Dying Scene

DS Interview: Smoking Popes’ Josh Caterer on thirty years of “Born To Quit,” their longest tour in decades, and more!

DS Interview: Smoking Popes’ Josh Caterer on thirty years of “Born To Quit,” their longest tour in decades, and more!

If you’ve even casually perused the Dying Scene archives at any point over the last fifteen years, you’re no doubt more than a little bit aware of the significance of 1994 in the annals of history. As a cultural touchstone (or more accurately a punk rock subcultural touchstone), it’s probably second only to 1976. While […]

If you’ve even casually perused the Dying Scene archives at any point over the last fifteen years, you’re no doubt more than a little bit aware of the significance of 1994 in the annals of history. As a cultural touchstone (or more accurately a punk rock subcultural touchstone), it’s probably second only to 1976. While the latter saw bands like Ramones and Sex Pistols open the door for bands like The Clash and the scenes in the Lower East Side and London and eventually LA; the former blew the roof off the building, with bands like Green Day and The Offspring changing the sound of what qualified as ‘popular’ music and allowing the Rancids and the NOFXs and the Bad Religions of the world to not only create decades-long careers for themselves but to create exposure for another tier bands who have truly provided the life’s blood to the scene in perpetuity.

Enter Smoking Popes. The Chicago-based foursome centered around the trio of Caterer brothers (the golden-voiced Josh on vocals and guitar with brothers Eli and Matt on guitar and bass, respectively) and Mike Felumlee on drums released their sophomore record, Born To Quit, on their hometown’s Johann’s Face Records into the maelstrom that was 1994. Thanks to the modest radio success of lead single “Need You Around,” the album was picked up by Columbia Records and rereleased the following July, spawning even more modest success, the release of the now-classic “Rubella” as a single, and the use of a bunch of album tracks in movies like Tommy Boy and Angus and Boys.

This year, the Popes marked thirty years of Born To Quit with a celebratory reissue of sorts. I say “of sorts” because this isn’t your basic “remastered” or “remixed” or “repackaged with bonus content from the archives” edition. Instead, since control of the original record still lies in the corporate clutches of Capitol Records, the Popes decided to take a page from the Taylor Swift playbook and rerecord the album for release on a new label, Ryan Young of Off With Their Heads‘ Anxious & Angry. Earlier this year, the band gathered at Bombsight Recording Studio in Bloomington, Illinois, to update and redo the record. Rather than rework each song track by track or turn it into an acoustic record or something of the like, the band actually compiled a studio audience of a few dozen people, hit the “Record” button, and pulled it off live on the floor, sans overdubs or modern studio magic.

Because the original was largely recorded live on the floor in studio three decades ago, the two releases have a largely similar feel. The new one sounds a tad crisper and cleaner, but it’s still punchy and raw in all the right places. Plus, it features a cameo from the one-and-only Deanna Belos (Sincere Engingeer) on “Gotta Know Right Now,” whose vocal take in the second verse and chorus give the song an interesting wrinkle of immediacy. Despite being recorded live in front of a studio audience (unlike Josh Caterer’s two quarantine-era solo live albums, each recorded effectively in empty bars), the lack of banter or improvisational moments still create the feel that you’re listening to a studio record and not a traditional live album.

Always one of our favorite music scene folks to chat with – you can still see our (*both laugh*) Quarantine Chat episodes here and here – we caught up with Popes’ frontman Josh Caterer via Zoom from a hotel room in Worcester, Massachusetts, before the sold-out Boston stop on the band’s lengthy – and now completed – US tour opening for The Get Up Kids (editor’s note: here’s what the aforementioned show looked like!). We spoke at length about the recording – and re-recording – processes behind Born To Quit, embarking on their longest tour in decades, navigating what it means to be a working punk rock band circa 2024, and, perhaps, a sneak peak at what the band has in store for next year…tours? Music? Find out below!!

The following interview has been edited and condensed for content and clarity. Cover photo credit: Chris Tracy

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): Thank you for doing this. It’s been a while.

Josh Caterer: Yeah, and it worked out today, time-wise, because it’s a day off for us. And so we drove from Asbury Park. We’re playing in Boston tomorrow.

You certainly are. I’ll be there. 

Oh, good, good, good. But we’re staying in a place that I’m told is pronounced Wor-ster. 

Worcester.

Worcester.

Worcester, yes. 

But it’s spelled Worchester. 

Yeah, like Worcestershire sauce.

So there are syllables in there that you just ignore. 

Yes, it’s very Massachusetts. 

Who has time for three syllables when you can just use two instead? 

Yeah, and then you actually got to cut the R off the end, so it’s Woostah 

Woostah!

Yeah, Worcester… W-O-O-S-T-A-H…Worcester.

But so yeah, we checked in here a little while ago and just kind of chilling for the evening. Perfect time to do an interview. 

How’s tour going so far? It seems like a long one for you guys comparatively, at least since COVID. 

It is, especially if you include the two weeks in Europe that we did starting at the end of July. We were over there for two weeks, home for 10 days. Then we started the Get Up Kids tour, the first leg of which was three and a half weeks, home for 10 days again, and then started the second leg. So it all feels like one big tour. And it’s pretty cool. It’s been going great, but it feels long. It’s long enough to where we feel like we just live out here now. 

Does it feel like the old days in some speaking? Granted, touring has changed a lot since like 94, but…

Yeah, I mean, we have not done this much touring in this short amount of time since the 90s. So, yeah, it’s old days for us. But better. 

I was going to say, how has that part changed in 30 years? 

Back then, there was a lot of substance abuse and general destructive behavior going on. So we weren’t really enjoying it…we thought we were enjoying life, but in reality, we weren’t enjoying life as much as we are now. 

Who’s in the touring lineup now? Is it the three brothers, Caterer and Mike in this edition or is it you and Mike? 

My brothers are not touring right now because they both have little kids. So it’s me and Mike. And then on guitar, we have Jack Sibilski who plays in a band called Telethon. 

Sure. 

So we’re kind of borrowing him. And then on bass, we have Reuben Baird, who’s been playing with us on the road for a few years now, because even before they had kids, my brother Matt decided that he didn’t want to tour anymore. Like basically, he got married. He wasn’t in being away from home. So we started asking Reuben to fill in and he’s officially our tour bass player. 

I feel like I have seen Reuben live. I feel like one of, I can’t remember the last time you were in Boston or where the last time I saw you was because I’ve sort of seen you all over, but I feel like Reuben was there last time.

Yeah, he’s been with us for, I wish I knew the exact number of years, but I don’t. But it’s funny because on the road, people will give Jack kind of a hard time for being obviously the new guy, the fill-in guy. People come up to him and ask him, where’s Eli? What are you doing here? But nobody says anything to Reuben because he looks like a Caterer. He’s got the Caterer hairstyle for sure. (*both laugh*)

You know, I feel like that actually sounds familiar now from the last time I saw you. I know that that’s not Matt, but maybe that’s like the cousin.

Yeah, maybe they put Matt into some sort of a stretching (machine), put him on the rack. (*both laugh*) 

So let’s talk about Born to Quit, the live session. So when we have talked the last couple of times, we’re about live albums that you did solo, essentially in front of nobody during COVID.

So this was a chance to do a live album with the actual four, the three Caterers and Mike who were on the original album, but with a little bit of a studio audience. We had about, I think there were 60 people in there. 

It’s at a studio studio, right? It wasn’t at like a live performance venue.

Yeah, it’s at a recording studio where we recorded most of our new album that’s coming out next year. A beautiful studio called Bombsite in Bloomington, Illinois, which is pretty close to where Mike lives. And so, you know, the idea was to kind of do, in essence, a “Taylor’s Version” of Born to Quit. But then that evolved into, well, let’s get some people in there and do like a small studio audience. So it’s sort of a live album, but because it’s in a recording studio, it has the production quality of a studio album. It’s sort of the best of both worlds, I think. And, you know, we got to do like most of what ended up on the album was just a single take of things. But there were three or four songs that we did a second take of because we felt like there was a little something wonky in there that we could do better. But as Mike pointed out after, we ended up, even in those cases, using the first take for most of those. And there were no actual overdubs. I know like a lot of times on a live album, the live will be in air quotes and all the vocals have been re-sung and the guitar solos have been redone. But now this is actually as it happened, warts and all. And it was pretty cool because the crowd that had assembled there were people who were really passionate about that album and many of whom had like flown in from different parts of the country. There was even a dude from Ireland there. 

Wow!

And so it just felt really special. It felt to everyone, including us, like we were kind of showing some reverence for the material and trying to do it tastefully and sort of not change it too much. There are a couple of moments where we veer from the original arrangement. For example, we did a duet. We did “Gotta Know Right Now” as a duet with Deanna from Sincere Engineer. 

The wonderful Deanna Belos.

Yeah, she’s just great. So we had her sing the third verse, but we had to change the key. So we had to like modulate coming out of the guitar solo from D to G. And so that kind of changes the flavor of the song.

But to have her vocal on it, it brings a whole new element to the song. It’s pretty great. 

Yeah!

And she sort of gets after it, too. She’s capable of doing harmonies, but she really made that gritty, I think. That’s an interesting element to add to that song.

If we had kept it in my key and that was her original suggestion, just like leave it where it is and I’ll just sing in your key. But it would have been really low for her. And so she wouldn’t have been pushing her voice up to where it really sounds great. You know, when she kind of starts getting screamy and her voice shreds a little bit, it’s really awesome. So we wanted that to happen. 

Sort of changes the context of the lyric a little bit, too. Like people say, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” There’s a certain sort of like delicacy and earnestness to the way that you sing it. But then when she sings it, it’s like grabbing you by the throat. It’s like, hey! This is time sensitive! I need to know right fucking now!

Yeah. She brings a kind of a manic quality to it. 

