more special now, right, harder to make
time for, but it doesn't feel the way it used to.
It can't like I'm just you know, it will never
feel the way it felt when you're seventeen or twenty.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
No, definitely not. It's like, yeah, you just there are
echoes that you can feel, but it, you know, it
just takes on a different meaning. Something that I've really
admired about the band and what you're doing is the
fact that I mean, especially with the release of the
magazine that you did to a company, the last LP

(52:40):
that you released, like context seems like a very important
part to the band. Like not only are you trying
to pull in all of these different influences and obviously
create the music that you're doing, but like you want
to show your influences and you know, show your work
so to speak. It's obviously it's a very deliberate choice
of your what I guess gives you that fuel to

(53:05):
build the context around the band and not just obviously
be like, oh, here's a record, like all the context
is in there, like we gotta who want to give
you more?

Speaker 1 (53:13):
That's a good it's a good question. I'm not really
sure exactly what the full answer is. Like the partial
answer in the case of the of the zine was
that as a lyricist, like as like one of the
people who writes lyrics in the band, Like I have
a very elusive and kind of intertextual style, Like I
quote a lot of things and pull from a lot

(53:34):
of things and make very direct references. If I'm reading something,
I'll write down passages and go back and rework them,
like I kind of need to do that to get
myself going as a lyricist. I can't go from a
standing start on a blank page with just you know,
whatever's in my head organically, so I steal from the
you know, I steal from a lot of people basically,
and try to steal from the best, which makes me
feel self conscious when the lyrics are actually published. So

(53:57):
there was like the germ of that zine. The initial
impulse was to give credit where it was due and
to do the lyric annotation and make sure that everybody knew.
I wasn't going to deny that I was stealing a lot.
So again, it was my own neurosis playing a big
role and a decision I was making even though I knew,
and I remember I did an interview with Fred Passaro
about this where you asked, like, doesn't it you know,

(54:19):
entertaining your lyrics kind of demystify them, and I was like, yes,
absolutely it does. Explaining lyrics is never a good idea,
but that was the trade off, Like we were gonna,
you know, we're going to like run the risk of
being a little bit obnoxious by explaining our lyrics so
that I could give credit where it was due to,
you know, all all explicit credit to all the all
the direct influences. So that was the in terms of

(54:40):
like providing context, that was the It was like that
guilty feeling, that was the impulse. And then like once I,
you know, once we decided Dan and I were the
ones who, uh were the ones who within the band
who kind of cooked this idea. Once we decided to
do that, then we basically just built it from there,
thinking well, it needs to be substantial, it needs to
feel substantial. The pandemic happened, and it was pretty clear

(55:04):
from very early on that we weren't going to be
able to tour play on it, and that we weren't
going to be able to provide or offer context in
that way, which is the in the usual course of things,
how context is offered with the band. You play live
and the audience sees, oh, that's what they dressed like.
That's what they look like, that's you know, that's what
their sense of humor is. That's you know, this is
how they present themselves. You know, you get all the

(55:25):
fuller picture of the band. You get the information that
you need in order to fully decide if you actually
liked the band or not. We weren't going to get
a chance to do that, so it made sense to
kind of make those representations in print and in with
words and with images and stuff. And by making that zine,
we could show off a different side of the band.

(55:46):
A lot of the material is a little you know,
it can be a little uh the there's a lot
you know, we play around kind of like we play
a dangerous game with emotionality and sentiment and and sappiness
in the band. I think I think it works most
of the time. Sometimes you step over the line, but
that also produces kind of a self serious effect that

(56:06):
I also wanted to cut against. I wanted to I
wanted them to be funny stuff in the zine so
you know, we have a more well rounded impression of
our personality was presented. I wanted to kind of correct
for you know, some of those tendencies to be overwrought.
Like there were a whole bunch of reasons for it,
and a lot of them, as you can tell by
how I'm explaining it, were like motivated.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
By self consciousness and things like that.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
But I think in the upshot of it, and to
the extent that it worked, it did work because it felt,
you know, it felt like this broader canvas was you know,
provided and a lot of context was offered, and like
I think it it it didn't come across as like
you know, sweaty or desperate or you know, insecure. I
don't think I think it Actually the effect was you know,
a lot more salutary than that. But at of the

(56:51):
motivation was you know, self consciousness and guilt.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
And all good things.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
Forty three year old neurosis. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Oh. I also the idea that you I mean you've
articulated this before in other interviews, but I love the
fact that you know, you call the band intergenerational. You know,
you're pulling with people that are obviously younger than you,
and like you're able to you know, create this stew
of different influences just based on ages alone. Well, I'm

