I first heard Kid Dynamite within months after they officially broke up. I have and always had an affinity for punk/hardcore songs that possess both aggression and melody and there may not be a band (in my opinion) that presented both of those elements as well as Kid Dynamite so it was very easy for me (at 14 or 15 ears old) to truly fall in love with their music and lyrics. It was upsetting to know that I arrived to the party slightly too late and that I would never get to hear a new Kid Dynamite song or get the chance to see them live as an active band but that didn’t stop me from holding on to what they were able to create in their very short lifespan. It was a grip that I was never able to let go of. Kid Dynamite is one of a small handful of bands that I have found myself developing an even stronger lyrical connection to as I have gotten older.

Flash forward to 2003 when None More Black released File Under Black. I was thrilled for the possibilities of what a new Jason Shevchuk fronted band could/would sound like. During this sit down interview with Jason, I explained it to him like this: “It took me a little bit of time to fully commit to None More Black in the early days as the only thing I had as a reference point was Kid Dynamite. There was just enough similarities on that first record to keep me interested and then as time went on, I learned to appreciate the differences more than the similarities”. None More Black also remains one of my favorite bands of all time and so gracefully kept that same lyrical approach that I had grown to love so much about Kid Dynamite. I never missed a chance to see them live while they were active or during their reunion years. My band Up For Nothing had the pleasure of playing with None More Black, GreyArea and our good friends in Capital (from Long Island, NY) during the final run of shows over at CBGB’s back in October of 2006 which I remember being a rare moment of early validation for us. We were a very young band at the time, and we belonged to something special with bands that we absolutely adored. We shared a legendary moment on a legendary stage together as peers and that feeling set the stage for us for many years after.

Since the disbandment of None More Black, Jason Shevchuk has continued to create great music as displayed by his most recent project, Town Liar (which also features members from The Gaslight Anthem & Midtown). To date, Town Liar has released 2 EP’s Lies: One Through Seven and Lies: Eight Through Thirteen. The latter of which was released in October of 2024. I had the absolute pleasure of having a delicious Raspberry Iced Tea at a local bar/restaurant with Jason recently where were able to talk through a lot of what he has been up to musically in more recent years as well as the Kid Dynamite and None More Black eras. I just want to say thanks to Punknews.org for allowing me to do another one of these artist-on-artist interviews and to Jason for the many years of singing songs that felt like they were being created just for me, for welcoming my band on stage, for always sticking to your principles and for agreeing to sit down and chat with me for this. Here is our conversation transcribed to text.

The first Kid Dynamite record came out back in 1998 and I know that you were playing in bands even before that. What is it about writing & playing music that continues to pull you in?
Not too much playing anymore. It's pretty much just writing and recording. That’s where I am right now. I’m just enjoying that more than any other aspect of it.

Is there a particular reason that playing shows has become the lesser enjoyable aspect for you?
Well, I guess just because it's harder to do. Right? For example, Town Liar is going to play a show in September, and we may practice once or twice before then after not playing at all for months. It's hard to get back in that groove, you know? If I'm not fully prepared, I don't feel good about it. My voice will be shot after five or six songs and it's just more anxiety ridden than I would like. Whereas, if you're doing it every day for six weeks and you're in that groove, you have that muscle memory on your side and things are just working better. So, it's just harder to get it right enough to feel comfortable doing it when I don’t do it as much. But when it comes to writing, I have an office and I can just do everything in there and I don't need anybody, I can just complete something in one day. That isn’t necessarily where we are with Town Liar but I am working on another thing now where I’m just going to do it all myself in that way.

Is what your describing similar to what the writing process was like with Former Member?
Yes, for sure. With the first record I wrote everything at home. I basically asked Will Yip if he wanted to play drums and he said “yea, let’s do it” and then it's funny, when I went down to record, he had a leg injury so he couldn't track and I had taken this specific time off and we had allotted this time. So, what we ended up doing was just recording my guitars to a click track at home and then when he got his legs back, he recorded the drum tracks, sent them to me. I did my vocals in the sound booth at work, I did my bass at home, then I sent everything to him and he mixed it. With the second record, I physically went out and recorded guitars and bass at his studio and I did the vocals at my house. So that was a little bit more professionally done than the first record.

