When I first called they were pulling over to use a rest stop and Matt Johnson asked if I could call back. So I put my ipod on and walked around in the Sunday morning springy sunshine and listened to Daylight a few times while the kids kicked a basketball around the projects courtyard next door. When I got back he was ready to talk and I was in a obsequious mood. Warning: if you want difficult or prurient questions you’ll have to look elsewhere—the following interview is an act of irredeemable fandom.

Matt Johnson: Well we’ve got some friends with us, but yeah we’re just in a van.

MJ: We set out on this one to make a recorded album. That first album we went into with just our songs and kind of played them through as though we were playing them live. In my mind what makes a good recorded album is a very different thing from what makes a good live show. A recorded song needs little nuances that you’re going to notice the 30th time you listen to it, things like that, little subtle things. But a live song there’s so much else going on—people are drunk, it’s hot and sweaty and loud—so you’re best bet is just to break it down to its bare minimum, beat and melody. We just decided we were gonna make the best recorded album we could.

MJ: We were thinking about it; because how the hell are we going to pull some of these songs off with more tracking and instrumentation and things like that? But the dynamic between Kim and I is very much the dynamic between just Kim and I, well and the crowd, all together. We wondered: if there was just one more person there would it be different? I don’t know. We played a show with Rude Mechanical Orchestra where they played a few songs and there were like 27 people on the stage, which was a whole other element but…Kim and I decided we’d rather strip it down a little bit and still keep it the two of us.

MJ:  I think it still is inherently there. Our show last night had some total disaster moments! Its part of what makes things exciting, the potential for disaster in live music, where it’s not so polished where you just could be home listening to the CD. We’ve played with a lot of bands that have heavy pre-recordings underneath their live show, backing tracks you know? I mean, usually the audience doesn’t notice or mind or whatever, but I feel it kind of takes that element of danger out of it, where if you were to stop playing the song would stop happening. But then again it would have been nice to have that comfort last night when we started blowing things. We pulled it through though and you put that energy in other places. It’s like “Oh Fuck!” and you extra put more into the next song than you ever have before. It’s as if you’re running a race and you trip or something, you get this big burst of energy to catch up.

MJ: There’s something bizarre that happens to that when Kim and I fuck up—we sell so much more stuff! I don’t know if they just see us more as humans then or…? I can’t figure it out.

MJ: We did a tour with CSS and Go-team where for like four shows in a row my keyboard broke, and we had to keep stopping the set after four songs. And the opening act, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, thought that was part of our…you know, angle. Like we were pretending to break down, and we were like, “No this is not part of the thing!”

MJ:  No I don’t think there are any specific influences. The thing is, I grew up though my teenage years being heavily into political punk, I mean that was exclusively what I listened to. So actually the word “punk rock” to me, I have to use them very carefully. I’d be so pissed when a band called themselves punk-anything when they weren’t. And in a way Kim and I don’t do a lot of those ideals that we grew up with. We’ve connected with companies and brands and had our songs in commercials and shit like that, and that’s not punk. But there’s something in the way that we do it that leads me to call it some kind of dance-punk. Maybe it’s that we do have that impending disaster and that all we do is drive around and play shows. And also that we’re involved in every aspect of this band. Some bands start letting things go, but, we see every bit of artwork, every show we play we try to keep our ticket prices as low as we can do them, and our merch prices as low as we can do them…we hold on to those punk ideals of doing-it-yourself by being very conscious of everything.

MJ: Kim grew up in Rhode Island and I grew in Vermont.

MJ: Any band before this one, I only did sort of scream vocals. I didn’t even try to sing. I remember hearing my voice played back on the first Matt and Kim demo recording and being like “Oh shit we got to find someone else because I am not going to cut it.” But it became part of who we were, or who we are. I never listened to any punk rock bands that one could consider Happy, but it isn’t about that… it’s about having shows where people come and just go fucking nuts. We’ve definitely had circle pits at our shows. I’ve seen more stage diving at our shows than at any punk rock show I went to in High School. It’s also who you put us next to. Right now we’re on tour with Cut Copy and compared to them we seem really punk rock, but when we were touring with Circle Jerks we seemed like an indie-dance band.  

  

MJ: It’s a different thing being a support band than being a headliner. You’re starting at the bottom of the hill with a bunch of people who don’t know you. You’re just 45 minutes that they’re going to have to deal with before the band they really want to see come on. It’s a great challenge, Kim and I really like it. We just do what we do and a lot of times people get won over.

