By Jason Schreurs
(Photos by Shawn Scallen)
The ‘90s emo-hardcore scene was an explosion of angsty bands with overtly political lyrics and lead screamers who frequently rolled around on the floors of brightly lit youth centres and community halls. Those of us who were part of that scene, despite its ambient shortcomings, hold a very dear place in our hearts for it. It’s where we grew up, learned about the world around us and met some of our dearest friends. One band from that scene that provided a different musical aesthetic, and is one of the few that have stood the test of time musically, is Ottawa’s Shotmaker.
Delivering a rhythmic, driving sound that culminated perfectly on 1996’s Mouse Ear [Forget-Me-Not], which we recently named one of punk/hardcore’s all-time most underrated albums, the three guys who made up Shotmaker found that sweet spot where playing music as a collective became almost effortless.
In a ‘90s emo-hardcore scene where a lot of bands didn’t pass the bullshit detector, it’s unfathomable that Shotmaker aren’t widely considered one of the genre’s most honourable bands. And, so we honour them here, by finally doing them justice with a proper look at perhaps the best punk/hardcore band ever with so few Google search results (try searching them, it’s pitiful).
We separately interviewed ex-Shotmaker drummer/vocalist Matt Deline and ex-bassist/vocalist Nick Pye about the band that they literally grew up in between 1993 and 1996, and what they left behind when they broke up.
The story of Shotmaker begins in the early ‘90s with Deline and guitarist/vocalist Tim McKeough playing in a funk/punk band called Herbal Scream when they first met the younger Pye. When Herbal Scream’s bass player left, Deline and McKeough approached Pye, just 15 at the time, about starting a new band, and Shotmaker was born.
Tell me about the beginning…
Deline: Tim and I did a band prior to Shotmaker and that was our first foray into music, so we learned how to play in that band. Nick, at the time, was a very good friend of ours who would hang out with us and come to shows, and we all came from Belleville [small town in Ontario, Canada], so there wasn’t a lot of people to play music with who were into the same stuff that we were into. So, that first band ended when the bass player quit, and Tim and I literally asked Nick the night our bass player quit if he would want to start a band.
How did the band start?
Pye: I went around to all of the Herbal Scream shows and when their bass player left I entered the spot. At that time we had a new direction of hardcore and we knew where we wanted to go as a band. When they were starting out, Herbal Scream was kind of like a funk/punk band and we took it more seriously and took it to the next level.
So you were only 15 when you started the band?
Pye: I was. I was the youngest. I was 15 when we went on our first US tour. So I turned 16 the night we played Gilman Street in Berkeley. And I think I was 19 when we stopped, and I moved to Toronto right after that. Tim was a bit older. Our band was really our way to escape Belleville, so Tim moved to Ottawa to start university and I was still in high school, then I moved to Ottawa as well and transferred to a school there and started living on my own at 16. So Tim must have been two or three years older than me, and then Matt was significantly older, maybe five or six years. So Matt must have been in his early twenties.
You mentioned knowing what direction you guys wanted to go in. What was that direction?
Pye: It was more of a shared consciousness and less of us really explaining it to each other. So we were exchanging music with each other and we responded to different things. It always had a heavier vein, so we were into bands like The Jesus Lizard and Swiz, more of a heavier melodic music and we just sort of understood that was the direction we wanted to go in, as opposed to when we they were starting out and just learning how to play their instruments. So we didn’t really talk about it; we just understood that we wanted to take the music more seriously.
When you started Shotmaker, did you talk about what sort of direction you’d like to go in, or how it might be different than your previous band?
Deline: No, I wouldn’t say there was ever really a talk about a direction musically. With the first band we were all still learning how to play and learning how to write a song, as ridiculous as some of the songs were in that first band, and with Shotmaker was an extension of that, too, where we were still learning. We were all pretty young, so were really just trying to figure out how to play instruments, and it wasn’t like we had a direction of a sound we wanted to do. It’s just when you put the three of us together, what came out is what came out. And the sound definitely did evolve through the process of the band to where it ended up.
Do you think the funk/punk elements that they brought from the previous band, and your style of bass playing, helped to set Shotmaker apart?