Right. It’s great. Sort of a two-part question, but a lot of those songs that you have played, you’ve played for quite a while and they have been sort of staples in the set. Are there songs that sort of grew as you played them live over the course of the last 30 years that you had to sort of cut things out of to make them more like the studio record, like extended solos that you might do during “Rubella” or something like that? Are there songs that sort of you had to morph back into the original because of the way that they’ve changed in the live setting over 30 years? 

No, we weren’t thinking in those terms. Like a song like you mentioned, “Rubella.” We’ve always played, we have not changed the structure of that over the years. And so Eli is doing the leads that lead into every verse. And I think he kind of improvises a little bit, but they’re fairly similar to the original. And I think some of Mike’s drum fills are different than the original recording. And I’m not sure about the tempo. He might play it faster now, but it’s not significantly different. Same with “Midnight Moon.” I mean, I think the two songs on this album that are different, like noticeably different than the original studio versions are “Gotta Know Right Now” and “On The Shoulder.” And usually when we play “Gotta Know Right Now” and Deanna is not with us, we do stretch out the solo and make it this kind of call-and-response guitar solo thing. And then I’ll kind of like sing other things over that part of the song and just kind of just have fun with it. But yeah, we didn’t do that. But we weren’t getting it back to the original. We were doing a completely different thing. But then with “On The Shoulder,” we haven’t played that song much over the years. It’s not a regular part of a live set. So it was cool. And it has been cool since we re-recorded the album to start bringing that back into our set. That’s one of the songs that since we haven’t played it that much, it still kind of feels fresh to us. And there were a couple of songs on the album that are like that, like “Can’t Help The Teardrops From Getting Cried.” 

I love that song, but yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it live.

I think we played it three or four times in front of an audience. And now I’m not even sure why. I think we had an idea that it just wasn’t going to go over well with audiences or it didn’t rock enough or something. But now that we’re playing it again, it’s like, “oh, this is really fun! This feels good to play!” Especially the guitar in there is fun. So it’s good to dust off some of those. And it’s like, “hey, old friend, welcome back into the fold.” 

Yeah. And it does, I mean, it sounds like a live album, but then so I’ve gone back and listened to the original. Obviously, we’re in an age where people don’t listen to albums straight through as much anymore. And much to my chagrin, I’m as guilty of that as anybody. But I’ve been going through and comparing and contrasting the original album with the live session. And A, it’s been really fun. But B, it sort of made me wonder how much of the original was recorded live in studio? Meaning like, how was the original tracked? Because there are parts of it where it almost sounds feel-wise similar, like you record it live and then maybe just overdub the vocals.

That is typically our approach to recording is that all the rhythm tracks are recorded simultaneously. So all the drums, bass and rhythm guitars on that album were recorded at once without really any fixes or overdubs or anything. And then we would go back in and I would do my vocal take and any guitar solos. And I feel like we only ever did a few takes of any song. We’ve never been a band that’s going to do 10, 15, 20 takes of a song. 

Yeah.

You know, we go in and we’ll do two or three takes. And if you do three takes of a song and it’s not feeling good, you’re not going to get it by doing more takes. Take a break.

Yeah, right. 

You know, go and have a burrito and come back to it later because it’s not clicking. 

And you weren’t writing in the studio, right? Everything had been written ahead of time and worked out ahead of time. So when you go in, it’s like hit record and go. 

So all the arrangements were already set by the time we went in. We couldn’t afford to write things in the studio. Back then we were saving up money from our little minimum wage jobs until we had enough for a studio session. So we didn’t have time to mess around and go in and record two or three songs and mix them all in one 12-hour session. 

Oh, wow.

Which is a fun way to do it. And one thing I do remember, though, is that on the song “Gotta Know Right Now,” on the original studio version, I went back and redid my vocal takes or did what was supposed to be a real vocal take. But I remember Phil Bonnet just kept saying, “I don’t know, guys, I really like that scratch vocal track. There was just something about it. And I think you should consider using that, even if it wasn’t EQ’d properly and it’s a little bit distorted.” So you can hear that, especially on the higher notes, like, “I gotta know RIGHT now!” It’s a little distorted and that wasn’t me roasting my voice. That was like overloading the track because it wasn’t EQ’d properly. 

Oh, wow. I’m going to have to go back and listen for that again. Something I’ve probably heard a thousand times, but not realizing what it was. 

Well, yeah, I know that was a Phil thing. He was amazing to work with because he was always more interested in how something felt than perfect. So on our recordings with him, there are these mistakes that we left in that just had a certain, they brought a certain character to it that he always really liked. But then when we got around to doing Destination Failure, working with Jerry Finn, who I have no complaints about because he was a genius in his own right. But he was much more meticulous about making things perfect. And if one of the strings on one of our guitars was slightly out of tune, he would stop the song, go over there and we’d have to plug into this huge chromatic tuner that was mounted into the wall and get our things had to be perfect. 

That’s awesome. The way you record now, is it sort of an amalgamation of the way that you’ve recorded on those early records or have you just sort of figured out your own way of doing things now? 

Yeah, it’s just a continuation of the way that we were doing Born to Quit, really, especially on this album that we just finished recording that’s coming up here. Because we’ve recorded this one like two songs at a time. And so it has taken us a really long time to make this record. I think, you know, Born to Quit only took us maybe, I don’t know how many months, it says so on the album, but maybe six months or so to start to finish. But this new album, it has taken us well over a year, just because we’d go in and record two songs. And then I would keep writing and we would get together very occasionally to work on arrangements. And then maybe three or four months later, we’d go in and record two more songs. So the process is just stretched out. But it’s basically like the same approach that we had on Born to Quit, where just all the basic tracks, rhythm tracks, are live simultaneous, and I overdub my vocals. I think the difference now is that we tend to put more layers of things on our music, especially with Eli in the studio. He is very creative and nuanced and will get ideas about little atmospheric things that can be added to the track. And so on our last couple of albums, he’s been really inspired about that and done some great guitar work that I don’t think we were capable of when we made Born to Quit. 

Yeah, he used to post stuff like that. I feel like pre having a little one, he used to post a lot of stuff like that on his Instagram, a lot of like atmospheric things he was sort of creating, just not folks related, just like stuff he would put together in a studio or in his house.

Yeah, he’s great at that. 

I forgot about that until you just mentioned it. 

Yeah. And I’m always delighted when he brings some of that to the Popes recording sessions. 

You put this live session out on Anxious and Angry, and I know that Ryan is a very big Popes fan and has been forever. Who approached whom about doing that? Because he doesn’t necessarily put out a lot of records as anxious, like he does a lot of merchandise and things, but he doesn’t necessarily put out a lot of records as Anxious and Angry.

Right. Well, he not only does our merch, but he just has a close working relationship with our drummer, Mike. Those two guys are really good friends. And so I don’t know who approached whom, but somewhere in their relationship, they were talking at one point and got the idea that we would do our album on Anxious and Angry, which seems great to me. Ryan’s been great to work with. And we’ve played some shows with Off With Their Heads. And not only are they a great band, but they’re cool people to be around. So I’m all for exploring that. I’m not sure that that means that we’re necessarily done putting things out on Asian Man Records. We’ll probably release, hopefully, more stuff on Asian Man in the future. It just sort of depends on what we’re doing. 

I was going to say, are you allowed to spill the beans about where next year’s new album is going to come out or is that to be revealed? 

Oh, I think I should wait on anything else about that. (*both laugh*)

I really dig the live records that you were doing during COVID from the sort of empty bars and that whole atmosphere. But I like this new version of Born To Quit. It’s an album I’ve listened to, like I said, a thousand times. And it’s enough like the original that it’s not like bands obviously will do complete reimaginings of records and strip them down. That has its place, but I don’t necessarily want that. 

These are songs I’ve sung a thousand times. “Need You Around” wouldn’t sound the same. And that was part of the discussion, too. We knew we wanted to do something for the 30th anniversary and that it would be too much of a pain to try to license the album from Capitol / Universal.

Do they still have it? 

They still have it. We get it back in a few years, but we don’t have it back yet. And so we needed to create a different version of it. And early in the discussion, we were thinking of doing the old acoustic version, which I mean, there are a lot of pretty cool examples of that. First that comes to mind is Superchunk did an acoustic one of their albums recently, and that’s cool. I know Bayside has done that. A lot of bands have done that and we considered it. But I don’t know, just the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like at least my feeling about it was that a couple of the songs, particularly “Need You Around,” is so dependent on the drum beat that any attempt to soften that or diminish that is just going to defang the song. And so it needed to be a full volume rock and roll version of it. And so that’s why we ended up doing it the way that we did. 

Yeah, and I feel like it sort of changes when bands do that. It sort of changes the way that you tour about an album, because if people get into the acoustic versions, then they’re going to want to hear you play the acoustic versions. But if you go out with Get Up Kids and they’re not doing an acoustic set, then it seems sort of weird to have an opening Smoking Pope set with a mini acoustic set in the middle. To me, it messes with the flow of it. Not that it’s inherently bad.

It just sort of changes the whole approach, I would imagine, to how you perform those songs. Yeah, I agree. 

Not inherently bad.

Right. And I feel like a lot of what we’re doing live as a band depends on there being a certain energy and a certain momentum to the set as much as I love doing acoustic shows, those are those are a different thing than going Smoking Popes live.

Yeah, I think increasingly, like every time I see Smoking Popes, I’m like, you know what? That band rocks. And that increase, that amplifies itself over the years too. Sometimes obviously bands will lose a step or three with age and with a lot of miles on their tires, but every time I see the Popes, I come away thinking “they just keep getting better, and they just keep rocking harder.” More shreddy guitar solos! It’s awesome. The pendulum usually swings the other way so I’m glad it isn’t.

I’m glad it isn’t too. Maybe eventually it’ll have to swing the other way because we physically won’t be able to rock as hard as we do now,

See but I think with your voice especially, you can still “rock” for longer than some people. You don’t have a screamer’s voice. Bands like Strung Out or whatever have put out acoustic record and Jason has put out side projects because he’s like “I can’t scream when I’m 60 the way I can when I’m 30 or 40.” I feel like as long as the voice is in place, the rest of the music is going to be there.

