In Conversation: Kevin Seconds
As the singer of 7 Seconds, he gave us hope against hardcore nihilism and championed community like few others. Forty years in, Kevin Seconds still has so much to give.
I was fourteen years old the first time I saw 7 Seconds, so when I tell you they altered the course of my life, I really can’t be more literal. As one of the key architects of hardcore punk as we know it, Kevin Seconds contributed a unique point of view that spoke for kids like me: Kids who were angry, but not cynical. Kids who were hardened by circumstance, but sensitive by nature. In 7 Seconds, I found a band who centered community, who were aggressively inclusive, and who actively worked to expand the seemingly limited parameters of early hardcore music and thought. In Kevin, I also found a model of evolution. 7 Seconds were there when I needed my hardcore loud and fast in 1987, and they were there in 1995 when I started wondering what a band called Texas is the Reason could sound like. They have always been there.
It’s truly remarkable, then, that Kevin and I only met for the first time this year. Our rapport was instant, and I wasn’t surprised to see his candor and insight truly light up a room. When I asked him to sit down with me for Anti-Matter, it felt like I’d been waiting 35 years to have this conversation.
I don't know if you've looked at the site yet, but I wrote an essay a few weeks ago that I called “Young ‘Til I’m Not.”
KEVIN: I haven’t read it. I like that though! [laughs]
Lately I’ve been really thinking about how when I first started going to hardcore shows, I had no concept of what a future would look like for me at this age. You didn’t see 40- or 50-year-old people at shows in 1988. So I used that song title to riff on because I felt like, among many people, it still inspires this concept of youth as some sort of idealized state. Forty years later, what crosses your mind when you think about that song?
KEVIN: It’s one of those things that does pop up frequently. Obviously, when I wrote it, I was 21 years old or something like that, and I was feeling very caught up in the idea that I did not have a great childhood. I was raised by a single mom with three kids, the welfare system, a dad that didn’t bother being a part of our lives. It was rough. We were always homeless and staying with friends and living out of cars. I didn’t realize it back then, but because I was the oldest male in the family, it felt like it was up to me to be the little man of the family and help my mom. The minute I could get a job, I was giving her money to help with rent. I did it because I loved my family, but I also started to feel a little resentful. I felt like I was robbed of my youth. I had to learn how to think adult-like things early on, and I hated that.
At one point, I wanted to celebrate what was left of my youth, and that happened to coincide with when punk rock came into my life. Everything kind of clashed and I said, “I’m going to celebrate the youth that I lost!” Over the years people have asked, “Isn’t it embarrassing to get up on stage now at 62 and say, ‘I’m gonna stay young until I die’?” There are times that I go, “Boy, if I had a chance to rewrite things or maybe reword things, it would be kind of fun now,” but I wouldn’t do that. I think it’s important to leave it as it is. I do still believe in the idea, and by that idea, I always meant what’s in my heart and what’s in my head.
In that essay I talk about how, without older people in the scene, there was no sense of a hardcore future back then—in which case being “young until I die” seemed like our only choice. What was your sense of the future when you were writing that song?
KEVIN: Well, keep in mind that I came up right when you turned eighteen and you were required to register for the draft, and Russia was going to bomb us at any minute, and… you know, everything was built on paranoia and fear. I had a mom that was an educated, liberal, hippie woman—bless her heart—and she never did it intentionally, but she was always feeding that paranoia a little bit. It didn’t help that my dad was a cop, and so probably when she divorced him she had even more of an anti-authoritarian view [laughs]. But I didn’t have a sense of a positive future.
I think I wanted to get my mindset out of this shitty childhood that I had just experienced and I wanted to be hopeful about something. With everything that was happening in the world, and the way people came at each other and hated each other, I just didn’t really have a sense that any of us were going to have a future. I just thought this was all going to blow up into a big ball of nothingness. So I think the positivity that people credit us for, I think that was just me trying to make myself believe that there had to be something worth fighting for. I think that’s what it was more than anything else.
Did you feel like there was a true precedent for that kind of positivity in punk? Because I always felt the positivity that 7 Seconds peddled was very unique. Obviously, you can talk about “PMA” or something, but I don’t think that was the same thing at all. Was there someone before you that you were drawing from or was it really coming from that experience?
