Amber interviews The Matches for Music-overload.com.
Amber: Name, age, position in band and favorite small animal?
Shawn: Favorite small animal... I'd say I'm Shawn Harris, my favorite position is the three-headed turtle and my favorite small animal is guitar.
Jon: My name is John, I play guitar, and my favorite small animal is a locust.
Amber: How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard you before?
Jon: We suck.
Shawn: Don't see us. Our first 100 fans said that it sucks that we're blowing up. So they don't want anyone to know about us.
Jon: So the answer to that question would be, don't come and see us.
Shawn: We... if you like Paul Simon, we're a lot like Slipknot. And if you like Fall Out Boy, then we're a lot like Slipknot.
*everyone laughs*
Shawn: Take everything good you like about the Used, and keep it with the Used. And you'll have... Story of the Matches.
Amber: Musically speaking, who would you consider to be your biggest influences?
Shawn: Lars Frederickson and Good Charlotte.
Amber: Do you have any pre-show rituals?
Jon: I run around crazy for like 10 minutes
Shawn: It's very regimented. I hide down here and our drummer, Matt comes downstairs and as loudly as he can he goes, "What the fuck are you doing? We're about to play." At that point I say, "Are you serious?" and I run to the bathroom and I smudge make-up around my eyes, then I run upstairs and I go, "Fucking psycho, fucking psycho" while I do the metal sign and I point my pinky finger and my index finger at my eyes. Then I do it to the other guys till they get annoyed with me. And then push me away and say, "Fucking stop it." Then Matt starts doing a snare roll, that means to play the snare really fast. And Justin comes upstairs and he's not done duct taping himself, and he's like, "Wait, wait, wait!" and he gets kind of mad because we started already. But we were supposed to.
Amber: What's your favorite song to play live?
Shawn: The Boys are Back in Town, but we've never done it in concert.
Jon: I don't like doing cover songs.
Shawn: Neither do I, I like playing anything by the band, The Matches. I like playing "The Restless". I like playing "Sick Little Suicide" and "Chain Me Free" too.
Jon: I like playing "Dog Eared Page", "Audioblood" and "The Restless". I also like "Chain Me Free" and "Sick Little Suicide".
Shawn: I like playing "Eryn Smith".
Amber: Do you have any good tour stories?
Jon: The other night, there were some really annoying people in our dressing room...
Shawn: Yea, the other night, and the night before that, and the night before that. One night me and Justin had a dance party in the bathroom. And we'd flip the lights. We were going crazy, we were getting all sexy in the shower. Like we turned on the water, and I had my suit jacket on, and then there was another switch that had a backlight behind the shower curtain, and it became a zombie party. We did this so we didn't have to hang out with the people in our dressing room. We have dressing rooms now, isn't that weird? Dressing rooms only mean that they give you beer so stupid people can drink it.
Jon: And so they can come in and be like, "I'm hanging out".
Amber: What advice would you give to aspiring bands?
Jon: Stay in school!
Shawn: The other night John was talking in his sleep, and we were talking about girl problems, and Jon didn't wake up, but he rolled over and was like, "Stay in school, I should have stayed in school!" and laid back down.
Jon: What happened is, I dropped out of school, so when people say that they are going to drop out of school like I did, I always tell them to stay in school. Dropping out of school is a bad idea. Go to school, go to college!
Shawn: We played for so many years before we actually got kinda good, so I don't know. Keep on playing, keep writing songs, do what you love and stay in school.
Amber: If you could tour with any band living or dead, who would you pick and why?
Shawn: Pearl Jam.
Jon: Creed
Amber: Tell me about L3...
Shawn: L3 stands for Live, Loud and Local. And it's a show we started putting on in California when we were just starting to play out in our local area. Because we weren't punk enough to play in the other punk places in California. So we just started playing our own show and booking bands that were our friends and stuff and we promoted it a lot and people started to come.
Jon: Then we started touring, but we still do L3 every 5-6 months.
Amber: What CD is in your CD player right now?
Shawn: My CD player broke, and it had Ryan Adams in it.
Jon: I found when I drive, I listen to Matchbook Romance, Over It, Outkast
Shawn: Me and John love listening to System of a Down.
Amber: What would you be doing if you weren't in a band right now?
Jon: I'd be tap dancing for sold out stadium shows
Shawn: I'd probably be making shirts and selling merch for whatever band became the Matches.
Amber: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what four things would you want to have with you?
Jon: Not my IPod because my battery would die after 3 hours.
Shawn: Pornography, definitely.
Jon: I'd get so tired of the same magazine after like a day.
Shawn: You could get videos
Jon: I'd bring a generator, tons of gasoline and...
Shawn: You could make your island in Iraq and use their oil
Jon: and a keg
Shawn: If I was stranded on a deserted island, I'd bring 1,000 of my biggest fans and a big PA.
*everyone laughs*
Amber: If you could be a crayon for one day, what color would you be?
Jon: Yellow!
Shawn: Baby blue.
Jon: White, I'd be white!
Shawn: White's cool, you can write on black paper...
Jon: With yellow you can too, I'm back to yellow!
By Amber
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