Thankfully I have a singing style that doesn’t overly strain my voice and it doesn’t shred my vocal chords. I don’t smoke anymore, I don’t even drink anymore, so that effect that alcohol can have on the voice, from the acids or whatever

Whiskey and cigarettes sound great on a voice but they do shorten the shelf life a little…

But then you end up sounding like Bob Dylan (*both laugh*)

Yes! And as much as I like and respect Bob Dylan…I’m sort of glad I haven’t seen him recently.

Yeah, I’m a huge fan, how could you not have tremendous respect for him? But his voice has been shot for a couple decades at this point!

Whereas Neil Young, who’s basically a contemporary…his voice has been shot since the beginning so it didn’t matter.

Exactly! It’s only as shot now as it was before! (*both laugh*)

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
anxious and angry born to quit Interview Josh Caterer Smoking Popes

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DS Photo Gallery: Big D and the Kids Table, Thumper, The Kilograms and Folly celebrate Halloween at Boston’s Big Night Live

DS Photo Gallery: Big D and the Kids Table, Thumper, The Kilograms and Folly celebrate Halloween at Boston’s Big Night Live

It was a bit of an early Turn-Back-The-Clock night at Boston’s Big Night Live last Saturday as long-running ska punk favorites Big D and the Kids Table resurrected their epic Halloween show tradition at Boston’s Big Night Live. Joining them for the festivities were a couple of regionally iconic bands – Thumper and Folly – […]

It was a bit of an early Turn-Back-The-Clock night at Boston’s Big Night Live last Saturday as long-running ska punk favorites Big D and the Kids Table resurrected their epic Halloween show tradition at Boston’s Big Night Live. Joining them for the festivities were a couple of regionally iconic bands – Thumper and Folly – and a relatively new supergroup (The Kilograms), a sort of Voltron made up of some longtime scene heavyweights – Sammy Kay, Joe Gittleman, Michael McDermott and J Duckworth. Despite being a four-band bill (seriously…a four-band bill? In this economy?) the 5:00pm doors, speedy changeovers and hard 9:30 curfew meant this was a perfect show for “The Olds” such as myself.

Hailing from the wilds of northern New Jersey, hardcore/ska crossover band Folly kicked off the evening’s festivities in blistering fashion. Accompanied by a nearly seizure-inducing endless strobe-lit stage show (that did wonders for a rank amateur photographer such as myself), the five-piece blazed through a half-hour set that set the stage for what was to come. The band got back together a couple years ago, nearly a quarter-century after their original run began, and while they might be older and wiser, they haven’t lost much of a step in their ferocity.

Next up was The Kilograms. Now I would be lying if I said this wasn’t the set that I was most interested in catching. While the collective number of shows that the band’s members have played in their previous endeavors numbers well into the thousands, this event marked not only the fifteenth show in the band’s history together but their first-ever show in Boston, which is obviously the place where Joe Gittleman earned his status as a genre-defining scene pioneer. I’ve been hip to the project – which came together fairly organically and almost entirely existed in the virtual world of Al Gore’s Internet before finally playing a show together back in May – since essentially the beginning, so it was great to finally see them together in the same room. Outfitted as the Gallagher brother’s New Jersey nephew, Kay takes center stage, although he and Gittleman and Duckworth take turns sharing vocal duties, at least when the latter isn’t spinning like a top at stage right. McDermott, who I hadn’t seen play in the almost dozen years since he left the Souls, kept the beat as steady as ever, letting the three-headed monster out front bob and weave and create their blend of rocksteady ska. Special shoutout to Craig Gorsline on the keys, providing layers of texture and filling out the rocksteady live sound. Extra special shoutout for the reworked version of the classic “Lean on Sheena” which Gittleman wrote and performed with Avoid One Thing and McDermott brought to the Souls, yet when they combine, it’s for a new, fresh version that only vaguely resembles the versions you’re used to hearing. Stay tuned for more from The ‘Grams soon, but for now you can listen on bandcamp.

Thumper was up next, and I’ll admit that I was almost as stoked to see Thumper as I was to see the Kilograms. I fell in love with Thumper in the mid-1990s, during the peak of what I guess we’re still calling ska’s third wave. They weren’t your average ska-core band, with a two-tone-meets-thrash-metal-infused sound and sense of humor and intelligence that were all their own. The last time I’d seen Thumper was coincidentally with Big D and the Kids Table at Tune Inn (R.I.P.) in New Haven, CT, on Valentine’s Day 1998. I don’t know if I knew at the time it would be my last Thumper show for many years – the band broke up later that year and I never made it to the scattered reunion shows they’ve done – so it was a welcome treat to see them dust off the cobwebs and jump on this bill. “Burn Baby Burn” and “Holy Roller” and “Backstabber” still go as hard as ever (especially the latter, which featured Folly returning to the stage for a big group throwdown).

And finally the witching hour – in this case around 8:00pm – was upon us, and it was Big D and the Kids Table’s turn to entertain the masses. Not only were the band celebrating Halloween as per usual, but they were also celebrating the 25 years of their 1999 Asian Man Records full-length debut Good Luck. It may be a bit of recency bias to say this, but though I’ve lost track of how many different live incarnations of Big D I’ve seen since 1997, this one – centered as always around the energetic bordering on theatrical David McWane – might be the tightest. The band blistered through Good Luck in what seemed like record time, perhaps due to the hard curfew. With a lot of my ska-core listening days behind me, I guess I’d forgotten how fun that record was, as it’s been overshadowed by Strictly Rude and Fluent In Stroll in recent times. If you’re like me, you can relish in those old days by watching the Good Luck tour documentary that finally found its way to YouTube after a quarter-century. Those memories seem like both just yesterday and like two lifetimes ago.

Check out more shots from each band’s sets below!

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
big d and the kids table big night live boston folly Halloween

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DS Show Review and Gallery: The Get Up Kids and Smoking Popes headline a sold-out Big Night Live (Boston, MA)

DS Show Review and Gallery: The Get Up Kids and Smoking Popes headline a sold-out Big Night Live (Boston, MA)

I have a confession to make. It’s not something I’m proud of, necessarily, but that’s just the nature of confessions I suppose. In spite of being an individual of a certain age (45) who has been going to punk rock shows since the mid-1990s and was a fan of the Vagrant Records catalog from pretty […]

I have a confession to make. It’s not something I’m proud of, necessarily, but that’s just the nature of confessions I suppose. In spite of being an individual of a certain age (45) who has been going to punk rock shows since the mid-1990s and was a fan of the Vagrant Records catalog from pretty much the beginning (or at least since that Boxer record) and who doesn’t see the word “emo” as a particularly negative word (and knows it existed before whenever Gen Z thinks it started), I had never seen The Get Up Kids live until 2024. Matt Pryor solo? Sure. New Amsterdams? Yup. Even James Dewees/Reggie And The Full Effect. But for whatever reason, never The Get Up Kids. I’ve long-since had my elder (geriatric?!) emo card revoked, but as of this week, I can officially apply for reinstatement, because, at long last, I finally saw The Get Up Kids!

The Kansas City-based quintet brought their Something To Write Home About 25th-anniversary tour to Boston for a raucous, sold-oud soiree at Big Night Live, a venue I’ve spent many words kvetching about on these here pages. And while many of my complaints are still valid (it’s too weirdly shaped and oversized and chaotically lit and limited-in-sight-lines for a punk rock show), I have to say that it was by far the best show I’ve seen at that venue. When I say it was sold out, I mean it was sold out sold out; each and every nook and cranny of the six (I think) different sitting/standing levels was occupied. A merch line snaked around to the back of the building for what seemed like hours before and after TGUK’s set. (Side note: a sold-out Get Up Kids show at Big Night Live and a sold-out Sabrina Carpenter show at the adjacent TD Garden made for about as enjoyable a people-watching experience as you’ll find).

From the opening notes of set – and STWHA – opener “Holiday,” the crowd kicked into full-throated singalong mode and never really let up for the duration of the evening. As is par for the proverbial course in album anniversary shows, the band ripped through a main set that consisted of Something To Write Home About from start to finish, essentially uninterrupted. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how well some of the mid/late 90s Vagrant records hold up, particularly by comparison, and Something To Write Home About is a prime example, its dozen songs still containing a sort of gravity and earnestness that have allowed it to age gracefully in the quarter century since its release. The call-and-response section of “The Company Dime” is of particular interest now that those of us who were around twenty when the album came out have two-and-a-half decades of day job doldrums under our belts.

After a brief intermission, the band returned to the stage with fervor, kicking things off with the acoustic-led “Campfire Kansas” and rousing renditions of “One Year Later” and “Stay Gold, Ponyboy.” It’s probably hard on an album anniversary tour to put together a larger, career-spanning setlist for the rest of your allotted stage time, and that was certainly true on this night, as only Four Minute Mile, On A Wire and Red Letter Day (the latter of which also turned 25 this year) were represented in the nine post Something… tracks that closed the show, meaning the “newest” song played was still more than two decades old. That didn’t seem to matter much to the jam-packed crowd, who sang along like it was the twentieth century through Mass Pike and the confetti cannon-accompanied “Don’t Hate Me” which brought the night to a fitting conclusion.

