Via Email, Shawn Stern, singer, guitarist and songwriter for Youth Brigade and BYO Records founder, answers a few questions from DeadOnTheWeb.

Interview by Aimee Schwartz

• How old were you when you and your brothers first started the band?
I was 20, Mark was 19 and Adam was 16 when we first started.

• Do you go back to where you were born in Canada often?
When we were younger we used to go at least once a year and then we used to try and make a stop for a couple of days on tour. 

I go back to visit for weddings or other family affairs, but I haven't been in 4 years. We almost had a show there next month w/the Swingin' Utters, but then we got an offer to do 2 weeks w/the Bouncing Souls and play NJ in front of 1,000 kids at a sold out show, so we kind of figured that made more sense.

• Does it surprise you at all that you still have a huge following?
Well, I don't know that I would say we have a huge following, but I'm pretty surprised to still be playing punk rock at 40 and that a lot of young kids that don't know about our history are into our music. If we weren't reaching kids, we wouldn't do this.

• In 1979 you and your brother Mark formed BYO, Better Youth Organization. Can you tell me a bit about it?
At the time punk rock was getting all kinds of negative press, all they ever did was sensationalize the negative things, the "freaks" wearing torn up clothes, with safety pins in their cheeks and cutting themselves up, drinking and getting high, being nihilists etc, etc. I saw an ignorant public looking at the outward appearance, which is the image we put out there, but there was a lot of intelligence and positive idea's/music etc. that was being created and they were ignoring. So, I thought it would be a good idea to start something that helped us band together and promote these positive things and just sort of help us get together and do our own thing. It was hard to get gigs, clubs were afraid of punk rock and cops would shut the shows down. By starting BYO, I thought we had a good chance of, I don't know, for lack of a better word, legitimizing what we were doing so we could control the business reality of our music/art etc.

• You have toured all over the world, would you say you have a larger fan base here at home, or elsewhere, another countries and such?
Oh, I think we have fans everywhere we've been and we have a great time traveling and meeting old friends and new friends. It's a great way to travel and work and I'm always aware how lucky I am to be able to do it. We're going to Hawaii next week! I guess L.A. still has one of the biggest punk scenes in the world, has since the early '80s.

• Do you consider yourself an activist in change and reform?
I like to consider myself that, but I honestly haven't done much real activist work since maybe the early '90s. I try to be active thru my daily life and my business, but I haven't been involved in protests and marches and walking my neighborhood since the Gulf war when I helped organize a big concert in downtown L.A. It was an amazing experience, but it was also disillusioning because the coalition of groups involved had a lot of really selfish, egotistical people that were all about getting themselves and there particular "cause" in the spotlight and really could care less about the big picture and the kids that were in danger of being drafted. They just wanted to be on stage and make a speech, they would fight and bicker over who took more time than others when we had this big concert and rally, it was just so fucking disgusting. After that, I couldn't work with most of those people anymore. Unfortunately many of them are as blind and stupid as the big multi-nationals they claim to be fighting.

• How come CD's like "Come Together" and "The Dividing Line" are by just The Brigade?
Because after we went to Europe in '84, Adam decided he would return to art school and get his degree, so we got another bass player and decided to change the name of the band as we were moving in a different direction. We probably should have just changed the name completely, but we didn't.

Has anything come about in your efforts to gain some rights back to "Another State Of Mind"?
No, Jim Guiernot, manager of Social Distortion and The Offspring and recently No Doubt and owner of Time Bomb Records, bought the rights to the movie and the entire 60 hours of video tape from the whole tour back in the early '90s from the producers.

• You seem really interested in promoting split 7".  Do they help in promoting other bands that may or may not be on your label?
Actually, we've got a split series, but it's full lengths, not 7"s. 7" cost too much to actually earn a profit unless you sell at least 3,000. We still make vinyl, but it costs more than CD's and CD's sell for more. That's actually due to the major labels keeping the market price (price in the stores) artificially high to keep up their profits. We tried selling our CD's to distributors for less when we started the label again in the early '90s, but we realized that most stores (except cool independents) were gonna mark the price up to the going rate and they and the distributors would keep the extra $. So, we gave in and raised our wholesale price. We've considered lowering our mail order price, but since about 90% of our sales are thru stores, we don't want to piss them off by undercutting the price.

     Oh, back to the splits, we've got a lot of friends in bands on other labels that are interested in doing a release w/us, many of them wanting to do a 7" or EP. We've decided that by pairing 2 bands that compliment each other or are into each others music, maybe one is influenced by the other (Hot Water Music by Leatherface) that it made sense to put them together. It was Mark's idea and it made sense cause we get a great record of usually unreleased songs by 2 bands who's fans may not necessarily know about the other band and probably would like them. It's working quite well so far. Next year we plan to release 2-4 more.

• What is the future of BYO Records?
Just keep working with musicians who make music we really like and support and hopefully we can help learn to make a living from there music like we have and reach a lot of people with their idea's.

• And last but not least, this is for some of my friends, how can bands hook up with BYO?
We've had the same PO Box for 21 years now, I listen to everything that gets sent here. A word of warning, I'm pretty tired of pop/punk and ska/punk, which I've been getting a lot of. Not that there aren't some good bands doing it, but there are just too many!!! And mainly, try to take your influences and make them your own. I'm tired of hearing bands that sound like NOFX and Bad Religion and Green Day. You're never gonna be them, so be yourself. Use their music as a starting point, not an ending point. Also, sorry, believe in whatever you want to, BUT THEIR IS NO SUCH THING AS "CHRISTIAN PUNK." That's an oxymoron, like military intelligence and moral majority. Punk rock is about not following anyone, so if you're all about glorifying god and a guy named Jesus, you're not punk rock. I've actually gotten a couple of tapes this summer from some obviously confused kids that think that because they copy the sound of punk bands, that they can insert religion into the lyrics and that's cool. It's not, it's bullshit and any self respecting punk knows this. Sorry, the religious can't co-opt the music we've all grown up on.

Think for yourself!