(57:21):
sure it wasn't the kind of intention to be like,
all right, we got to draft some younger people to
play with or whatever. I presume that's just kind of
an added bonus, the fact that you can kind of
come at it from different perspectives, not just.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Okay, anybody's listening, who's like thirty plus or thirty five plus,
who wants to start a band, Just go out and
recruit just chicken hawk some young guys. Yeah, because if
you do that, you won't have to wear the fact
that you're an old guy in a band. You know,
you won't have to your band won't be an old
guy band if you do that. That's not what I
said to do, but that's what ended up happening. And
very early on I recognize, oh, this is great. I

(57:52):
don't have to be in an old guy band because
I have these younger guys who can kind of be
the public face of it. I could just suck the
adreamochrome right out of them, you know, and and and
drink from the fountain of youth. Because at the time
I was playing in an old guy band, my friend
Nate the aforementioned had moved to Toronto and I was
playing in a straight edge band called Ancient Heads, which
was kind of a goof on the fact that we

(58:12):
were older.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Of course that was.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
You know, that was kind of a star cross band
and like the fact and being in an old guy
band was really fraught in ways that we hadn't expected,
and it was there were elements of it that were
kind of a bummer. So when I started jamming with
with Jacob the drummer, who was a lot younger than me,
and Dan and and Cody and Andrew, it was you know,

(58:36):
I didn't realize that I was doing this, but I definitely,
very early on recognized that this was an opportunity to
kind of hide behind, you know, a facade of youth
and not have to you know, not have to answer
for being you know, part of the gerontocracy and punk,
which is you know, a very real thing. There are

(58:57):
a lot of there are a lot of old guy
bands out there right now, and I'm a part of
the problem. But I don't have to, uh, I don't
have to like have the public reputation of having that
being part of that problem because you know, everybody else
is appropriate age.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
I'm the only one who isn't.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Right. The like we were joking about off Mike, I mean,
this isn't a joke because it's the truth. Like, you know,
the band is absent from social media there and maybe
that's like part of working with locking out is the
fact that like you have to be you know, scarce
on the internet in order to you know, put out
a record. Obviously I'm joking, but clearly that's a deliberate choice,

(59:34):
not only for you as a person, but then you
know the band. Is it just the fact that like, yeah,
this doesn't really like not only like lean on our strengths,
but it's not something that we're really horribly interested in.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
Yeah, that's kind of it.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Nobody ever pushed for us to have social so we
never did just sure telling somebody else about this, There
was no strong push from anybody, Like, you know, the
the guys on in the band who do have social
media cans kind of at their you know, whatever whatever
they get out of being on social media, they get
from the personal accounts. Nobody felt the need to kind

(01:00:07):
of translate that to make the band uh a social
media phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
We didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
I was, yeah saying this to somebody else. It wasn't
because we wanted to make proof a point or you know,
or enact some anonymity manifesto. We weren't trying to be mysterious, guys.
It just didn't seem right to be a hardcore band,
especially coming out of the little you know, like the
the the niche that we came out of, which was
like Masha's Delight, you know, intent free spirit demo coreps

(01:00:36):
like that's what that was the milieu that we were in.
Almost none of those bands had social media, you weren't
supposed to. It was, you know, like it was it
was kind of anathema. We kind of translated the principles
to those band to our band and then kind of
just kept it up as the band kept going, even
though we're not really you know that that niche doesn't

(01:01:00):
really exist anymore, at least in its original form, and
you know, whatever a version we might have had, like
kind of on principle doesn't really apply anymore. But just
because of just because of inertia, we kept it up.
You know, it would be another like what we always
say is it would just it's not like we're immune

(01:01:21):
to all of the kind of like weird social dynamics
that you get caught up in on social media, like
We're on plenty of platforms that just don't happen to
be social platforms. We're on Spotify, so we're always checking,
you know, like we're you know, peaking at those numbers
where you know, when an album comes out, we're like,
you know, trying to do interviews like this one. We're
like we're playing the game and we're like involved in

(01:01:42):
all that stuff. And if we were, if we had
social accounts, that would just be a you know, one
more set of numbers to like freak out about and
be you know, to be like weird about. And it's
just nice not to just to keep that to a
minimum because we'll take you over your life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Yeah, you got Well, basically you're just telling me it's like,
you know, we can't hit the attention like there's there's
there's numbers, like we just still I don't want to
pay attention to more than one number. That's just too much.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Yeah, And it's not like the thirst for attention is
you know ancient. It's you know, it's time the memorial
like you know bands. Uh, when when I was a kid,
I was saying, this is the other thing I was
saying to the person I was talking to like they
were just as thirsty for attention then as they are now.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
That's never been uh, it's never been otherwise.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
The only difference now is that you know the process
and the set of processes, the set of tools for
drawing attention and quantifying the amount you're getting have been
becomes so much more sophisticated and rationalized that you know,
the uh, the all the bad psychology around wanting attention
is just you know, magnified by one hundred thousand times.