The almighty Smoking Popes kicked off the evening’s festivities, and don’t worry, I’m not THAT much of a square – I’ve seen the Popes a bunch of times over the years. The touring lineup has changed a little bit: two-thirds of the Brothers Caterer have stepped back from tour life in recent years, so golden voiced frontman Josh and longtime drummer Mike Felumlee are joined by Reuben Baird on bass and Telethon‘s Jack Sibilski on guitar. The result is a live band that absolutely shreds. Not that Matt and Eli Caterer wouldn’t be up to the task by any stretch, but 2024 has found the current touring Popes iteration has logged more shows in a year than any Popes lineup since the Clinton Administration, so they’re about as locked in as it gets. Their set kicked off with “Midnight Moon,” the song that also kicks off Born To Quit, an album that’s also celebrating an anniversary this year, albeit a thirtieth anniversary. (Yes, that’s right…Born To Quit is thirty. More on that in a couple days, and also, better make sure your AARP benefits are up to date, gang.) BTQ and Destination Failure tracks made up the bulk of the band’s dozen-song set. Sadly, personal favorite Into The Agony was represented only by “Amanda, My Love,” but them’s the breaks when you’re in an opening slot I suppose. At least we got “Let’s Hear It For Love” and “Madison” and a brand new song called “Golden Moment” – more on that one to come! Caterer’s voice – arguably the best in punk rock over the last few decades – still goes down as smooth as ever, and it was fun watching he and Sibilski take turns shredding lead guitar riffs.

The Get Up Kids / Smoking Popes nationwide adventure winds itself down tonight in Chicago. TGUK will be at the Best Friends Forever Fest in Vegas this weekend, while the Popes will take some well-deserved time off the road for a little bit but stay tuned for a few fun announcements on that front, and check out more photos from the show below!

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
asian man chicago elder emo emo get up kids

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NEW MUSIC: Ways Away drop video for new track, “I Should Have Brought A Gun”

NEW MUSIC: Ways Away drop video for new track, “I Should Have Brought A Gun”

One of yours truly’s favorite bands to have materialized over the last few years is the California-based supergroup Ways Away, and yes I know the term “supergroup” gets thrown around liberally at times but seriously, it’s Jesse Barnett from Stick To Your Guns and Sergie Loobkoff from Samiam and Knapsack and Jared Shavelson from Paint […]

One of yours truly’s favorite bands to have materialized over the last few years is the California-based supergroup Ways Away, and yes I know the term “supergroup” gets thrown around liberally at times but seriously, it’s Jesse Barnett from Stick To Your Guns and Sergie Loobkoff from Samiam and Knapsack and Jared Shavelson from Paint It Black and BoySetsFire and Joyce Manor (and Seal) and Chad Darby from Samiam and The Ship Thieves, so what the heck else are we supposed to call it?!

ANYWAY, the band dropped a video for a brand new track, “I Should Have Brought A Gun.” As of now, it’s a stand-alone track, but word on the street is there’s more new music coming down the ‘pike, so stay tuned. Check the video out below, and if it’s your first time checking out Ways Away, familiarize yourself with their back catalog here. It’s great.

by Staff Writer jaystone
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i should have brought a gun New Music new video ways away

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DS Show Gallery: The Gaslight Anthem’s History Books tour rocks Boston’s MGM Fenway with help from Pinkshift and Joyce Manor

DS Show Gallery: The Gaslight Anthem’s History Books tour rocks Boston’s MGM Fenway with help from Pinkshift and Joyce Manor

The Gaslight Anthem finally brought their History Books album tour through Boston, Massachusetts on August 18, 2024. Joyce Manor and Pinkshift were in tow for what turned into a tight, no-nonsense rock-and-roll soiree at the cavernous MGM Music Hall at Fenway.  Baltimore’s Pinkshift kicked off the evening, by my math, a couple of minutes early. […]

The Gaslight Anthem finally brought their History Books album tour through Boston, Massachusetts on August 18, 2024. Joyce Manor and Pinkshift were in tow for what turned into a tight, no-nonsense rock-and-roll soiree at the cavernous MGM Music Hall at Fenway. 

Baltimore’s Pinkshift kicked off the evening, by my math, a couple of minutes early. I’ve made repeat mentions on these pages about how the MGM is a massive facility, but it’s not to be understated, particularly for an opening band who’s playing at a comparatively early time on a Sunday night as the crowd is filling in. Not to project, but I can imagine that might be a daunting task. That said, this marks the second time that I’ve seen a “smaller” band grab this sort of opportunity by the throat and make it their own on this very stage (the first was Grumpster opening for Jawbreaker/Joyce Manor a year ago). If you’re later to the game than I was, the core trio – Ashrita Kumar on vocals, Paul Vallejo on guitar and Myron Houngbedji on drums – formed in the halls of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University – and put their respective careers/educations on hold to make a go of the band thing. The older I get, the more infrequently I see bands for the first time whom I think feel “important.” Pinkshift feels important. With a live sound filled out by Kirby the Immortal1 on bass and Michael Stabekis on guitar, the band plowed through a 35-ish minute set that included “nothing (in my head)” and “Trust Fall” and of course their breakthrough single “i’m gonna tell my therapist on you”. Super fun stage presence, emotional and cathartic vocals, powerful – nay, punishing – hooks. What a trip.

The one-and-only Joyce Manor provided direct support on this Gaslight run. Much like they did at the aforementioned Jawbreaker show a year ago at the same venue, Joyce Manor not only came ready to play but brought a had a sizeable portion of the crowd singing along with every word from the anthemic opening notes of “Heart Tattoo” that set the tone for the rest of the set. From there, the quintet (core trio of Barry Johnson, Chase Knobbe and Matt Ebert joined by Neil Berthier on acoustic guitar and Jared Shavelson on drums for this run) blitzed through nearly two dozen songs over the course of a tight forty-five-minute set. The set was heavy on tracks from the band’s ten-year-old full-length Never Hungover Again, including the above-mentioned opener, and closer “Catalina Fight Song.” Other highlights included “House Warning Party” and “Beach Community” and of course “Constant Headache.”

At promptly 9:00pm and accompanied by the dulcet tones of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” the Gaslight Anthem strode to the stage and immediately broke into the familiar buildup that is the intro to “American Slang.” From my vantage point in the photo pit, it sounded as though the band ground the gears of the ol’ big rig a little bit before finally getting up to cruising speed, although I’ve gone back and watched a few of the videos floating around YouTube and it seems like that might be more a result of a reverb issue at the front of the house than anything else, as they sounded dynamite from further out in the crowd. Crowd-favorite singalong “45” followed, a one-two punch that did a more than exceptional job of picking up the gauntlet that had been thrown down by Pinkshift and Joyce Manor. The last of the “photo pit three” that started the set was “We Came To Dance” from 2007’s Sink Or Swim, a song I hadn’t seen the band perform since pre-hiatus, so probably nine or ten years ago.

The setlist that followed, I have to say, was pretty great. The four History Books tracks – “I Live In The Room Above Her,” “Michigan 1975,” “The Weatherman” and “Positive Charge” fit in nicely with the comparatively deeper cuts. Much of the back catalog was well represented – although the only Get Hurt song to make an appearance was “Helter Skeleton,” a fact I thought was a little interesting given that we were just a couple days past the tenth anniversary of what is a desert island for yours truly. But I digress. Other highlights from the main set were “Bring It On” and “1930” and the Boston Bruins’ radio anthem “The Patient Ferris Wheel” and the left-right combo of “High Lonesome” and “Here’s Looking At You, Kid.” (Side note: if you haven’t read our recent interview with Benny Horowitz which talks about weaving the new tracks into a setlist of staples and also hints at the epic show closer, what are you waiting for?)

The band sounded pretty finely tuned; dare I say as good as ever. Frontman Brian Fallon’s voice had a little more growl in it than normal, a byproduct of the road (and being only 48 hours removed from a massive sold-out show on their home turf at the Stone Pony), and he was noticeably much less chatty than as has become standard. Less chatty, but no less having fun, and he frequently wore a wide smile across his face and seems genuinely happy to still be doing this with the same guys – Alex Rosamilia (not to get all “Fashion Police, but who was not only not wearing a hoodie but was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and playing a Gibson Flying V and looked like rock and roll personified), and Benny Horowitz and Alex Levine and of course the mighty Ian Perkins and the more recent touring addition of Brian Haring –  again nearly two decades down the road. Karina Rykman, who appears on the studio version of Gaslight’s cover of Billie Eilish’s “ocean eyes” joined the band on second bass (“two bass players for the price of one!) and vocals on that song and stayed out on stage in the same role for the remainder of the set. And what a remainder of the set it was: “ocean eyes” into “Mae” into “Great Expectations” into normal closer “The ‘59 Sound,” a foursome that was worth the price of admission in and of itself. But it was capped off by a return to the stage from Pinkshift, who joined Karina and the rest of the Gaslight crew for a rousing rendition of the Nirvana classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It’s a song that has a different sort of cathartic energy than it did thirty years ago, less of a dangerous catharsis and more of a “hey, we’re still here and still kicking and still a vital force” catharsis.

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
boston gaslight anthem Joyce Manor mgm fenway New Jersey

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DS Exclusive: Philly’s Cloakz unveil debut full-length album, “Control Program”

DS Exclusive: Philly’s Cloakz unveil debut full-length album, “Control Program”

Happy debut LP release day, Cloakz! The Philadelphia-based indie rockers (that’s them up above – say hi Cloakz!) are unleashing their new record, Control Program, on Mint 400 Records today! Debut full-length records are always meaningful moments in time; here’s how Cloakz’ ringleader Zac Ciancaglini explains the origins of Control Program: “The initial songwriting seeds […]

Happy debut LP release day, Cloakz!

The Philadelphia-based indie rockers (that’s them up above – say hi Cloakz!) are unleashing their new record, Control Program, on Mint 400 Records today! Debut full-length records are always meaningful moments in time; here’s how Cloakz’ ringleader Zac Ciancaglini explains the origins of Control Program:

“The initial songwriting seeds and ideas started coming together for me right after my first kid was born in 2020, not long after COVID shut the world down and just fully wiped out anything that felt familiar or secure…I kept finding myself thinking, ‘Can someone please just build a goddamn program that can run everything for me?’”

If you’re in or around the City of Brotherly Love, you can catch the album release show at Johnny Brenda’s this Sunday, August 25th. The rest of you can stream that jawn down below!

by Staff Writer jaystone
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DS Interview: Catching up with Gaslight Anthem’s Benny Horowitz about remixing “History Books,” touring in the age of cell phones, spending three decades in the music scene and much more!

