When I came up with the idea of dedicating a week of coverage on No Echo to the 2000s hardcore era, one of the bands that I jotted down on my list of what I wanted to include was The First Step. The North Carolina straight edge outfit released some excellent records during that decade, especially their 2006 album, What We Know.
The First Step vocalist Stephen St. Germain went on to front both Union of Faith and Peace, two short-lived but killer hardcore bands worth checking out. I reached out to Stephen about the idea of doing an interview covering his entire musical life to this point, and he was down for the chat. Enjoy.
Where did you grow up and how did you come to discover hardcore music?
I was born north of Boston but my mom, sister and I moved to the Sandhills region of North Carolina when my mom married my step dad who was in the 82nd Airborne and stationed at Fort Bragg. I grew up listening to a lot of folk and rock of the day like Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, and Cat Stevens all the way to Guns N' Roses and AC/DC.
I liked music that sounded cool but I also always liked music that made me feel something. I remember hearing Billy Joel’s “The Downeaster 'Alexa'” while we were living near the ocean in Massachusetts and I felt like I could feel the despair and longing in his voice. I wouldn’t have said it that way then but looking back I always liked music that had a feeling to it and that seemed real.
When we moved to North Carolina I started to get into R.E.M. and some indie rock. There was this one band, Helium, that I liked. This kid at summer camp traded me a Minor Threat tape for the Helium CD I had and that blew my mind but I didn’t have a sense of a scene or where that type of music fit.
A few years later I met Aaron Chrietzberg [The First Step, Union of Faith, The Living Memories] at school and he saw a Minor Threat picture that I had cut out of Spin magazine hanging in my locker. He was a year older than me but had been into metal, hardcore, etc. since an early age so he was stoked and made me a mix tape with classics like Slapshot, Youth of Today, Chain, BOLD, and current bands like Chokehold, Unbroken, Halfmast, and Face Value. That tape changed the course of my life.
Were there are a lot of other kids in school that also listened to hardcore, or were you and Aaron anomalies in that regard?
Aaron, this kid Jonas who drummed for Aaron’s band, Peaceful Non-Existence, and myself were some of the only kids into hardcore or punk. There were a few other kids that like some non-mainstream music but in general we were pretty much it. There were some other kids in town and periodically a GI stationed at Fort Bragg would move to town who was into some cool music. I never remember thinking, “this sucks I wish I lived somewhere else.”
I was just stoked on whatever shows or whomever came around. Everybody was also into all kinds of music so there were no pure 100%, only listened to Youth Crew hardcore kind of kids around. That was a real thing at the time and would have been pretty isolating.
How did you stay tapped into the hardcore scene during those younger years?
That was just a matter of talking to kids and hanging out. The various scenes around North Carolina went through periods of being fairly connected at time and very cut off an insular at others. I started doing shows and zines so I knew much of what was going on in our area because myself and my friends were doing it. As far as the scene outside North Carolina, I read bigger zines like Maximum Rocknroll, talked to touring bands when they came through.
Word of mouth was really one of the best ways to learn about new bands, new records, bands breaking up, etc. Stretch Arm Strong from Columbia, South Carolina was an extremely important band to us and, in my opinion, to hardcore in the Southeast. They were just a bit older but very open, wise and willing to help younger bands.
People from other scenes may look at them and not see the connection between them and a band like TFS but we were very influenced by the way they were as a band and how they carried themselves. They took what they were doing on stage seriously and it was easy to see how much they believed in their message but offstage they were fun, approachable and open. That really made an impression on Aaron and I.
READ MORE: Stretch Arm Strong Guitarist Scott Dempsey on Their Past, Present & Today’s Hardcore Scene
When did you declare yourself as straight edge, and hw did that go over with folks in Fayetteville?
I think I officially started calling myself straight edge in ’95. While North Carolina did not have the numbers as compared to other scenes a large percentage of the kids into hardcore were straight edge so no one batted an eye.
The Earth Crisis vegan straight edge thing was really big, there was a healthy scene in Winston Salem centered around New Start Records/Naked Angels/Rob-R-Rock and the majority of hardcore kids in Fayetteville were straight edge. The Fayetteville kids, by in large, were into some of the current straight edge bands but were also more into the NYHC, DC, Cali straight edge bands and others of that style.
Being straight edge in high school was a different story because everybody drank but while being sober was something I believed in I have never really been the type to totally put it others faces. So I still hung out with people who weren’t edge and it also just kept a low profile in high school anyways. I didn’t really want to be a part of what else was going on so I didn’t really rub elbows that much with kids who would give me a hard time for not drinking.
I wanted to talk a bit about Until Today. What was the genesis story there?
