Full Disclosure: Matt Smith is my brother. We don't live in the same city (he's in Buffalo, New York) and I'm in Laurel, Maryland), and even though we occasionally team up to play music, our artistic collaborations typically don't go any further than that. That brings me to this documentary my brother made in partnership with Thane McGarry of Shepherd Moon Studios. I had no idea my brother was even interested in documentaries, so I certainly didn't know he wanted to make one. Therefore, I thought it might be worthwhile to speak to him and learn why he wanted to make the documentary Zip Tied: The Virus X Story, which is about the Niagara Falls, New York, punk band Virus X. Readers should note, however, that this conversation touches on more than just the documentary. I start by asking my brother about his involvement in Buffalo's punk rock scene, and by the time it wraps up, we find ourselves discussing art's staying power. Dig it.
This conversation took place on December 26, 2025, when I was supposed to be working.
Joe3: All right, so I want to talk with you about your documentary, Zip Tied: The Virus X Story. Did I get that title right?
Matt Smith: You got it right.
Awesome. So, even though we're brothers, I don't really know about your early involvement with punk rock in Buffalo. When did you first get into punk rock and what are your memories of the Buffalo scene at that time?
I think I got into punk rock in the same way that you did. You know, we both went to St. Francis High School outside of Buffalo, and for some reason, punk rock was a very big thing with the kids there in the early and mid-1980s when I went. I have talked to a lot of friends that went to other Catholic high schools in the area and that wasn't the case for them. They said a lot of their schoolmates were into classic rock and things like that. For some reason, the kids who went to St. Francis have always been into punk from back in the day. And so, through my friends, I started listening to The Clash, and I started listening to The Jam and Elvis Costello (early Elvis Costello), Black Flag, Husker Du, and that stuff ... it literally kind of like changed my life. It felt like I was in on a secret that other people weren't, and I don't know, I just remember it being a really exciting time. And from getting into punk through that, my friends and I started exploring what was available in Buffalo. We discovered The Continental, which was a legendary punk place in Buffalo, and [the record store] Home of the Hits, where you could get imports of all this various punk music like Generation X and the Sex Pistols and Echo and the Bunnymen. We'd go down there and buy shirts. And so, you know, that's how we got into it. And I started following some bands in Buffalo, like The Fems, and we would have these cassette tapes that we would play on the school bus.
The Fems had a song, “Go to a party, act like an asshole.” I remember that. My friends and I just thought it was so cool ... we got fake IDs to hang out at The Continental. From there, I got really into the Forgotten Rebels, which was a punk band out of Hamilton, Ontario, that played Buffalo all the time. They were like something I'd never seen before, and so, hanging out at The Continental and going to see the Forgotten Rebels as much as I could, I just started finding other bands in Buffalo at the time, like the Lumens. That's when Virus X started to come around. They were really good friends with Teenage Head, which is a legendary punk band from Hamilton, Ontario, as well. And yeah, so I mean, really through high school and through my friends, and then just the curiosity we had and the excitement that we had about the music led us down a path.
Okay, I did not know that. Cool. But in terms of Virus X, you said that you saw them and that they were friends with other bands, but what are your memories of them from back in the day?
Yeah, it's funny. They seemed like a band of outsiders in a world that already existed for outsiders because they were from Niagara Falls. I wouldn't say they were the predominant punk band in Buffalo. They were just kind of there on the scene, and being from Niagara Falls kind of made them outsiders in the Buffalo scene, even though Niagara Falls is 20 minutes away. I remember when they put out their first album, and that album, along with the other local bands who had put out albums, started circulating throughout school. What really surprised me about them, not so much back then, but when I left Buffalo for 33 years for my career and raised a family and things like that, was when I got back to Buffalo I found out that they were still playing and pretty much the same band that existed back in the day. They didn't really go through any membership changes, except they've had a few different bass players over the years, but the core of their band was the same. And if you've been in a band, you know how hard it is to keep it together for 40 days, let alone for 40 years. After I returned to Buffalo, I started a punk magazine [1120 Press – Ed.] and got to know bands throughout the area through that. Eventually, I got to know the guys in Virus X and I found them fascinating. Anyone who's been around for 40 years has stories to tell ....