DS Interview: Catching up with Gaslight Anthem’s Benny Horowitz about remixing “History Books,” touring in the age of cell phones, spending three decades in the music scene and much more!

Once upon a time, there was a relatively predictable template that bands would adhere to fairly strictly in the life cycle of an album. There were exceptions to the rule for sure, but it generally went something like: write, record, do press, play live; write, record, do press, play live; lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum […]

Once upon a time, there was a relatively predictable template that bands would adhere to fairly strictly in the life cycle of an album. There were exceptions to the rule for sure, but it generally went something like: write, record, do press, play live; write, record, do press, play live; lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum if you’re lucky. That cycle could span anywhere from, say, nine months (Ramones releasing S/T, Leave Home, Rocket To Russia and Road To Ruin between April ‘76 and September ‘78 for example) to, say, two years (Ramones releasing Halfway to Sanity, Brain Drain, Mondo Bizarro, Acid Eaters and Adios Amigos between September ‘87 and July ‘95 for example). 

For myriad complex reasons including but certainly not limited to production delays, the changing habits of the music consumer, the proliferation of cell phone-carrying showgoers and their corresponding social media accounts, the cycle has become much more of a fluid situation. Case in point: The Gaslight Anthem toured the US fairly extensively during the Spring of 2023, essentially serving as a second leg of their reunion tour that kicked off the year prior. October 2023 brought with it History Books, the band’s first new studio album since 2014’s brilliant Get Hurt. That was followed, at least initially, by radio silence from a US touring perspective, until the official kickoff of the US History Books tour in Denver a couple of weeks ago. Tour kickoff coincided with a pair of uncommon moves in this day and age; the digital-only release of a remixed version of History Books, and Dying Scene catching up with Gaslight Anthem’s affable timekeeper Benny Horowitz.

Let’s start at the end and work backwards, specifically with the reissue of the band’s sixth studio album, History Books, officially referred to on digital platforms as History Books: Expanded Edition. The new version includes the four-song EP Short Stories that the band put out a few months back (which features a stellar version of Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes”) and a new version of “Little Fires” that features the one-and-only Bully. But the real meat and potatoes is an entirely remixed version of the original album. If you’re like me, you saw the initial announcement about the Expanded Edition and thought “well, huh, that’s weird, I really like the original record, so I’m not sure why they’d remix it.” (Side note: based on Reddit comments, many of you are not, as it turns out, like me in that regard.) But if you’re still like me, you put the Expanded Edition on in your headphones and from the opening moments of “Spider Bites” on, you thought “ohhhhhh I get it now.” And that’s exactly by design. 

“The only way it was going to come out,” Horowitz explains, “is if we heard it and kind of had the same reaction you did, which was like “oh okay, this sounds different and pretty good, and it’s kind of making certain things pop in a certain way, and things we weren’t hearing before kind of pop out.” That’s not to say the original mix – which still sounds great on vinyl – has fallen out of favor with the band. Far from it. “We were going for something. Us and Peter (Katis, producer) were going for something that I think we achieved, and I think it’s vibey as fuck and super cool.” Still, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t approach some of the feedback they heard with open ears. “People were like “I like these songs, but it just doesn’t sound like Gaslight,” says Horowitz. “The thing that I didn’t kind of realize – and even as a music fan I empathize with more now – it’s just like there’s a consistency in production and sound for a band. And it’s not just the songs but you kind of expect a band you like to sound a certain way to a point, you know?” 

I suppose it’s worth reiterating that the album is not remastered, as is often the case with reissues, anniversary editions, etc. It is, in fact, entirely remixed and yes that’s an important distinction and if you’re a Luddite like me, Benny does a good job of explaining that distinction in the Q&A down below. The band decided to give the original stems to the History Books tracks to Chris Dugan for a fresh set of ears, though that still wasn’t a guarantee that the results would be different enough to release into the wild. It was a bit of a risky proposition. “I don’t like making decisions in this business without historical precedent, and there was not a lot of historical precedent for this. Not a lot of bands have done it,” he explains. “We didn’t know if it was going to be good or bad,” says Horowitz. “It wasn’t like a certainty that we were going to hear it and be like “this has to come out.” So I think on our level – on a creative level – it was fun hearing it like that…I think it sounds cool.”

The Gaslight Anthem (L-R: Alex Rosamilia, Brian Fallon, Benny Horowitz, Alex Levine). Photo credit: Kelsey Ayres

So armed with a retooled version of History Books under their collective belts, the band partook on their first US album release tour in a decade. If you’re headed out to any of the shows – (like Boston – come say hi!) you’ll hear a high-voltage, two-hour set chock full of songs from across the six-plus album catalog. “We try not to harass the crowd by doing more than like three or four (new songs) in one set,” Horowitz laughs. “I’m not far off from being just a normal ass music fan, and I remember what it’s like going to shows of a band you really like. Maybe or maybe not you love the new record but you don’t want to hear like eight of them.” Who knows, you might even catch the band taking a hard left and opening a set with a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” as they did in Dallas a few nights back. “That’s either really funny and bold or just, like, stupid,” he exclaims. “It was the one time I was like “you know what? I don’t get to say this too often but I’ve been practicing my whole life for this moment!” I learned this song when I was like 12 fucking years old!”

It was a moment that, like so many others in a live setting circa 2024, was captured on an infinite number of smartphones and uploaded far and wide within minutes. Hell, it’s why I knew about it the night it happened despite living 1800 miles away, thanks to a certain Andy Diamond and his Church Street Choir. The times, they have a-changed. “That is an exact case of like out of nowhere faces turn into phones, you know what I mean?” he asks. “I look out and all I see is, like, a sea of flashlights and phones now instead of faces. I’m not saying it’s like bad or good, I’m not going to be the old Luddite on here, but it is different.” Gone are the days when a band could work out unfinished versions of new songs live on stage, sometimes resulting in tracks that either never appear in final form, or end up radically different than they started by the time there’s an “official” version.

Since they’re a band that was born in the age of cell phones, it’s a phenomenon that Gaslight haven’t dealt with extensively “I think by the time we really started gaining any like real interest in this industry, where people would actually like give a shit about us having a new song, it had already co-opted into “phone time.” Still, it’s not exactly a foreign concept to the New Jersey quartet. “I remember we kind of had a lesson actually in this where we played a song – the earliest version of the song “Biloxi Parish” – we played on an Australian tour before we put out Handwritten, and then the song wound up on YouTube and was up there for quite a while by the time we got around to actually doing the record. And a lot of people like you know the changes we decided to make on that song were resented by the people who had already listened to YouTube.”

While the shows have certainly grown in scale in all the possible ways since a young Benny Horowitz was booking shows in northern New Jersey Elks Lodges (editors note: there’s a sweet anecdote about young Benny at the end of the Q&A below, but you’ll have to keep reading to get to it) thirty years ago, but that doesn’t mean they don’t carry the same weight. It’s just most of us on our side of the barricade are all older, heavier, less limber, and sometimes have to work in the morning. “I’ve actually had to train myself to not judge a show’s quality on that inert physical quality of a show,” he laughs. “Because they’re not necessarily the same thing anymore. A good show – especially in the US or England – kind of used to be dictated by how many people are going nuts…if you happened to get into us when you were like 25, you’re in your mid-40s these days. You might have retired moshing and crowd-surfing by now!“

Check out where you can find Gaslight on the road in the States the rest of this year (including not one but two dates on their home turf in Asbury Park). And keep scrolling to check out History Books: Expanded Edition and our full Q&A with the great Benny Horowitz. Maybe check out his awesome podcast, Going Off Track, while you’re at it.

The Q & A below has been edited and condensed for the sake of content and clarity. We pick up our conversation partway through, after some trading of snack time and parenting style stories…

Jay Stone (Dying Scene): Anyway, so thanks for doing this. We have chatted a few times in passing at shows over the last 10 or 12 years, but never done the actual interview thing, so I appreciate this. 

Benny Horowitz (Gaslight Anthem, etc) Oh it’s sick. I’m always reading Dying Scene periodically.  It’s cool. 

It always floors me when people say that. Because I like to live in a bubble and not pretend it’s as big a deal as some people think it is. So it always warms my heart when people say that they have actually read it before. It means we’re not doing it for nothing. 

Oh yeah, as an underground heavy music fan, it’s one of the stops, for sure. 

So long story short, the site crashed entirely for a few years. And so since having it rebuilt we’ve tried to do a lot less in the way of just regurgitating press releases and stuff like that. And more on focusing on original content and actually talking to people, taking pictures at shows, publicizing smaller bands, stuff like that. We’re trying. 

That’s great. And it’s smart too. I mean just this day and age you gotta own some of your own content or else you’re fucked. (*both laugh*) Like all the photos and all that. That’s the only way to drive it at this point. AI is going to take the other job of regurgitating press releases. (*both laugh*) I’m pretty sure AI is actually writing press releases already! Press releases have always kind of sounded like AI in a way, right?

Yeah. I quite literally got one this morning…not to go off track…I quite literally got one this morning with the band’s name spelled wrong.

Noooo,  really? Oh no!

I’ve seen it happen periodically but I quite literally saw it today. And it seemed like maybe somebody was dictating because it was a funky-spelled name. It seems like somebody was dictating and then didn’t check. And I went oh no. That’s horrible.

That’s horrible! That’s proofreading 101. (*both laugh)

Although it got me to notice the email I guess.

Yeah that’s true. (*both laugh*) 

ANYWAY, we will talk a bit about History Books because I think that the album and the History Books tour were the prompt for this, but in sort of checking the calendar I realized that this week is anniversary week for both Get Hurt which was 10 years yesterday and I think 59 Sound is 16 years old this weekend. Which to me is amazing because I keep track of anniversaries like that. That’s how my brain works. Is that a thing that you guys are mindful of? Or the longer that you’ve been a band, does it become like every day at some point is an anniversary of something, so does that stuff does not mean the same thing as it used to? 

