Kevin Mahon is a drummer. Known as the original drummer for Against Me! Whether with a bucket or a snare drum, he’s been putting it out there and keeping it real. He’s currently living in Brooklyn and is playing drums in forgetters.
At the time of this interview, forgetters was Kevin Mahon, Blake Schwarzenbach and Caroline Paquita. They were in Olympia, WA on tour with Street Eaters and played that night at Le Voyeur. The interview was conducted at the studios of KAOS 89.3 fm on the campus of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.
There are photos from their shows in Seattle and Olympia by Frank and more awesome photos by Ryan OLYWA, too.
[interview transcript]
I’m Kevin from forgetters. And I’m just gonna tell a quick story or two.. Well, one is a story the other is something else.
I guess it was November of 2009. Forgetters went to Austin to play the Fun Fun Fun Fest fun, which we were really excited about because Mission of Burma was playing, and Melt Banana, and some other really great bands. And the people that brought us out there got us this fancy hotel. They got us a bottle of Makers Mark, bought us dinner… It was all very, very nice.
The first night we stayed there, we all had a bit of whiskey and were sleeping really hard. Blake and Caroline were snoring. They sounded like freight trains. And early in the morning, Blake was like halfway awake. He opens his eyes and kind of looks at me, even though he was like still asleep, and slugs me in the face! Like not hard, but hard enough to where it hurt . And then he woke up and just apologized and went back to sleep. Whenever I bring it up still to this day he gets uncomfortable because… Well, he won’t actually even admit it. But he gets uncomfortable when I bring it up because I think somewhere deep down inside of him, he actually wanted to punch me in the face. I don’t know what for.
I know that’s not the funniest story but it’s a story.
The other thing I was going to bring up.
I was on the porch just a few days ago with my bandmates and this very nice man, Joshua. We were talking about music and I just sort of brought up how I excited I was about the Brooklyn scene. All the different style of bands that are coming out of there and just how inspiring it is to be involved in music right now. And he said, “Why is it that you so inspired at this point?” He’s a pretty thoughtful guy.
And I said, “Well, I think a lot of it has to do with record labels kind of being, not obsolete, but at least in this band’s experience, unnecessary to this point.” You know, the incentive to start a band… there’s really no fast way to make money or even a living off of it in an easy way. So I’m really inspired by people that make music because there is this open playing field where the incentive to make music is to be creative. You just make music to make music and you don’t have posers, just trying to make a buck. People are doing it because they love it. Like a poet, there’s no money in it. If you’re going to do it you should be doing it for the right reasons.
So yeah, those are my two monologues. Sorry if they were boring, and that’s all I got. Thank you.
[end transcript]
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forgetters are from Brooklyn, NY. This interview took place on January 31st, 2011.