Since the release of their debut full length, The Things We Carry, Have Heart have been riding a wave as the forerunners of the new generation Boston hardcore scene. Have Heart are a band that wears their influences on their sleeves, and tries to keep alive those inherent elements that defined a genre in the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s, whilst ever breathing new life into the style. Their new album, Songs To Scream At The Sun is sure to further this view of the band as a progressive yet honest and always powerful force in hardcore. Frontman Pat Flynn’s lyrics are always relentless in their focus and tear through false preconceptions with their insight. For this reason, coupled with the fact I had just seen him play his part in one of the most energetic sets I had ever seen from a hardcore-punk band, I was very excited to speak to Flynn on the band’s first visit to Australia.
“Barriers are this huge disconnect, and it’s so off putting” Flynn leads off, commenting on the distance between the Tivoli’s stage and the crowd. “We started this band going against the barriers. We’re not a barrier band – we’re a basement band, a CBGB’s or Gilman Street band. We can work with it, but for someone like me, especially when I’m sick, it’s really aggravating because I sound like shit and I can’t get into the zone.” Out of breath and clearly worked up, Flynn still seems strangely energized for a set that he deemed as being sub-par. “It’s also mind-boggling - it’s kind of hard to get into the zone; to be in Australia and have kids sing along. It just doesn’t make sense. I started the band when I was 16 and I just wanted to play a couple of shows and we always just did what we wanted to do, and if we had an opportunity we’d take it.” Clearly overwhelmed, even after having toured the states and Europe multiple times, Flynn’s astonishment is the perfect example of the extent of his, and subsequently his band’s honest approach to shows and the music they make.
Having been involved in the band for nearly seven years, and in the past two starting to have visible impact worldwide, I ask Flynn if he can still see himself doing the band far into the future. “No” he replies, simply. “I love this, but I’m not gonna lie to myself and say I wanna do this for the rest of my life. This is my life right now and I love it, but there are other things in my life I wanna do that don’t necessarily consist of Have Heart. This is the greatest thing in my life right now and I am seizing the opportunity. I am really happy to be a part of creating this music, and it’s a great platform to express myself. I do wanna teach, that’s been a goal of mine since I was a kid. It’s a challenge to myself, and I want to accomplish that” He explains that while he sees many figures in hardcore still up on stage, giving it their all way into their mid-thirties, the 23 year old says he can’t see himself doing that, despite the respect he holds for those figures. However, he qualifies his statements; “We’re not done by any means, we’re not going to break up soon or anything... I feel like Have Heart started out as a band that I want to keep special and I feel like in my lifetime, the things that have been done for so long kind of lose their specialty. I wouldn’t want to ever – ever – take a chance at tainting what Have Heart was, because it is so unbelievably special.”
On the topic of older personalities of the hardcore scene, as well as that of what the band holds dear, Have Heart have been lucky enough to foster a career-long relationship with one of their musical role models, Pete Maher (or Sweet Pete) of the band In My Eyes. Maher was on tour with Have Heart in Australia, doing merch of all things. “Pete’s been such a great support” says Flynn, “especially in regards to the hardcore scene. He’s a genuine supporter of the hardcore community… He’s been around for a while – he started going to shows in ’83, but he can still be that guy who can see potential in younger bands. He’s not one of the millions of jaded, clichéd dudes who think hardcore died when they left the scene.” It’s clear that Flynn is not generalising, but speaking from actual experience. “I’ve been going to shows for almost 10 years now, I’ve been in a band and I’ve seen a lot of the ugly parts of our country’s hardcore scene. We’ve played with a lot of shitty bands that are just there to break things. It gets very easy to become disillusioned with the hardcore scene. It takes a lot of strength to be inspired and have a positive outlook. I sound like a cheesy posi guy.” He continues “[Pete’s] definitely someone who helps me keep the faith in the potential and the good that hardcore can bring to so many kids. In My Eyes was definitely one of the first hardcore bands I really got into. When we first started out he was genuinely interested in us, it was the coolest thing… He overheard that we needed help with money to get a van. Our parents weren’t going to help us, and we really needed a van ‘coz renting it was too expensive. He loaned us the money, and we just payed him back. We ended up paying him back relatively shortly, but it was a huge thing. He’s helped us out in a number of places. He’s just a big supporter of Have Heart.”