Okay, so how did you go from knowing who they were to making them the subject of a documentary? Was it just that ability to kind of stay the course and keep their core together for 40 years, or was there some other kind of element to them that made you think these guys would be a great subject?
Well, I mean, you know, I got to know the guys here and there, and I got to know people who knew them, and I got to hear stories about them, some which I really can't repeat due to statutes of limitations ....
I've been a lifelong journalist, so I'm trained to recognize what makes a story, and there is a lot there that makes them fascinating subjects for a documentary. And again, when I decided to make this documentary on them, it wasn't as a fanboy. It wasn't to say this band was the greatest band. It was to say, this band is really cool and they’ve got really cool stories and their story is one worth telling from a journalistic standpoint. So, you know, I teamed up with a young man named Thane McGarry who runs Shepherd Moon Studios. And, you know, I specifically chose to reach out to him because his work is, in my opinion, far superior to anyone else's in Buffalo. He's a great cinematographer. He's very influenced by snowboarding films and things that you would see on Vice Television. I think my line of thought was, if you're going to make a movie, just try to get the best talent you can, and Thane is the best out there. He was enthusiastically on board. He didn't know much about the Buffalo punk scene. But yeah, so that's how I hooked up with Thane and we just started going to work.
Virus X was a very enthusiastic and motivated subject. They were honored that someone wanted to make a movie about them. They just opened their world to us and they were very cooperative with us. And so we worked on it for about a year.
Okay, so you just explained that you saw a story there with these guys. But I want to ask what, personally, what made you think, hey, I want to do a documentary about these guys? You're a writer, you've written a couple books, you're a journalist, you know how to interview people. This could have been a multi-part podcast. It could have been a book about Virus X and their position in the punk scene in Buffalo. And then there’s the whole Niagara Falls element, which I want to get to later. But I've known you your whole life and I've never heard you talk about making documentaries. So, what made you say, you know what, I'm going to do a documentary this time?
Well, I always did want to make a documentary. It was always a creative goal. And I have ideas for non-music related documentaries. But when I started the punk magazine, I initially wanted -- and I recruited Thane for this -- to make a documentary on the history of Buffalo hardcore music, and Thane has shot a lot of shows and his footage is tremendous. So, we started down that path and then realized that was an enormous project. I ran into story lines that I did not anticipate. You know, there are some politics involved in that scene, as you know because you were involved in it. There are different factions. I just realized it was a much bigger project than I had anticipated, and so I wanted to pivot. And, you know, in my desire to make a documentary, I had been jotting down ideas and subjects. And again, I got to know the guys in Virus X and I just thought they would make a compelling story, not only because they were together 40 years, but just the simple fact, if you're together 40 years, and anyone who's been married a long time knows this, there's that origin story. But then there are also challenges and the battles to overcome those challenges. For Virus X, there was a whole Niagara Falls element. There were so many stories within their story, and once I realized it, I thought, okay, we're going to pivot from this hardcore project. So, when Virus X agreed, you know, we just ... we kind of let the story unfold. I knew what I wanted to accomplish with them, but we let the story unfold and we let the story take us where it took us. So, you know, it's ... again, having been a journalist my whole life, I was able to recognize, you know, elements within the story to make it, multifaceted. And it just worked out. We're very happy with the way the film has turned out and we're very happy with the response.
You're doing a fantastic job of anticipating my questions .... So, talk a little bit more about letting the story unfold because as I was watching the documentary, I was wondering, did you – and I don't really have any conception of how documentaries work -- approach the interviews with the various people in the band and people around them, and ask direct questions like I'm asking you now, or were the interviews more freeform? How did you do the interviews and how did that mesh with the narrative arc that results in the film?