Yes and yes honestly. We heard about Get Hurt being 10 years and that was one of those dates that was a little jarring to us. We’re like “wow really? 10???” But the ones like 59 Sound being 16, I have no idea because if we played that game…we have six records now, so, you know, at some point every year each record turns something and it does get a little much. I think it works the same way as birthdays now. It’s like if it’s not based on like 10, 15, 20, you know one of the major marker kind of things, then probably we don’t pay too much attention to it.

Like when something is like “oh it’s like eight years old”…Like I’m 43 now right? With kids. I don’t expect to get another real birthday party until I’m like 50. (*both laugh*) And I think records kind of work the same way.  Like you hit 10, you hit 20, 25, you know, you start doing something. 

I feel like with 59 Sound, I noticed because it’s one of those albums to me. But also like my kid was born in 2008 so my kid is 16. That record and that second Loved Ones record, Build & Burn, they both came out in 2008. And so to me like those lined up with when my kid was born.

So that one has always stuck with me because that album will always be as old as my kid was. Plus those two records, Get Hurt and 59 Sound are probably desert island records for me. Like if you only got to bring five records to the desert island, I think two of them are Gaslight Anthem and they’re those records. 

And we also opened for The Loved Ones on the Build & Burn tour. It’s kinda funny.

Oh, I remember. And it’s wild to think that was that long ago and the arcs you’ve taken since 

So anyway, back on track. Where are you today? You’re in Atlanta, yeah? 

Yeah, I’m in the back of our truck right now in Atlanta, Georgia. The only quiet place, because there’s a soundcheck going on inside.

These are the first real US dates since History Books came out right? Because there was the tour before the album came out, but I feel like in my brain – which is half mush at this point – but that there wasn’t an awful lot of touring here after the album came out. So is this really kind of the first run that a lot of these songs have had for US audiences anyway? 

Yeah for the most part it is. You know it was kind of a bizarre thing the way the album rolled out and the fact that we didn’t have a tour when it did come out. You know that seems like kind of music industry 101. So it wasn’t the best way to do this. But yeah technically this is. We’ve been to Europe twice since it’s been out. But haven’t done a proper US run yet. 

I’m assuming that most of the songs translate pretty well? What’s the sort of feedback you get now that people have had a chance to sort of hear them live or check them out on YouTube if they haven’t gone on to shows or whatever yet? How do the new songs translate live? What gets the kids sort of as excited as the old days? 

Well to say “as excited as the old days” you know…Speaking of all these dates, you know, if you happened to get into us when you were like 25, you’re in your mid-40s these days… 

Yeah, I’m 44. 

Yeah, you might have retired moshing and crowd-surfing by now. (*both laugh*) So by default I’ve actually had to train myself to not judge a show’s quality on that like inert physical quality of a show. Because they’re not necessarily the same thing anymore. Like, a good show –  especially in the US or England – kind of used to be dictated by how many people are going nuts. You know as time goes on and maybe even songs like start taking on some new shapes, it’s not necessarily the way to gauge it anymore. I mean it’s always an interesting thing playing songs off a new record, because you know you write them you play them together and then you record them and certain things flush out in certain ways. When you start playing them live again, it is literally the first time you’re playing these versions of these songs. And when you start translating it to live some stuff works some stuff doesn’t work, and you kind of have to adapt some things. It takes a little time sometimes to settle in and know what that’s like.

We’ve been actively (playing) “Positive Charge” most nights, “Weatherman” most nights, “Michigan 1975” most nights. And then you know “History Books” and “Spider Bites” and “Live in the Room Above” are all peppered in. We try not to harass the crowd by doing more than like three or four in one set. (*both laugh*) You know like I’m not far off from being just a normal ass music fan, and I remember what it’s like going to shows of a band you really like. Maybe or maybe not you love the new record but you don’t want to hear like eight of them. That’s just crazy. So we do try to limit it and still kind of represent every record too in each setlist.

Did you play any of the History Books songs live on that US tour before the album came out,  whenever it was, like a year ago I guess?

I think we had like the ones… you know the way this weird industry works now, they like start rolling out songs in the record much prior to the record coming out and all that stuff. So I do believe we were definitely playing “Positive Charge” I think, because that was definitely out. And maybe “History Books” too. So you know those songs that were actually released as like singles we could play. But we couldn’t play any of the album tracks yet.

Is that different?  Do you miss the days of being able to play things before people had sort of heard it? Or has YouTube and TikTok or however people consume music nowadays has that sort of ruined that “we’re going to test music out live” thing? I mean thinking back to the music of when I was growing up. That was the way that you found out about new music is you heard like maybe a bootleg. Like, I was a big Pearl Jam fan as a kid, so you would hear all the working versions of like random songs that would end up coming out two or three albums later sometimes. Do you miss sort of like being able to do that? Or is that not really even a thing anymore? 

I do miss it. I mean I think by the time we really started gaining any real interest in this industry, where people would actually like give a shit about us having a new song, it had already co-opted into “phone time.” I remember we kind of had a lesson actually in this where we played a song – the earliest version of the song “Biloxi Parish” – we played on an Australian tour before we put out Handwritten, and then the song wound up on YouTube and was up there for quite a while by the time we got around to actually doing the record. And a lot of people like you know the changes we decided to make on that song were resented by the people who had already listened to YouTube a lot. And fans can fall victim to the same thing that artists can. Like, demo-itis is an extremely real thing, and once you just get used to hearing something a certain way, anything else is going to fall short. You know like you just fall in love with some weird version of it for whatever reason, and any other version of it is going to be lesser, you know?

So yeah I think it is totally taken out of the pantheon now essentially, unless you have a song that’s just like so worked out already, that you know 100,000% there’s not going to be any changes or anything. But I think that’s the whole point of testing it out live and doing the thing is like seeing how it sounds and seeing how it goes. So yeah I think the long-winded answer to that is yes, I think that concept is basically totally dead now. 

I feel like and I can’t remember specific Gaslight examples, but I know that like Tim Barry for example, there’s a few Tim Barry songs like “Walk 500 Miles.” There’s like a live bootleg that came out, I don’t know seven or eight years ago now, that because of the way that song got performed on that bootleg, that’s the way people started to hear it and then do that call and response thing that isn’t in the original song. So that now the live version is different than it used to be just based on like a one-off live recording that happened to circulate at the right time. It’s really sort of interesting when that works. 

I know it’s kind of cool. I also think someone would probably start giving you shit too for, like, you know…it is something that after that “Biloxi” experience, it’s not something we tinker around with anymore. For now! It’ll be a cool way to do it again, I hope.

Yeah, and EVERYBODY does have their phones out. 

So it’s just a matter of the second we do anything even remotely like that…I see it, you know? I look out in the crowd a lot when I play I kind of see what’s going on. And if we play a song we haven’t played in a long time or a cover or something like that that people weren’t expecting, I mean…

Or you open a set with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for example.

Exactly! And that is an exact case of like out of nowhere faces turn into fucking phones, you know what I mean? I look out and all I see is, like, a sea of flashlights and phones now instead of faces. I’m not saying it’s bad or good, I’m not going to be the old Luddite on here, but it is different. 

There’s probably multiple videos of that going around from wherever, I guess it was Dallas the other night, and I watched one and I sent it to my wife. I was like “holy shit look what they opened the set with! That’s wild!” And she said “yeah look, once you can see that that’s what’s happening, you can see from the audience perspective all the phones going up too.” So it’s interesting to hear you say like that’s obviously what you see because you can see it on the video too. 

Well I realized too…that version in Dallas was literally the third time we’d ever played that song as a unit. Like, we just thought about doing it, we ran it a couple of times in soundcheck and we’re like “fuck it let’s play it!” We were like “yo, it would be funny to open with it!”

Oh, it was amazing!

And we’re like, you know people are going to think we’re just doing like the intro for fun, we got to do just the whole fucking thing. But there was actually a bit of a backstory to that because one time we played a very, very ridiculously corny radio festival in Dallas, I believe at the MLS stadium. It was just one of those really strange, awkward radio events with other bands that you would never play with and stuff.  And in order to have some fun and not hate our lives that day we played a cover set. We just played like six cover songs we knew in the 25 minutes we had. So there was kind of like a ‘spirit of Dallas’ thing going on, where if we’re going to do that, we’re going to do it in Dallas I guess. 

Yeah and I think that’s still a way to hold on to like the old-school punk rock sort of sentimentality too. I think that’s fun.

Yeah I mean that’s it. That’s the conversation I had with Brian beforehand. I’m like “well, is it fun to play?” We’re like “yeah.” And I’m like “well let’s have fun and play it!” It wasn’t about “let’s try to cook the audience” or something like that, it was just kind of a whim.  I had another funny element of that too. I do get some general anxiety and jitters before I play shows. I still get it. And I had a bunch that night because I was like “Jesus we’ve played this song fucking twice, and we’re coming out with one of the greatest songs in rock and roll history. That’s either really funny and bold or just, like, stupid.” And then it was the one time I was like “you know what? I don’t get to say this too often but I’ve been practicing my whole life for this moment!” (*both laugh*) I learned this song when I was like 12 fucking years old.  I’ve known it and periodically played it from then till now. So it’s like if there’s any song I could walk up and actually get through and know all the changes and the parts, that’s one of them for sure. 

That’s what I was going to say, between the I guess five of you including Ian, you’ve probably played that song 7,000 times over the last 30 years. Maybe not together. 

Yeah, just with someone or on your own or something.

I’ve probably played it a thousand times on my couch just for the hell of it. 

But that can be dangerous too because sometimes when you play a song a million times, you completely lose sense of the fact that you’re playing it wrong. You’re just like doing something like close to it, and like you said in this fucking internet age, I’m not trying to fuck up “Smells Like Teen Spirit” drum parts. (*both laugh*) That’ll get called out. It’s like “oh he’s not doing the double hits in this thing” or something. 