Going back real quick to what you were saying earlier about like being in the groove and not feeling comfortable and/or confident from a performance perspective. I’m not sure if you remember this but I reached out to you once back in what must have been around 2007 and asked if you would be down to do a guest vocal spot on my band’s (Up For Nothing) record that we were in the process of recording. At that time, we had gotten Ernie Parada to do one on there and we thought it’d be cool to get you on as well. I remember in your response you were very thankful to be thought about in that way but you mentioned that you really struggle with the sound of your voice and don't really feel comfortable singing in general let alone on someone else’s record. We were happy enough just to get a response from you so your decline was not an issue for us, whatsoever. I do however remember thinking how interesting it was to hear you say that about your voice. Are you still there with feeling that way? Or have you gotten past that?
I'm past that with my own stuff, right? But when I do thing for other people. Everyone wants the “whoas”, everyone wants that Kid Dynamite thing. Also, not everyone mixes my voice the way that I like it. I definitely don't want to meddle other people's art so it's not my favorite thing to so. I mean, I have done it from time to time, but I just don't really enjoy it so I don't think I'm going to do those anymore. During the Covid-19 lockdowns I did those “Mikey and His Uke” things. I did a Metallica cover and a Jawbreaker cover and those were fun, but once I had to film myself doing it for the video portion, that kind of made me uncomfortable, you know? Because at that point I’m vulnerable.

Do you still feel like the stuff that you put out gets compared to Kid Dynamite and/or None More Black? Or do you feel as though enough time has passed for those types of thoughts to still exist?
Definitely not Kid Dynamite. I feel like None More Black comparisons makes sense because it's usually a similar song structure and similar chord progressions.

When I say “compared”, though, I don't mean sounding similar, I mean more in terms of what people consider to be “good”.
Oh. Yea, I’m sure people make their comparisons in that way. I definitely don't care. When we started Town Liar, the goal was to just keep pumping out music. It didn't turn out that way as life gets in the way and all that but I am more concerned with continuing to write and create than what anyone thinks of what’s being created because I am not in it to do anything professionally at this point. Its more just for the joy of writing and recording.

While on the topic of Town Liar. How did that band formalize?
A few blocks from where we are now (Garwood, NJ) during covid, I was walking daily to try to keep the commute aspect of my daily routine the same. I walk past the school and I was wearing a Jade Tree shirt and this dude came running out after me saying, "Is that a Jade Tree shirt?” Did I see you walking the other day?” and it was Ed Brown from Shades Apart. I had no idea he lived two blocks from me. He asked me if I was interested in doing a project that we would work remotely for. We were literally yelling from across the street because we didn't want to get close. That's the point of the pandemic that we were at during this conversation. He had a little recording setup because I think Shades Apart had just done something similar for their previous record. I had just finished up the lyrics for the second Former Member record so I said just give me some time. Once that was wrapped up, I kept thinking that I wanted to get back together with Nick (Remondelli). We had talked about a lot so I thought this would be a great opportunity to do that. We tried to record to a click and pass ideas along to each other that way and it’s really tough to write like that. We just didn’t like it so we just decided to pretty much end it (since we didn’t have a drummer in the fold) and then Nick was like, what about Benny (Horowitz)? I figured that there would be no way that he would / could do it considering he was in two bands and had a crazy schedule with all of that. I wasn’t aware that Gaslight Anthem was on a break So, I called Benny, we talked about it. He said, yeah. He knew that I already had stuff written and that was kind of the appeal. That's sort of the only way this band works is if we come in with stuff complete and we all just kind of flesh it out. Then Nick found Heath (Saraceno) and it just ended up working out that we were all sort of live around 30/40 minutes from our practice space.

