A letter from Chris Bauermeister and Horace Pinker
We are writing this letter regarding the most recent issue of Punk Planet in response to the Jawbreaker cover story. As a band, we have to take issue with Trevor Kelley's assertions in the story's introduction. He wrote:
Bauermeister: Getting antsy to play music again, he joined Chicago pop-punk troop Horace Pinker in 1999.
It was a decision he would regret making. Horace Pinker, a band that had been around for close to 10 years at that point,
seemed to glow with the phrase "featuring former Jawbreaker bassist Chris Bauermeister" and after a joyless tour across
Canada in the summer of 2000, Bauermeister quit.
This simply isn't true. Perhaps, in searching for a "Behind The Music" style controversy, Kelley was attempting to make
Chris' involvement with the band fit a rockumentary formula. In reality, Chris decided to quit Horace Pinker because we
are still touring and he devotes most of his time to his PhD work and his wife.
Chris sets things straight (via email from Germany): "In a typically journalistic fashion, Trevor has taken liberties and
extrapolated on what were essentially factual statements on my part. Those are not my words. I did decide to quit after
the 2000 tour because it sucked for me. I was sick the entire time and didn't enjoying touring anymore, so I said
something to that effect. I never said I regretted joining Horace Pinker."
Let's paint a more accurate portrait of reality here. First of all, we are friends, and playing with Chris was not an
exercise in pushing product. Touring with All Systems Go (whose line-up features ex-Doughboys and ex-Big Drill Car
members), we rarely played to more than one or two hundred people (where is the 'glow' here??). When we played local
shows, the audiences tended to top out below that. Our EP 'Copper Regret,' recorded with Chris, has certainly not gone
gold. Horace Pinker NEVER promoted themselves or endorsed the phrase "featuring former Jawbreaker bassist Chris
Bauermeister" and even told labels and booking agents not to advertise us that way. These were band decisions that
Chris was a part of making and that we even talk about in our interview for Punk Planet issue #37 2000.
Punk Planet: it's interesting because it seems that so far, there's been little fanfare about your joining hp, at least
not compared to the hoopla over jets to brazil-and you really don't seem to mind. you probably prefer it. how do you think
jawbreaker's legacy will impact your work with hp?
Chris: i do prefer it. i think a band should be dealt with as a whole, not individual celebrities. as i've said before,
that's what i really like about hp. that's one thing i really hated about the whole major label thing; they don't seem to
know how to market anything but divas. i'm realistic enough to recognize, though, that copper regret is going to get a
certain degree of 'ex-jawbreaker' marketing, but if that gets more people to listen to hp, great. on the other hand, i
think it's preposterous if that eclipses the band in any way. i mean, the band was around long before i joined it. hell,
we toured with them; that's where i know them from originally.
According to Chris, in the interview with Trevor "I probably mentioned the 'ex-Jawbreaker' mostly because we were talking
about Blake's attempts to escape the Jawbreaker tag."
What Trevor said about Horace Pinker is simply not true. We do not want to make a big deal out of this, but when someone
purposefully distorts the truth we feel that we need to respond. All we have ever done over the past ten years is work
very hard to get our music heard and try to release quality records with almost no label support. It is so typical that
someone who knows absolutely nothing about our band would make negative and untrue comments in a well respected
publication.