I had started a band with some guys from Greensboro called The Impact. We only played one show and we weren’t very good but I was hooked. I wanted to be more than a person in the crowd, I wanted to be up on stage, jump around, dive and speak my mind. But there weren’t many kids into hardcore in North Carolina who could play an instrument and weren’t already in a band.
I think one of the coolest aspects of being young and in a music scene is how people will just seemingly appear out of nowhere. I felt like my groups of friends pretty much knew all of the kids in a 100 mile radius who were remotely into any non-mainstream music but one day this kid Chris, later dubbed "Crippled Chris" even though he's not crippled in anyway, just popped up at a show. He was into Fugazi, Rollins Band, and some hardcore and he could play drums.
Right around the same time Matt Templeton, who lived outside of Fayetteville, started coming to shows (he had a Gorilla Biscuits shirt) and he could play guitar and had a friend who could play bass. So myself, Matt, Andrew (bass) and Chris all started meeting out at Matt’s parent’s house and to jam in his basement. We practiced a lot and wrote songs pretty quickly so we recorded a demo at The Jam Room in Columbia, South Carolina and started playing shows.
The scene at the time was in a bit of flux. After Peaceful Non-Existence, a legendary NCHC band the released an awesome 7” called “Crisis in Democracy”, broke up Aaron and Jason (Decker) started Reinforce. I was only around for the tail end of PNE but I was in the mix and close friends with the guys in Reinforce from the start which was so cool and exciting.
At that point Aaron had gone to college at East Carolina University and met a bunch of new people from Raleigh and the eastern part of the state so all of the sudden there were new faces, a new band what seemed like a new chapter in North Carolina hardcore. Reinforce was much more focused on playing hardcore in the vein of 7 Seconds, Youth of Today, and Uniform Choice so this was one point where our scene started to split into camps that were more into one style or another.
Some people weren’t into what Reinforce was doing and many of us, as younger people often do, drew lines in the sand and felt like we needed to pick a side. Which in retrospect was silly. At the same time, this did bring like-minded people together. If I could go back I would have tried to keep the peace a bit more, that would have been better for the scene as a whole.
Until Today dropped a few releases in the short time you were together. How popular was the band on a regional level? Did you tour at all? Also, why did you decide to part ways?
We were popular in our area of North Carolina but it was a small scene. Active but small at the time. We played out of state a couple times once when Mainstrike came over for their one and only tour. I think we played down in Atlanta with One Way and No Comply. Our drummer Chris moved and replaced him for a few shows with Jermaine and added a second guitarist name Clay but with Matt and I both getting close to going to college it felt like things were winding down.
Matt was going to college in Tennessee to learn how to be a sound engineer. He was a very talented musician: on our last record Clay played scratch guitar and Matt drummed to that and it sounded great. He could sing well and was a musical guy so I think he was also wanting something more.
Later, when he moved back to North Carolina, he and the original drummer to Reinforce, Jared Porter, started this really cool band called Inez. It was sort of emo, sort of jazz, a little bit like At the Drive-In. So he had that sort of thing in him. I, on the other, hand wanted to play hardcore and I wanted to tour. So the band just sort of ran its course with no hard feelings. Until Today was such an important moment in my life. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.
How did The First Step come together? Did you guys talk about a specific style of hardcore you wanted to explore, or did that just come organically once you started writing together?
It was one of those things where the right people just happened to be free at the same time and happened to be in the same place. Until Today broke up. Reinforce did as well around the same time. Aaron went to Costa Rica for a semester but before he did he wrote the music for what became “We All Die” and “As it Is." He basically just mulled over the songs in his head while he was away and when he got back he got together with Israel Soriano, who drummed for a local band called High Pointe, and then they showed me the songs too.
I wanted to sing immediately and I also loved that we were playing with someone new. It felt like there were a lot of new possibilities. At that point Aaron wrote “The First Step” and “Whose Life?” We had talked to Crucial John about playing bass since he was around and into the same style that we were. For whatever reason, it didn’t happen, although he did play fake bass at our first show on the Outer Banks.
Matt Templeton from Until Today had moved back to town to finish college at NC State so we asked him to play bass. I think we showed him the songs and practiced a few times and then recorded the demo with Noel from Naked Angels at his studio in Winston Salem. Song writing and ideas came really easy during this period.
Aaron, Izzy, and I were all really on the same page with how we wanted to sound, Insted mixed with DYS, and that we wanted to play out as much as we could. Looking back, this is probably my favorite periods of TFS because we all just clicked and the future was wide open. We really felt that.
The demo came out in 2001, well after the so-called “Youth Crew revival,” but I remember people being psyched on TFS from the get go. What do you remember about the reaction to the band during that early period?
At our first couple of shows in North Carolina, we played some familiar places, like the legendary Backdoor skatepark in Greenville. In a way it seemed a little bit like an extension of Reinforce and Until Today, but to Aaron and I it felt very different. We were much more focused and serious about our message and really going off live.