I was listening to both Town Liar recordings the other day and was curious to know if there is any significance to the album titles Lies: One Through Seven and Lies: Eight Through Thirteen or are they just playing into the band name?
Yea well, the lyrics aren't autobiographical, which is different from anything I've done before. Everything's based on a movie. Every song is about a movie character or a situation in a movie that I am trying to unpeel. So, I'm essentially lying since they are not my stories. The name Town Liar comes from the movie Career Opportunities. It was written by John Hughes and stars Frankie Whaley and Jennifer Connelly. Where he works overnight in Target and she ends up shoplifting and staying there overnight. Frankie Whaley’s character in the movie is called the town liar so I always kind of thought that would be a great name for band. Also, I always liked (and regret not doing it with Former Member) how the band Baroness just had their records referred to as colors. I always love that kind of thing. So, I just wanted to have a continuation in record titles that's not really too serious.

That reminds me of something I once heard about the None More Black song titles. There is some sort of Seinfeld references in there, correct?
Yes, there was a lot of movie, and TV show (specifically Seinfeld) references that were plucked for the early None More Black song titles and then when the band shifted towards This is Satire and Icons a lot of stuff was plucked from the Howard Stern show. Just things that someone would say that we thought was hilarious or inside jokes that we just picked up on.

Pretty much everything that you’ve done musically (post Kid Dynamite) has a very unique sound that accompanies unique song structures and chord progressions. Where do you think that comes from?
It's all feeling, right? I feel more comfortable playing like reverse chords. I don't know what else you would call them. Where they're like heavy on one end, but then a tiny bit light and sour of the high end. Rather than playing Basic power chords. I also don't know what chords I'm playing a lot of the time because I'm self-taught. I've never bothered to learn or figure that out because it didn’t really matter. If it sounds cool, then I was good with it. And then I also think the fact that I'm singing over it, I'm taking care of the dual duties and I could just kind of make the two work together. Whereas maybe if I was just doing one over the other, it would be different. My playing style definitely changed after the first None More Black record. You can hear a little bit of what my style became with songs like “The Ratio of People to Cake” maybe a little bit on “Banned from Teen Arts” from the first record but otherwise, that record overall is pretty straightforward. I was just trying to find my wrist and that downstroke. Also, I remember telling you, I after seeing you play at the last show that we played with your band that I really miss playing a Strat. The first NMB record I played a strat and then I switched to the tele and that changed things too. Changed my strum, changed everything.

When did you start playing guitar?
Well, in high school, I played bass in a band and I didn't know what I was doing. I figured it had four strings so it must be easier (a lie we tell ourselves) and my brother played guitar so there was a guitar in the house so I would fiddle around, but really it wasn't until we started None More Black that I really started to get into that, yeah. I didn't own a guitar until then.

I remember when NMB first broke up at the Fat Wreck showcase in Red Hook, Brooklyn in 2006 and being completely shocked to learn that it was (at the time) the final NMB show. I then remember going to Philly for the first reunion shows in 2008 at The Barbary and at a clothing store called “Deep Sleep” (which will always go down as one of my favorite shows of all time). What do you remember about those shows and the idea of getting NMB back together during that time period?
That Deep Sleep show was one of the top three hottest shows I remember playing. Colin threw up. Right after our set you could see there's a video, he barrels out and just pukes. I think Jared played in his underwear and you know, If I take my shirt off, you know it's hot! Yeah, we didn't know what we were going to do after that with anything. It's funny how it happened. I was out with a friend Kate (who would always come on tour with us to do merch, etc) at Barcade in Brooklyn. She was texting Colin while we were out. Colin was in a certain place; I was in a certain place and Paul was in a certain spot. So she was texting all of us and somehow she prodded everyone to talk about getting back together to do some things. Jared Shavelson went to LA so we got Richard to play drums so we just got together to just write and play shows. In a short period of time at this bar Kate orchestrated this and everyone wants to play again. Colin came up and we went to dinner and it was like, okay. Let's do it. And I had already had songs in the can and it was just back to normal and it was a lot of fun, too. This is also where my anxiety about playing lives started. Because we were doing it so few and far between. That's when I started to really like develop this “agh, I can't even get through a whole set”, my muscle memory is shot. And it was by design, too because Richard lived in Florida, which gave us this reason to not really put everything we had into it. I had also just started working this new job and my career was sort of blossoming, and it would have been a mistake to just throw myself back into that. It was always keeping things in arm’s length at that point.

