Post-hardcore veterans Chavez never broke up, but it’s a common misconception that they did. It’s an understandable error: The last album they released was 1996’s nervy, angular Ride the Fader (that’s not including 2006’s compilation, Better Days Will Haunt You), and they’ve only hit the stage sporadically since. But guitarist/vocalist Matt Sweeney, guitarist Clay Tarver, drummer James Lo and bassist Scott Marshall promise that they never officially parted ways. “Life sort of took over and we all started saying yes to other projects here and there,” Tarver tells Paste over the phone. “I started screenwriting, Matt and James each had their own things and Scotty had a film career to pursue. But we never quit playing and we always got along.”
In the ‘90s, Tarver, who also co-executive produces HBO’s hit satire Silicon Valley, was only interested in performing when he and the rest of the band felt like it, as opposed to touring constantly like so many other acts do. “We’d all been in bands that had toured their asses off, and it sort of made a difference,” he says. “But not really. We made this decision [to play less] without even really talking about it that much. At a certain point, we couldn’t control anything, so we were like, ‘Let’s just do the things we want to do.’ It was almost like the less we played, the more people liked us.”
Now, two decades and a handful of benefit shows later, Chavez is getting ready to release their first EP in two decades, a three-song set called Cockfighter, which drops on January 13 via Matador and comprises material written in different rehearsal spaces over the years. “Obviously we’re insanely slow,” laughs Matt Sweeney, who Paste reached out to in a separate phone call. “We write together in this kind of committee. The drummer has to like what I do, and I have to like what the drummer does. The band is meant to be a band that comes up with material together. So when we’re not together, everything takes a long time.”
Tarver and Sweeney delve further into Chavez’s non-reunion below, where they touch on balancing different projects (Tarver’s ongoing involvement with Silicon Valley; Sweeney’s collaboration schedule — he’s performed and recorded with Josh Homme and Iggy Pop, Eagles of Death Metal and Run the Jewels, among many others), their relationship to nostalgia and whether or not they’ll record a full-length.
Paste: What did you initially set out to do as Chavez?
Matt Sweeney: I think we wanted to make interesting rock music. Clay’s good with metaphors, and he would always talk about turning corners in interesting ways, having set ups and payoffs that are interesting—things get revealed in a way that’s sort earned. We definitely had a lot of things that we wanted to do. We were talking about how a lot of ‘70s rock had a grand, dark, evil mystery we were tapped to. For example, in [Blue Öyster Cult’s] “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” there’s that big dramatic fucking thing in the middle of it, like in that Cheap Trick song “Dream Police.” These are all influences that were very untrendy at the time and still are. The best thing about making rock music with some kind of intention, as opposed to being weird for the sake of being weird, like, why make a rock song? Let’s try to figure that out, which is why it takes for fucking ever for us to come up with something that we all can concur is an interesting thing.
Clay Tarver: I’ll give you the long answer, which is: When we started the band and were really active, we weren’t naïve. We’d all been in bands before. In fact, we were sort of the opposite—we were all like, “Okay, we want to do this the right way, and we don’t want to cheat, and either people are going to like us or they’re not. But the main thing is we do what we want to do.” And to be honest, I think we really felt like, “Oh, this is exactly the music we wanted to make.” We really, really did it. Some people responded, but for the most part it was, like, a lot of head-scratching, which was weird and a little bit frustrating, but also that’s what you get, I think, when you take a risk. I mean, everyone wants, when they go on their creative projects, to get standing ovations and people giving you warm cookies and saying how great you are and giving you a medal, and stuff. But it was weird. It all made perfect sense to us and was very emotional music, and grounded, and sometimes it was hard to get that some people just didn’t quite see it that way.
Paste: So what led to that decision to record as Chavez again?
Tarver: A friend of ours had cancer, so we played a benefit show and that was really rewarding, and then the manager begged us to play this thing in Las Vegas, which went really, really well, and we had a blast. We’d had all of these songs that we never recorded, and we kept playing, and we kept writing songs over the years, and we were like, “Why don’t we just record ‘em?” We played ATP in London, and then Asbury Park and Primavera and stuff, and then at a certain point, we were like, “Let’s not play a show until we have new music out,” and that’s sort of where we left off.
I’m sure it seems like we’re reuniting and trying to recapture the magic, but the honest truth is, it was one of those things where we had all this music—and we have a bunch of other songs, too—but we just decided to do three songs at a time for now, and just follow our own path.
Sweeney: We never did a third record and just needed time and space. Clay especially had been pushing for something to happen for years and years. Then every time some block of time was available, it would [become] unavailable, often due to Clay’s work schedule. He’d be like, “Okay let’s block out this time and I’ll come out and write a bunch of songs,” and he’d be like, “Agh, I just got asked to work on Silicon Valley” or insert whatever job you’d be crazy not to do. Finally, Clay wrote this very impassioned email and was like, “I would die unhappy if we don’t do a third record.” So then we started working on stuff and once again our time got decimated to the point that we’re like, “Why don’t we just go in and record three songs, then we’ll do more if we can?”