KEVIN: It was really coming from that experience. I mean, of course I love Bad Brains. The PMA thing, though… I love the concept, but I just get annoyed by what some people would now call toxic positivity. It drives me fucking nuts. The energy and the fury of punk rock in general is what did it for me. It just gave me this exhilarating feeling. There had to have been some bands who triggered that sort of “happy feel good” or whatever, but I can’t really think of any at the moment. People say, “Well, you guys were influenced by Minor Threat,” and I’d say, “Of course,” but I didn’t see Minor Threat as being that positive of a band…
When I was brainstorming for this conversation, I actually wrote a note here that says: “Positivity isn’t something we connected with early ‘80s hardcore. Even Minor Threat were kind of jerks about it” [laughs]. So it’s kind of funny that you say that.
KEVIN: I get it all the time. Because people will compare the two bands from that era and they’ll put in the whole positive-core thing, but I never looked at them as being that positive. They kind of were little young jerks, really [laughs].
I’ve always differentiated you in an interesting kind of way. In my scene—and even among the people I hung out with from New York, like the Youth of Today guys—“Kevin Seconds” was always talked about like this big-brother figure. Even when you talk about [7 Seconds bassist] Steve [Youth], you always refer to him as “my little brother.” It’s literally never “my brother” or even “my younger brother.” Which is to say that the vibe that I’ve always received from 7 Seconds was very nurturing. And it wasn’t just nurturing on a personal level, but it was nurturing on a community level.
KEVIN: Absolutely.
So having told me earlier about how you were the man of the house, and how you were probably looking after your siblings while your mother was working, do you feel like there was a sense of being a steward or a caretaker in your personality even back then?
KEVIN: I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it like that! I had to learn that role, but I suppose that could be. And it’s funny you say that because I hear that from Toby [Morse] from H2O all the time—like, “That’s my big brother!” Maybe that’s part of my thing [laughs]. The community part, though, is enormous. Even when I was younger, we just wanted it so badly. There were just a handful of us, really; our little scene was maybe twenty people just loving this music. We were all writing bands and saying, “Please come and play Reno!” But we had no idea what that meant. We had no idea how to make a show happen. D.O.A. were the first band to take us up on it. They said, “Can you pay us 200 bucks?” And we were like, “Sure, why not!” [laughs]. The best part of it—other than them just being astonishingly amazing at the time—is that after the show, they stayed at the house where they played and we all hung out all night and just talked. They were just the sweetest people. Nothing seemed too dumb to ask them. They were willing to share information, and they’d already gone out touring. They were friends with Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys. Just getting to know them opened up this whole world for us—these slightly younger kids who were trying to expand this community thing that was brewing.
I remember Joey Shithead talking about the idea of community, the idea of a scene. And I said, “Yeah, that’s what we need to do! We need to build a scene!” The more there are of us, the more we can get stuff done. That idea just turned me on so much. I didn’t necessarily want to be part of a gang or a group. I just wanted to connect with likeminded people and make something happen in this really dreary, depressive Reno. It was such a terrible place to be a kid.
Did you experience much blowback from the positive messaging of those first albums? Did people think there was such a thing as being too positive?
KEVIN: Oh, for sure. Do you remember [Matador Records founder] Gerard Cosloy? Way before he was doing the record label, he was a fanzine guy, a writer. And that’s back when Steve Albini and all those guys were writing. It was kind of this New York hip kind of thing, and they would always shit on the younger hardcore bands. They loved X and the Weirdos and Germs and stuff like that. They also loved Minor Threat. But we got a lot of flak. I remember at one point somebody called us “the Beach Boys of hardcore.” It hurt our feelings, but it was also like, we had finally gotten to where we wanted to be—which was in a van, traveling around the country, playing shows. And there was enough love from the kids that we didn’t care that much. We weren’t playing for writers. We were playing for the kids that grew up like us, who were looking for something a little less jaded.