It was a little bit of both. Like in the case of Leo McDonald, who was the band's original bassist, obviously we wanted to talk to him about the band's history, and that was kind of a more structured interview. But then, the deeper we got into the story, I started realizing, okay, one of the aspects that arose during our interviews with the band was there was a time they thought they were going to break up and they put out an album which was kind of cast as a solo album by Rick [Virus X's vocalist]. The Rick Miami Pad is the name of the album, and it was kind of presented as a solo LP, although parts of the band worked on the album as well. But when that story line started to develop, and that started to develop naturally, that wasn't one I anticipated. I knew that I had to bring people into the film to talk about that aspect. So that's why, you know, we brought in Flip Hastings, who played bass on that album, and he was able to give us insight into that record. So, as the story went along, I realized, okay, we need to interview so-and-so because he can tell us about this story line that's naturally developing. And there were story lines that I didn't anticipate at all that Thane, who's got a tremendous journalistic sense about him, did. You know, he started recognizing the whole Love Canal angle of, you know, this band grew up in Niagara Falls at a time when the Love Canal environmental disaster really hit and influenced and shaped what was happening in Niagara Falls, New York. Then I realized that was starting to become a story line. That was something I never anticipated putting in the film, but it became a big part of it and so, we adapted in terms of the interviews we did and how we structured the interviews and where we took the interviews. A lot of it was natural, and it was in response to the way the story was developing as we were making the movie.
Can you talk a little bit about the Niagara Falls and Love Canal disaster angle? I knew Virus X was from Niagara Falls, but I didn't put those two things together. From your perspective, what was the influence of Niagara Falls/Love Canal that kind of surfaces in the band’s story?
Well, there were a couple, because as I said when we started this interview, bands from Niagara Falls in Buffalo are kind of considered outsiders. And if you know anything about Niagara Falls, New York, it's a place that has fallen on very, very, very rough times. And, you know, people who aren't familiar with Niagara Falls, New York, when they come to see Niagara Falls, they're kind of shocked at what the city of Niagara Falls looks like. Niagara Falls, Ontario, across the bridge, is a whole different world. And that's where you want to go if you're a tourist. You don't want to hang around Niagara Falls, New York. So, there was that element of the band coming from Niagara Falls that made them outsiders that I wanted to explore. But then I started realizing the city itself must have influenced who they are as people and who they are as musicians. And then on top of that, there was the whole Love Canal situation that they had to deal with, that they grew up around. So, it influenced their childhoods. It influenced that whole community. It thrust that community into the national spotlight. It was a disaster. And, you know, so there had to be an effect on them as artists.
And so, again, the Niagara Falls angle, just like other story angles, started to develop more and more as we got into it. I didn't anticipate really traveling down a path in that film regarding the subject of Love Canal, and it ended up becoming a big part of the film. It was an outgrowth of Niagara Falls being one of the story lines. I've talked to other bands about this as well in the course of my work for the magazine, and I had an interesting interview a little while ago with a musician from Niagara Falls who wasn't in Virus X. He said, not only does the community influence you. but [for Niagara Falls musicians] there's a lineage where all the musicians are kind of ... anyone who took lessons, took them from like the same four or five people, and there's some very, very well-known musicians in Niagara Falls who the musicians out there today kind of grew up watching and being educated by. So, there's a Niagara Falls sound because everyone learns from the same people.
That is actually why we brought in Ivy D'Amico, who's in the film. You know, her family has run this music store in Niagara Falls and a lot of people learned how to play by going to that store and being taught by her father. She runs the business now. She was a musician herself from back in the early punk days, which is why I wanted to talk to her, but I didn't anticipate, again, a natural development of the story where these guys in Virus X, a lot of them learned from her father. And so, the whole Niagara Falls angle was kind of like an onion. The more Thane and I chipped away at it, the more layers would just fall and you'd realize, oh, there's something else to explore.
I don't know if that answers your question, but it's kind of like, one element of Niagara Falls led into another element of Niagara Falls that maybe we didn't anticipate, but was in front of us, and we were like, okay, let's explore that.
That answers my question. All these questions are admittedly open-ended because I want to hear what you have to say. I thought that part in the film where the band is talking about kind of Love Canal and what it was like growing up there, and I think it's Rick who says, “After that, I really didn't trust the authorities anymore,” that just kind of completely hit home for me. Like, first of all, what an amazing punk rock statement. But second, yeah, going through, living through Love Canal and the amount of bullshit that must have been flying around, you know, for people growing up in that environment, it was probably really difficult to get an honest answer out of anybody. It's just interesting to think about punk bands being birthed or growing up in that kind of situation.
It almost makes for the perfect environment for a punk band to be birthed from.
Yeah, like everybody talks about how important the Reagan era was for punk rock bands. This is a mini element of that.
