page_title: Jawbreaker (band)
section_title: 1997–2016: Post-Jawbreaker projects
hierarchical_section_title: Jawbreaker (band) / History / 1997–2016: Post-Jawbreaker projects
caption_attribution_description: English: Blake Schwarzenbach playing piano in Jets to Brazil at The Catalyst, Santa Cruz on April 29, 2001. Photo taken with a Nikon E880 and uploaded to Flickr by user "star5112." Released under Creative Commons license: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0.
context_page_description: Jawbreaker is an American punk rock band active from 1986 to 1996, and again since 2017. The band is considered to be influential to the 1990s emo genre, and has also been credited for being part of the punk rock revival scene that decade.
  Lead vocalist and guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach, bassist Chris Bauermeister, and drummer Adam Pfahler formed the band while students at New York University, later relocating to Los Angeles where they released their debut album Unfun through independent record label Shredder Records. Relocating again to San Francisco the next year, they released 1992's Bivouac through the Tupelo Recording Company and The Communion Label.
  Schwarzenbach's charisma and personal, frustrated lyrics helped establish him as a cult idol, even as he underwent surgery to remove painful, voice-threatening polyps from his throat. Jawbreaker toured with Nirvana in 1993 and released 24 Hour Revenge Therapy in 1994, attracting the attention of major labels. They signed a $1 million contract with DGC Records and released 1995's Dear You, but its more polished production and smooth vocals caused significant backlash from the band's core audience.
context_section_description: Following the band's breakup, Schwarzenbach moved to Brooklyn where he DJ'd and wrote freelance video game reviews for websites. He formed and fronted Jets to Brazil from 1997 to 2003, combining Britpop influences, piano ballads, and stark lyrics. Fans and critics, however, still associated him primarily with Jawbreaker and did not warm to his new project: "Schwarzenbach was so adored for what he had done that few were willing to allow him to gracefully move on", writes Greenwald, "Jets to Brazil, though popular, has received unspeakably scathing reviews, boiling with the bitterness usually reserved for a cheating lover."
  Bauermeister, meanwhile, returned to his job at the toy store he had worked at before Jawbreaker had begun touring. "I had been on tour, playing in front of thousands of people", he later remarked, "And here I was, working as a toy shop clerk. I was devastated." He eventually returned to music, joining the Chicago pop punk band Horace Pinker from 1999 to 2001, performing on their 2000 EP Copper Regret before forming the shortlived Shorebirds and Mutoid Men with Mattie Jo Canino, formerly of Latterman. Bauermeister additionally recorded bass on RVIVR's 2014 EP Bicker & Breathe, a band also fronted by Canino.
  Pfahler remained in San Francisco's Mission District, where he opened the Lost Weekend Video store with Jawbreaker's tour manager Christy Colcord. He played in J Church with Bauermeister's old roommate Lance Hahn from 1998 to 2002, then in Whysall Lane until 2006. He continued to release Jawbreaker material through his Blackball Records label, issuing the live album Live 4/30/96 in 1999 and the compilation album Etc. in 2002. In 2004 he licensed the publishing rights to Dear You—which had become an out-of-print collector's item, often selling for more than twice its retail price on online auction sites—from DGC's parent company Geffen Records, and re-released it to positive critical response.
  In August 2007 filmmakers Keith Schieron and Tim Irwin began work on a documentary film about Jawbreaker, having previously made the 2005 Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo. All three band members were convinced to take part in the film and met at a San Francisco studio, the first time they had all met together in eleven years. "A couple years ago, I began to have a really nice time with the memory of Jawbreaker," said Schwarzenbach, "I just thought, 'That's good, people finally get it.' It was nice. So I was happy with the idea. I wanted to do it." Bauermeister was unsure about seeing Schwarzenbach again, but stated that "there was a moment when I realized that my resentment was not so much through Blake, but what he had come to represent in my mind. So I told him." The filmmakers had the necessary instruments and equipment set up in the studio and invited the band to play, which they did, performing "Bivouac", "Condition Oakland", and "Parabola". The performance was photographed, and an audio recording was made through the sound board, but the band chose not to film the session "out of both respect for the sanctity of the moment and fear that we'd suck." In February 2011 Schieron and Irwin shot footage in Los Angeles, including interviews with Jon Liu and the band's former tour manager Anthony "Nino" Newman. There was talk of reuniting the band with Dear You producer Rob Cavallo, but this did not take place. Bauermeister and Schwarzenbach did not speak again for some time after the filming in San Francisco. Pfahler mentioned in a May 2015 update on the band's official Twitter account that he had "just met with Keith Schieron about the Jawbreaker documentary. We're interviewing editors to take it from here."
  Schwarzenbach spent time teaching English at Hunter College in New York City and briefly fronted The Thorns of Life from 2008 to 2009. He currently plays in the band Forgetters. Bauermeister lives in Olympia, Washington and performs in the Mutoid Men. Pfahler still resides in San Francisco, where he continues to run Lost Weekend Video and reissue Jawbreaker material through Blackball Records; in 2010 he rel
caption: Schwarzenbach in 2001 with his post-Jawbreaker act Jets to Brazil.
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