Pye: Yeah, for sure. I wasn’t really into that style of music, so when I joined those guys the tone of the band became a lot heavier and more rumbling. I wouldn’t say darker, just heavier. So I think my influence was definitely a louder, fuzzier, heavier influence.
Did being brand new to your instruments, and what Nick brought in with his bass playing, help make the band unique?
Deline: Yeah, absolutely. The bass player from our other band was pretty flashy; he did a lot of slap and pop and stuff like that. He sort of mastered his instrument quick. So when Nick came in he played more of a simple bass at the start, which Tim and I really liked, and his playing branched out from there and became what it was, which was a pretty driving force within the band with big, rhythmic bass lines and really crazy sounding bass. We were all just good friends and we were super excited to start something with Nick, and he was excited to have a band to play in. Oddly enough, I got my drums off Nick before I even started playing music. I think I traded him an old snowboard for a set of drums, and that was the set I played in Shotmaker.
Shotmaker kept recording new songs as they busily wrote them and they toured pretty steadily for the three and half years they were together. Their recorded output, documented on a double-album discography released in 2000 by Troubleman Unlimited, included three 7”s, two full-length albums, a split 12” with Maximillian Colby, compilation tracks, two unreleased songs, as well as a demo tape which wasn’t included on the discography. By the time ‘96’s Mouse Ear dropped, the band was barely recognizable from their earlier demos; now a serrated, rhythmic feral animal with sinewy riffs and finesse in their playing that came from all of that steady playing and practicing.
Through the time you spent in the band, did you surprise yourself with how much you were progressing in such a short time?
Pye: At that time, we just lived for the band, so we were rehearsing at least three days a week and trying to play live every weekend. So we always ready for touring, even in the early years. So I don’t think we were focusing so much on the amount of material we were putting out, or the changes in our sound; it was just happening organically. And it happened so quickly; we were only together for about three and a half years, which is a really short time. You don’t really have time to reflect; you’re just in it and you’re doing it and you’re just letting it happen.
You were only a band for three and a half years. Were you guys surprised at how far you came in that time?
Deline: Yeah, I think so. It’s funny thinking back on it now. I think we did four big tours and then we used to do a lot of shorter ones… I think when you’re younger, three and a half years seems longer than when you’re older. Now it seems like hardly any time, but when we were younger that’s what we did and we delved pretty deep into it. It seemed pretty natural at the time, and touring was a huge part of it, too. When we first went on tour we were only a band for, hell, I want to say four or five months. Tim and I had bought a van with the intention of touring with our old band, and when that band broke up and we started Shotmaker, our intention was to tour that summer, so we figured we’re still gonna tour, so we put out the first Shotmaker 7” and went into the States for six weeks, which at the time, for a Canadian band, there weren’t a lot of bands doing that, except for maybe Sparkmarker on the west coast. It was a ridiculous, hilarious tour and obviously no one knew who we were, but we just wanted to do it.
Mouse Ear is one of my all-time favourite albums. Did you feel like Shotmaker was reaching a peak when you put it out in 1996?
Deline: I wouldn’t even say I felt like we were reaching a peak, because again it just felt like a natural progression from the other records. As an album within our catalog, it’s a nice one to have things end on because I do think, dynamically, it’s the strongest. There’s more going on in that album. I don’t listen to the records much, I’ll occasionally break them out and when I do, and I’m pretty proud of all of them and I think they all stand up, but Mouse Ear is the one where we explored more dynamics. The Crayon Club LP kind of beats you over the head; I really like it, but it’s pretty intense. When we wrote Mouse Ear, there wasn’t an intention that it would be the last record we’d write, it was just the songs we had at the time. I believe if there was a record after that, it probably would have been in the same direction, but maybe out there a bit more.
What did you think of Mouse Ear after it was first recorded?
Pye: With everything we ever recorded, I always felt pretty disappointed. That album, I do feel it’s our most accomplished album. I never felt the same passion for the records as I did from playing live. I don’t think we were a terribly good band in the studio. We worked with decent people but we never really found our sound in the studio. And now, in retrospect, we would have had to take a different approach in the studio altogether. We were too full on to take that approach, so we’d record with all of our amps really loud and there’d be a lot of bleed into all of the microphones. We didn’t really record in a way to allow more control and get the right tones and sounds. So was I happy when I heard it? I was the most happy out of any album with that one, but I still feel like we were a really hard band to capture in the studio.
