Interview - Quinn & Eddie of High Card

At Mixtape Festival 2015, I had the honor of being one of the first people to interview Quinn and Eddie from local Long Island hardcore band, High Card. After putting on an extremely energetic show, I was very surprised to learn that not only are they unsigned, but they’ve only performed about a dozen times. In fact, they’ve only been a band for a few years, having released their first demo in the summer of 2013. Originally just talking to Quinn, we stood in the smoker section of the venue and I asked him the typical questions. He considers his musical influences to be “earlier” hardcore, “stuff from the 80’s. Kill Your Idols, Minor Threat, Outburst… Stuff like that.” Quinn doesn’t know how to play any instruments, and only started doing vocals when he was about twenty-one. He writes the lyrics for his band, as well, “about what pisses me off, mostly.” “I’ve known I’ve wanted to be in the music industry since I got into hardcore when I was fourteen. I was just like, “I wanna start a band!” It just took me a really long time to get it together, actually do it. I tried a lot of times and it always fail, and then I just happened to meet Eddie, over here.” It was at this point I realized the guitarist was standing a few feet away from us, so of course I got him involved in the interview.

 “We’ve known each other for awhile, then we became closer when we went to college together,” Quinn says. Eddie is one of the founders of the band, alongside Quinn. “We wanted to start a band, so we started a band.” He said simply. He also says one of his musical influences is Outburst. “Bane (who also played Mixtape Festival) was actually one of the first hardcore records I ever got, when I was thirteen. First show I ever went to, too,” Eddie continued. He is also the drummer in another band, U.S. Dogs. He has been playing guitar since he was about five.

 High Card is currently working on an LP, currently untitled but should be out within a month. They will be playing The Acheron in Brooklyn with Fury and Unified Right, don’t miss it!