We wanted to hit hard in that Youth of Today sort of way. We wanted the crowd to feel what we felt and tried to communicate that through our words and actions. We started connecting with new people like the thrash kids up in Raleigh and we had also met knew kids from the Outer Banks like Matt Price who became a roadie and lifelong friend. All these new faces were stoked on what we were doing which in turn made us even more excited.
Once we recorded the demo I started ordering and dubbing tapes and sending them out to anyone I knew around the country. I remember Zach Attack from Full Contact and later Shark Attack heard the demo and liked it so I sent him a bunch to pass out. I did the same with the dudes in Tear It Up who were really supportive.
Basically, anyone we knew who didn’t send up money for tape got one in the mail anyways! In that way the reaction and energy around the band was very different from anything we had done before. People from outside our local scene were starting to pay attention.
You worked with Livewire Records on the Open Hearts and Clear Minds EP the next year. How did you come to work with Ed? Tying it all together, you also had Tim McMahon do the layout.
With the demo out in 2001, we just started doing weekends as often as we could: Richmond, Virginia Beach, DC/Maryland, New Jersey, Boston and further. In previous bands, we always piled into someone’s car but I took the position that we needed a van. We didn’t have enough money to buy one but I found out that you could rent pretty cheap cargo vans through Enterprise, so I would just rent of those, pick everyone up and pile equipment and merch in the back. Sure, it was a metal floor and if you ever had to hit the breaks, stuff would go flying but it was awesome.
We had an open-door policy with weekends so if anyone wanted to go they were welcome. This often led to more friends than band members but that’s what we wanted. Matt Templeton played bass on a few early weekends but pretty soon he wanted to do something different. Our friend from college, Jason Mathis aka Jason Solution, played a few shows. He went off when he played and was a great guy to be around. Aaron somehow met John Millin who had played in Committed from Cleveland but was now living in NYC. He started playing bass for us, including an awesome weekend to play Reflections in New Bedford, Massachusetts and our first California tour.
Through him we met a guy named Reese who was played in Running Like Thieves with Matt Warnke from BOLD and Andy Guida from Supertouch. Somehow, I was tasked with booking a TFS/Running Like Thieves weekend, which I was pretty stoked about. One of the shows was outside DC at The Mosh Mansion which was Gene from Desperate Measures house.
Tim and Traci McMahon came to that and I believe that is where we connected or re-connected with them. They were super into and supportive of TFS and became great friends. Pretty soon their house in New Jersey became our Northern HQ: anytime we drove north of DC we stayed at their place.
I can’t overstate how important Tim and Traci they were to the development of our band. They introduced and connected us to the straight edge scene that was a little older than us. And beyond that they were just great friends.
Through them we met Ed McKirdy at Posi Numbers 2001. He was interested in putting out the demo on his label Livewire Records so that winter we flew to California, where he was living at the time, and toured for about 10 days. When we got there, he had the demo pressed on 7” which came out so well. Ed even played bass at couple shows when John Millin had to go home.
We were so happy with the way things worked out with the 7" that when we started working on the songs for what would become Open Hearts and Clear Minds there was no question that Ed would put it out. We wanted the layout to be simple and powerful like True Till Death and Sportswear’s Keep It Together. The use of the silver as an accent color came from our love of Sportswear specifically. Tim was really stoked on our references and had some great ideas for it.
For recording, we decided to do it at Monster Island in DC with Ken Olden and Issa Diao. We wanted something that was raw like the demo but also had a bigger sound, especially on the drums. Izzy was such a hard-hitting drummer and we wanted to capture that. Both Ken and Issa were really kind and had some great ideas, although I think Issa ended up doing a bit more of the actual engineering.
One wild moment from that time was when we were in the studio and Ken got a call and abruptly said he needed a break and ran to the backdoor. Apparently, he was having a Porche delivered and it had arrived! I listened back to Open Hearts a little while back and I am still really satisfied with how it turned out. It was a massive step up from the demo, which I also loved, in terms of sound. I always liked how the drums and guitar sounded so loud and in your face.
To me, we really captured our version of that harder, positive East Coast straight edge sound. I really love the majority of the lyrics on that record. I feel very proud of how we approached not eating meat in “The Higher Taste." That sort of perspective or stance is still how I feel about it now.
“Will It Ever End?” kind of got forgotten over time but it is one that I wish we played more because I loved singing and talking on stage about the cycle of violence. After 9/11, it felt like so many people became super pro-American and just wanted to fight fire with more fire and I saw it (and still see it) much the opposite. Violence is really a sickness and to choose peace over war/fighting is such a powerful choice on a personal level and on a global level.
I wanted to ask you about Jaguarz, a hardcore band you briefly played in around this time.