I feel like some of that anxiety that you’re speaking about comes across in the lyrics of the song “We Dance on the Ruins of the Stupid Stage”. I feel like that song is a description of that anxiety to some degree.
Yeah. Playing is fun, but it's not easy, right? People don't understand. It's not always all that it’s cracked up to be. No matter how big or small you are that schedule and that grind. It's tough.

While on the topic of touring schedules, I don’t really remember None More Black or Kid Dynamite really having long extended tours. What were some of those touring experiences like for you when you did head out on the road?
None More Black did way more touring than Kid Dynamite. Kate dynamite was frontloaded by weekends, weekends, weekends, and weekends. For pretty much a full year, essentially. So when everyone was out of school and out of work and we had the opportunity, so we did a summer tour, recorded and then did a fall tour and that was it in terms of tours for Kid Dynamite. With None More Black we did maybe a dozen tours. Not all super long. Two were maybe 6-8 weeks and the others were maybe a week or two. We did some shows with The Lawrence Arms, Death By Stereo, some shows with Alkaline Trio and just these things that Fat was getting us connected to during that time.

Do you wish that you all were able to do more in terms of touring? Are there any regrets tied to what you were and weren’t able to do?
I don't know. It’s challenging because I probably made things more difficult than it should have been for the band by not wanting to do certain things by not wanting to fully commit and do every tour that was offered to us, etc. And then later keeping things at arm’s length. But no, I mean, it could have been a disaster if I had really gone full commitment. It's really hard to play that kind of music for your whole life. There are certain bands that can. But I don't have enough faith in it. I also know that I'm not that palatable of a song writer. I know certain people might like it, but not everyone does and to think that I can really spend the rest of my life doing that (and I knew I wasn’t going to go on tour). It's one of those things where I'm glad I did have restraint but we did have a great time.

What was Fat Wreck Chords like?
Fat was great! I have I have so much admiration and so much joy from that experience. I mean, we also signed at the tipping point of music being physical and they were at the top of their game when we signed. I'm also really like proud of the pedigree of signings that happened around us. That was a wave of Fat that I’m really proud to be part of. I think it changed the sound and represented something different than what had come before, but yet it still respected it. I thought that everyone that worked there was supportive and great to work with. An interesting story is that we got out to the west coast and Paul’s amp broke and they were like “oh, we’ll take you to Guitar Center and buy you a new one. Just pay us back” and they never asked for any money back they were always just like “we got ya!” We had another situation where we were on the Death of a Nation tour, which was Anti-Flag, Rise Against and us and we didn't have a drummer because we were in between drummers when we took the tour. We ending up finding someone to play and he did the first leg with us and then disappeared two days before we were supposed to leave for the second leg of the tour. His wife or girlfriend calls us and says he got arrested and was in jail. Fat says “We’ll bail him out. Lets get him on the road!.”. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to as there was something weird going on with the case and then they found us Danny (Windas) from Spanish Bombs. We missed only 1 show. They found him for us, he came in, they introduced us to him, we practiced and went right out on the road the next day. They got stuff done!

