“…I would pick up one of my dad’s guitars at home and download tabs from the Internet and try to teach myself Green Day songs.”

Raised on San Jose’s South Side by two social workers, local punk guitarist Mike Huguenor’s upbringing was culturally eclectic. His parents actively encouraged the consumption of all genres of literature, film, and music. If he wanted a particular book, they would purchase it for him. Musically, he was raised listening to the likes of Van Halen and other ’80s “fun rock” groups with his mom, jazz and opera with his dad, and Huey Lewis with both his parents. His dad routinely made mixtapes for him and his brother to listen to. When it came time to choose an instrument for middle school music classes, Huguenor settled on the alto saxophone, an instrument he remembers his father playing. But his excitement for it was no match for his obsession with punk rock. “I was playing sax in the school band, but then I would pick up one of my dad’s guitars at home and download tabs from the internet and try to teach myself Green Day songs.”

Huguenor had discovered the genre through San Jose’s now defunct rock station KOME. It was where he first heard acts like the Offspring and the Bay Area’s own Green Day. Shortly thereafter, a relative of Huguenor introduced him to the Berkeley-based underground band Operation Ivy. “When I heard them, it just opened up everything for me. They were my first real favorite band,” Huguenor says. About 11 years old at the time, he thought it was the best music he ever heard and still thinks their sole, self-titled album is “one of the best punk records ever.”

Huguenor is not alone in that sentiment. Despite the band’s short, three-year tenure, Operation Ivy’s influence on modern punk music—especially the ska subgenre—is difficult to overstate. Dozens of bands, including Goldfinger, Green Day, and Rancid, have released covers of Operation Ivy songs. Most recently, Machine Gun Kelly licensed the hook lyric from their song “Knowledge” for his song “all I know.”

Huguenor was given a starter electric guitar by his ever-supportive parents for his thirteenth birthday. “That’s when I started thinking about it intentionally and started writing hypothetical songs for bands that didn’t really exist.” Huguenor soon formed his first band and took his songwriting from hypothetical to actual. “Let’s just do it,” he recalls saying to a friend. “All these bands are all just people doing it. Let’s start a band.”

That sentiment gave birth to the short-lived punk group, Shooting Blanks. From there, Huguenor experimented with several punk acts throughout high school, but it wasn’t until shortly after graduating in 2002 that he formed his “real, I-actually-want-to-make-a-band, band,” Shinobu. “At the time, I thought it was going to be my not-punk band,” he says. “But in spirit it ended up being so, and that was the community that accepted us.”

After releasing several albums and touring occasionally over the course of six years, Huguenor soon found himself the lone member of Shinobu remaining in California. Another South Bay act, Pteradon, was in a similar situation, having lost their guitarist to the tech industry. Huguenor joined them and formed Hard Girls in 2008. Hard Girls’ songwriting process consisted of simply jamming a riff over and over together until it became a song, as opposed to Huguenor being the primary in Shinobu’s process. Huguenor found the new approach “very freeing.” It got him thinking about music differently, he said. “I was trying to write guitar parts that were interesting and were non-chordal. I was trying to fill out a song with just one guitar and have it sound huge and have it not just be strumming chords.”

Huguenor quickly found that composition wasn’t the only major difference between the two acts. “Shinobu would play San Jose shows and there would be 20 people there. Then Hard Girls would play shows and there would be 150 people there. It seemed like the scene had changed a lot.” Shortly after the formation of Hard Girls, Huguenor received a life-changing phone call. He was told that Jesse Michaels, frontman of aforementioned Operation Ivy, was starting a new musical project and wanted Hard Girls to be a part of it. Michaels had been in the South Bay recording some demos for the new project with Asian Man Records, the same label who had released Hard Girls’ first album. While recording, it was obvious the tracks needed a full band behind them. Mike Park, founder of Asian Man, suggested Hard Girls. The quartet became Classics of Love. “I was just completely blown away at the thought of it and could not believe it,” Huguenor says. “It was a dream situation.”

Hard Girls continued writing and touring at the same time as Classics of Love. Despite consisting mostly of the same members, the type of music differed significantly. “Hard Girls was writing more indie rock music,” Huguenor said. “Jesse was writing straight up ’80s hardcore punk songs. So we were playing way faster, in a totally different harmonic register.”

Over four years, Classics of Love released an EP and a full-length album that spawned tours in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Michaels then relocated to Los Angeles and continues releasing music under the Classics of Love name. Huguenor looks back at the time fondly, having had the opportunity to work so closely with one of his musical heroes. “I don’t really feel a lot of ownership of it. I am just happy to have been a part of it.”

Since then, Huguenor has gone on to record and perform with other acts, both local—such as the Bruce Lee Band and Teens in Trouble— and beyond—such as Dan Andriano in the Emergency Room and Jeff Rosenstock. He currently writes, records, and performs regularly with Rosenstock. In 2020, he also released a solo album of instrumental music in which he plays all the parts on the guitar.

Huguenor’s path has become iconic for many San Jose punk rockers. Ask any musician or fan in the local punk or punk-adjacent music scenes, and they’ll instantly recognize his name. While his stint working with a punk legend may have accelerated that image, Huguenor has now blazed his own reputation that easily stands on its own. “Every year I meet more people who have Shinobu tattoos and who say we inspired them. I really appreciate all their love for the band. It makes me really happy to know that we did connect with people.”

He hopes he can leverage his experiences to help those struggling to find their break. He also wants to see the local music scene grow and thrive. “The punk community has never been able to get a foothold here, and I feel like it needs that. It needs to be allowed to have a permanent space. I need to be involved in some way locally because I need to advocate for the people who are currently teenagers, who have nowhere to play because there’s no room that accommodates major touring bands in San Jose.”

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