It’s definitely a harrowing album. It’s not one that you put on when you want to feel good.
Pye: [Laughs] That’s probably more my influence, too. I think I was maybe the darker one in the group.
It’s a test to listen to. And it’s one of all-time favourites, but you really have to be prepared for it. And that’s maybe why it’s so good; it’s pure emotion. And as far as that genre of music goes, that’s why it sits up at the top.
Pye: I agree that it has a really heavy, emotive charge. I do just wish that we took a little more time with things, and that comes with just being older and looking back in hindsight. Money was always an issue, so we always had to rush the recordings. You hear about people taking two weeks in the studio to make an album, which is nothing, and you’re like, ‘Wow, the luxury!’ We probably recorded that album in three days, including mixing. Think three days versus two weeks. We really could have finessed the sound, and not to make things different, but just finding the right tones. We never found our live sound on record.
The little information online about Shotmaker, there’s always reference to the lyrics and how they were loose and open to interpretation, but I believe you guys had some very specific messages in mind when you wrote songs, especially the ones on Mouse Ear. They were personal messages, probably, but there are certain lines on the album that have haunted me over the years. What were you guys talking about on this album and what were some of the themes running through it?
Pye: We all wrote our own lyrics and our own songs, but for me I was 19 years old and the themes that were going through my mind were just being in the world and just how strange and isolating it was. How does one function in the world? It’s a very terrifying time when you’re that age and you’re thinking, “What do I do? How do I function? Where is my place?” There are all of these questions that you have. So, for me, the band was a really good outlet for those themes of isolation and… just angst. Feeling pissed off and fed up, but not in an angry way, in a more introspective way. So trying to think about those themes, rather than react to them.
Can you tell me what the songs that you wrote for the band were about?
Deline: I guess the lyrical messages weren’t right out there in the open, but there was a spirit of being young and rallying against the system and there’s a bit of that in there. I know there’s a song that was written about an article about people planting bombs at abortion clinics, and the song had to do with a woman’s right to choose and the importance of that. So there were some songs like that. We weren’t a super political band, in any sense, but we definitely had a DIY spirit to us. The politics of the band weren’t like Propagandhi or a band like that, and I love that band, but we weren’t right out there like that. I’d say we had more personal politics in our songs.
All good things come to an end, as they say. Unfortunately, for Shotmaker, that end came rather suddenly, and less than four years after the band began. And while Mouse Ear is a fitting swan song, it’s still tough to see a band fizzle out right when they seemed to be at the height of their creative momentum.
Deline: It’s funny; I don’t think there was any intention really to break the band up. We had been doing it for a short period of time, but pretty intensely. My first daughter was born close to the end of the band, so I had that going on. When we split off we were in Ottawa and Nick moved to Toronto. Our intention was to take a break from the band; it wasn’t really to end it and then it just ended up being one of things where we took a break and it never ended up starting up again. Tim and I went on and did another band after Shotmaker called 30 Second Motion Picture, but it was very short-lived.
Pye: When I moved to Toronto, the band broke up. It was a good time for the band to break up, too. Something changed; you just felt it, and it was just a different band. It just didn’t feel authentic to what it was before, so it was a perfect time to change it.
Deline has played in a few bands since Shotmaker, as has Pye, but both of them agree that none of those other bands were quite the same as them playing together. Hopes for a reunion show or tour have been dashed by the fact that the band broke up nearly 20 years ago and, well, life happened since then.
Do you still keep in touch with Nick and Tim?
Deline: I haven’t spoken to Nick and Tim in a long time. I do occasionally email Nick and we’ve chatted that way. And I’ve messaged them both on Facebook here and there. It would be great to hook up with those guys again; I would really love to see them at some point in my life and I’m sure our paths will someday cross.
Do you foresee ever playing with them again?
