Podcast
100 Words Or Less: The Podcast
Host Ray Harkins dives deep with creators of independent culture from musicians, artists and other interesting people to find out what inspires them, how they came to be and many other unexpected places.
- Episodes
- 787
- Releases
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 1 hr 8 min
- On air since
- 2010
- Latest episode
- 6 days ago
Episodes
787 episodes, newest first
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1 hr 15 min
Dan Barrett from Have A Nice Life & Giles Corey
Episode 733
Show notes
Before Have a Nice Life became one of the great cult bands of its era, Dan Barrett was a theatre kid from Glastonbury, Connecticut, who found his way into the state’s hardcore scene as the vocalist of In Pieces. The band released three albums between 2000 and 2005, and somewhere along the way he ended up meeting Jamey Jasta’s dad, a story that says a lot about how small and interconnected the Connecticut scene was.
While In Pieces was still active, Dan and Tim Macuga started Have a Nice Life in Middletown. The songs that became Deathconsciousness were written in the aftermath of his father’s death, and in 2003 he founded Enemies List Home Recordings just to get the record out. It arrived in 2008 to almost no attention, then spread through message boards until it became a cult classic.
For years the band barely existed live. After a few early shows, including an Alcest support slot in 2010, they disappeared for seven years before returning in 2017 with a full band, which led to Sea of Worry, a full Deathconsciousness set at Roadburn, and this year’s Nothing Will Ever Go Wrong tour.
In this conversation, Dan talks about the stage instincts he brought into hardcore, his time with In Pieces and Have a Nice Life at the same time, the aliases that let him say different things, and what it’s like to hear strangers sing back songs written entirely alone.
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1 hr 9 min
Steve Looker from Morning Again and Culture
Episode 732
Show notes
Steve Looker has been playing guitar in Morning Again since the Florida straight edge and vegan scene of the mid-90s, a band that helped define metallic hardcore on Revelation Records. Before that, he played in xOutcastx alongside future Morning Again vocalist Kevin Byers, then left to join sister band Culture, which set the whole story in motion.
In this conversation, we talk about growing up in that scene, the long path from the original run to the Survival Instinct era, writing songs from a distance, and what life looks like outside the band.
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1 hr 8 min
Jared Hart from Mercy Union
Episode 731
Show notes
Jared Hart grew up in North Jersey in a family of art teachers, and it shows in how he’s approached music for more than two decades. Between The Scandals, Mercy Union, his solo work and running Mt. Crushmore Records, he’s built a career the way a lot of people in this world do, by hand and on the road.
In this conversation, Jared talks about coming up in North Jersey, what it means to be raised in a household that takes making things seriously, and why Germany has become such a meaningful place for him as a touring musician. It’s a conversation about where you come from, the rooms that take you in, and the long drives in between.
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1 hr 2 min
Bjorn Dossche from Wrong Man & Rise and Fall
Episode 730
Show notes
Rise and Fall's Bjorn Dossche joins the show to talk about leading Wrong Man into their Deathwish full length debut, and the conversation goes deeper than expected. He breaks down why the mix is where a record actually lives or dies, not just the songs underneath it. He talks about watching hardcore cycle back around on itself generation after generation, and why that's never bothered him. And he opens up about mortality being the unlikely thing that pulled Rise and Fall back together after all these years.
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1 hr 9 min
Ari Katz from Lifetime & Zero Zero
Episode 729
Show notes
Ari Katz has spent over three decades inside hardcore and punk, first as the singer of Lifetime, the New Brunswick band that quietly rewired what a hardcore song could be about, then through Zero Zero, and later behind the counter at Black Cat Records. On this episode of 100 Words Or Less, Ari looks backward: the DFA scene, the New York hardcore bands that set the bar in the late '80s and early '90s, and what it took for a band from Jersey to write something personal in a scene built on toughness. A conversation about influence, lineage, and the records that made this whole thing worth doing.
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS
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1 hr 26 min
Bryan Garris from Knocked Loose
Episode 728
Show notes
Bryan Garris, vocalist of Knocked Loose, one of the most talked-about hardcore bands to come out of the last decade. He first sat down on the show in 2017, when the band was still an "upstart" fielding as much online debate as praise. Nine years later, they've released a Grammy-nominated record, toured arenas with Metallica and Gojira, collaborated across genres (Poppy, Chris Motionless, Denzel Curry), and become one of the rare hardcore bands to break through to a genuinely mainstream audience, controversy and all. Along the way there's also been real physical toll: a van accident on tour and a bout of Bell's Palsy that he pushed through mid-run. This conversation revisits where he started and checks in on what's changed.
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1 hr 3 min
Eric Stenman from The Barbarians of California & Tinfed
Episode 727
Show notes
Eric Stenman has spent three decades on the other side of the glass, quietly shaping records for Deftones, Weezer, Thrice, Dashboard Confessional, and Senses Fail, while building AWOLNATION's entire catalog alongside Aaron Bruno since 2011. Before any of that, he was a teenager in Sacramento, self-funding vinyl pressings on his own credit card inside a scene that also produced Deftones, Far, Will Haven, and Death Grips.