The current era of Have Heart is shaping up to be the most defining since those early beginnings. Songs To Scream At The Sun has been released to mixed reactions from fans and press alike, not to mention good-spirited practical jokes on the part of label mates Ceremony. “We’re good friends with Ceremony, we play jokes on each other” explains Flynn, exasperated. “Oh my god – he made that announcement so long ago and it’s just spread like wildfire. When you’re a Bridge Nine band you can log in, and you have special access to make announcements about your own band. Toast made the announcement that our album’s going to be 41 tracks. All these kids have been asking us, and it’s been bumming some kids out – like ‘I don’t want 41 songs!’ It’s just funny because I just made a bulletin on myspace today saying that our record is not 41 songs long.”
By the time of printing, the album will have been out for a while, but at the time this interview was conducted, the song Bostons was being flagshipped in promotion for the record. The song still stands out against the other nine, however, with it’s pointed yet vast lyrical dealings. “I took a second and I thought about my life and my father’s life and my grandfather’s life, so the song is really complex. It’s about three generations of Flynns.” Pat offers an explanation that seems to give back story to more than just this one song. “I wrote that song The Unbreakable [from The Things We Carry] about my Grandfather. When my uncle passed we had a Flynn family gathering and I was talking to my other uncles, asking them a little more about my grandfather, ‘coz I only had the stories my father had told me. My father always told me that my grandfather – his father – was this great man who worked a million jobs a day to help raise his family, and he always had this great sense of humour. These were my father’s memories of his father that he wanted to keep, and he kind of blocked out any other ones. My father left Boston to join the army and change his life around a bit. I talked to my uncles who stayed in Boston and they told me stories about my grandfather, who I wrote The Unbreakable about. Turns out, he was a hard working man, but he definitely suffered from the Irish tradition of getting drunk all the time, neglecting the wife and spending more time in bars than just ‘being there’ and that really affected my father. That’s something that always troubled me ‘coz I wrote this song about this great man before I found that out. I started saying it was about my own father, so I guess it works out. I just wanted to bring some closure to that.
“I grew up in the city right outside Boston, then I went to college when I was 17. I moved to Boston and have been living there since I was 17. My college is literally right across the street from the high school my father went to, which was a hard high school to get into when you were a kid from the ghettos of Boston. I’d walk down the street at night and I’d think about how I get to go to this school ‘coz my father, when he was a kid younger than I am worked his ass off to get into that school, so he could change his life and so I could have a different life and a different youth than he had. I thought about that and I felt really guilty. To me there was like two eras of Boston. That’s how I wrote that song and why I called it Bostons, ‘coz it’s like there are two Bostons. My father goes there, and we drive by Hyde Park and he sees it and has some bad memories of that place I go there and do my running at night and I walk around during the day and it’s such a beautiful place to be and I love it!
“The end part is actually from my friend, Leo, who grew up in the ghettos of Boston. He has a song with the line ‘You’re friends say Boston’s beautiful’, that’s the one line I borrowed. He’s actually a hip-hop dude. That line stuck to me, ‘coz I do think Boston’s beautiful, and that line is supposed to be my father speaking to me. It’s funny ‘coz people have been interpreting that song in a million ways, which is fine, they should find different meanings as much as they can.” The epic nature of this tale and this one song seems to act as a metaphor for the entire album, with the notions of family, displacement and belonging. It provides an obvious reason as to why this track was chosen as the lead in to the record’s release.
In terms of the stylistic shift on the new record, however, both press and fans have been meeting it with mixed reactions. Flynn readily acknowledges the band’s conscious decision to change their sound. “We started to change our sound on the last record, and kids like wrote us off and whatnot, and I think that’s a shame ‘coz they’re missing out on so many great styles of hardcore. That has always bothered me…” When one takes into account the attitude Have Heart take to making music, it doesn’t seem so hard to reconcile the obvious changes they have gone through on Songs To Scream… “I just want to be myself” Flynn explains. “That’s the number one aspect of this band, that we all try to do what we want to do, whether or not people like it. I think people catch that; we’re just doing what we want. I remember being a kid and I could always tell the bands that were doing what was ‘in’, and then the bands that were doing what they wanted to do. Like Modern Life Is War” he refers to the copies of the magazine on the table in front of him. “I remember when I first saw them forever ago, when they were starting out, and they were just dudes from Iowa. It was really inspiring to me, ‘coz the sound they were playing wasn’t ‘in’, and I saw them at Posi Numbers 2003 which is a really youth-crew oriented fest.”