Deline: There have been a couple of moments of kind of attempts at maybe thinking about playing together again [laughs], but they’ve sort of fizzled out. My kids are older now, so I have ample time to do things, but I know Tim has a little one and he’s in New York, and Nick’s in Toronto, so logistically it would be hard.
Do you think it would be possible to get back to that same place you were at when you were teenagers?
Deline: That’s one thing I’ve thought about. I know a lot of bands get back together and do reunions, and I have nothing against that at all. People come out and they like to see it, but as far as being someone in one of those reunion bands, you do wonder if you could bring the same sort of elements to the songs that you brought when you were younger. Would you be able to do the songs justice? But I’m sure the three of us getting back together, once you got through the first bit, it would be like riding a bike again. I do feel like that band wrote songs pretty effortlessly. I don’t feel like we struggled to write songs and the three of us connected pretty well. I’ve played in other bands where it’s been a battle to write songs sometimes, so I definitely look back on Shotmaker where we had so many ideas, and the way Tim and Nick played, they both had really interesting styles, so for me it was easy to play around them.
When you think back on Shotmaker, what do you remember most fondly?
Deline: Just meeting people and hanging out, really. We were very young and I have so many memories of that; just being young. It’s almost 20 years ago when we started and your life moves on in different directions, and we all came from this small Canadian town, but being able to go out when you’re young and see the States and your own country, and just meeting people and feeling like you’re part of a community with that underground, DIY spirit, and just being creative and playing music… it’s been said by a lot of people who play hardcore or punk rock music, but discovering that music gave me the opportunity to do it. I had no idea how to play music when I started, and Shotmaker had a huge impact on my life. Without it, I wouldn’t play music today. When I listen back to it, it holds up pretty well, so that makes me proud. You don’t listen to it and think, “Ooh, that was of a certain time,” you know?
The scant amount of footage of Shotmaker on YouTube captures the band perfectly. Pye lurches around his bass, screaming into a sloppy microphone that constantly allude him by pointing downward against his force. Deline seems to be playing himself out of his skin, feet darting sideways with each snare hit and eyes bugging out and rolling back in his head as he bellows his feelings. It’s obvious that the three members of Shotmaker revelled in playing live, but not for reasons of showmanship; instead this was an emotional, communal bloodletting. Pure scream therapy.
Do you remember what you used to think about when you were playing live and you looked out into the audience and saw people getting so into your music?
Pye: It’s strange, because when I’m on stage something happens where I just shut everything else off and I just play. So I didn’t necessarily think about the crowd; you definitely feel their energy. So I wasn’t playing for them, I was playing with them, with their energy, and the other guys. Nothing really was going through my head, just the music and that feeling and the organic nature of that process, and that whole event. Just the event was going through my mind.
Do you ever go back and watch the few Shotmaker YouTube clips that out there?
Pye: I do, I do sometimes. I get nostalgic sometimes and think, “Oh my god, I’ve had a few different lives.”
We’re probably sitting there watching the same videos.
Pye: Well, I think there are only about six, so…
When you think back on those three-and-a-half years in Shotmaker, and it sounds like it was a bit of whirlwind, what do you remember most fondly?
Pye: Being in the van and driving with the guys, and the camaraderie and the friendship and the jokes. It taught me so much about my life. I really grew up in a van, and it was just such a rich experience. Being 15 on the road for the first time with these two guys who are your best friends, and just experiencing everything with them. That’s what I remember most about the band.
Do you still keep in touch with them?
Pye: We all have pretty different lives. Tim’s a writer in New York and we don’t keep in touch all of the time, but we’re good friends and when I’m in New York we’ll go out and have a coffee or a beer. But Matt and I, not so much, and I wish that wasn’t the case, but I’m just being brutally honest with you. We’ve have been asked to do reunion tours and things like that, but I’ve always said no because it’s a really connected space when you play music and you have to really be in a good place with everyone in the band.
How hard would it be for you to play these songs at this point?
Pye: Oh, it would be easy. I write music for films that I make, and for other peoples’ films, and I played in a few bands after Shotmaker but it didn’t have that same sort of connection. So I just stopped pursuing playing with people.
Do you think you could still scream like you used to?
Pye: Yeah, probably. I hope so, yeah. I have a weird voice.
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