The other thing I think about when I think about 7 Seconds—maybe even more than the positivity—is that, for me, I always look at your lyrics as being almost hyper-empathetic. Like, when Joe Nelson at Trust asked me to say something for the liner notes of the Walk Together, Rock Together reissue, I knew he’d ask me about “Regress No Way” because, I’m sort of like, “the gay hardcore person” [laughs].
KEVIN: The ambassador of gay hardcore! [laughs]
I’m cool with it! But I remember telling him how the first time I heard “Regress No Way” [in 1986], two things crossed my mind: One was, I cannot like this song too much or I am basically going to come out of the closet [laughs]. But the other thing was this feeling of, like, who is this guy? Nobody has ever said this so explicitly. There were a lot of songs about accepting people for who they are, but you literally use the word “gay.” It’s unambiguous. So to me, there was almost this superhero aspect to it, where I thought you must have been taking bullets for this. Were you?
KEVIN: Not as much as you’d think. I always thought it was just because there were so many words crammed in there that some people didn’t necessarily pick out the word “gay” [laughs]. But I’ve always had this little bit of regret about that line—“To me, it all comes down to choice / Why fight? It's just a waste of time”—and I’ve changed it since then.
My mom’s brother, my uncle Bud, was openly gay. And for holidays, he would bring our Uncle Tony over with him. Uncle Tony was his partner. And they would just come over and bring us toys and make us laugh and they were great. I loved him. I also loved that my Uncle Bud was also a singer. He was a DJ, hosting these cool old time radio shows that he used to do live. He was just such an interesting guy.
At an early age, I remember my mom took us to a family gathering with my grandparents, and I asked, “How come Uncle Bud never comes?” And she said, “Your Grandpa Bud doesn’t speak to Uncle Bud.” She explained it to me that when he came out as being gay, his own father disowned him and admonished him and did everything he could to make his life miserable. It just broke my heart. I love my grandfather, but I did feel empathy and it just tore me apart. I never understood it. I remember feeling very weird when my young friends would make homophobic comments. Like, I didn’t know how to take it on. I wouldn’t say anything. So I don’t really know what I was thinking or why I thought it would be OK to try to put this in a song other than it’s just how I felt, I knew it was how my brother felt, and I kind of thought it would make my mom proud, maybe.
But then you had to be somewhat self-conscious when you went in and wrote “Man Enough to Care” [in 1986]. You had to feel like you were doubling down, right?
KEVIN: No. And I’ll tell you why. Because by then, I actually had a couple of friends who came out to me. My dear friend Chris, we’re still good friends. 7 Seconds was playing a show with TSOL at the University of Reno, and he was driving me around, putting flyers up. We got in the car and he said, “Hey Kev. I have to tell you something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while. I’m gay.” I was really keen on not wanting to be shocked or not wanting to be freaked out—and I wasn’t freaked out! I just didn’t know what to say. I was like, “That’s cool” [laughs]. But I saw what he went through. I had a couple of friends who were not even sure who they were, who just wanted to do their own thing, and they were just fucked with. Not just by the outside world, but by people within the scene. I hated it. So every chance I could, I would speak out against it and let people know where I stood on it. This was all about our little scene; it had nothing to do with what was going on outside of Reno. We just wanted to make it very clear that kind of bullshit was not tolerated here.
“Man Enough to Care” was a coming of age thing for myself. New Wind was such a transitional record. So many things were happening in our young lives. My brother was the first band member to have a child. Things were changing. Steve left for a while, Troy was out for a while. We were trying new band members. Different musical influences came in—the U2 stuff, the Cure stuff, R.E.M. or whatever. We were all growing up. It was the first time I think I felt like an adult, and I just wanted to open up lyrically to talk about things we hadn’t really covered.
In a lot of ways the story of 7 Seconds is the story of evolution. To go from Skins, Brains, and Guts to Soulforce Revolution—that trajectory is kind of insane [laughs].
KEVIN: People have asked me, “When you look back now, do you think it was a mistake to follow-up Walk Together, Rock Together with New Wind?” No, not at all! I love those records. I only wish we could have recorded them differently, maybe with people who had a better understanding of what we were trying to do. We were always going into studios with these rock dudes who made great records, but when it came to us, I don’t think they knew what to do—and we didn’t know what to do. I was terrified in the studio.
