Meet Kevin Kawano and Matt Lau of Joker’s Hand in Torrance

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Kawano and Matt Lau.

Kevin and Matt, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We started the band in late 2017 during our final year at UC Santa Cruz. Neither of us really knew what we wanted to do with our lives after graduation. By this time, we had known each other for just over three years, having been randomly assigned as roommates in our first year. We jammed together countless times, but never once considered taking it to the next level; we weren’t what you would call “risk takers.”

Graduation felt like a ticking time bomb. We had been going through the motions that had been expected of us our entire lives: get good grades, go to college, and get a good job. Music had always been around us as a hobby and an escape. Kevin played guitar and sang in a number of bands prior to Joker’s Hand. Matt grew up formally trained in classical music, playing viola in orchestras before picking up the guitar and singing. Despite already devoting a good amount of our lives to music, it wasn’t until our final year in college that we considered doing it professionally. We didn’t want to wake up thirty years from now asking ourselves, “what if we had actually tried?”

We started playing shows at a local cafe and recorded our first demo right before graduation. Once college was over, we moved back to the South Bay. While performing at an open mic, we were approached by producer Steve Ornest who would go on to produce our debut Self-Titled EP at Total Access Recording Studios (Sublime, No Doubt, Guns N’ Roses) along with producer Wyn Davis. Our first single “Anthem” began airing on several FM radio stations throughout SoCal. We met bassist Blake Baldwin and drummer Aviv Cohen during this time and played our EP Release Show at Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach just days before the country was shut down due to COVID-19.

Our second single “Gold Rush” charted on KROQ’s Locals Only with Kat Corbett, reaching #1 and staying in the Top 5 for nine weeks straight. Locals Only also featured our song “Hijacked” which took the #1 spot as well.

Prior to the shutdown, we had an upcoming tour centered around showcases at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, TX and were gearing up to play the BeachLife Festival with big names like Fitz & The Tantrums, The Steve Miller Band, and Sublime with Rome. Once all of those plans were thrown out the window, we had to figure out how we were going to continue pushing forward. Our latest single “Lockdown” was our response to the state of 2020.

We’re currently working on a new EP and some singles that will be coming soon!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We were best friends prior to forming Joker’s Hand, bonding over skateboarding and music almost immediately. We spent hours on our boards, exploring Santa Cruz and trying to learn new tricks. We used to push each other in skateboarding similarly to how we push each other in music, learning new guitar licks from each other and motivating one another to play better than before. When it came to singing, however, Matt had never sung in front of anyone before.

Matt had struggled with shyness since he was a kid. We really became best friends by pushing each other socially: Kevin would push Matt to put himself out there more, and Matt would push Kevin to try new things (Kevin is kind of a creature of habit). Matt definitely struggled with stage fright for the first few gigs we had, but he worked through it and found the stage to be absolutely addicting. Connecting to an audience with songs that you’ve put your heart into is the most rewarding feeling in the world, and if we hadn’t decided to take the risk knowing very well that we may fail, we may have never discovered that feeling.

As far as COVID-19 goes, this has been a huge obstacle for everyone. We had big shows and a tour lined up to follow up the release of our debut EP that all wound up getting scrapped due to the pandemic. We had to change how we approached even the simplest things like meeting up to write or practice. Recording became less lighthearted with all of the safety precautions we had to take, but it was still rewarding to create “Lockdown” and film a music video for it despite the inconveniences. Frankly, that’s all it’s really been for us: inconvenient. We’re just thankful that everyone in our band is healthy.

Please tell us about Joker’s Hand.
We are not bound by genre. Joker’s Hand is a rock band, but our music pulls from tons of other genres. We don’t want to be a band where every song on our record sounds the same. Writing in one style song after song becomes monotonous after a while. We’re just here to write good songs that we believe in. Our live shows coupled with our vocal ability, musicianship, and genre-bending writing style give us a uniqueness that distinguishes us among the thousands of other bands in LA.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Los Angeles is a great city because of its diversity. The culture of LA is almost defined by how undefinable it is because of how many different communities exist there. In food, music, and culture, you could effectively travel the world in one city.

The crux of LA’s issues has a lot to do with the sheer number of people living there. It’s typical to complain about the bumper-to-bumper traffic in this city, but frankly what bothers us more is what we pass while inching along the highways. There’s a huge housing crisis that’s been hitting this city and the issue of homelessness seems to be worse than ever. We are hopeful that things can get better, but a lot of work needs to be done.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jokershand.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jokershandofficial/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JokersHandBand
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jokershandband?lang=en

Image Credit:
Janna Molano, Gerald Rivera

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