Chris MacDonald’s Days and Days – A Story about Sunderland’s Leatherface and the Ties That Bind (ECW Press, 2024) sidesteps the usual fan-biography tropes. It doesn’t idolize. It doesn’t beg for reappraisal. What it offers is a layered, often raw examination of how music binds people—not through glory or consensus, but through damage, distance, and the uncomfortable intimacy of influence.
MacDonald splits the narrative between a backpacking trip through the UK and Ireland with his friend Jason, and the search for whatever truth can still be salvaged about Leatherface, the Sunderland punk band long obscured by poor distribution, personal implosions, and a reputation that spread quietly, but with surgical precision. The Guardian once called them “the greatest British punk band of the modern era.” That kind of praise sits in the background of Days and Days, but the book doesn’t echo it. It interrogates what that even means.
What MacDonald captures more sharply is absence. The absences that open between friends over years. The absence of access, before the streaming era. The emotional absences in adolescence that get filled by half-understood lyrics. “I was sort of drifting at sea,” he says about first hearing Mush. “There was a lot of desperation and pain I didn’t understand.” That clarity doesn’t come in the moment—it’s unearthed later, when the pain has calcified into something readable. The book is full of that kind of belated understanding.
It’s also full of tension: between memoir and reportage, between myth and detail. MacDonald is acutely aware of the risks of visibility. “There’s definite power in being less visible,” he says, referencing Leatherface and the Misfits in the same breath. That argument isn’t new, but here it’s grounded in experience—his own teenage hunger for meaning in grainy black-and-white photos, in tapes passed hand to hand, in lyrics that only made sense once life caught up to them.
The writing, when it turns to Jason, is unadorned and clear-eyed. There’s no flourish, just accumulation. A cold night at King’s Cross. A cry over a book. A walk through a neighborhood that mirrored Rexdale. MacDonald avoids overstatement, even when describing moments that clearly still cut deep. “Friendship is definitely a theme,” he admits, though the book is smart enough not to wrap that friendship in nostalgia. It lets the silences speak.
The same applies to Leatherface themselves. There’s no grand declaration of legacy, no call to elevate them to the canon. Instead, MacDonald honors what was actually there: the poetry in the grit, the unresolvable contradictions in Stubbs’ lyrics, the way a line like “I have dreams” can hit harder than a manifesto. “It was the contrast,” he says. “That’s why they struck such a deep chord.”
Researching the band meant chasing down people who weren’t always eager to talk. “With every new person, the myth cracked open a little more,” MacDonald says. But the myth isn’t dissolved in the book—it’s reframed. Less about underground mystique, more about human mess. Not all stories conclude. Not all bands get resolution. What we get instead is a composite—fragmented, tentative, and strangely intimate.
Below, MacDonald goes deeper into these themes. The full interview covers his writing process, his conversations with those inside and around the band, the influence of figures like Rick White and the Sadies, and the question of whether discovery—even now—can still be sacred.
How long did it take you to stop writing this book, emotionally I mean, not physically? You can feel the presence of absence in these pages—was there ever a version where you didn’t go back into the dark corners?
I wish I had a little more time to be honest, but I suppose that’s the nature of the beast. When dealing with a publisher, there’s always a deadline. It’s a blessing and a curse. In my heart, I would’ve had a few more months, but I’ve also learned with art to not over think it. It’s hard to know when to set it free, but I know it’s sooner than later. Sometimes the deadline helps with this.
When did you first feel the band wasn’t just good or underrated—but essential? Was it a single lyric, a moment, a place? What cracked the shell?
This moment didn’t happen for some time. Perhaps it did earlier on a subconscious level. My first memory of me being cognizant of this was when I heard Minx. I think I was still processing Mush. Minx sent me on a whole other trajectory of emotion. It was confirmed then that life wouldn’t be the same without them.
There’s this constant tension in the book between memory and myth, especially with LEATHERFACE’s elusive status—do you think some bands need to stay half-invisible to retain their full power?
