Last week brought the announcement that, after 30 years of bickering and lawsuits, The Misfits would be putting aside its differences and reuniting for Riot Fest. The punk-focused festival has a history of launching high-profile reunions, and one that is rumored every year is that of legendary East Bay punk act Jawbreaker. Yesterday, Substream Magazine writer Scott Heisel did some digging and found this YouTube video filmed at Giant Robot in Los Angeles last month where Jawbreaker drummer—and California member—Adam Pfahler fields questions from the assembled crowd. Talk quickly turns to reunion rumors and Pfahler spills all the juicy details.
It’s been known for years that Jawbreaker had played together while doing interviews for a documentary that’s been in the works for nearly a decade, but what wasn’t known was that it happened again a couple years ago, too. Pfahler says, “I went to New York and Chris [Bauermeister, bass] was in New York seeing his dad, and we all got together and we played. We just went to Blake [Schwarzenbach, guitarist-vocalist]’s practice space and played a couple of songs just to see if we could still do it. We weren’t sure if we could still do it. We could still do it.”
According to Pfahler, he recorded the sessions for posterity, and when he listened back to it he was surprised by what he found. “When I got the recording, I dropped it into iTunes, and I looked at the timing of [each song], and it was exact, almost down to the second, of the recorded versions. I thought it was so insane. I just wanted to see how off we were—like, ‘I was probably rushing the whole time’—but no, it was perfect. That was a real trip.”
Pfahler goes on to state that the band has fielded offers throughout the years and gotten close to reuniting for an unnamed festival at least once. “[A reunion] got close, and then something happened. We were really close to doing it in 2015, I think, or 2014. A couple of years back it got real close. There was a bigger band they were waiting on an answer to headline one of those festivals, and sure enough they did it, they took their slot, and it kind of relegated us to the following year, and then the timing wasn’t right the following year.”
The status of a Jawbreaker reunion is still up in the air, and Pfahler states that, if the band were to get back together it won’t be the money that makes them do it. “We’ve totally talked about it, and everyone is excited about it, but it’s gotta be right. All the money in the world isn’t gonna make that happen. Everyone’s just gotta be right there with it.” It seems that all parties are open to it, but until the stars align, people will just have to make do listening to the excellent new record from Jawbreaker Reunion instead.
Update: Pfahler has taken to the band’s Facebook page to dispel these reunion rumors, claiming that if the band were to reunite he’d be the first to break that news.