I had the pleasure of sitting down and chatting with Ian Legge, known by most as simply the Punk Cellist. I was particularly drawn to Legge’s unique spin on punk, emo and hardcore tunes because of the refreshingly reimagined transcriptions not of songs I was hearing for the first time, but ones such as the Gaslight Anthem‘s “The ’59 Sound” or The Menzingers‘ “Burn After Writing,” melodies that have consistently occupied my airwaves. I was given the feeling of hearing a brand new song, yet was able to sing every word along to the instrumental.
For a genre that, as a reader of Dying Scene I hope you love, but others sometimes misunderstand, the Punk Cellist is able to reimagine these punk tracks as arrangements that demonstrate their true musicianship, a duty that pays homage to such masterminds as Tony Sly, Dave Grohl, and the numerous others that Legge has covered. I’ve found Legge’s YouTube channel as an effective means of demonstrating some of what I love so much about punk to those that just don’t get it, and may not even want to. The Punk Cellist said it best by stating, “you can show this to your grandparents and they would be like ‘oh that’s nice’.”
I was ecstatic to hear that Legge was hard at work preparing for the release of his debut full-length later in 2023. After seeing that The Menzingers and Alkaline Trio held the honor of being the first two singles for this release, I have still yet to come up with two more suitable tracks to help warm fans up for what’s to come. Before these demoes were even released, I can remember running through the videos on The Punk Cellist Youtube channel and noting that tracks by the Menzingers and Alkaline Trio were ones that seemed to flow the best.
Be sure to continue scrolling for all kinds of great stuff to help get you acquainted with who I consider to be one of the most unique acts in punk rock. We cover all kinds of cool topics including what the process looks like going from punk track to cello instrumental, some of the similarities between two unlikely genres in classical music and punk, such future aspirations as possibly composing full orchestral pieces, as well as a whole lot more. Linked below is what is currently available on Spotify, as well as where you can grab a flexi of the two released tracks.
The Punk Cellist Fall ’22 Demo Flexi!
(Editor’s note: The following has been edited and condensed for clarity’s sake because a good chunk of this interview was just two guys shooting the shit.)
Dying Scene (Nathan Kernell NastyNate) Hey man, how you doing?
Ian Legge aka The Punk Cellist: Doing well, excited for this release, it’s doing well so far. Went on a good bike ride today, it was cold, but it was good.
So yeah, let’s hop right into it. Congrats on the release, man. I honestly couldn’t think of two better songs for it, they fit so perfectly. How did you decide upon those two songs with the Menzingers and then “Clavicle”?
Honestly, I had started putting together some mixes for a larger album and then I actually thought that I want to just do a demo at first and see kind of how it did. So I just chose what the first two songs that were kind of ready.
So how long has this been in the works, have you been working on this quite a while?
Since probably this summer, I’ve been looking for a label to help me put out these songs and press them on vinyl, help me with digital streaming, getting publications to talk to me when it’s released you know, just all the like background stuff. I’m really good at recording and arranging, but the whole back end of the band, it was never really my forte. So Ryan [Curtiss] came along saying that he wanted to help put out my music, he has a small label called Over Caffienated Records, so I’m working with him on it and we’re already half sold out of this pressing. We’re really excited to really thank you everyone who’s snagged one so far.
Have there been any issues you’ve run into with like licensing with these being covers? That seems like it could be kind of a difficult hurdle.
That was my concern at first, definitely. Luckily there is a step to payout royalties to these bands, so we did that and we can legally release these covers and everyone gets paid accordingly.
Did you record these yourself or did you go somewhere?
Yeah so I recorded them at home and mixed them myself and then I sent them to Joe Riley, who is actually Trevor Riley from A Wilhelm Scream, his dad and he has a little mastering studio called Black and Blue. So he mastered them and they sound great, he’s really affordable and quick and professional. So if you ever need any mastering done he’s a great person to go to.
I was looking around on your YouTube a little bit and actually the Menzingers, I thought those songs fit perfectly with you playing on cello. And then The Gaslight Anthem’s “The ‘59 Sound,“ I thought that was perfect too. Are there some songs that just don’t work on cello?
Honestly yeah. It’s funny because there are some songs that I really do want to arrange, but I’ve sort of hit some roadblocks in a way with how I think they would sound. For example, especially songs with not exactly like a vocal melody, they might be yelling something, that definitely makes it more difficult. I’m thinking of Propagandhi’s “Back to the Motor League.” I wanna do that one but right in the beginning, he yells ‘I wanna party fuckin’ hard’, like how do I recreate that on cello? But kind of a successful example with taking a sort of yelly, screaming part, I made it into a melody and it ended up working; the example I’m thinking of is Still Waiting by Sum 41. In the first verse he kinda yells ‘drop dead, a bullet to my head, you’re words are like a gun in hand’, and so I made that into like a melody with harmonies and stuff, I think it sounds pretty cool.
So then when you’re choosing a song, is it just as simple as transcribing it, it seems like it’d be more complicated than that?