After college, I moved to Boston because I always liked New England and wanted a change. I had a room in Mission Hill with Greg from Mental, Chris Corey and Dave Weinburg. It was a great change for me living in a big city and a really cool time in Boston with the beginning of Lockin’ Out and that whole new wave of Boston hardcore.
AJ McGuire from Stop and Think had given me a summer job selling Yankees Sucks shirts down at Fenway Park and that’s where Owen Black (vocals for Jagz) and I met. We hit it off immediately. We started training Krav Maga together, he introduced me to The Cardigans back catalog and I introduced him to the Danzig solo records. The idea and songs for Jaguarz had been rolling around in his head for quite a while and he knew I played bass so I started jamming with him, Rich Perusi and Jeff Pickett.
The band was a little less serious on the surface which was a nice change for me. I have always taken bands that I sing for very seriously because I represent the band and the band represents me and I have always believed in the power of music and lyrics to inspire. But when it came to playing bass it was really cool to just be a part of something that didn’t require me to wear my heart on my sleeve and instead I could just go off.
We were all friends with Greg from Lockin’ Out and he wanted to put out the demo when we recorded it. Greg was very enthusiastic and supportive of that whole group of people and it made for a fun atmosphere to be around. He always seemed to have a new idea, new zine or new side project band that was in the works. We played a handful of shows but eventually Jeff moved away and people just got interested in other stuff but I really loved that band and it was a moment in time that I look back on with nothing but love.
READ MORE: Bridge Nine’s Chris Wrenn on How Sports Fans Helped Launch Have Heart, American Nightmare + Terror
TFS went on some kind of hiatus/break up after the Open Hearts and Clear Minds EP. When you returned there was some lineup changes. Was that a matter of people moving on because of work/school commitments, or did people just get burned out?
While I was in Boston, we had decided to stop playing. There were a couple factors. We were now pretty spread out up and down the East Coast which just meant we couldn’t spend time together unless it was on a weekend so the chill, spontaneous side of hanging out with your friends and band mates just wasn’t there like it used to be.
On the other hand though, this also made me really appreciate the time I had together with the guys in TFS because I knew that it was a special, temporary thing that I couldn’t afford to take for granted.
Another factor was our relationship with Desperate Measures. Both of our bands had started around the same time, played a ton of shows together and had gotten really close. But we had started drifting apart, maybe wanting different things and even though that is totally natural I can’t pretend that it didn’t hurt to see the relationship change. That was one thing that contributed to this feeling of disappointment that was starting to build in the band.
I remember Aaron saying to me around that time, “We started the band to connect with our friends – not to lose friends” and that’s sort of how it felt: many of our friends were finishing college, moving away, getting into other things and I just felt like in a few short years so many of the people we had come up with were gone. In retrospect, this all makes sense as we had hit the ground running, played constantly and made a lot of friends and while that was awesome it was also exhausting and couldn’t last forever in that way.
So, we decided to stop playing shows and catch our breath. That didn’t last that long but when we came back Andy Norton, who was on Open Hearts and Clear Minds, didn’t want to keep playing bass.
Prior to breaking up, we had played a weekend with Stand and Fight and had met Greg Bacon. We asked him to play with us and he did but since he lived in SoCal, we sometimes had our friend Chris Niels play bass if Greg couldn’t fly out for a show. After about a year of this it was clear that we wanted, and Greg wanted to be the bass player so we decided to only play when we could all be there.
You then came back and became part of the Rivalry Records roster, a label that had a massive impact on the hardcore scene in the 2000s decade. Had other labels reached out to you about releasing your full-length? When does Rivalry enter the picture? Wasn’t Livewire originally going to release the album?
Our plan was to release the LP on Livewire. That was our thinking when we demoed about half of the songs with Noel from Naked Angles in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Ed McKirdy had done so much for the band and we felt very loyal to him and Livewire Records. Personally, I have always loved the feeling of building something and being a part of a new world as it growths. That is exactly what Livewire was: both the band and the label grew together. Success for one helped the other.
With planning to do an LP we wanted something different, and it felt like we were sort of moving beyond Livewire. We weren’t interested in making moves to be “big” as that wasn’t really much of a reality for a straight edge hardcore band unless it was Champion or Have Heart. But we did want to expand our circle. We also hadn’t put out something since Open Hearts so there seemed to be a lull in excitement around the band and given how long it took for a record to come out we were a little stuck.
In many ways we still felt like a small North Carolina band that was sort of entering a larger world. We weren’t really sure where we fit. Word got out that we wanted to leave Livewire so Steve Reddy at Equal Vision got in touch. We liked Equal Vision as a label, and it was an interesting idea, but it was hard to see ourselves there. It didn’t seem like us or a place we would feel at home.