MJ: I remember when all these bands started and when we started we did the same thing. Bands like Death Set or Dan Deacon—we started doing it for the same reasons; to get that loft party vibe, like we’re all in this together, not to divide the stage and the crowd, not to be exclusive. But at a certain point it becomes completely exclusive playing on the floor when you’re playing for three or four hundred people because only the first friggin 15 people can see you. You’re buried in that exclusive circle of that first ring of the crowd where everyone else in the back is just left out. Especially Kim and I who sit down when we play—no one can see us. Someone like Dan Deacon who’s gone to a much bigger audience makes it work by the way he manipulates the crowd and spreads them out. But then, I love Lightning Bolt, they’re one of a handful of bands I love to actually see, I love seeing Brian play drums. I just don’t even go to their shows anymore. I’m not going to push my way to the front, and since I can’t see them I just stopped going. You gotta just adapt to the times. Still when Kim and I played in Winston Salem on that Fuck Yeah tour we played on the floor because they’re were that many people there and it worked again, it was like old times.

MJ:  I think we learned a lot. Early on we were very very cautious about who we worked with, and I can see how it becomes a slippery slope for people, “I did this one thing so the next one is going to be easier.” We try to stay conscious of who we choose to work with. But in this day and age…like when we released a song through Green Label Sound which is a Mountain Dew/Pepsi entity, we were really cautious to begin with, but the fact of the matter was that they wanted to do a full marketing campaign to give away a free song, and they’d cover show costs so that us and the Cool Kids could do shows together and it would be 5 dollars for people to get in. I was like, “Are they going to brand us and Mountain Dew logos over our faces on the poster?” but they kept it very tasteful and subtle. In the end their goal is to sell more of their products but if they’re willing to do it in a tasteful way and the people can pay nothing for the songs and less for the show I just really couldn’t find the problem in it. Of course if I was 17 I’d be like: Fuck That Band.

 

MJ: I don’t get into those business conversations often, though I know that’s out there. I know there are bands that go to South-by-Southwest because they think it’s their chance to “make it,” meanwhile we’ve only made any of our decisions based on whether we think it would be a good time. We’ve gone to SXSW three or four times but only because we’ve had fun each year. I remember some guy pulling me aside at the convention center as we were trying to get the money—when you’re a band playing there they give you a little tiny bit of money—and these guys with a camera came up and said “Do you think playing down here is going to give you more national exposure?” and I’m like “Dude, I’m just here to get drunk with my friends, I don’t know about any of that.” He just shut the camera off and walked away. It was pretty sweet.

MJ: Yeah all those people that put their name in BYOFL are so sad now because they’ve been called by every kid in the US trying to book them a show.
 

  

MJ:  There’s an added convenience with the internet, you know? You can’t leave the old internet out. Kim booked our first hundreds of shows and numerous tours and we didn’t play a single venue. We didn’t have an album out on our first tour, but we had songs on the freakin’ interweb… and I remember showing up in San Diego and playing a house party, the furthest we’ve ever been from home and people were singing and dancing along and we were like What the Fuck. We just got all these contacts from all our friends who were in bands and started the process like that.  

MJ: The thing I hate is bands that see moving to bigger venues or things like that as “moving up.” It’s a way to move, and it’s exciting to do that but also to go and do Cycle-Slaughterama in Richmond which is this DIY bike event. I remember last year we played on a stack of pallets through a shitty PA, but whatever; I think you’ve got to keep doing everything to keep it exciting. Like we knew that the Fuck Yeah tour was just a great way to lose money, so many bands traveling together just isn’t financially sound, but we thought it would be fun to do. We’re lucky though, we’re just two people with low overhead: we share one bed, we share one cell phone. We’re really lucky to be able to eat rice and beans and enjoy being in a band full time.

MJ:  It’s just classic haters. Haters have been around since the dawn of time. When we first started gaining some sort of popularity we started getting haters. We’d get something good, some positive thing—whatever-blog band of the week and you would read the comments and they’d be so uber-negative like “What the fuck do they have to be happy about!” And at first it sucked because this band…we spend 25 hours a day on it. It’s not just them dissing your business you kind of take it personally but then we were watching this Kat Williams stand up about how we need haters. He was like “Ladies if you only got 15 haters you got to figure out how to get to 20 by summertime!” it’s the only way you know if you’re doing something right. Now Kim actually gets bummed out when we get something on Brooklyn Vegan and there aren’t enough haters for her liking. We got to step this up, there aren’t enough people hatin! It just means people aren’t talking enough to say something.

MJ: I don’t think it could ever be like that. Even if you put out a fucking incredible album like Animal Collective, there’s just this random hate, “Who listens to this shit?” Some people want to hate on whatever’s really loved.

MJ: No problem!

If you’re coming to boo the happy faces tonight at the 9:30, they’ll appreciate it. See you there.

 

Further reading:
John Foster reviews the cover art for “Grand”
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Live+Sweaty @ Bobby Fisher Memorial
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Peter’s F Yeah Tour Sanity Plea
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Lo Fi Social Clubbing