Now he's finally the one holding the guitar. The Barbarians of California, his band with Bruno, released their debut album And Now I'm Just Gnashing My Teeth and is about to open a couple of dates on Guns N' Roses' 2026 tour, a long way from a home studio with barely any gear in it.
We get into the Sacramento scene that shaped him, the reunion with Bruno after a decade apart, his stories from recording Cake, what it means to walk onto a stadium stage after thirty years of building other people's.
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS
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1 hr 8 min
Mike Morales from Initiate
Episode 726
Show notes
Mike Morales grew up skateboarding and playing in a power violence band in Lompoc, a small Central Coast town far from any real scene, before those friendships pulled him into Initiate. We trace that path into the band, into writing Cerebral Circus (the record where Initiate let acoustic guitars and huge choruses sit next to their heaviest material), and into what it's like touring with a band now spread across three states. Mike also gets into the gap between what a band looks like online and what it actually feels like from inside the van, plus watching hardcore grow up around Initiate since 2016.
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1 hr 7 min
Christine Goodwyne from Pool Kids
Episode 725
Show notes
Christine Goodwyne has been building Pool Kids since she was two people short of a band, booking backyard shows in Tallahassee before there was even a name on the flyer. Nearly a decade later, the group has a Hayley Williams cosign, a flooded studio they somehow saved, a hardcore alter ego born as an April Fool's joke, and three albums that trace a path from math-rock tangents to pop hooks, most recently Easier Said Than Done on Epitaph Records.
This episode, Christine sits down to talk through the parts of the story that don't usually make the press cycle: what it actually takes to survive as an independent band inside the modern music business, what made Florida's DIY scene both a launchpad and a complicated place to come up in, and yes, an honest attempt at ranking math rock bands, because someone had to ask.
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS
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1 hr 3 min
Robin Staps from The Ocean
Episode 724
Show notes
Robin Staps started The Ocean in Berlin in 2000 as a revolving cast of musicians before locking into the band's most stable lineup in 2009. Twenty plus years and seven albums later, the group's blend of post metal, prog, and sludge has taken them from Siberian squats to European festival mainstages, and Staps runs Pelagic Records, the label he built alongside the band that's become one of Europe's key homes for post metal and post rock.
In this conversation, Robin talks through The Ocean's first ever full US tour, what it's like bringing a band built on European infrastructure and audiences into American rooms for the first time, and how the reception compares to what he expected. He also runs down his all time top five European hardcore bands, tracing the records and scenes that shaped him before The Ocean existed. And he gets into creative balance, how he manages songwriting, running a label, and touring without losing the thread on any of it.
A look at two decades of restless work from one of European heavy music's most consistent architects.
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1 hr 5 min
Brian Gorsegner from Ancient Artifax & Wired Booking
Episode 723
Show notes
Brian Gorsegner has spent his life circling the same scene from every angle. He fronted Night Birds until the band's final show at the end of 2022, books tours for acts like Alice Bag Band, Career Suicide, and Generacion Suicida through his company Wired Booking, and sits on the town council in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. But most people know him as the guy behind Ancient Artifax, the Instagram account turned archive turned book that's been unearthing punk history since a single Big Boys 7" post back in December 2016.
In this conversation, Brian talks about booking bands for a living versus collecting the artifacts of a scene that existed decades before he could buy a ticket to it, the strange economics of Discogs and what a first pressing is actually worth once nostalgia and scarcity collide, and what's sitting in his "fire box," the small stack of records he'd grab first if the house was going up in flames. He also opens up about the human side of building the Ancient Artifax book, tracking down items through people like John Brannon and Nathan Strejcek and hearing the stories behind them firsthand.
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1 hr 10 min
Ladd Mitchell from Park
Episode 722
Show notes
Before Springfield, Illinois had much of a scene to speak of, Ladd Mitchell was already building one, first with Park, then Tiger Tank, logging years on the road during the golden run of early-2000s midwest emo. We talk about joining Park mid-formation and becoming the one constant across four lineups, chasing a deal all the way to a small Santa Barbara label, and what a yearlong nonstop tour actually does to a band. We also get into the breakup, the return, and how the same restlessness that wrote songs on tour eventually turned into his first novel. This one's about staying creative no matter what circumstance you're handed: van breakdowns, lineup changes, or a blank page twenty years later.
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1 hr 2 min
Adam Rubenstein from Chamberlain and Solo Work
Episode 721
Show notes
Adam Rubenstein has been making music since he was a teenager in Indianapolis, when he and his bandmates formed Split Lip on Christmas Day, 1989. Drawing early influence from Burn, Youth of Today, and Endpoint, the band became a cornerstone of the Midwestern hardcore scene. They released records on Doghouse before most of them could drive, and landing a track on the landmark 1996 Anti-Matter compilation alongside Quicksand, Farside, Snapcase, Strife, Lifetime, and Mouthpiece which was and is a document of everything that mattered in that moment.
By 1995, Split Lip became Chamberlain, and the band pivoted toward a rootsier, more expansive sound that would go on to influence a generation of bands from Dashboard Confessional to Rise Against to The Gaslight Anthem. After Chamberlain went on hiatus in 2000, Rubenstein built a parallel career as a film composer, scoring acclaimed documentaries including Night School, 9-Man, Kid Danny, By Sidney Lumet, and Medora.