But then Kyle Whitlow from Rivalry Records got in touch. We had met Kyle on our first California tour in the winter of 2002 when we played with his band, The Damage Done, and he had remained a good friend and supporter of the band. He had built Rivalry into an awesome label that supported its bands but also allowed them the space to be who they were.
Rivalry was a perfect fit for us as Kyle was an old friend and understood the spirit of TFS, but as a larger label he could help us play for people who might never have heard us otherwise. Putting out a record on Rivalry felt down home but next level simultaneously. In a very real sense Kyle Whitlow saved TFS. I really don’t know what would have happened with the band if it wasn’t for him giving us a place to feel grounded and secure. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but we were sort of adrift in the wasteland and I don’t know if we could have found our way out on our own.
The What We Know LP was produced by Walter Schreifels (Quicksand, Gorilla Biscuits), but the sessions were broken up between two studios, with Issa Diao of Good Clean Fun tracking the drums in Maryland, and Ian Love of Rival Schools handling the rest in NYC. Why was it split up like that, and what do you remember about the sessions? Any interesting stories?
Our drummer, Israel, was living in Richmond during this time and didn’t have a lot of free time to travel. I think it was either Walter or Issa that suggested Shefield Sound in Maryland that was close and had a large, cavernous drum room. As a side note “The Thong Song” was also recorded in that drum room. Once the drums were recorded, we started tracking everything else with Ian Love at his studio, The House of Love, in Brooklyn. Walter was pretty convinced that Ian Love was the best guy to engineer the rest of the recording and with both Walter and Ian in New York in made sense for us to go to them.
The sessions in Brooklyn were awesome and grueling too. Ian had this cool spot in Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) which at that time was a little bit like a ghost town, not like it is now. His studio was in a basement with all of these café lights providing a relaxed atmosphere. The downside was there was no natural light so it sometimes felt like we were lost in time and space too.
We had never recorded an LP of songs before so it was also just a lot of work. One thing that Ian and Walter had me do for vocals was sing whole takes of the songs meaning that even if there was a lackluster part on the third line of the song I still needed to keep going. It was really hard but it allowed the vocals to flow in a way that punching in (fixing individual lines) doesn’t.
Despite the long hours and exhaustion, it was a great time. Ian Love was such a wonderful, calming person who had an inexhaustible knowledge of sound and music. He was the first person I ever met that had that musician’s mind that heard things in ways other just didn’t. Meeting and getting to know Walter was incredible because he was simultaneously this larger-than-life character who was also down to earth, funny and serious.
Going into the experience we all were a little intimidated but immediately his openness made him feel like a person I had known for a long time. The kindness and respect that he showed us left a real impression on me and was something I always thought back to when interacting with people who were fans of TFS.
What are your personal picks for favorite songs on that album? “Time to Understand” is an all-time opener. It sets a strong tone to the rest of the record, but curious to your thoughts.
I really love something about each song whether the music, the lyrics or something that comes up when I remember recording the song. One of my favorites from the record is “Get Wise." I love how hard it hits and the lyrics and delivery just match each other perfectly. The message about looking beyond yourself to the greater world was something that I had been contemplating for a long time and had wanted to put into words.
“Pursuit of Happiness” is another favorite of mine. I loved that we brought a little more of a Minor Threat sort of vibe on that song. The idea of examining how material possessions, or the obsession over them, was something I thought was important to examine because so much of modern life, and hardcore to some degree, was just about mindless accumulation of stuff. Very quickly this act starts to feel so empty and it seems so obvious that a thing can never really take the place of a person or an experience.
“No Way to Live” is another favorite. I loved how the bridge came together and how musically it nodded to a lot of different music we liked but seamlessly worked with our sound. And lyrically this was a song had been one that was on my mind but I couldn’t voice the ideas in the way that I wanted too. When I was younger friendships came easy and there was something beautiful about that. But over time it became clear to me that relationships with people that I cared about took work and sacrifice and that these were people that I valued and wanted in my life. But there were some people who also just didn’t see it that way.
The last song, “A New Reality,” seems like it was maybe a little lost at the end of the record, but I sometimes think it’s one of the best songs we wrote. Lyrically, it’s about the hope we felt coming into this new chapter of our lives and as a band and looking backwards and forward at the same time It was inspired by our friendship with Damage Control from Norway.
Musically, it really brings in a bit more of the DC sound that we always loved. Up to that point people generally saw TFS as a youth crew hardcore band but I was glad that we were able to write songs on What We Know that incorporated different aspects of music that we liked. It felt like a truer picture of us as a band.
Since you were playing all over the place by that point, what do you remember about the hardcore landscape? That was a time when bands like Converge were huge. Did you find that the different scenes mixed well and TFS were able to connect with people that might not have necessarily come from the traditional hardcore route? Perhaps it was different in Europe?