Especially to open a set too, because I feel like you would know if you got a part wrong or if you flipped something around or whatever, and I feel like that would just like rent space if you let it. \

Yeah, yeah! I mean that’s why it’s bold, because it can definitely go wrong. Pretty easily!

Well good on you guys for doing it. That made my day or week or whatever. (*both laugh*) So, History Books, now that you’re on the road for it, it did just get sort of are we calling it a reissue or extended-release or whatever. But the newly remastered version is out now. And that feels like a thing that I didn’t realize…like I’ve liked the album from first listen, I thought it was great (and I reviewed it here) and I was super glad that you guys are back and made it. And I said oh I don’t really feel like they need to remaster that album, it seems fine. And then I listened to (the new version) once, and I was like “oh, I get it!” Granted I’m a complete Luddite when it comes to like music technology and barely know what mastering is, particularly as compared to mixing and whatever. But where did that idea come from? And was that something you talked about doing before? 

No, no. And to be clear, it’s not a remaster, it is remixed.

Oh okay. See, I told you I don’t understand the difference!

Yeah, so mastering is what happens at the very end of a record. Like, a record is mixed, and mastering kind of puts an overall compression on it. It like takes all the instruments essentially and is supposed to put them together into one thing in a relatable package while keeping everything separate but compressing it into an audio-friendly type of thing. It also works with sequencing. Like mastering will be, okay “two seconds between each song” and things like that. But the actual mixing mixing is done prior to that. So when you see the old reissues and stuff that are remastered, they’re kind of just tweaking sounds but they’re probably not changing volumes and stuff on the original mixes. So we actually gave the original stems of the songs and the mixes to a different mixing engineer, and we didn’t know if it was going to be good or bad. Like, it wasn’t like a certainty that we were going to hear it and be like “this has to come out.” The only way it was going to come out is if we heard it and kind of had the same reaction you did, which was like “oh okay, this sounds different and pretty good, and it’s kind of making certain things pop in a certain way, and things we weren’t hearing before kind of pop out.” So I think on our level – on a creative level – it was fun hearing it like that. And then you know I think, you know, one of the things was like the original way it was mixed was not a mistake, you know? Like we were going for something. Us and Peter (Katis, producer of History Books) were going for something that I think we achieved, and I think it’s vibey as fuck and super cool. The thing that I didn’t kind of realize, and even as a music fan I empathize with more now, it’s just like there’s a consistency in production and sound for a band. And it’s not just the songs but you kind of expect a band you like to sound a certain way to a point, you know? And I think that’s where it kind of really was bumming out fans. People were like “I like these songs but it just doesn’t sound like Gaslight.” That seemed to be kind of the effect of it. And when we had somebody awesome take a look at it and heard it, it was like “all right like let’s put this out.”

You know, we won’t change the vinyl; we’ll keep that like that nice, original thing we were going for, but now there’s this kind of polished digital version. It was crucial to me that people who already bought the record didn’t have to buy it again. You know, like some of the logistical stuff. And then also just like adding some elements to it just to make it worth people’s time, like you know adding the like the EP at the end of it and the thing we did with Bully. You know just so it’s like “oh okay, there’s something different here to listen to.” And then we just went for it. It was a strange thing because I had a hard time finding like…I don’t like making decisions in this business without historical precedent, and there was not a lot of historical precedent for this. Not a lot of bands have done it, so I was like “I don’t know if this is gonna be a terrible idea or a good idea.” But I think it sounds cool. You know let’s go for it. And I don’t read too much of the Internet but it seems fairly positive.

Yeah the people on Reddit and whatever seem to like it. Not that I am a big Reddit person but I tend to follow along and they tend to like it. 

I read everything from Reddit. I check it every day and I base my mental well-being on whatever I read. (*both laugh*) 

That’s a terrible decision. (*both laugh*) Yeah the people seem to like it.  And you’re right, there aren’t I don’t think of many examples of bands doing it this early, or this close to the release of an album. We were talking about before like a “20th anniversary, we remixed a record.” Like Pearl Jam did with Ten and a couple other records. 

Yeah, we try to not be afraid you know?

Yeah right! Okay, one more! So I’m gonna steal one of your own questions. I happened to be listening back to a Going Off Track episode that you did with Dave Hause because Dave’s been a buddy of mine forever, and you asked him something about –  I’m paraphrasing a little – but would 15-year-old you like 45-year-old you. And talking about the sort of ethos and the mentality and where he ended up (in his career). And I was sort of thinking about that in the context of like 15-year-old Benny booking shows in basements in Jersey and whatever, and now like – I’m in the Boston area and this weekend you’re at MGM and you get to play like essentially the back door of Fenway Park.  And so would 15-year-old Benny think that stuff like that, or playing the Winter Classic and whatever is cool, or would 15-year-old Benny be like “fuck that guy”?.

You know it’s one of those things, I think, that’s almost like hard to come to terms with.

And I’m kind of thinking about it as you ask it. And it’s hard to frame now, because of the fact that like I’m an adult who tries to be easy on myself, you know, especially if there’s space in the game. But if I’m completely honest with who I remember that 15-year-old to be, he was a pretty sweet kid. He had a good heart. He was nice to people. But he hated fucking bands that got too big. (*both laugh*) So, I don’t know man. I think the 15-year-old version of me would have probably had a “fuck Gaslight” period. Especially if I started on like Sink Or Swim or something. I probably would have had, you know, almost just that punk rock way of like. “Oh everyone likes The 59 Sound, I’m going to go like something else. Because too many people like this fucking record. Too many people are hyping it up for me to like this.” And that’s kind of the way I was if I’m honest.

Sure! Like a lot of us!

So yeah,  I think 15-year-old me probably would have thought I was a bit of a fucking herb.

But it’s also got to be pretty cool. I mean maybe Fenway isn’t Yankee Stadium to you...

Yeah, see I do also remember that kid as reasonable and sweet, so I think if I like got his ear for about half an hour, I’d be able to explain it in a way that he’d be like “Oh all right, I got you.” But right off the bat? Yeah no totally “fuck Gaslight”. (*both laugh*)

I appreciate your honesty. I do. 

Yeah. No problem…just having a stark look at my own childhood. (*both laugh*)

Right! I’ve looked in that mirror many a time. 

I was doing fucking Elks Lodge shows. I mean the kind of shit I thought was corporate then, was literally like baseline industry standard. 

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
benny horowitz billie eilish gaslight anthem going off track history books

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DS Show Review: Bad Religion, Social Distortion and Lovecrimes bring the punk rock history to MGM Boston

DS Show Review: Bad Religion, Social Distortion and Lovecrimes bring the punk rock history to MGM Boston

I’m going to do that thing again where I insert myself into the story when I do a show review, but I feel like it’s to be expected at this point. Maybe someday I’ll be a “professional” writer, but today is not that day my friends. Some of you may have seen me mention this […]

I’m going to do that thing again where I insert myself into the story when I do a show review, but I feel like it’s to be expected at this point. Maybe someday I’ll be a “professional” writer, but today is not that day my friends. Some of you may have seen me mention this before, or maybe you heard me say it when I chatted with Jay Bentley a couple years ago, but Bad Religion was my very first punk rock show. It was on the Gray Race tour in April 1996, which seems so late by comparison to have seen Bad Religion for the first time, but it was almost 30 years ago, which just speaks to the band’s longevity and level of importance. Anyway, That show, at what was then the Avalon on Boston’s iconic Lansdowne Street, was my baptism into the world of live punk music, and I guess what has followed over the course of the last three decades is in no small part due to that very show. The band – and especially Bentley and frontman Greg Graffin and guitar wizard Brian Baker – will always have a special place in my heart for that reason. And so to have them not only play right across the street from what used to be Avalon (it’s been combined with what used to be Axis and what used to be Mama Kin into the House of Blues, if you’re interested), at the sparkly-new MGM Music Hall, and for that show to be almost exactly twenty-eight years since my first show AND to have the band co-headlining with Social Distortion, another iconic band that I first saw live in the comparatively late year of 1997, was a pretty special, benchmark show.

Lovecrimes were the leadoff hitter on this night’s lineup, taking the stage to a surprisingly large crowd. If you’ve never been to the MGM, it’s a massive (5000-ish capacity) venue shoe-horned into a triangular lot behind the bleachers at Fenway Park. It’s so close to the lyric little bandbox that the backstage of one venue opens directly into the other. As such, it can be a finicky place to see a show, especially one of the punk rock variety, not just because it’s massive but because the Fenway area isn’t the easiest to get to or park in for less than $50, and ESPECIALLY when there is also a home Red Sox game going on, which thankfully was not the case on this night. So at a place that can be fraught with latecomers, it’s noteworthy that a good crowd showed up early to watch the opener. But Lovecrimes isn’t just any opener. They’re fronted by Mike Ness’s son Julian, who we had previously seen slinging the lead guitar for Jade Jackson’s band just prior to Covid becoming a thing. The similarities between father and son are unavoidable, not just in look and name, but in sound. Lovecrimes possess that same early Social D growl and swagger and they have it in spades. If you close your eyes a little bit, it’s almost like stepping into a time machine to 1983. Backed by Trevor Lucca (D.I.) on guitar, Collin Schlesinger on bass and Josh Roossin (The Jacks) on drums, Julian and crew blazed through a nine-song set that more than set the tone for what was to follow.