He looks down somewhat self-consciously at his Youth Of Today t-shirt. “I feel like a doofus ‘coz I’m wearing this shirt,” he says. “I love Youth Of Today but they’re not the be all and end all of hardcore. There are so many other forms of hardcore that are just as inspiring. There are so many sectors of hardcore now – so many fucking genres. That youth-crew scene is so closed-minded. We felt that, ‘coz when we started out we were just a straight up youth crew band. It bugged me ‘coz everyone expected me to be this posi kid or something. I’m a pretty natural guy, I get real bad mood swings and I get pissed off very easily, I just try to control it and be as mature as I can.” Flynn offers some insight as to why the band felt the need to separate themselves from the current crop of positive hardcore bands. “The idea of ‘being positive’ has been so raped and lost it’s meaning over the years. I think bands like Bad Brains or Youth Of Today didn’t write songs to ‘be positive’, they just did it ‘coz there was an importance behind it, and there’s so many avenues of just being negative. I think a lot of bands have run it into the fucking ground, and it’s become a really bad parody or caricature of itself. It really bums me out, ‘coz it’s an important aspect of hardcore, to strive for better things. That’s why I’ve always kept an open mind, in terms of being holistic and being inclusive. That’s important, ‘coz I’ve seen things that I love about hardcore get run into the ground. It’s stupid ‘coz [hardcore] has such a great meaning and can do so much for people. At least I know it did for me.”
Flynn brings up another aspect of hardcore that he has found hard to reconcile, and that is the current assimilation of it into popular culture. “I don’t think hardcore should be confined only to ‘hardcore kids’. It’s hard enough, and if you do that it’s just gonna fade away. At the same time, I don’t think hardcore should become this big mainstream thing, I’ve always been against that. A big part of what made hardcore unique was the fact that it was run by the kids. That business aspect was never there, and that’s what I loved about it. You put the business aspect into it, and you have these fatcats at the door looking all professional, and these huge fests where a water is sold for $9. You lose the idea of some 15-year-old kid saying ‘I can do this myself’. That’s always driven me nuts, the fact that people try to capitalise on the money that can be made in a hardcore scene. It’s a fine line, because I don’t want it to become this big, mainstream, Warped Tour thing, but I don’t want it to stay in the hands of people who think it’s ‘just for them’.” However, large tours such as Warped, amongst many others these days, are a major meal-ticket for bands. Flynn considers this; “I wouldn’t play it ‘coz I don’t believe in it. I think Warped Tour ruined punk rock. I think it was the nail in the coffin. It was already really big after Nirvana got big, but then it just became this huge corporate thing – I guess it always was, but now it’s just silly. I went to Warped Tour when I was 12 and I saw 7 Seconds and Blink 182, and I loved those bands. I just wouldn’t want to see hardcore take that route.” He acknowledges another significant point, and that’s that this cultural shift has created a division between what is considered ‘punk’ and what is ‘hardcore’. “It’s weird” he says, “‘coz hardcore and punk for me has always been the same thing.”
Happily outspoken and opinionated, I was very interested to hear what Flynn had to say about the other side of Have Heart – that of the straight-edge lifestyle. With so much confusion about what is straight-edge and how it should be represented, not to mention social rifts even between straight-edge people who interpret it differently, Flynn showed some clarity by explaining how he and his band mates approach the philosophy. “I think a lot of people perceive us as a super-straight-edge band and that’s all we know about. We’re definitely very well rounded people, we have other interests in life. Straight-edge to us is just a part of us – it’s like my arm, just part of who I am, and I have accepted that.” Sensing the opportunity to vent, Flynn admits some of his feelings about interviews; “It’s become really alienating for me over the past 2 years because I’ve been downsized to being nothing more than a kid with an X on the back of his hand. I understand we’re a straight-edge band, but we don’t listen just to other straight-edge bands.” In admitting he doesn’t actively think about straight-edge all that much, Flynn still makes clear how he feels about it in relation to the band. “We’re a straight-edge band, and I still have ethics and ideals about that. If we broke up and our guitarist went and broke edge, I wouldn’t give a shit. We’re a straight-edge band now, so I have some type of idealism – even though I’m not militant or anything.”
This perspective on the straight-edge philosophy shows through on Have Heart’s recordings too, as Flynn explains. “We have one song that is literally about straight edge, and that’s Something More Than Ink [from The Things We Carry]. Straight-edge runs fluidly through me, and it affects the way I see things and how I deal with certain things. So totally, on the new record there are things that are products of me being straight-edge. There’s a song on the record about promiscuous sex, but it’s not like ‘That’s wrong.’ I talk about an experience I had and how it just left me feeling miserable and alone. That’s definitely a product of me being straight-edge. Even the song Something More Than Ink isn’t an outright straight-edge song. All my friends drink, and whenever we play a Boston show they’re all singing along ‘coz they’ve found meaning in it. That’s something I was really careful about, because for someone who doesn’t know about straight edge or loosely knows about it, they’re not going to read those lyrics and think ‘Oh that’s a straight edge song.’ I’ve never wanted to be in a band that says straight-edge is the be all and end all, but I don’t want to oppose that, it can be really fun, like Down To Nothing who are our best friends. It’s good to have bands like that who are promoting straight-edge and keeping that tradition alive. The thing I love about DTN is that they’re fun with they’re straight-edge, they’re not closed-minded and you can tell that when they play and in their lyrics.” The flipside of this, Flynn explains, also has much to do with Have Heart’s approach. “I can tell you straight up that that band Embrace Today really pissed me off. They were doing the militant edge thing. It was just retarded - it was like a joke. That’s half the reason Have Heart started, ‘coz I wanted to represent straight edge in a good way. Also, straight edge was turning into a joke in the Boston scene coz everyone was breaking edge and it had no meaning to it.”