In the USA it seemed like in certain places certain types of hardcore had really expanded maybe in part to Have Heart’s popularity. But at the same time the scene, on a national level, felt more separate even than it did a few years before. When a band like No Justice was around, for example, it seemed like many different expressions of punk and hardcore could all play together but in many places, it seemed less that way.
So, I remember that it often felt a little homogenized at larger shows. I think this was the time too when your average band started to seem more “pro” and less punk derived. Or at least maybe aspired to be but that’s just my perspective. As an aside, I think that was what was so cool about what came later with Mindset and React records. They seemed, to me, more raw yet also powerful. None of this was a negative per se and there were places where different genres mixed very well, especially in California.
Europe for TFS was always next level in every way but it was especially this way for us because early on in the band we had connected with Damage Control from Norway and had formed a very close friendship. Musically, lyrically, and ideology-wise they were a perfect band, in my opinion, and touring with a band that I was inspired by and loved was such a gift.
Travelling with them Europe gave us an experience that I don’t believe we would have gotten with a US band or on our own. But with some exceptions we often did end up playing with bands somewhat similar to us. It’s funny when we started out, we wanted to play packed all hardcore shows, like we saw in old videos or zines, but we always played very diverse bills. But in our last few years we really wanted to play with different types of bands and longed for more variety.
The Connection EP came out a year after the album. It’s the final TFS record and it finishes things off with some of your strongest material. Did you know the band was ending while you were writing/recording that EP, or did that decision come later? How do you feel about those songs?
The decision to end came later and I don’t remember us really talking about the end of the band. Fred Grave and Aram Arslanian had been playing drums and second guitar with us for some time at this point but this was the first record they were actually on so I will always think of it as the record that sort of marks this time and place with those two guys.
That was our longest running lineup but was only on that one record. We toured consistently and played some of best shows and certainly our biggest. We went to Guatemala which was one of the highlights of the band and certainly one of the best experiences I have ever had in hardcore. That time period also seemed, personally, as the time when I figured out how to be the frontman/singer that I wanted to be.
I loved talking about the lyrics in between songs because it felt like a moment I could directly connect with the audience. I remember seeing bands do that and it felt so powerfully cathartic. For me, it all just clicked during this time and I was able to be open and honest with a crowd of people and I loved that. To feel so confident and free just allowed what was in my heart and mind to flow out. That was the headspace I was in during the writing and recording of those songs and that is sort of the vibe I brought to them.
Much of what was on Connection musically and lyrically built on what we did on What We Know but just opened the aperture a bit more. I feel like lyrically the vision on Connection was wider than on previous records. Whether we were talking about social responsibility ("Greater Vision," "For a Reason") or a different idea of ourselves as people ("Learn to Trust").
Aram and I were also very close at this time and were very much on the same wavelength of how we talked about songs and thought about writing lyrics. I feel like that is why I really liked what he did with Betrayed because it was coming from that sort of perspective. Aaron and I had been at the center of TFS for so long but it was also cool to have another person who was comfortable as a decision maker and had ideas for the band and the will to make them happen.
Much of the growth we had as a band during this period was thanks to Aram. It’s also hard for me to think about the Connection record and not think about Mindset because it was during this time that we met them and played together. As a band they, especially Ev and Mike, thought about hardcore, their band and life in much the same way I thought about TFS.
It was easier for me to step away from TFS knowing that Mindset was there because I felt like they were people and a band that I could believe in and that made me feel like I still had a place in the hardcore scene.
Why did The First Step end up breaking up and did you feel like you had accomplished everything you had set out to do with the band when that happened?
Aaron had long had the aspiration to complete a Buddhist retreat so while it was unclear as to what else we would do as a band when Aaron made plans to be in retreat for three years that was a clear indication that we should call it a day I was already thinking about what enough meant to me in the context of TFS. We knew what we wanted from the band and understood the box that we had created and pushed the boundaries of that box.
At the same time, just doing everything again felt a bit like an empty, endless road to me. While there were some new goals with the band like touring South America and Japan, the core of what we had wanted to do as a band and how we wanted to conduct ourselves had really been met from my perspective. TFS ended up being more than I could have ever dreamed of so I was and am very proud and satisfied.
I always wanted to be a band that ended on its own terms when we felt it was right. It’s easy to get pulled into continuing a band, or a lot of things, because deep down you are scared to let go of it. I was scared of letting go of this band that I loved but it also felt good when I realized I had the courage to do it and move on with my life.
The next band you played in was Peace, which also included other familiar faces from the hardcore scene. What was the origin story behind that band?
Mindset and TFS had played a good bit in the last few years of the band and I had toured with Mindset after TFS broke up. Mike and Ev are still to this day some of my closest friends. I had started writing some songs and asked Mike about playing guitar. He was down. I moved from Rhode Island down to Washington, DC because I wanted to be a bit closer to my family in North Carolina and I just needed a change in life.