Bad Religion were in the two-hole for this particular show. And while I’m always partial to a Bad Religion headlining show, having them play a seventy-five-minute co-headlining spot is certainly sufficient and, to be honest, it helped provide a sonic change-of-pace, with the overdriven rock-and-roll thing that Lovecrimes and Social D do serving as proper bookends. Bad Religion tore immediately into “The Defense” from 2002’s Process Of Belief to kick things off. When you’ve been a band for 40+ years and have seventeen studio albums under your belt, and you’re limited to a 75-minute set, it might be expected that the setlist would be comprised mostly of “the hits,” so the choice to kick off such a set with like the eleventh song from the twelfth album – and a song that was definitely not a “single” from that record – was a pretty awesome one in this writer’s opinion. Bad Religion collectively and individually certainly have more than a few miles on their tires but with the pace pushed by more recent addition Jamie Miller on drums, I hesitate to say you’d almost never realize it…but you’d almost never realize it. Brian Baker and Mike Dimkich serve as guitar-wielding bookends on stage left and stage right, respectively, while Bentley and Graffin patrol the center of the stage with almost as much youthful abandon as ever. The crowd certainly responded in kind as more than a few crowd-surfers who were, *ahem* of a certain age made their way over the barricade at the front of the house. Just like the old days! Personal highlights from the 22-song set included “Fuck You,” “Stranger Than Fiction,” “New Dark Ages” and, my first favorite Bad Religion song, “Generator.”

And then, as the clock turned 9:30, it was the legendary Social Distortion’s turn at the plate (I was going to say that batted cleanup but there were only three bands on the bill and the cleanup spot is fourth and so there goes the baseball analogy train derailing on me). To say that this was a show that had a chance of realistically not happening is not an understatement. You don’t get to achieve legend/icon status without having the bulk of your career in the rearview mirror, and with age and longevity come the threat of realistic health scares, and iconic Social D frontman Mike Ness is no stranger, having gone through a rather public cancer scare over the last year. And so it was equal parts cathartic and, perhaps, tongue-in-cheek for the band to kick things off with their 1991 classic “Bad Luck” to open the show. It isn’t reflected in discography liner notes, but the current iteration of Social D, which features Ness backed by longtime wingman Jonny “Two Bags” Wickersham on guitar, Brett Harding on bass and David Hidalgo on drums is the longest-running one in the band’s storied history. That’s clearly evident in the band’s lock-tight live set, which featured classics like “Mommy’s Little Monster” and “1945” and “Ball and Chain” and “Ring of Fire” sprinkled in with newer tracks like “Tonight” and “Over You” over the course of fifteen songs and 80-ish minutes. It was every bit a triumphant performance that was equal parts 1980s nostalgia and modern, revved up guitar rock goodness.

Check out additional photos from the gig below!

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
Bad Religion boston greg graffin lovecrimes mike ness

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DS Show Review: Hot Water Music’s 30th birthday celebration hits Boston w/Quicksand, Off With Their Heads and Be Well

DS Show Review: Hot Water Music’s 30th birthday celebration hits Boston w/Quicksand, Off With Their Heads and Be Well

Friday, May 10, 2024, found Hot Water Music bringing their triumphant 30-year anniversary to a stop at Boston’s 1000-capacity Royale theatre. Coincidentally, it also marked album release day for Vows, the band’s dynamic 10th studio album. The confluence of those events created a pretty great Venn diagram sweet spot that found the genre-defining five-piece sounding […]

Friday, May 10, 2024, found Hot Water Music bringing their triumphant 30-year anniversary to a stop at Boston’s 1000-capacity Royale theatre. Coincidentally, it also marked album release day for Vows, the band’s dynamic 10th studio album. The confluence of those events created a pretty great Venn diagram sweet spot that found the genre-defining five-piece sounding just as vital and authentic as ever.

I understand that it’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation to disclose that Hot Water Music has been one of my favorite bands over the course of the last two decades – I am a mid-40s bearded white guy after all. Still, it’s important to note the influence that the band has had not only as a guiding light in this quadrant of the music world, but on my own personal life both inside and outside the last baker’s dozen years I’ve been doing the Dying Scene thing. It’s a level of importance that is palpable when you’re in the room when the band plays, even thirty years on and minus an original member. What’s also palpable is the level of respect and admiration that the band have for each other and for the crowd. Co-frontmen Chuck Ragan and Chris Cresswell made repeat references to how honored they were to be able to celebrate a lengthy career and a new album in front of a room full of friends, and Cresswell seems doubly-appreciative of his spot as a fan first and, for the last seven years, a band member. Of course, how can you not appreciate playing in a band with the “human cheat codes” that make up the rhythm section of Jason Black and George Rebelo.

As is basically standard operating procedure of late, Hot Water began their set with a blistering rendition of “Remedy,” the song that kicks off their landmark 2002 album Caution. This was followed quickly by “A Flight And A Crash” and “Jack Of All Trades,” a one-two-three punch that set a frenetically high bar for the evening. Because this was not only a thirtieth-anniversary tour but also an album release tour, one can imagine there was more than a little difficulty putting together a setlist that was appropriately reflective of the band’s career arc while obviously celebrating the new material. The next hour-and-a-half did a damn fine job of it, however. Vows was certainly well-represented by “Burn Forever,” “Menace” and “Remnants,” the latter of which contained a pause and restart while a crowd-goer who’d hit the deck was tended to. “Keep It Together” from 2004’s underrated The New What Next was a pleasant surprise that I feel hasn’t seen much love in the Cresswell era. Exister‘s two staples, “Drag My Body” and “State of Grace” were of course included, as were personal favorites “I Was On A Mountain” and “Alright For Now.” By the time the iconic “Trusty Chords” brought things to a close, the band had barreled through 20 songs in about as raw and real and life-affirming a manner as they ever have. Making and sharing music is not a responsibility that Hot Water Music take lightly, and to say that all four of the touring members leave it all on the stage night in and night out is to put it mildly, and I look forward to more nights like this as long as Chuck’s and Cresswell’s voices will allow.

Be Well kicked off the festivities early in the evening. A late add to the bill after the cancellation of their West Coast run with I Am The Avalanche and Grumpster, Be Well really are a perfect fit to help celebrate Hot Water’s 30th birthday given how intertwined frontman Brian McTernan has been with HWM for the last couple decades, having produced A Flight And A Crash (2001), Caution (2002), The New What Next (2004), Feel The Void (2022) and now Vows. (He also produced The Draft’s 2006 masterpiece In A Million Pieces.) The lineup was slightly retooled from the band’s previous runs through the Northeast; McTernan, Shane Johnson (drums) and Mike Schleibaum (lead guitar) maned their usual battle stations, while normal bass player Aaron Dalbec slid into perhaps his more identifiable role as guitar player (see Converge, Bane, etc) while newcomer Zach Crocket (who plays with Johnson in Richmond, Virginia hardcore band Beggars) assumed bass duties. Whatever the lineup, every time out finds Be Well solidifying their place as one of the most vital bands in the modern hardcore game, and I say that while fully acknowledging that I am very much “not a hardcore kid.” McTernan’s honest, earnest vocals and heart-wrenching storytelling are front-and-center, supported in full by the band’s strong concentration on thrashing, melodic tempos. 

Off With Their Heads were up next. It had been a minute since I’d witnessed the full-band OWTH experience. Actually, it had been well more than a minute…maybe a decade? Maybe? On a tour with Alkaline Trio and Into It. Over It.? I should check my list. ANYWAY, I’d seen the OWTH acoustic revue a number of times, so it was gratifying to see that Ryan Young and friends (Kyle Manning on drums and Kevin Rotter on bass) have not lost a step off their plugged-in, punk rock set’s proverbial fastball. Kicking things off with “Let It All,” the band blistered through a nine-song set that was heavy on their last full band full-length, 2019’s Be Good. Set closer “Clear The Air” was as cathartic as ever and included a couple of local references (Billerica? Really?) for good measure.

Quicksand served as primary support on this night as they did for the duration of the tour. Speaking of bands who are naturals to open a Hot Water Music 30th anniversary run, Quicksand were also perfect not just sonically but because of frontman Walter Schreifels’ role as producer of Hot Water’s 1999 classic No Division, considered by many to be the first album that really found the band leveling up (as evidenced by it’s spot as one of the “album shows” the band did on its string of two-night stands on their 25th-anniversary tour a few years back). The trio (Schreifels on guitar and vocal duties, Sergio Vega on bass and Alan Cage behind the drumkit) hit the ground running with “Omission” from their own iconic record, 1993’s Slip, and tore through another thirteen-song set that included such staples as “Thorn In My Side” “Fazer” and “Dine Alone” before closing things out with a transcendent “Landmine Spring.” The band sounded as solid as ever, and the staircases that adorn the sides of the stage and lead to the backstage green rooms were adorned with members of the night’s other bands watching and singing along from the wings.


by Staff Writer jaystone

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DS Exclusive: Asbury Park’s Tide Bends unveil “Birthday,” brit-poppy new single from upcoming EP “Say Yeah”

DS Exclusive: Asbury Park’s Tide Bends unveil “Birthday,” brit-poppy new single from upcoming EP “Say Yeah”

Happy Friday, comrades! Today’s DS Exclusive premiere comes to us all the way from one of my favorite places…Asbury Park, New Jersey! We’ve brought you music from AP bands like Yawn Mower and Bristler in the recent past, and today we’ve got Tide Bends for your listening pleasure. The band features Yawn Mower/Bristler’s Rudy Meier […]

Happy Friday, comrades!

Today’s DS Exclusive premiere comes to us all the way from one of my favorite places…Asbury Park, New Jersey! We’ve brought you music from AP bands like Yawn Mower and Bristler in the recent past, and today we’ve got Tide Bends for your listening pleasure. The band features Yawn Mower/Bristler’s Rudy Meier (guitars) teaming up with David Hough (vocals/guitar), Dan Nolan (drums) and MJ Hancock (bass) for a sound that is a fresh, modern, swamps of Jersey-inspired take on classic Madchester Britpop goodness.

Tide Bends’ Say Yeah EP is due out June 21st on Mint 400 Records, and you can check their new single, “Birthday,” today! Enjoy, and pre-save the EP while you’re at it!

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
birthday ds exclusive mint 400 records say yeah tide bends

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