A concert playbill for punk band Face to Face and No Motiv at the San Bernardino Fairgrounds.
Face to Face is from my old stomping grounds in Victorville, CA. Rob Kurth, their drummer for many years, played drums on several tracks that I mixed and mastered in the recording studio. He is an excellent drummer, not just for punk, but for pop styles as well. Very solid player.
Origin    Victorville, California
Country    USA
Years active    1991-2003
Genres    Pop punk, Skate punk
Labels    Dr. Strange Records, Victory Records, Vagrant Records, A&M Records, Fat Wreck Chords
Beginnings
face to face originally formed in 1988 as a local band under the name “Zero Tolerance”[7] by Keith (guitars, vocals) and Matt Riddle (bass), who had been friends since high school during this time. They found Rob Kurth, as their drummer, through mutual friends and started writing and rehearsing, although Zero Tolerance never released any recordings. Kurth’s friend Mark Haake joined on as an additional guitarist for a couple of months before getting orders to the Middle East with the Air Force. As a 3-piece, the band played a show at Spanky’s in Riverside, California, and a couple of other local shows. When Haake left, the band continued as a 3-piece and changed their name to “face to face” in 1991.
The band continued to play frequently throughout the Inland Empire and Orange County and quickly became a local favorite alongside bands like The Offspring, Guttermouth, Voodoo Glow Skulls, and others. At one of the local shows, the band met Bill Plaster of Dr. Strange Records. They decided to do a record together and face to face entered the studio at Westbeach Recorders in Hollywood, California to record songs for their first album, Don’t Turn Away (1992). Once the recording was finished (in 2 weekends) there was trouble getting it released; in the interim the band met Jim Goodwin. Goodwin offered to record the band’s new songs for free, and they entered the studio to record songs such as, “Nothing New,” “Pastel,” and “Disconnected”, which also ended up being on the Don’t Turn Away album.
As a four-piece band
In 1993, just after a three-week tour in Germany supporting Lagwagon, face to face added Chad Yaro as an additional guitarist to fill out the sound of the band. Before the band would work on their second album, they made a decision to go with a then-new label that had major-label distribution. The label, Victory Music, signed them and then they entered the studio with producer Thom Wilson (of The Offspring fame) and began recording their second album, entitled Big Choice.
The label was nervous about their distribution deal and wanted a test release to run through the system, and the band put together an EP of songs from 7″s and other rarities called Over It. The EP was released weeks before Big Choice and the label had a remixed version of the song “Disconnected” on the play list at KROQ-FM in Los Angeles, California. Because of the success of the single on radio, the label convinced the band to add “Disconnected” to Big Choice as a bonus track (a third recording of the song); additionally, a cover of The Descendents’ “Bikeage” is included as a bonus track. After touring with bands such as NOFX, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and The Offspring during 1995, Riddle left face to face and went on to play in 22 Jacks and Pulley before settling on No Use for a Name. The band replaced him with a then-unknown bassist, Scott Shiflett.
In 1996, face to face began writing and recording their third album, which is self-titled. This being the first record without Riddle, who had been Keith’s songwriting collaborator, Keith wrote the majority of the songs with some help from Shiflett and Yaro. They recruited Jim Goodwin again to record and produce the record. Following the release of the album, they joined the Warped Tour in 1997. After the release of their self-titled album, Kurth left face to face in early 1998. To finish out the touring cycle for their self-titled record, the band replaced Kurth with Jose Medeles, who was out with them on a co-headlining US tour with the Reverend Horton Heat band, before taking a break to write and record their next album. After Pete Parada joined the band as Kurth’s replacement, the band started writing and recording two more albums (with producer Chad Blinman), Ignorance is Bliss (1999) and Reactionary (2000), before Yaro left the band in 2001.
Post-Yaro period
Following Yaro’s departure in 2001, face to face decided to stay a three-piece again and began writing material for what would be their sixth and final studio album, How to Ruin Everything. After getting out of a less than desirable deal with Beyond Music, How to Ruin Everything was released on Vagrant Records in 2002. Following that, the band headlined and joined The Warped Tour for the first time since 1997.
Breakup
In 2004, after announcing their breakup, it was announced that face to face’s hiatus would be permanent as their official website displayed “Don’t call it a come back”. They gave most of their fans a proper farewell with “The Only Goodbye Tour” of 2004 with supporting acts My Chemical Romance and Seconds to Go, which followed the raucous Warped Tour finale in Boston. Orlando fans had their farewell show cancelled due to Hurricane Charlie. It was rescheduled as the last date on the tour, but that show was also cancelled.