The interesting thing too is, I recall Sam [Virus X’s drummer] telling me that ... we were talking about the movie and we were talking about some of the plot and the subplots of the movie. He said he never really even thought about how Love Canal influenced them until the movie started to explore that subject, and that forced him to explore it within his own experience. And so, it's just interesting.
But again, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. It's to just touch back on your point. Love Canal seems like the perfect place for a punk band to be birthed from. Not only was it a disaster, but Love Canal, the Love Canal story, was all about government and corporate malfeasance and if you ... what else is going to breed distrust of authority and rebellion than government and corporate malfeasance?
Okay, so now that the documentary has been out and shown around town. What are your thoughts about it?
Well, it's interesting because I lived with it for so long. There was a point in which I was kind of getting tired of it. You know, as an artist or a musician, you work on something for so long and you're driven by this creative impulse, and after a project is done, you can bask in it being finished and people receiving it, but that starts to wear off and you want to move on and start creating something else. So, I had a lot of emotions swirling around about the film. I was very excited, very thrilled, but I was also a little nervous because it was a whole new medium that I was exploring. Thank God Thane was as good as he is at what he does because it freed me up. I was very hands off. I let Thane like just do his own work and he killed it.
One of the things that people appreciate about the film is the quality of how it looks. It doesn't look like this cheaply made, film, but as the I've lived with this film for so long, and it had two screenings in Buffalo, but I had watched the film in the editing process about 1,000 times. So, I was getting kind of exhausted. I have not gone back and watched it, but I'm going to go to the showing in Canada, in Niagara Falls, on January 15, 2026, and I'm kind of excited about seeing it because I've intentionally stayed away from it since our last showing on November 13, 2025. So, I'm kind of excited to watch it with not necessarily fresh eyes, but having taken a break from it. I think I'm not going to analyze it as closely. I think I'm going to go and just enjoy it. So yeah, I've had a lot of emotions swirling about the film, but, ultimately, I'm just very, very pleased. I'm really ... to be honest with you, I'm ecstatic for the guys in Virus X that the reception has been so enthusiastic and that the movie was received so well because it was great to see the love that was directed toward them. I think that makes me the happiest.
Okay, and what has the band said about it and what have people who know something about film or making documentaries said about it?
I mean, the band is very, very thankful and they're very happy and appreciative, and, you know, they've been nothing but great about the whole thing. Again, I'm glad that they were shown love, that people wanted to come and see this film. I haven't really received any reviews from people in the business, so to say, and frankly, I wouldn't give a shit either way. I don't know if Thane has, but no, I haven't and I wouldn't. I mean, I'm happy with it. I'm overjoyed with how it came out. It came out the way it did in large part because of Thane's expertise, and I think our skills really matched. I'm a journalist of almost 40 years and I know my way around a story, and he knows his way around a camera and editing and it just worked out. I want to also thank the bands around Buffalo who gave us their music to use in the film for the soundtrack. That was a key element too. I tried not just to plug songs in, but to use each song at various moments in the film to kind of advance the story. So, you know, I've got nothing but thanks for the bands who let me use their music.
Yeah, I will say that it is really well done, just in terms of how it looks. When I was coming in for the showing, I was like, oh, please don't let this look amateurish so I have to lie to my brother. [Ha ha!] It's really well done.
I think a lot of people expected it to look like a home movie.
So, getting back to like the whole idea of documentaries .... This is your first one and as with most projects of this nature, you look at it with sort of rose-colored glasses, and then you get into it and you encounter the problems that people who work in the art form typically encounter. So, I'm interested to know if there were any feelings of sort of imposter syndrome anywhere along the line, or any moments where you were like, “What the hell am I doing? Why didn't I just write some articles?” If there were, how did you get over them? If there weren't, why do you think that was?
I never felt any type of imposter syndrome. I'm very confident when it comes to my work. And again, I specifically wanted to work with Thane because I think he's so talented, and I knew that he was cut out for this job. So, I never doubted our abilities. I never had imposter syndrome. And I didn't really care what people who found out about the film thought about the idea that we were doing this. It was just something I wanted to do and I was going to plow ahead with it. And I had, like I said, I had full faith in Thane. As far as his end, he had creative freedom throughout the whole project. I wasn't going to tell him how to do his work. He didn't need for me to tell him how to do his work. He's a master at it. And again, I'm a storyteller, so I had no hint at all of imposter syndrome.