Does having the name “Kevin Seconds” make you take things more personally when 7 Seconds is criticized?
KEVIN: That’s a really good question! I don’t know if it’s the name as much as it’s just that I’ve always been here in this band. Everybody else has left; everybody else has come and gone. But I was always like, “I’ll hold it down. Steve, I know you’re going to come back. Bobby, I know you’ll come back!” I haven’t taken that much personally, to be honest with you. I was talking to my brother about this the other day. I’ve thought, “Maybe I should just drop this name,” but then it was like, “Well, you’re still Steve Youth. That’s gotta put some strain on you there” [laughs]. We laugh about it. It goes back to the “young until I die” thing. It drives Sammy [Siegler] crazy, he’ll be like, “Maybe don’t bring up your age on stage on so much,” but I’m like, fuck that! If we’re having a great show and the four of us are looking at each other and we know we’re having a great show, it’s like, I want everyone to know that I’m 62 years old, motherfucker!
OK, since we’re speaking about being older, maybe I can get into this. The other day on Instagram, you posted something about driving a Lyft. It was an overall positive post, but my neurons started firing when you talked about “being nearly unemployable after years of being a touring punk rock musician with no discernible job experience, etc. etc.” I’ve been thinking a lot more about how we really didn’t account for the fact that we’re all going to get old and how we’re all going to need some protections that we didn’t realize we’d need when we were 20 or 30 years old. The joke I’ve made to my friends is that Fugazi kind of fucked us [laughs]. And I say that because it’s almost like they created this kind of unreachable idea of what “ethical” touring looks like and everybody else was just trying to sneak in under the bar.
KEVIN: I’ve had this conversation with Ian himself about this! I’m like, “You bastard!” And he’s like, “What? It was a good idea, right?” [laughs]
Reading that post, I started wondering about your own relationship with money, as it pertains to the band. Is there ever a moment where 2023 Kevin Seconds looks back at 1986 Kevin Seconds and wonders, “Was I ethical to my future self?” Like, we can all afford to be super punk for certain parts of our lives, but then there are other parts of our lives where it’s really fucking hard to be “punk” in that way.
KEVIN: Absolutely. A few years back, I did this thing where—and I can’t talk about it too much because I signed a NDA for it—but a social media giant approached me about creating musical content for this new thing they were starting. They were trying to give YouTube a run for its money. But essentially, they paid me to write and record three songs every month. And I did this for almost three years. It was amazing. I used to make a joke like, “Man, back in the day when they had the Brill Building writers, and they would write all the songs? I would love to do that. I would love to sit in an office and write fucking songs!” [laughs]. I jumped at it. With the money they offered me, not only was I able to start my own little retail art gallery business, but it enabled me to breathe and to take care of stuff that I had to take care of. It enabled me to get quality healthcare, which I hadn’t given any thought to. It just helped things.
My wife Allyson was like, “You’re happy. You’re not stressing out about money.” That’s the biggest thing I stress out about because when I was a kid, I remember not having shit. And I remember as an adult, I said, whatever it takes. I’ve always got to be able to pay my bills and take care of shit. And for the most part, I have. You do let things slide—and I know countless musician friends who, when it comes to the healthcare thing, have said, “I don’t want to know if there’s something wrong because I don’t know what it’s going to cost.” Which is sad. But if I can take care of things and keep upright and keep my studio happening, then… I won’t say I’ll do anything—because I won’t. But I will definitely consider ways to keep the fire lit because it contributes not only to my physical health, but my mental health. It keeps me in the game. My biggest fear is losing the ability or the desire to create stuff.
Maybe this is the idealism of community that I have—which is partially your fault [laughs]—but how do we start thinking ahead about supporting the people in our community who have put their lives on hold to make these records that we’re telling them changed our lives?
KEVIN: People kind of are. Like, I sell artwork, and my sole means of doing it is just going on Instagram or Facebook and saying, “Hey, I’ve got paintings for sale.” And they sell. I mean, it’s fun art, I love it, and I’m happy to make these people happy. But I always think that were it not for my little community that I can always count on… Well, there aren’t many art galleries that are pounding on my door going, “You’re amazing! We’ve got to get you to New York!” [laughs].