I mean, this is subjective. Hard to answer without writing an essay. The generation I come from, where things weren’t as accessible as they are today, yes, this had something to do with it. It’s dot dissimilar to the Misfits, where the only photographs of the band out there were grainy black and white photos that prompted your imagination. This could have been their greatest gift. The best horror movies will let your imagination do the work. It isn’t as effective now that the Misfits are so visible and glossy. So, yes, there’s definite power in being less visible. This is just the route I prefer. Many bands have proved visibility and popularity work in their favour.
You don’t just write about music—you write about cold train stations, old friends, chemical evenings, and growing up with a kind of poetic violence. How did you decide when to let the band speak and when to let the personal narrative breathe?
This was a very tricky balance to achieve. I knew I wanted this book to be different, because Leatherface did it differently than the rest. It only felt right. It took a village, and some attention from my agent Dave Bidini and my editor Michael Holmes, on how to best structure the manuscript. It went through a few drafts to get it to where all parties were happy, where it struck the balance between biography and memoir with connective tissue throughout.
The scenes in Rexdale and under bridges could’ve belonged to a Larry Clark film if it had a British punk soundtrack—did you feel that connection between your own youth and the world LEATHERFACE sang about, or did it just creep in as you wrote?
Thank you. I was greatly affected by what Leatherface was singing about in my youth, even if I couldn’t comprehend it all. I was always reading poetry, and was someone who listened carefully to words. But, while writing Days and Days, I had to revisit many of the lyrics, so, a new level was unlocked for sure. It’s been a journey with them. As I tried to make clear on the last page, while writing the book, I fell deeper in love with the band than ever before.
When you finally made it to Sunderland and connected with Andrew Laing, how much of what you found matched what had lived in your imagination all those years?
I had no preconceived notion of what Sunderland looked like besides what I’d absorbed from Mush, where you’re looking through a distinctive and dreamy lens of the landscape. When we arrived in Andrew Laing’s neighbourhood at the time, it looked like Jamestown in Rexdale to me. I could relate, and because of this, I knew it was gritty. I knew there was something else behind the curtain, I just couldn’t see it all in the moment.
The writing gets tender when you talk about Jason. How much of this book is really about friendship, and how much about music?
Friendship is definitely a theme in the book, not just from mine and Jason’s perspective, but from the other people threaded throughout. These are friendships that were cultivated because of music, stemming from impactful bands such as Leatherface. I would say both friendship and music are entwined the entire way through. There’s so much heart in Leatherface. I had to reach that in the book, and friendship was one of those connectors. My favourite review of Days and Days so far came from Louder Than War, where it seems they were genuinely affected by this aspect of the book.
You talk about that night sleeping in King’s Cross, Jason crying after reading Fall on Your Knees, and the train rumbling through half-sleep—did the writing of this book ever feel like stepping back on that train?
Absolutely. It was a welcome and emotional ride. It was written during Covid, a time when travel and live music weren’t permitted. So, part of the book’s makeup is escapism for sure.
There’s a beautiful contrast between the rawness of LEATHERFACE and the sensitivity in your descriptions. Were you ever worried that writing about them in such poetic terms might alienate fans who see them as pure grit?
There were days I worried and others not so much. You can’t win everybody over. And everyone would write their own version of Days and Days just as they would prefer it to be. When I asked Stubbs in the beginning if I could have at it, he said “on one condition, that you tell the truth.” This resonated pretty hard with me, and I honoured this request on sometimes an unseen level. Truth is somewhat subjective because we view and interpret things differently. So, my truth was calling to celebrate the poetic aspect of the band. I know they are a band of true grit, but are equally thoughtful and romantic in their own right. I think that’s why they struck such a deep chord with folks. It was the contrast.
There’s a scene where you describe lying to your brother, pretending you’d written LEATHERFACE lyrics—do you think some of us carry punk rock inside us not to show off, but to survive?
Absolutely. I’m not sure where I would have ended up without punk, but when I try to envision it, the image is bleak. Punk was survival for me and taught me about myself as well as the world.
Do you remember what it was like when the music from Mush first played out of the boombox in Darrell’s basement? Have you ever heard anything since that hit you with the same mix of fear and clarity?