(01:02:49):
Everybody knows that, and everybody in hardcore and punk has
known that for a lot longer than most people. That's
the funny thing about being in hardcore and punk, Like
all these weird social dynamics that eventually hit the mainstream
tend to come to hard first. I'm sure you've you know,
made this point yourself in social media, Like I heard
the episode Ray you did with Gibbie Makeout Club, and
I think you guys talked about this, like all of
this weird shit that started to happen to everybody happened

(01:03:13):
to punk in hardcore and email people first because of
Makeout Club, Like we were, like, you know, we were
the test market. We were, of course, and you could
just see it happening. You just see it spreading to
the rest of the culture. Like I can remember when
everybody really started to get on Facebook around seven oh eight.
I can remember thinking, oh my god, the whole world
is about to be the whole world is about to

(01:03:33):
become fucking rev Bord or the Green nine board, Like,
we're in a lot of trouble here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
I thought I had wasn't quite so crystal clear, but
I think a lot of us had a version of that.
You're like, oh my god, everybody's going to be acting
like this now, everybody's acting online hardcore kids.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Yeah, yeah, you know, you know, we don't need we
don't need the rush to the lambgoat comments. Okay, Like
let's call.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
It down right, exactly exactly what we fucking got in
every work of life.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Absolutely, and now now it's just like you can do
lamb goat comments obviously on you know, wars or political
beliefs or anything else were as opposed to you know,
this person sold out or whatever where it's like, oh
my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
How we saw it all, Like all that stuff we
saw it in like twenty nineteen ninety nine, Like we
saw the way that people would act, and it used
to be to your discredit if you like let yourself
get sucked into it, Like you kind of had to
be a little bit cheapish about you know when you
when you brought up makeup cloud, that changed. You know, Yeah,
people lost their hang ups about it pretty quickly. But right,
you know, the part of the early kind of beta

(01:04:32):
social like the like the beta tested social Internet was
to kind of like it was kind of was to
kind of violate certain.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Shibbolets.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
You know, you were like you were, it was you know,
you were being fake, you were being you know, you
were you're being somebody you weren't. You were putting on
a facade. You were you know, you were doing things
that you're not supposed to do, and it was gonna
engender behavior that was going to be untoward, you know,
And that was It's not like people didn't know what
the risks were, what the downsides were, but the temptations
were just too right, so everybody got involved first with us,

(01:05:01):
then with everybody else.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Yeah, but so crazy to have had the front row seat.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Totally totally the So how does I mean clearly like
you obviously have built a life outside of the you know,
confines of punk and hardcore, and you know, you traveled
in the world of journalism for many years, and like,
how does what you have, you know, learned and gleaned
from your experience within the you know, di y and

(01:05:27):
punk scene and stuff infiltrate your quote unquote real life
or do you kind of separate those you know pretty distinctly.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
No, that's a good question.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
The thing that you get, or I guess maybe should
get when you're like a like a punk or hardcore person,
is I don't know, like like you tend most people anyway,
to cultivate or at least perform a certain kind of
healthy cynicism or skepticism towards you know, institutions or or

(01:06:00):
common or you know, like a conventional wisdom or whatever.
You know, like just sort of the way things are
that you know, in theory should serve you well in
a if you're working in journalism, as I did for
a decade or so, it's not exactly how it goes,
because you know, news organizations like to think of themselves
as the people who speak truth to power, but they're

(01:06:23):
an institution like any any any other. They're a power
center like any other. So that's kind of how they act.
But you definitely come into it. I definitely came into
it thinking, well, it'll it'll make sense to kind of
do this job or to be part of this sort
of enterprise, because the stated job description is to be
you know, is to be a cynic and to be
a and to be a skeptic and to be a

(01:06:44):
to be a like a puncturer of narratives or whatever.
So it's I don't know, it was motivating early on,
Like as with any career or any industry or any
sector that you're in for too long, there's a lot
that happens that will be demoralizing or.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
Mystifying things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
But I think it was probably true that, like, uh,
kind of temperamentally and philosophically, the two things were a
good mix on that basis, even if you know, the
reality of journalism isn't exactly like the myth of it
or the self image of it, the self regarding image
of it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Right, Yeah, No, I I think it's it is interesting,
like as you to your point, because you've thought about
this and as a old human within the context of
punk and hardcore, like clearly it is a youth culture
based movement. But at the same time, this scene and
this subculture has not existed for you know, arguably like