After more than two decades in New York, Rubenstein made the decision to leave the city and relocate to Ohio — a move that became the emotional backbone of his new album Firebreak, his first solo record in a decade. We talk about where it all started, what it meant to be on that Anti-Matter comp, the long road from hardcore basements to film scoring, and what it looks like to start over when you've already built something.
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1 hr 10 min
Kevin Hart from Public Opinion
Episode 720
Show notes
Kevin Hart has been yelling in hardcore bands since he was a teenager, but Public Opinion is something different, louder in some ways, quieter in others. His dad was a DJ, which means music was never just background noise growing up. These days Kevin processes the hard stuff through songs instead of burdening the people around him, and it shows as Painted On Smile is one of the most genuinely self-reflective punk records in recent memory.
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1 hr 17 min
Rich Gaccione from Providence Vegan Deli
Episode 719
Show notes
Rich Gaccione built Providence Vegan Deli into something rare; a business that functions less like a restaurant and more like a community hub, where free sandwiches go to anyone who needs one, touring bands eat for nothing, and the line between customer and neighbor gets blurry fast. We talk about how that philosophy took shape, the hardcore and punk roots that inform everything he does, and the seitan operation that started it all. We also get into his time touring with My Chemical Romance and the sandwich on his menu that is his most popular one. Come for the food, stay for the conversation.
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1 hr 3 min
Anthony Lemus from Stateside
Episode 718
Show notes
This week I sit down with Anthony Lemus, the voice behind Southern California's Stateside. What started as a warehouse job friendship and a shared love of 2000s emo has turned into one of the more exciting bands to emerge from the current hardcore-adjacent scene — and Lemus is the emotional engine at the center of it. We get into how growing up in Southern California's hardcore world shaped him, the deeply personal lyrics behind Where You Found Me, and what it actually feels like when the band that started it all asks you to open for them. It's a conversation about where music comes from, what it costs you, and the surreal moment when your heroes treat you like a peer.
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1 hr 12 min
Chad Green from Frozen Soul
Episode 717
Show notes
On this episode, I welcome Chad Green from Frozen Soul to the show. We trace his path from growing up around the Texas heavy music community to finding his place in death metal, building Frozen Soul from the ground up, and watching the band become one of the genre's biggest modern success stories.
We also dig into the influence of the Texas hardcore scene on his outlook, the confidence it takes to trust your creative instincts when the spotlight gets bigger, and the story behind Chad drawing the now-iconic Frozen Soul logo himself. It's a conversation about believing in your vision, staying authentic as opportunities grow, and why a strong identity can be just as important as the music itself.
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58 min
Jack Murray from 156/Silence
Episode 716
Show notes
Jack Murray, vocalist of 156/Silence, joins the podcast to discuss the road that brought the band to where they are today. From coming up in the Pittsburgh heavy music scene to navigating years of uncertainty, Jack reflects on the relationships, community, and DIY spirit that helped shape both the band and his perspective.
The conversation also dives into the moments when it seemed like 156/Silence might not continue, what kept him from walking away, and why persistence has ultimately been one of the band's greatest strengths. Along the way, Jack shares stories from the road, lessons learned through years of growth, and why staying committed to your vision can pay off in ways you never expect.
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1 hr 9 min
Jeremy Walker from Fire In The Mountains Fest
Episode 715
Show notes
This week I sit down with Jeremy Walker, co-founder of Fire in the Mountains, for a conversation that goes far beyond festival promotion. Jeremy reflects on the winding path that led him from a life rooted in Vermont to building one of the most unique experiences in heavy music in which a gathering where community, culture, and the natural world carry as much weight as the bands on stage.
The discussion explores the evolution of Fire in the Mountains, the mission behind the Firekeeper Alliance, and the responsibility of creating spaces that foster connection, stewardship, and cultural understanding. Jeremy also shares how his relationship with music, wilderness, and community has evolved over the years, and what continues to drive his work today. We also discuss how the Neurosis reunion got pulled together as well.
A thoughtful conversation about purpose, place, and building something bigger than yourself.
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1 hr 11 min
Mat Dwyer from Oakwood
Episode 714
Show notes
This week Ray is joined by Matthew Dwyer, the voice behind the beloved Texas band Oakwood. For many people, Oakwood occupies a unique place in underground music history of literally playing only 15-20 shows, but having a "comeback" moment that has now turned into something way more real.
Matthew takes us through his life in Texas and the environments that shaped both him and Oakwood. The conversation explores the band's connection to the Odessa era, the band came together, and a lot more. We also dig into Matthew's relationship with the broader punk and hardcore world, including formative influences from bands like Paulson and Hot Cross, and how discovering emotionally honest music helped shape his creative voice.
Along the way, Matthew reflects on the realities of building a life in Texas, balancing adulthood with creativity, the evolution of DIY culture, and how Oakwood fits into it all. It's a conversation about longevity, community, finding your place in underground music, and what happens when songs continue to connect with people long after they've been written.
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