Carmen Macri
The Pinz are back, antagonizing the punk scene.
Words by Carmen Macri
What does punk mean to you? Is it the clothes, the slang, the hair, the music? For Walter Clough, punk isn’t about the look — it’s about the attitude. It’s about flipping the bird to conformity, even when it’s coming from inside his own scene. And that mindset started the rise, the fall and the rise again of The Pinz
From a young age, Clough knew exactly who he was: an antagonizer. Fitting in was never the goal, and following the rules — hell, even the law — was more of a suggestion than a mandate. He looks back on the days he’d ditch school to cruise around in his buddy’s ’50s Mercury — no power steering, all muscle—then spend the rest of the day surfing, skating and throwing hands with anyone who gave him a funny look.
Before The Pinz, it was just a no-name band out of Ponte Vedra that barely made it through one show before Clough realized he belonged front and center. That led to the Banditos, a raw two-piece with Clough on vocals and Clayton Block on drums. They started building a buzz around Jacksonville, and it wasn’t long before they knew they needed to beef up the lineup.
The first order of business was to find someone on bass, and luckily enough, Clough knew just the guy.
“I was just sick of dealing with flaky people who were not really in it because I was committed. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to give 100%, and Clayton was the same way. We would pretty much do anything to play music,” Clough shared. “My brother [Wyatt] was into music. He liked Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and all that kind of stuff. He was kind of catching the tail end of the emo scene, so I went to my brother’s room across the hallway because we still lived with our parents, obviously. And I said, ‘Hey, you’re going to play this.’ And I handed him a bass, and he said, ‘OK.’ Just like that.”
Clough didn’t waste any time getting Wyatt up to speed, and Wyatt was all in. They had about a week of practicing before they were set to perform that weekend at The Pit.
“It was awesome. I mean, he picked up the singing pretty quickly, too, because he loved Pete Wentz at the time. And so for him to get to play bass and kind of emulate his hero was, I think, pretty cool for him.”
Not long after Wyatt joined, The Pinz entered a battle of the bands at Nease High School — and, no surprise, they won. The prize was an hour of studio time at a local Jacksonville spot, which they used to cut their first album. Even with the studio access, the whole thing was still pure DIY, just like everything The Pinz touched. They knocked out the whole 7-song EP — live-tracked and all — in under an hour.
“It was like there was no production value. We just live-tracked it. We didn’t even place a click or anything,” Clough recalled. “We didn’t know, we were just dumb ass kids and everything we’d ever done was DIY from day one.”
The dominoes kept falling into place for the band. Shortly after recording their EP, they landed a spot on tour with the punk legends the Dead Kennedys — a full-circle moment for Walter, who had named the band as one of his biggest inspirations.
Clough recalled getting an unexpected call from Bruce Cataldo, a local producer, who started the conversation with a strange question for a promoter: “What kind of amp do you have?” Walter told him he used a Marshall and asked why he wanted to know. Catlado then asked about the drummer’s kit — Clough explained it was a brand-new Pearl—and followed up by asking about the bassist’s gear. Clough admitted they’d been borrowing rigs and didn’t have a dedicated bass setup. Curious, he pressed Cataldo on why he was asking all this. That’s when Cataldo revealed a band from California wanted to take them on the road, but they’d need to upgrade their equipment to meet the standards for sharing a backline. Clough told him to send over a list of what they needed, and he’d make it happen.
“I called him back probably in two hours, like, all right, I got everything. I literally went out to Guitar Center and just got whatever I needed right then and there. So I did that, and I called him. I was like, all right, cool. What’s going on? What are we doing? He had given us really cool shows before, and I was like, OK, well, this might be crazy,” Clough explained. “And he’s like, have you ever heard of a band called the Dead Kennedys? I was like, are you? Are you kidding me? Bruce? The Dead Kennedys were the first punk band I ever heard back then. Hell, yeah, we’re so down.”
Clough marks that tour as the real beginning of the Pinz as we know them today. Hitting the East Coast with the Dead Kennedys gave them their first real taste of life on the road. Since Clough and his brother were still in high school at the time, their mom came along for the ride — tour chaperone duties and all. A close-knit relationship grew between the two bands, and the Pinz were invited back to perform at shows across the country. Clough remembers one show in particular when the lead singer asked him to jump on stage and sing a Dead Kennedys song with them.
“He just handed me the microphone, and I was like, OK, if you want me to upstage you guys, I’m going to do it. Don’t give me the microphone and expect me not to make the most of it. So during the song, when he handed me the microphone, maybe I took it, maybe he handed it to me, I don’t know. But, I went out and I stood on the crowd. I was walking on people’s hands singing the song,” Walter shared. “And that was the moment I was like, yeah, this is it. This is what I am. This is what I meant to do, at least for the time being. It was just so natural. I was 18 years old, commanding a pretty big field, like a 2,000-seat theater.”