(01:07:43):
it's around forty years old now and so like there
hasn't really been the ability to watch generations unfold. And
so I think now you're starting to see how people,
you know, for lack of a better term like age gracefully.
Of course, people can point to you know, Henry Rollins
or and Mackay and be like, oh, yeah, that's how
you do and it's like, yeah, well those are those
are unicorns to my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
But but yeah, for you to be able to like
help you have made some money, you know, Yeah, Ian
Mackay can be above the fray and not have to
reunite any band because you know, of course right, no,
he's getting he's getting mailbox checks on top of mailbox checks,
and it's like, yeah, that's that's fine, and more power
to him. I would rather have you know, him be
a secret millionaire than any of us.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
Was still getting killed on shipping.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
It's absolutely crushed on shipping. Yeah, but yeah, to your point,
just the idea of like being still being able to
be active while not looking like some you know, stupid
cliche of yourself. But then also, you know, be a
contributing member of society whatever that may mean, you know,
being able to balance all those Like it takes a
lot to be able to still pursue the passions while

(01:08:51):
so obviously being a quote unquote normal person.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Yeah, that kind of you can kind of abstract that
out to the whole community too, for lack of a
better way, Like it's sort of a problem on the
individual basis, but it's also a problem for the the
whole scene or whatever, the whole subculture, Like it's the
whole subculture is aging and trying to contend with, you know,
being older and trying to gettend with what happens when

(01:09:15):
you get older, Like, you know, the thrill can be
gone when you get older.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
You start to repeat yourself when you're older, You get hardened.
You're less.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Idealistic and romantic when you're older. Like the kind of
scene at large is dealing with all these things, Like
it's everybody within it is a lot of people within that. Everybody,
like people our age are aging within it. But the
thing itself is aging, and the two the individual level
and the community wide level kind of interact with each
other and interesting ways. Oh, absolutely, no, I agree, Like

(01:09:46):
it's there are ways in which this, you know, punk
and harkwrore feel really decadent and tired, and then there
are other ways where it's the opposite, where you know,
like there's all kinds, there's there's you know, there's is
much excitement around it, and as much, especially among you people,
as there ever was as much genuine excitement and energy,
which is really reassuring. But you know, on other front,

(01:10:07):
you know, it seems, especially from the point of view
I somebody who's older, like it's just it's the thing
can be out of gas, and it could depend on
the day, Like one day you'll it'll feel like it's
out of gas and the next day you'll be completely reinvigorated.
But it's not, you know, the baby is you know,
the baby is no longer cute like they had it
pegged forty years ago. Right, Novelty in youth and being

(01:10:31):
the new thing will only take you so far. And
nobody who starts something like this or gets involved with
something like this thinks they're still going to be doing
it decades later. So when you still are, it can
be you know, It could be really demoralizing, or it
can also be really comforting. It can be like a
source of comfort and stability and continuity in your life,
and it can also feel like you're wasting your time,

(01:10:53):
Like it's I think I think a lot of people
who are involved, especially older people, are really really ambivalent
about it, but they just can't quit it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
It's like me with sports, can't quit it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yeah, totally. I'm always always, always going to root for
the home sports team or whatever. Yeah, it's it's there's
certain things you can't quit. And then you know that
is a positive thing because there are still, you know,
selfishly on mi end of things, I can listen to
a new Millspack record and be like, thank god, you
guys are a band.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
Of course, thank god, I'm so glad, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Yeah, of course, Well, Matt, I very much appreciate the time,
and thank you for letting me punish you and go
in these philosophical directions.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
Yeah, and that was my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Ray.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
I was really happy to tell the world about this
very exciting, amazing core record called Marathon that I just
want the whole world to hear what.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
A good pitch man you are. Matt. There you have it.
That was Matt from the awesome band Millspeck. Please check
them out because if you like anything that is hardcore related,
whether that's emotional hardcore, DC hardcore, whatever you want to
call it, that is that is what they deliver. And
Millspeck released a record called Marathon that is Man, it's

(01:12:02):
so flipping good. So anyways, thank you very much Matt
for being gracious with your time and hanging out with me.
Next week is the often anticipated fabled Best of twenty
twenty three podcast. And when I say fabled, it's just
because me and my friend Joey and my friend Jeremy
I have been doing this for many, many years and

(01:12:22):
we just love talking about records and that's what we do.
So we walk through our top ten records of the
year and it gives a lot of people some pointers
on records that they should check out if they have
not themselves. So that's what we got next week. Until then,
please be safe, everybody,

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