Yes, I remember it as clear as day. It changed the course of my existence, even if I hadn’t understood the totality in that moment. I’m not sure if I’ve heard anything that impacted me on level that Mush had, but this may be because there was so much at stake when that album came into my life. I was sort of drifting at sea. There was a lot of desperation and pain I didn’t understand. This had so much to do with it. It was a bit of a lighthouse for me.
You mentioned your reaction to the cover art of Mush as being almost mystical—do you think the way punk albums looked back then shaped the way we interpreted the sound?
Certainly. The cover of Mush looks to me, colour, grain, everything, exactly how the record sounds. It’s a perfect pairing. Another great example is Suffer by Bad Religion. That cover is the music personified. They go hand in hand. If Black Flag didn’t have such great album art, I’m not sure I would’ve liked it as much, to tell you the truth.
Frankie Stubbs’ lyrics are fragmented, working-class philosophy and urban poetry. Was there ever a lyric that haunted you more than the others, even when you weren’t listening?
“A time when everything was evergreen,” and “I have many things, I have dreams.”
Let’s switch gears a bit—what was it like trying to research and chase down people from LEATHERFACE’s orbit? Any encounters that threw you off or broke the myth wide open?
This was an entertaining but difficult endeavour. It was nearly impossible to get some of the folks on the line, and very easy with others. Everyone I spoke to brought so much insight. It was enlightening to learn from them. With every new person, the myth cracked open a little more, but feel as if I still only scratched the surface.
Writing a book like this in a post-streaming world is already punk. What’s something you wish younger music fans understood about the value of discovery?
I wish younger fans knew what it was like to wait. Everything is so immediate and disposable. I also wish they knew what it was like to take a chance and spend money on music that you have only read or heard about. I believe there’s more on the line when this happens, and that maybe you’re not so quick to move on. Perhaps appreciation comes through this. But I don’t blame them. If given the accessibility to me then, I would have gobbled it up too.
Let’s talk about the local scenes. You bring up Full Blast Records and that specific kind of nerdy curation—any other 2024-2025-era artists or scenes that gave you the same buzz LEATHERFACE once did?
Yes, I feel quite nerdy about the Sadies, a Toronto alt country/psyche band with punk roots that has been highly influential. Their singer Dallas Good died in 2022. Rick White (Eric’s Trip, Elavetor to Hell, The Unintended) has recorded a recent album with the Sadies with him singing. It’s the closest to Good that we’ll get. It turns out White and Good were deeply connected and influenced each other greatly. I believe these two might have been unknowingly at the forefront of a movement that has bled through Canadian music. I’m fascinated how this distinctive sound has spread and created a scene that is still alive today. You can hear it and trace the threads if you listen close.
Do you feel there’s a place today—Toronto, Sunderland, or elsewhere—where that kind of magic can still happen? A physical place, not a playlist.
Sunderland still is producing great punk like Back Teeth, Tearjerker and Roach Squad (ex Leatherface!) and many more. I think every city has a scene of some kind that is special to those experiencing in the present and with their community.
Have any current bands reached out after reading Days and Days and said “Hey, this is the kind of story I want to live too”?
I’ve had many musicians contact me. I think there is a Jason and me in every city in the world who has experienced a somewhat similar brush with the band. So many people have reached out to keep the conversation going. And that’s been the most rewarding aspect. I sent Sam McPheeters from Born Against a copy. I received a handwritten letter in return that had one of the greatest Leatherface stories I’ve ever heard inside of it. That one’s is just for me though.
Would you ever consider writing a similar story about another underground band, or was this a one-time pilgrimage?
Like I mentioned, the Sadies and their connection to Rick White. Also, Reigning Sound from Memphis. Although I don’t feel inclined to write about music at the moment, when I think about these bands and how similar to Leatherface they are in the sense that they are cult classics, I could imagine writing another. These are exceptional musicians on the fringes, which is exactly what I’m passionate about and find inspiring.
And finally, what would you say to someone who’s never heard LEATHERFACE—where should they start, and what should they listen for, beyond the noise?
Start with Mush. It’s the gateway, I believe.
Listen to the delivery, the urgency, the musicianship, the message, the passion, the anger, the poetry, and the hope. It’s rare that all these things can be found in one place.