The Pinz kept gaining steam and building a cult-like following in Jacksonville — but with the buzz came some friction behind the scenes. As they started playing alongside more punk acts, cracks began to show. The scene started to feel less authentic — some of the bands they once admired were putting on a persona to please the crowd, pushing messages they didn’t actually stand behind.
“We were writing music with these guys and seeing the music industry from behind the scenes. And it’s all so disingenuous to talk to someone on stage acting like they’re just totally ripped on whatever mystery meat narcotics, and then they come off stage like, hey, guys, what do you think of the show?” Walter explained. “Obviously, they’re playing a character, but why not just be yourself? Because when I’m on stage, I’m the same person on stage as I am walking around Publix. My brother and I, we don’t really care about being famous. We love to write music, and if it becomes super successful, then cool. But I don’t really give a shit about that. That means selling out, so to speak, of who we are.”
In the industry, Clough kept running into the same wall—people telling him what to do, what to wear, what to sing, how to sound. For a while, he played along. But eventually, it wore thin. He hit a point where he just couldn’t fake it anymore. He didn’t want to. He wanted to be himself, and if that was something he wasn’t able to do, band life lost its appeal. With the love gone, performing felt more like a job than it did a passion, so tensions began rising within the band. The final straw sounds almost laughable now — but at the time, it was anything but.
“We laugh about it now, but I can’t remember what the full story is. Essentially, my brother and I got in a disagreement. I think I had to take him to a dentist appointment because he wrecked his car or something like that, and he wouldn’t get out of bed. I was like, well, f*ck you. I’m leaving and you’re not going to go to your dentist appointment. And then I was like, you know what? I think we just need to take a break from the band and all of that,” Clough recalled. “It’s such a stupid, silly reason to end something that was so fun. But like I said, you’re not really flush with maturity at that age. So yeah, we got into a fight over something stupid and took a 10-year break.”
Over the past decade, the band members drifted into their own lives — marriage, kids, the whole thing. It wasn’t until a few years back, when Clough and his wife Elif were running a shop in Georgia, that the idea of getting the band back together started bubbling up — sparked by casual conversations with customers who’d wander in and strike up some small talk. Walter recalls the exact conversation he’d had that made him stop and think.
“Some of the people who were always coming to the business would strike up conversations with me and would ask me, ‘What were you doing before this?’ You know, you just talk to people. And one day I was like, ‘Well, I used to be in a band.’ And that was the first time I really thought about it,” Clough expressed. “Later that day, I went back and listened to old songs and the album we did with Chris Testa. I listened to that album and remembered thinking, ‘Yeah, this is so cheesy. I wrote this playlist in high school, but, damn, the production is so good. This is such a great album.’”
While listening to the album, Clough caught himself studying the artwork on the back and realized — it had been 10 years since they put it out. He picked up the phone and called Wyatt, pitching the idea of a 10-year reunion. Sure, it had come up in passing before, but this time, he was all in. No more talk — he was ready to make it happen. Clough reached out to one of their former drummers, Jacob White, who jumped on board without hesitation. Michael Peters stepped in on lead guitar—and just like that, The Pinz were officially back in action, and in true Pinz fashion, they practiced fully as a band only two days before their show at Jack Rabbits back in 2022.
“I think we probably prepared for like a month in advance of the show. The first time we practiced together fully as a band was two days before the show, and we learned the whole set, then a whole bunch of covers that we used to play throughout the years. It was so fun. It was, musically, probably not as tight as I would’ve liked it to be because I’m a perfectionist when it comes to that. But, we had a sold-out crowd, which really shocked me,” Clough shared. “For not playing for that long, I was like, wow, people must have really fond memories of us. I was so thankful and humbled in a way, you know? People still get us. People still care about coming and seeing us. We had crowd surfing and stage diving. It was like we never skipped a beat. It was like we were right back to where we were in the punk scene.”
Since reuniting, the band’s been back in the studio, writing new material ahead of their upcoming show at Jack Rabbits on June 14. But this time, it’s on their terms. They’re making music for themselves — writing what they want to write, singing what they want to sing. As Clough put it, “If people like it, cool. If they don’t, OK.”
“We’re not trying to sound like anybody else. We’re just being ourselves and being ourselves as much as we can be,” Clough shared. “And for me, I want to be on stage. I want to be performing. That’s what I love to do. I love to perform. I love to hear my guitar. I love to play my guitar.”
Follow FOLIO!