How did the Fat Wreck Chords signing end up happening?
So we had put out the seven-inch. Which no current members of the band (at that point) was even on. I think my brother even played on that (laughs). Then I went back in and did a demo with Nick (Remondelli) on bass of maybe five songs that were on File Under Black and I shopped it around and sent it to everyone that I could. Vagrant Records, Drive Through Records and Side One Dummy were the three other labels that got back to us. We never got any offers from any of those three but they were showing some interest. Then Jason Hall from Fat called me while we were playing a show in Wilkes-Barre, PA. I have no idea how he got my number but he said “hey, I have your seven-inch (not even the demo that I was shopping around). I love it and we want to talk”. Then sure enough, that week Fat Mike called me from vacation on the beach in Hawaii and he gave me a number and said “Yea, let's do it. If you want a contract, I'll make one. We don’t HAVE to but we can”. We ended up getting the contract made up but it turned out that we didn’t need it and it ended up being a waste of money for us to have to get a lawyer and all that because we found out that when Fat Mike gives you his word, it's his word. And, that was pretty much it.

Was Fat Mike Familiar with Kid Dynamite at the time?
Yea. I don’t know if he cared. I do feel like the employees there really cared and everyone there really put their best foot forward for all that bands (not just us) and they became really good friends of ours. It was cool!

Let’s transition into Kid Dynamite for a bit. Obviously, there are some great melodies in None More Black and everything that you’ve done since but for a hardcore band, there are some killer melodies in Kid Dynamite. What's your take on how that materialized? Was it a conscious effort to be both aggressive and melodic?
Oh, Yea. Absolutely. Well, I think it was, if I had a tape of my first audition…

You had to audition?
Oh, yeah. There was a lot of singers out there. When I tried out, it was probably more yelling, because my band before that was all screaming. A little bit of melody, but not like pocketed melodies. I think it was that Dan gave me a tape of singers that he liked. It was Kevin Seconds. It was Squirrel Bait, Turning Point and the common denominator was melody so that’s just kind of the balance that I struck.

Did you know the rest of the band before your tryout?
No. I met Dan (Yemin) once when my band Bound played with him. I actually had a friend from High School that tried out for the band before I did. He somehow knew about the band and was excited to tryout. At the time, I was in the band Bound and we were still active. Then he came over with his lyrics and asked me for help to phrase certain things and all that and I had copied the tape. He ended up not getting it and then months had gone by, Bound had broken up and I called my friend and I just asked him if he would mind if I went for this. He gave me Dan’s information and I asked him if they were still looking for a singer. I mentioned that show that our bands had played together the year before and thankfully, he didn’t remember because he probably would have said no as my style in that band was completely different.

Ok, wow. So what was that experience of joining a band with people that you hardly knew?
It was fine! Me and Wagenschutz got along right off the bat. Yemin was super busy with school and he was getting his doctorate degree but Wagenschutz and I were into a lot of the same things. Pop culture, video games and stuff like that. I think that they were just so excited to finally get it going and then it just shot off.

Ok, so now that the band was fully in place, what were the days of an active Kid Dynamite like?
Fast! Busy, fast and productive. We practiced three nights a week, we were together all the time.

Did you guys being together so often and practicing so much mean that writing new songs was happening throughout? What was the writing process like for Kid Dynamite?
(Dan) Yemin brought all the music and it was front-loaded because they had been practicing for a year without a singer so that first record already done and he was probably already working on the second record when I started and I’m sure that there was even some Paint it Black stuff already in there, too. That's one of the things I learned playing with Yemin because in all of my previous bands everyone brought parts and tried to put them together. Yemin brought songs and it was just like; this is the music, everyone do their thing. So, it was all kind of just ready. When we were ready to start writing the vocals everything was there. We would just do a couple of songs a night, boom, boom, boom and that was pretty much it. All I had to do was write the lyrics and the melodies. It wasn’t until the EP with 88 Fingers Louie that I actually experienced the entire writing process.