I lean on my community, and I’ve done it more lately on an emotional level, like when things were very obvious that my wife and I were splitting up. She was staying somewhere else, and I just got online and said, “Hey, I know this is vague looking, and at some point we can talk about this, but I guess I’m just appreciating the people in my life.” And everyone reached out. Everyone came and said, “Hey, I hope you’re all right. Don’t kill yourself if that’s what you’re thinking. We love you. Let’s have coffee. Do you need money?” Everybody came, and that was all I really wanted to know. I didn’t need to take anybody up on anything. I just wanted to know that our community is still out there and got my back in a way. I realize how it came off, and I remember Jonah Matranga actually saying it was “a bold move.” But it’s not a bold move. It was the only move I had because I was just feeling this one night where I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wasn’t suicidal. I wasn’t looking to end anything. I knew the next day all it would take is seeing something that would inspire me to draw something and I’d be fine. But just at that moment, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m glad I did it.
So I think the community does give back, but who knows, if I become homeless at some point [laughs]… I still got that working class thing in me. Like, during COVID, I knew I couldn’t go out and play shows. I have my art, but it was like, man, I’m really screwed because I’ve spent 30 years in this band. I don’t have a great résumé. What does one do in two-thousand-whatever-it-was when they don’t have that? Well, one goes to work for Amazon. That’s what I did. And of course I got, “What is Kevin Seconds doing working at Amazon?” Well, give me a better idea for a job I can get. I’m fucking 60 years old, what do you want me to do? [laughs] I got a little upset at a few people because [they were acting] like I was destroying their image of their hero or something. But this is real life and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not afraid of it. I’m going to do what I have to do to survive. I learned how to do that, and I’m never going to give up on myself or give up on having a roof over my head and keeping my shit together. If I have to be a door-greeter at a fucking Walmart because that’s the only job I got, you best believe I’ll hate it, but I’ll do it.
That’s the type of thing that I think people need to be hearing and people need to be saying out loud. Like, what the fuck is going to ruin my image of Kevin Seconds? Kevin Seconds is a guy who needs to eat and he needs a home. That’s my image of Kevin Seconds.
KEVIN: It’s shocking to me because I thought the punk rock thing put us on that level of reality. I bought into that. When I would see these bands who were trying to create the mystique of being in a band, who didn’t want the curtain open, who didn’t want to show the boring and unsexy shit, I was like, “Let them see it! Let them know the reality of it!” I’m not going to run away from that. I'm not embarrassed by it. I don’t necessarily think it’s noble or brave, but I don’t have it in me to put on some kind of airs because it’s going to bum somebody out. Forget that. I don’t want to be desperate, and I don’t want to be hitting people up for favors or anything, but I know that if it comes down to it I will always find a way to make things work. In the times where I’ve had to try to raise money, I just try to offer something creative in return. Like, I needed a van a few years back and I couldn’t afford to get a van, but I needed to keep touring. So I just said, “Look, I’ve got music, I’ve got art, just buy this shit. Help me buy this fucking thing and I’ll make more of it” [laughs].
But also, it’s not like they’re just doing you a favor. We do this work and this work has value. I talk about this with friends all the time—how even the way we talk about our work is so self-deprecating. It’s like, “Oh, I just made an album. It’s pretty cool, I guess.” But in your mind, you’re actually like, “Oh my God, this album is everything to me” [both laughs]. It’s like we’re not even able to be honest about what the work means to us and what we hope it means to the world.
KEVIN: That’s it. And then when someone dies, when someone is gone, then there’s this, “OK, let’s go back and listen to all this great music!” I guess it’s the cycle of life and it is what it is. I’ve got a Bandcamp page with over 1,100 songs that really have never been heard by more than ten people, right? So I’ve actually said to my wife, “Look, I keep writing this music and it’s just stockpiled. Now, here’s the deal: When I die, everyone’s gonna go, ‘Man, he was a genius! He was incredible!’ [laughs]. And so what you’re gonna do is, you’re gonna release this stuff.” I have literally talked to key people, friends of mine that would know how to help her get it out there. Because at the very least, if she benefits—if somehow people buy this stuff and I leave her with that—I feel like, OK, it’s going somewhere. It’s a sad, pathetic way of looking at it, and she hates it. She’s like, “Just shut up. Don’t even talk to me like that.” But there’s some reality to that. I don’t look at it as morbid. It’s there, and I think a lot of it is really great stuff.