Myself, John Scharbach (Give, Shining Life Press), Ev Wivell (Mindset, REACT! Records) and Zach Wheuthner (Intent, Shining Life Press) got a house together in the Brookland area of Northwest DC on Newton Street. It was an awesome house and a great vibe. Once I was in the area, Mike and I started to jam.
The first time we played with a drummer we went to Connecticut and hooked up with Fred Grave who played drums in TFS on the Connection EP. He wrote the music for the song “Let Go." But quickly the distance became a thing. The last few years of TFS saw all of us living far away and getting together was a production. I wanted something close and easy in that regard so we asked Dan Fang from Mindset to drum and Andy Norton to play bass and they were down.
That's a great lineup of musicians.
There had been some hurt between Andy and I after TFS broke up the first time. He had had some very rough times in his life and I didn’t support him the way I should have. Prior to playing in Peace together, we had mended those wounds and it felt so wonderful to be at that point again with him.
So, while Peace never did all that much as a band it was exactly what I wanted and needed at that point in my life. I was involved in hardcore but I also had the time and space to grow in other ways. It never officially ended which I love. It just came into being and then faded away and that felt right to me.
The next band you sang in, Union of Faith, was pretty sick. I wish had released more music after the one demo.
Aaron is one of those guitarists who just can’t not write music so when he got back from retreat, he started playing guitar again and some songs just came out of him. He was back in the DC area, as was I, so as soon as he shared the songs with me I started writing lyrics which is something I always do with or without a band. Izzy from TFS was also living in DC and time had healed some of the wounds from our days in TFS together so he started playing drums.
For the three of us, it felt like a chance to start again in a way and also maybe some redemption for Izz. The three of us started jamming a bunch with me on bass and eventually we started to form what became the Union of Faith demo. Aram was one of my closest friends at that time and we saw a good bit of each other even though we lived on different sides of the continent. He started coming to NYC for work often so we asked him if he wanted to play bass and he was super into it.
One thing that I loved about Aram was it seemed like there was no idea to big or any curveball too off base for him; he always could come up with a way to make something happen. So doing something like this did not seem difficult at all. While I wished we all lived closer I think that I had accepted that to play with people I wanted often meant I had to travel. Aram’s bass playing was awesome and creative so once he started coming out to practice, we were quickly ready to record the demo.
To me, those are some of the best songs that Aaron has ever written and that I have ever sung on. People had been asking if TFS was going to reunite but to me, while I loved TFS, it felt like my past. I loved all the lyrics I wrote for TFS but I didn’t feel them burning like I did when I wrote them. But with Union of Faith that was my present and in terms of lyrics they perfectly captured how I thought about the world, myself and how I wanted to express those ideas.
I wouldn’t say the lyrics to Union of Faith are poetry but I let the more metaphorical side of myself come out. I had always loved poetry and abstract lyrics but that was seldom the way I expressed myself in a hardcore band.
After playing a handful of shows around the DC area we went into the studio again to record some new songs. We had Aaron O'Neil from Get the Most playing drums and although the songs sounded great there was something different or something missing.
I think it was that the band was starting to be really spread out like TFS had ended up being and I knew I wanted something where music was a more consistent, natural part of life. Looking back, this idea of closeness and separation in terms of music and people is a consistent refrain throughout my life.
That last time you appeared on No Echo was in 2022 via The Living Memories, a band that is completely removed from the hardcore style you’re known for. Had you always wanted to venture out into that side of the musical spectrum? Days of Morning Light came out in the beginning of the year.
Aaron is one of the greatest friends of my life and we just have a connection and an understanding. When he writes music, he shares it with me and when I write lyrics, I think of him. There is this magnetism where we will always probably do something together even if it’s playing acoustically for our families. We both help each other bring our ideas and visions to fruition. So, something like The Living Memories was not planned but pretty inevitable.
Before and during COVID, Aaron had bought a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and immediately was able to write songs like he had never done before. When he started sharing them with me it hit me hard because with these songs, I was able to sing about all of the thoughts and feelings I had that lay in between black and white.
I felt free to just put an incomplete idea out there where with hardcore bands I sung for I felt a desire to present a problem and the solution or the positive side of things. In truth, that’s how I tend to view life in general so I have never been one to just leave lyrics more ambiguous. But now I felt like I could also sing about feelings I had but had never put into a hardcore song like the love for my kids or my wife or regret of fear of death. Or my father.
Even though we were both incredibly inspired by what each other was doing and wrote a wealth of song things still moved slowly because TLM was not our main focus. But this also gave it room to breathe. Eventually we got together with Chris Moore at his place in DC and recorded the drums for what became our first record, Home Truths, which we eventually finished in Baltimore with Matt Redenbo.