It’s clear, in the way he speaks, that Flynn is as much a fan of music now as he ever has been. “People always just downsize me to this kid who only listens to the first 20 releases on Rev. It gets annoying coz people in the hardcore scene wanna talk about music, but no one wants to talk music with me ‘coz they think I’m this corny dude who doesn’t listen to the ‘right’ music. It just sucks, coz I love talking music with people.” His love for older bands like In My Eyes and Youth Of Today is clear, but he also refers to Dischord and the mid-nineties D.C. scene. “Soulside are one of my all time favourite bands. End Of A Year are really good too. I love a lot of the DC stuff, I feel a lot of music from that era was very forward thinking.” In terms of current hardcore scenes, Flynn cites fellow Bostonians Verse as one of his favourite bands. “It’s really weird to play with them, and now they’re like our brother band. We play with them so much, and I love everything they do. They’re like our best friends and we hang out all the time, I almost wish they weren’t my friends ‘coz it would be a different experience – we wouldn’t see them so much or tour with them all the time. I feel clichéd saying Verse are one of those bands – but they really are one of those bands. Shipwreck AD too, they’re also our friends, and we tour with them. It’s really fucked up, there are a lot of great bands that we’re just friends with – Ceremony as well. It’s like we play with these great bands and become friends with them, it’s not like being a 16-year-old kid and thinking a band is mind-blowing.” He pauses; “I actually think Modern Life Is War were one of the best bands in the world. They were always doing their own thing. That last record was mind-blowing, I think it was their best record – the music and the lyrics, it all just came together. That doesn’t take away from everything else they did either.” He goes on to explain that he is very picky about hardcore these days, but maintains that all the bands he has mentioned keep him excited about being involved in hardcore, regardless of whether they are personal friends or not.
Flynn also shows a lot of passion for music outside of the hardcore-bubble. “I listen to a lot of folk music and country. I have been listening to a lot of R.L. Burnside and Muddy Waters. I like old Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly.” This eclectic taste in music doesn’t really come as a surprise when considering the poetic nature of Flynn’s lyrics. He continues; “My sister has always loved Tom Waits, and she’s got every record and it’s always been in the background of my life. The past two years I started listening to him a lot more.”
The central theme and point Flynn seems to revolve around in this interview is that of honesty, in any situation. He applies this viewpoint once again “The whole New York hipster scene is so lame and cliché. Here’s what happens; kids in New York or Boston or LA or wherever in the country, usually they’ve left a hardcore scene, they get jaded on everything and think it’s a good idea to go live in a closet. They’ve raised the cost of rent in New York and kicked the other people out to other spots of NY that aren’t so under the microscope as part of the city. So these kids have their parents pay for this tiny little closet and their false reality. It was like that in Boston for a little while, around 2000, there were all these hipsters and every girl looked like Amelie. It was so annoying - I hated that. That time sucked, especially in Boston. Everyone was just so arrogant.”
It seems apt that our 50-minute conversation seemed to land where it took off – at Flynn’s hometown. With the seismic rumblings of Parkway Drive still beneath us, we wrap it up. Pat Flynn seems content and free of any stress regarding misunderstandings or pigeonholing. His hyper-consciousness and acute observations on the cultural worlds we live in are affecting, and represent why Have Heart are named as such. Just as they played this night, so has Pat Flynn spoken earnestly and energetically about those things close to his.
Check out the 2009 tour dates and go see this band, or kick yourself in the head;
May 20 - Perth, Rosemount Hotel
May 21 - Perth, YMCA HQ
May 22 - Adelaide, Underground
May 23 - Melbourne, The Arthouse
May 24 - Melbourne, The Castle
May 27 - Canberra, Tuggeranong Youth Centre
May 28 - Sydney, Annandale Hotel
May 29 - Sydney, The Fitz St Ives
May 30 - Brisbane, Princess Theatre
May 31 - Byron Bay High School
*All photos taken from band's Myspace, www.myspace.com/haveheart (with permission) and Bridge9.com
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