The same with my artwork. People love the owls and people love the robots, and I love drawing them and painting them, so I keep doing it. But there are so many other things. I’m just not so connected, and maybe not even interested in the art world in general. I’ve tried. I’ve done shows, and it’s just such a turnoff the way people communicate. But I’m also bad with these things. Even to this day, when I go to price one of my paintings, I’m always wanting to go, “Oh, I should make it cheaper, I should charge less.” And I’ve had artist friends say, “No! Because you devalue it! You make people think it’s worth less than it is.” And it’s not because you don’t love what you do and you don’t believe in yourself and you don’t think that you’re good at what you do. You do. You do, obviously. It’s that friggin’ thing that just stands there.
All right, I’ve got one last question, but first, here’s the ghost of Kevin Seconds past.
KEVIN: Oh boy [laughs].
This is 1999. You said, “I can’t see being 50 and doing this. No. Maybe I’m wrong, but I really don’t see it happening” [laughs]. What changed?
KEVIN: Wow! You said that was from 1999? That’s so shocking because I can imagine saying that in the late ‘80s maybe, but in ‘99, we were doing the Warped Tour and playing in front of more people than we’d ever played before. That’s really bizarre. Maybe I just never found the right job [laughs]. But I don’t know! I mean, I would do this for free if I could. I still love getting up on a fucking stage. It’s not about the attention, but it’s just those little moments where you’re just doing your thing and you’re looking over and you’re seeing your bandmates are smiling and everything is just connecting—whether it’s in a club with 300 people or that thing we did with the Bouncing Souls where there were I don’t know how many thousands of people. There is an energy there, and you can’t beat that.
But where we’re at, honestly, it’s almost more fun now because… I hope this doesn’t sound weird and cocky, but I just don’t feel the pressure of proving myself constantly. If by now you don’t think this is legit, and you don’t buy it, and you think it’s a grift, I got nothing for you. I go by my heart when I see a band or watch a movie or whatever, and if I feel it, I feel it. That’s all I care about. It didn’t feel bad at all being 50 years old on stage, and it doesn’t feel that bad being 62 on stage. I don’t move like I used to. I don’t want to try to move like I used to. But it feels normal and natural.
Hearing you say that really makes me think of that lyric: “I’m not a punker, I’m a human being, with this urge to exercise what’s in my heart and mind.”
KEVIN: A lot of it still holds true, I guess. And maybe back then I didn’t quite know what the fuck I was even talking about, but I think that’s where I was always hoping to get to.
That’s the other thing that constantly comes back to me: When we started, we were helping to sort of create this hardcore punk rock thing. We were in on, well, maybe not the ground floor, but we were right there and we were waving that fucking flag as hard as anybody. It was like, we are a hardcore punk rock band. This is what we’re about. It was so important for us to be a part of this genre that we got to help create. Not everybody gets to do that. I don’t think about this often, but every once in a while, I think, “Yeah. We got to be a part of this thing. And we got to be a big part of it.”
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"Kids who were angry, but not cynical. Kids who were hardened by circumstance, but sensitive by nature." I've never heard/read such a succinct summation of my experience and why I gravitated to hardcore/punk from the moment I heard it. This is perfect. Thank you, Norman.
This was a fantastic interview. Maybe it was because 7 Seconds kind of fell "in between" Minor Threat and Youth of Today, but I don't think they ever truly got the respect they deserved, no matter how much some of the most important punk and hardcore bands cited their influence. You did an excellent job of reminding folks of how important they were.
Thanks for an amazing interview. Thanks Norman, and thanks to Kevin for being so open and continuing to be a positive and empathetic person in the scene. Needed then, needed now.