Speakeasy with Matt Devine

Devine is the frontman of Atlantic Records’ band Kill Hannah.

Q: Has the whole major label thing worked out the way that you’d hoped?

My expectations always have to kind of adapt to what’s realistic. It hasn’t panned out the way I used to dream as a teenager. I used to think you’d get signed and they’d hand you a bag full of money and you were on the plane to England the next day.

Q: Is there any worry because of the instability of the business?

Considering the climate right now and how competitive everything is we’re really fortunate to be in the position we’re in — meaning that we’re still signed after two years. We just try to minimize risk by staying self-sufficient and not asking the label for anything excessive. We try to just work as hard as we possibly can and do as much independently as we can. We try to stay below the radar. We just try to avoid the pitfalls that we’ve seen so many other bands in our position become trapped by.

Q: If you were to be dropped would you go D.I.Y. or just pack it in?

We’ve been faced with so much adversity up until this point. We’ve had opportunities every afternoon to disband and we don’t. We’ve persevered through worse things than the possibility of being dropped.

Q: What is the best and the worst of now being a major label band?

I love seeing the logo on our CD because we’ve been unsigned for so long. One of my more tangible goals was I wanted to go into a CD store and find my CD shrink wrapped with a little Atlantic logo on it and that just makes me so happy. The biggest disappointment is the pace. I think we were hoping that we’d get a lot more exposure a lot faster. There’s no one to blame for that. It’s the climate out there in music in general. That’s not a slight on the label. I don’t want to downplay the major label system at all. I believe in it. I think it’s too easy a target for criticism.

Q: What role do you see the major label system playing?

The major label community is the filter between the thousands of worthless bands out there and the handful that may actually write songs you want to hear. I think they provide a valuable service.

Q: So what’s up with the signature Kill Hannah armsocks?

I don’t know where the fuck it came from. I mean when you’re poor you just recycle your clothes. I don’t know that we originated it, but I can say a year after we started doing it in Chicago, Britney Spears did it during the Super Bowl half time show and now I think Express came out with a line of armsocks.