The challenge that we had were finances. That was a major obstacle. And, you know, I didn't... I don't want to say I was ignorant about that, because I did anticipate that there's a chance we we're going to run into some financial issues, but I was shocked. There's a point in the film where we had a total--it wasn't concurrent--but we had a total of 3 minutes of Love Canal footage that we obtained from various sources. And then we found out that we had to gain the rights to it. So, when I started looking into how to get these rights to this footage, it turned out to be $35 a second to use the footage. And then, because the film was going to live on the Internet, we had to get international rights on top of that, which jacked the cost up even more. We were looking at something like $20,000 just to use 3 minutes of footage, and we didn't have that money because this is a very DIY project. This is a very ... to say it was made on a shoestring budget would be an insult to shoestrings. You know, I mean, we financed this in a very, very DIY way. I couldn't raise $20,000 in the period that we had. Also, we found out about what we were facing in terms of cost very late in the game with the premier already scheduled. So, we had to go and we had to go do our own footage and try to fill 3 minutes of time. This wasn't a matter of just turning our camera on and running it for three minutes. It was a very long, complicated process.
How we overcame this was we didn't try to do it ourselves. We found experts to help us do this. Thane works with a young man named Mac Cloutier, who's a drone expert. And he not only did the drone photography for us to help us fill this gap, he knew every regulation that governs drone photography, which was very, very key because there are a lot of regulations that come into play when you're dealing with public land, public airspace, international airspace, and Niagara Falls is on an international border, and half of Niagara Falls is owned by New York State. So, we ran into the public airspace issue and the international airspace issue, and Mac knew the regulations inside and out, which, you know, if he didn't and we violated these terms, we could have easily been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, there are financial concerns that we ran into and financial obstacles that we had to overcome, and we had to be resourceful in overcoming them. But there was never any doubt or anything like that.
Okay, I have one more question for you. As you know, I'm big on encouraging people to follow their creative impulses and that’s because, when you do that, even if you suck at whatever your art form it is you're interested in, I think you learn something about yourself, about practicing the art that you're interested in, or maybe about things that come up that you didn't even anticipate. So, I want to turn that question on you. Having gone through this process of making the film, releasing it, and all that stuff, what are your takeaways from the experience? What did you learn about yourself, about documentaries, or maybe something else?
First of all, I'm a right-brained person. You know, I'm horrible at math, I'm horrible at science, I'm horrible at issues like critical thinking, but I'm a creative person. So, if I'm not creating, I'm miserable. I have to be working on something creative all the time just to exist in some type of harmony with myself. I'm in my late 50s now too, so I'm constantly thinking about age, and how much time I have left. I'm a fatalistic person, so when I got to a certain point in my life where I have a lot fewer days ahead of me than I do behind me, I decided I'm just going to do whatever I want to do from here on in. I've done that professionally and I've done that creatively. I'm very adamant about it and I think everyone should just do whatever the hell they want to do.
And not to get too philosophical with you or anything like this, but I've really realized that the only thing that endures is art. Everything on earth is fleeting. Even people are fleeting. You know, you have relationships with people that either fall apart and you never see these people again, or even people you love are fleeting because they die. Nothing is forever, but art is pretty much forever. You create a song, you create a drawing, you create a film, it's there. It's going to be there forever. And that's ... art is just really the only thing that's permanent, and that's been a very helpful motivator to me in being creative. So yeah, that's the way I'm going to answer that question.
Well, Matt, thank you. Even though we're brothers, it's always interesting to sit down and have conversations like this. So, thank you for agreeing to do this. I appreciate it.
All right. Peace.
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Matt Smith (my brother) is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and singer for the bands The Sneers and Clown Teeth. He also runs 1120 Press, which is a website that covers the DIY music and art scenes in Buffalo, New York, and 1120 Records, an independent record label. You can see what he's up to on Instagram @mattsmithphotography716.
Click here to see the full Zip Tied documentary on YouTube.
Click here to read an interview with Virus X that appeared on the 1120 Press website.