Thankfully, I have a little bit of experience with arranging, just in school doing it a lot. What I realized is that the cello is tuned in a way that makes it pretty easy for me to recreate a lot of these songs because they’re tuned to fifths, so basically when I put one finger down across two strings, it makes a power chord like on a guitar. So when I realized that, I just went to town just trying to figure out everything that I could play. So then there are definitely bands that their musical style really makes it pretty easy for me, pretty straightforward. Some recordings are more difficult to hear, so trying to figure out the exact notes that they’re playing sometimes can be kind of a challenge.
So I think you mentioned it, but this two-song demo, is this part of a bigger release coming?
Yeah, I definitely hope to release a full-length vinyl with a good amount of covers on it, hopefully like 12 to 14 covers. I will be trying to do some smaller releases of maybe like just one or two bands as well. So yeah we’re gonna really push hard in 2023 and hopefully keep putting out some cool stuff.
Do you have any type of deadline for that or are you just aiming for some time in 2023 at this point?
Just 2023, getting that done at some point. I don’t wanna put any date on it just because we were supposed to release this [demo] in the fall and it ended up coming out in January.
So I wanted to pick your brain a little bit on choosing songs, on how you do that. A lot of these songs, are they just favorites to yours, was that kind of what it was in the beginning and now it’s progressed? How do you go about choosing some of these songs?
It definitely started as just my favorite songs. I’ve always loved hearing them turned into these string pieces, it’s so cool and it like scratches an itch for me that I had always had and I didn’t know that I had. Then people started asking to collaborate, for me to commission work now which is really cool, like it’s helping me pay bills. And also my Patreon supporters, there are about 40 of them supporting me monthly, they’ll request songs and I have a lot of cool songs in the works. One in particular that stuck out to me that I’m really excited to get working on is Strung Out. I’ve never really listened to them before and someone requested it and I was like ‘wow these guys are awesome, I’m surprised no one had suggested them to me before that’. So I hope to put out a Strung Out cover sometime this year as well.
Yeah that’ll be pretty cool because I know you did the A Wilhelm Scream cover a while back. I kind of put those two in the same realm, even though Strung Out has been around longer. They kind of go hand-in-hand to me.
I also have another A Wilhelm Scream cover in the works currently that’s actually more complete, hoping to release that sometime in the next few months.
I think that’ll be really cool once that comes out. I will say it is really cool listening to you, I was showing you some of your music to my girlfriend last night. She can’t stand punk man, she just doesn’t get it, but I showed her like “The ‘59 Sound” and “Burn After Writing,” “Dumb Reminders,” and she actually really liked them. “Dumb Reminders,” was that like your first video?
Yep, I was gonna say that’s a real throwback, that was my first YouTube video.
I was showing her because she just doesn’t get punk, she doesn’t want to get punk and it’s cool showing her because it really shows the musicianship behind the writing. For people that maybe don’t understand or can’t really hear it because it’s so fast or whatever, it’s cool because it really demonstrates the musicianship behind the music.
I totally agree. I think that’s one of the coolest parts about it, you hear in a different way, but the music is still there. I like to keep things pretty close to the originals and it really does highlight the songwriting that is in punk because it’s incredible. I think it oftentimes gets overlooked, but I think it’s just because it sounds a bit harsh to people, they’re not used to it. That’s where they kind of draw the line, their brain kind of shuts off. I love to say you can show this to your grandparents and they would be like ‘oh that’s nice’.
So how long have you been playing cello, is this something you grew up doing?
Yeah both my parents are hugely into music and I started playing violin in 3rd grade. Then in 4th grade, that was actually when I saw the cello for the first time and I switched right away, so 21, almost 22 years and counting.
I know from some of your videos you play guitar and sing a little bit, did you pick those up later on?
Yeah drums, actually, I think is like my second best instrument, I practiced that a lot and I played in a punk band for 10 years on drums. So that’s kind of where my love of punk really came from was playing drums for this band called Half Hearted Hero. My bass player and my guitar player and my singer, we were all super close when we were in the band, which we’re kind of on hiatus right now, but they all showed me like NOFX, Propagandhi, all those great bands; No Use for a Name, the Swellers, Less Than Jake, Set Your Goals. I used to listen to like Green Day, Simple Plan, Sum 41, Story of the Year, you know like all those bands. That’s like how I started getting into the style of music and then they kind of really opened my world. And like Ramones and Descendents and all the OG punk, I actually kind of found that within the past few years which is cool because I’ve gone backwards in time. I started with all the newest stuff and then went backwards in time and just like kept looking for older stuff. And I feel bands like Ramones and even the Saints were really such a cool way to kick off the whole punk movement.
I’m kind of the same way, those were some of the bands I grew up on, Green Day, big on them Sum 41, all those guys. And it wasn’t until pretty late in high school that I really started getting into some of these punk bands that I love now.
That’s actually one thing I love about this project. I’m learning about so many new bands I don’t think I would have ever listened to really. There’s like a little community that I’ve built online, like we’re always chatting about different bands, different music, I’ve definitely discovered some really cool bands because of it.
I wanted to talk to you little bit about about like classical music, that’s kind of what everybody thinks of when they see the cello. I grew up playing violin as well and I wasn’t playing punk rock. Were you trained classically, and if so, I wanna kind of hear how you made the jump from classical to punk?