What was the Philadelphia scene like at that time? Did you grow up there?
No. I grew up in New Jersey, but I was I was there for college. I was in film school, and I was in my junior year when I joined the band. Philly was just changing and blossoming at that time. There were so many venues. You’d have so many different varieties of shows. From the bright lights of the Trocadero to the church and West Philly basement shows, etc. We were a good band to be there at that moment. Then we branched out to the tri-state area and then we'd go to Boston, DC. We started to kind of expand it a bit.

One band that always comes to mind for me whenever I think about Kid Dynamite (especially for me living in New York for the first 37 years of my life) is GreyArea. From an outside perspective, there seemed to be kinship or strong connection between you all, Correct?
Well, Ernie (Parada) emailed me (or the bands email) on AOL, or whatever it was at the time. And he said, I got this new band, and I was a big fan of Black Train Jack. I was never a fan of the bravado of hardcore. I was not a fan of the barking. I loved the aggression. Then I saw Black Train Jack play City Gardens a couple of times and I just loved them. So, he send me this email and says lets play shows and I mentioned it to the guys and we just did it and it just clicked. I was the youngest guy in the band in my early 20’s and the joke between us with GreyArea was Grey Hair-ia because they were men of a certain age (laughs). I just think that everyone clicked back then and I was just along for the ride. We were kind of like minded. It was like, oh, let's go out to dinner after we're done, etc and we just started playing lots of the same shows. It was the same thing Kill Your Idols at the time. It just kind of clicked. And, they were all also like weekend warriors like we were.

I remember being at the last Kid Dynamite show (which happened to take place in my hometown of Brooklyn, NY) and you guys pretty emphatically saying that this was IT and there wouldn’t be any more Kid Dynamite shows in the future. It reminded me of one of my favorite lyrics ever that think about all the time from Rancid song Time Bomb “the secret to a good life is knowing when you’re through.” What was the process like for knowing emphatically that you were done?
I can only speak for myself. And I know that everyone feels things differently but for me it felt like I'm not like it's not going to get any better, right? It's just going to become the same. And also, my desire to keep moving forward. It's like shooting an arrow into the ground. It's not going to go anywhere. You know, we got back together, we went to Europe, went to the west coast. Everyone had their shot. We were pretty good. We took it seriously, practiced a lot. We gave it 110%. I just couldn't give it any more than that anymore. With those last two shows we played the Electric Factory in Philly, and we played House of Vans in New York. It's not going to get any better than that. I don't want to play shows with barricades. We've had offers. Countless offers since, and it's really hard to turn down. Trust me. I get why bands keep doing it. It’s good money. I'm not gonna lie about it. That's the climate. All these festivals feed on bands desire to reunite so they just offer them a lot, a lot of money. So, it would be beneficial for all of us to do it. It’s just where does it leave you? It just doesn't feel good.

Is there anything that you truly miss about playing out / touring?
I would just say that you can't have it your entire life, but I miss camaraderie most of all. You know, when you grow up your priorities shift but I miss the camaraderie and the joking around. I miss the post show van ride when everyone is just juiced, and everyone just debriefs the night, the gossip and all the stuff that happened that you may not have caught. It's like that hour between from when you get in the van but before your tired and driving to wherever you're going. Those are experiences that you just don't get anywhere else. One time in particular None More Black played Eerie, PA and these kids asked us to come stay at their punk house and we were hesitant at first but agreed to go check it out. We walk in through their band room and there are just a ton of beer cans everywhere and cigarette butts, etc. One of the dudes had a tarantula that scared me (laughs), then we walk into the bathroom and someone literally shaved their head in the sink and there was just a glob of hair sitting in the bathroom sink (laughs). We got that far and were seriously considering just bailing to get a hotel somewhere but we stuck with it and then saw all these video game systems set up and ended up having a really great time and they were all so good to us and it was just a seriously fun night. Another time we stayed at a place in Seattle where they had like a house goat. A goat would just walk around the house. We usually never stayed at hotels unless we were absolutely stuck and had no other options because we weren’t really making money. We were either driving to the next city or crashing at people’s houses. Those are the moments that are like, you're never going to experience that again.