Split The 7", Split The Interview: Kevin Devine and Matthew Caws
Today we’re taking the wraps off a new series of feature interviews revolving around the Devinyl Splits, a series of six split 7"s curated by Kevin Devine and released by Bad Timing and Devinyl Records. In conjunction with each release, Senior Editor Jesse Richman will be taking part in a conversation with Devine and his split partner. First up is a chat with Kevin and Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws, who released Devinyl Splits No. 1 on February 28th. If you couldn’t tell by years of reading POZ, I’m a massive fan of Kevin, and it’s an honor to not only release his music, but also to be able to share more about it on this website. This is my disclaimer. Go read the interview! - Zack Zarrillo
Kevin, since this is the first of these interviews we’re doing, I wanted to start by getting a little background from you on how the idea for the Devinyl Splits series came about.
Kevin Devine: Sure. The series is something that gets embedded in you from growing up around hardcore, punk rock, indie rock. Half of my collection of 7” singles from when I was in high school is, like, some band from DC and some band from upstate NY splitting sides. That got in my head early: that it was a fun and sort of cool way to step outside the continuum of the album cycle, and also outside the continuum of touring. It’s about having an experience where you get to share music with people you like, respect, are friends with, sometimes all of those at the same time… Well, respect all the time, for sure, but sometimes people you know, sometimes people you don’t. “It was a series dense with people I had no respect for and had no respect for me, equal amounts of disrespect.” [Laughter] “Listen, I really don’t like you very much. I thought we could put a record out together and really get down to the nitty-gritty!”
I’ve done [splits] before, but the idea of doing something more serial with it… When we did the self release for the last two records [Bulldozer and Bubblegum] and coined this label-slash-logo to put on things, I did have the idea that it would be cool at some point to release other people’s music, and that one way that could happen would be to do something like this, where you do a series and you bring other people into the tent in a smaller-scale way. You’re not releasing someone’s album, per se, but you’re still there, and kind of slowly expanding the scope of what this thing can be. That’s where the germ started. I think in specific to Matthew, we’ve been friends for probably about six years?
Matthew Caws: Yeah, something like that
KD: We kind of talked, I think initially it was connected to a Daytrotter thing. There was an idea we were kind of talking about –
KD: – doing a split single for that, and as this other group of ideas developed, it was like “well maybe would it be cool with you if we did it this way?” And it sort of moved over here. That’s my memory of how it kind of started.
So the split with Matthew was kind of the genesis of the whole split series project, then?
KD: For me, it was, because the idea was there in abstract, and talking to Matthew about it concretized it, and also it excited me a lot, because – I’ll probably say a handful of things over the course of this interview that will make Matthew blush, but the truth is – as a friend first now, fan second, but fan first before I got to know him, the idea of… Like, [“Inside Of Love” is] one of my favorite songs ever, you know? And that’s not hyperbole.
Do you remember the first time you heard Matthew or Nada Surf’s music?
KD: I do remember that. I think I was probably in Junior or Senior year of high school when “Popular” was happening and all of that. I was a fan of that.
What convinced you to go deeper than “Popular”? Because a lot of people obviously didn’t.
KD: I was playing in Miracle of ‘86, and I remember a friend gave me Let Go. I had kind of lost track of the band, and heard Let Go and went back and heard Proximity Effect and was like “fuck, this is great! This is really, really good.” It was everything I like about music: it’s smart, it’s well-written, it’s lyrically precise, the melodies are incredible. It’s what I want songs to be like. The songs that they write are like a blueprint to me. Smart, good, likeable songs that are also idiosyncratic enough to have their own personality and voice.
Matthew’s music is a big deal to me, and also how the band conducts themselves, how they’ve done what they done over the different chapters of their career. To me, that’s a total success story: a life in music that doesn’t live and die just by the whims of the major label system, and to have an even-more-continually-interesting second, third, fourth, fifth chapter. That’s what I want out of a life in music, and they’ve done it and are doing it.