We had so many songs that we started working with another drummer Matt Oconkee to bring to life a new batch of songs which became our second record, Days of Morning Light. Prior to that we had existed and even played as a duo which was cool but we wanted a proper band. Eventually found a permanent drummer, Richard Pouffary and bassist Tim Kriependorf.
We played our first show as a four piece in February of 2024 in Baltimore and are currently working on our next recording. To me this band feels like a band that could exist for the rest of my life. It doesn’t have to be one thing or another and can exist whether people love it or not and that is exactly what I want from a band these days: a vehicle for thoughts and feelings and connection with friends.
It feels like hardcore is in healthy shape right now. Do you keep up with the scene and newer bands? What are your feelings about it today as someone who was very active in the scene for so many years?
I do not actively look for new bands but I usually end up stumbling across them. I am always interested in checking out new music, especially from younger bands. I am glad that hardcore is something people are still into and it’s interesting to see how people have combined different influences or opted for a more “traditional” approach to the sound.
I do not really relate to most hardcore bands now but I think that is kind of the point. One of the beautiful things about hardcore, in my opinion, is that it seems to perfectly capture youth and all the changes, doubt and questions that come with that time period. I feel very youthful in my heart and mind but my life is also not in that place anymore so it makes sense to me that hardcore wouldn’t speak to me about the moment I am in life like it did when I was younger. And I don’t really need it to do that either.
These days, I really appreciate it for just what it is and really enjoy my role as a supporter and observer. When I met the guys from Insted years ago that was really the first time I got a sense of what it could mean to be into hardcore later in life. Those guys loved hardcore but had accepted that they couldn’t be active like they once were. They took the ideas and values that they had been exposed too and applied that to the rest of their lives so that their band and how they lived their lives made perfect sense together. That was so inspiring to me and it’s the way I have approached balance in my own life.
I feel good about where I am. I remember when I was at the last show Mindset show in DC it hit me that this was kind of like the end of the line for me in terms of feeling that spark from a hardcore band in that way where I connected with them and had a history. Not because there wouldn’t be any good bands after them but because, for me, the best aspects of hardcore came out with close friendships and shared time.
I understood and related to so much of what Ev was talking about in Mindset because we spent time talking about it and that was not something that I was really going to have the same space for in my life. At that time, my wife and I had just had out first daughter and I could just feel my heart, mind and focus shifting. But as bittersweet as that realization was, I knew that it was the right thing and that made me feel at peace.
Of all The First Step shows you played, which one stands out the most to you and what do you miss most about being in the band?
We were fortunate to play so many awesome shows and have an experience that few have, so really most of them stick out in one way or another. There are ones that had tons of stage dives and we felt like YOT at the Anthrax and there were ones that were kind of tame but we had a great time hanging out afterwards.
All of those moments that make up a life. I think about that a lot how at the time I (we) were pushing towards something, the next hill to climb or goal. I see now that the whole thing was my life or a significant part of it. Not just the good or the bad but all the in-betweens and the successes and the failures. I think the crazy shows, especially the last year or so we were a band are very memorable for obvious reasons but there was this one show that we played with Our Turn in Santa Cruz that I will never forget.
We did a weekend with Our Turn in California, before What We Know came out, and it was their last shows. Even though they were a San Francisco band the Sunday show ended up being in Santa Cruz and was really small and sort of anticlimactic. We had a really big group of friends with us and I think we all realized this and there was this sort of unspoken/semi spoken agreement that during Our Turn’s set we were all going off so from the first note to the last we pitted and sang along the entire time.
Larry Ransom started a thousand circle pits and that collective energy made it such an awesome show. There were maybe 50 people there in a really large space, but everyone walked away sweaty and beat with a big smile on their face. This is one of things I loved about my experiences in hardcore: a group of people coming together and moving as one and for a few minutes changing the world inside a room.
It’s magic from a certain point of view. Nothing much changes outside those walls but inside the people who experienced that know everything has changed. Sometimes in ways that you can’t even put into words, but you know it.
What is the possibility of a The First Step reunion show in the near future happenig?
I am honored that people ask TFS about playing again but it is not something I am interested in. I often get nostalgic about the band because I have such wonderful memories of those days and the people that we met but I know that playing again just wouldn’t feel that way. Any band captures lightning in a bottle for a period of time and there is just no way to get that back or do it again.
I’ve heard Sammy [Siegler] or Walter [Schriefels] talk about getting a chance to spend time with friends a couple times a year and I love that and think how wonderful that would be.
I just know for me, the way I think about hardcore and how I put my heart into it, none of it would feel the way I wanted. But I really miss the people and those moments. I am also so thankful too because without all of that I wouldn’t be the father or husband or son or friend I am today. It’s like in order to get the best out of something like a band, it just can’t last forever.
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Tagged: 2000s hardcore week, peace, the first step, the living memories, union of faith, until today