Yeah so that was how I started, just through school like the whole elementary, middle and high school orchestra track. I played in a youth philharmonic orchestra as well, so that was a little bit higher end as far as performance level; three hour rehearsals once a week, playing like real stuff. And I liked it but I was already kind of getting burned out on it by high school. So then I discovered Apocalyptica and all the others that were doing contemporary stuff at the time, like rock-based contemporary stuff and it made me stick with cello. Like I almost quit, I almost just stopped, went with drums. I never really had lessons on drums but I’ve always loved drums so much. It’s something that I wasn’t really technically proficient at though like I was on cello. So I’m appreciative that I kind of stuck with it because I would have been starting from square one with drums if I wanted to learn it like that.
I mean I can’t really think of two more polar opposites than classical and punk rock. So this is kind of like a two-part question, was there somewhat of a learning curve when you started doing punk on cello and were there any surprising similarities between playing classical and playing punk?
That’s a good question. Yeah I actually think one of the things that I learned most, or needed to learn that I didn’t really know was to play in certain positions that benefit vocal melodies. What I mean by that is that a lot of vocal melodies are actually pentatonic scales, and so I learned basically how to play pentatonic scales on cello in learning all these vocal melodies for these cover songs. Like the chords are one thing, that’s where the similarities lie I think is in the chord structures. Not only like the fact that I could place one finger across two strings and it sounds like a power chord, but like in western music you can’t really go too far outside of the 12 chords that you are given and so you definitely will see a lot of chord progressions where you’re like ‘oh I’ve heard that before’. Another example, spiccato on the cello is actually like palm mutes on guitar; like those types of things, where one articulation from classical is a different articulation in punk rock or rock music. Especially that spiccato, which means that your bow is bouncing on the strings, it sounds exactly like a palm mute sound, and so one of the fun parts about arranging these songs is taking the techniques that I’ve learned from the classical world and mimicking sounds in rock or punk. For example, doing a pick slide, there’s no real specific technique name for that but it’s something that’s been transcribed into some classical music that I’ve played before where you just have to slide up or down the neck.
I mean that’s so surprising to me that there are those kind of similarities between two things that, just on the surface, seem so different.
But sonically, you’re like ‘Oh yeah it sounds very similar’.
Is a lot of the theory very similar too?
It depends on what era of classical music you’re talking about. The further you go back, the more rules there are that punk rock tends to break, like parallel fifths, that type of thing. It was really interesting for me to learn where punk rock came from because that informed my knowledge of theory behind punk. It’s really based out of just straight-up rock’n’roll, like Elvis Costello and just guitar players that were pushing the envelope back in the day in the Blues and the rock scene. I mean you can draw a straight line from punk rock, through rock and roll, through Blues, all the way back to classical music. I mean there are similarities that you can find, for sure, it just depends on kind of how you look at it because they’re pretty far apart.
That does make a lot of sense about it being harder to find similarities with theory because punk kind of inherently breaks rules. For 2022, I saw you did stuff with Garrett Dale, can you talk about some of the other shows you were on, some of your favorites?
We played with Tim from Elway and also James Renton, he kind of sat in when we were playing shows in Canada and that was a lot of fun. I met some really cool people it was a quick one, two in Canada and two in Colorado and we plan on trying to do that again at some point for sure. That was sort of a test run for us.
What about 2023, anything planned?
I’m trying to play more locally, just like trying to have cello pay the bills. I’m playing a lot of breweries, a lot of coffee shops. You probably know Narragansett brewery, I’m playing at their tap room in Providence in April. Just definitely trying to do more of those things and then we’ll definitely be doing some fun things around Fest time, we’ll try to plan a tour down there, it depends on if I can find a band to go with, that definitely helps. There will be some cool collaborations happening at Fest, but just little stuff up until then.
I know you’ve done covers up until this point, do you have any plans on originals?
Not really at this point. I mean I’m also really into hardcore and so I’ve been thinking about starting a heavy band, but nothing planned right now for cello. At this point I’m actually thinking about trying to expand these covers into doing full string orchestra at like a theatre. I think that would be taking my idea to the next level.
Oh that’d be awesome. I know with the Decline doing their thing at Red Rocks, that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
That was pretty mind-blowing to me. That gave me kind of the idea of doing something like that, and also me playing with the 8-bit big band with my friend Charlie from school, he makes video game arrangements in big band, like jazz band. So I was like ‘I would love to do this with punk tunes’, there a lot of punk fans that I think would appreciate going out, having a nice night out, drinking fancy cocktails and hearing their favorite punk songs done on strings.
Any big collaborations planned, I mean you don’t have to spoil anything?
I hope to have something out with a couple bands, I’m working on kind of a double cover where one of the songs will be a Descendents song that I’m doing by myself and then one a member of No Trigger will be doing vocals on the other one. And then I just spoke with Scott from Born Without Bones, we want to do a Rancid cover together.
Well it sounds like you’ve got a lot going on, I’ll definitely follow along man. I appreciate you sitting down with me, and good luck with the upcoming releases.
Yeah thanks man.
