There’s a name popping up all over the place lately that has people intrigued. On flyers and festival lineups all over the US it seems that Portland’s Distorted Times are very quickly making their mark on the punk rock scene, but just who is this band of ambitious upstarts? I sat down with singer and guitarist Kevin Hudson to shed some light, share the new single “Another Wasted Night” and shoot the shit. Check out the new single below and read on to see what all the fuss is about!

DS: Hey bud! Just to get it out of the way, we’ve known each other for a long time now, but can you give a little introduction to our readers?

KH: Thanks Andy! I’m Kevin Hudson, I write songs and sing and play guitar for Distorted Times. I played my first punk show in December of 1994 with My Goldfish Ned and have just been playing punk around the Northwest for the last thirty years having fun and touring out across the country a bit here and there. I guess bands I’ve been in that your readers might recognize since My Goldfish Ned were Devour, Freelance Terrorists, The Knuckles, Acoustic Chaos, and Ground Score. Distorted Times is just kind of a continuation, or maybe the evolved form of Ground Score really. The core of Ground Score was myself on guitar and vocals, Jay Crash on bass and vocals and Ian Jackson on drums, and the three of us have been friends and done a bunch of musical projects together over the last probably 25 years or so. 

When Covid hit back in 2020, Ground Score was really doing a ton of shit, but coming out of the pandemic we had expanded the musical vision a little bit and shuffled around members and instrumentation, so we decided we needed to move forward with a new name. Distorted Times was the name of a punk zine I used to put out with some friends back in the late 90s so when that came up as a possible direction we all kind of latched on to it, given the state of the world and everything right now.

DS: You guys have been popping up on a bunch of high-profile festivals and runs lately. Congrats, by the way! I was fortunate to be able to catch you guys opening for Ignite and Death By Stereo, as well as your recent weekend run with Koffin Kats and The Last Gang. As musicians you’ve all been around the block a bit with previous bands, but considering Distorted Times is such a new face on the scene, how has the reception been and what have been some standout gigs so far?

KH: We played our first show as Distorted Times in August of last year and have played maybe 15 or 16 shows over that span and it’s been fun as fuck and cool as hell to see that our history and friends around the scene have helped us get off to such a great start. The shows with the bands you mentioned were really fun and we were grateful just to be invited. It was great seeing you at those shows and that’s one of the things that has been really fun is to start traveling around a bit again and reconnecting with friends and just being part of fun fuckin shows. The run we did with DFL was a good one. We toured around a little bit with DFL as Ground Score back in 2018 and 2019 so it was awesome to see those guys again this year, plus Berzerk was part of that package and we all go back with them to the late 90s as kids in the Portland punk scene so getting to hang out and play shows and get nostalgic and shit backstage with them was cool. Berzerk still kills it by the way, which you love to see.

DS: You’ve been dropping some killer singles lately! Your most recent release “Hella Highwater” even had a guest spot from Jay Navarro of The Suicide Machines! How did that come about and what was the experience like?

KH: We have been approaching this first set of songs a little differently than we have in the past. Partly just due to how releasing music has evolved and partly because we’re just completely DIY and self-funding this stuff. We’ve put out four singles in the last 8 months with four more to come over this summer. Like I said, we’re doing it all ourselves so we’re just releasing the songs as they’re done, and we’ve been working really hard to get them just right, especially Jay Crash, who has kind of adopted the producer role for these songs.  

Having Jay Navarro sing a couple of verses on “Hella Highwater” was really a dream come true for us. I mean, Jay Crash and I fucking bonded hard over Destruction By Definition back in the mid-90’s and we’ve always carried a torch for those guys. It’s one of those things where if you’re just involved in the scene and doing fun stuff and not being an asshole you make relationships over the years, and if you know how much Jay Crash has contributed to so many bands over the years behind the scenes you’re not surprised when he walks into rehearsal and floats the idea of having Jay Navarro sit in on some vocals on a track. I mean, I was surprised for sure but knowing Jay Crash the way I do it’s not totally shocking when he pulls off something like that I guess. We had our local buds Eric and Stevie and the Los Mal Hablados crew on that track, too, as well as on “Thieves & Leeches”. It’s been a big family effort really. We have Pete Steinkopf from Bouncing Souls playing lead guitar on “High Times” for fuck’s sake, which is another crazy thing Jay pulled off. If I were going to give you a scoop it would be that we have singles coming up this summer with Chris from Crazy and the Brains doing some vocals and Joey Steel from Cop/Out and All Torn Up doing some vocals as well.  

DS: Your newest single “Another Wasted Night” is a bit of a departure from the previous releases. It definitely stands out as a triumphant emotional release in your set. Can you tell us a little bit about the song and what it means to you?

KH: “Another Wasted Night” is the song we close our set with when we play out, so it’s an important one. I think that’s just because even though it is a bit of a heavy emotional song it ends on kind of an inspirational or uplifting note, so that’s a nice thing to leave hanging in the air when you leave the stage. For me it’s pretty intensely personal. I wrote it during a tough time when I was going through a bunch of upheaval in my personal life, so performing it is always pretty cathartic. The song starts in a dark place but it evolves pretty steadily into a positive note. By the end of it I’m actually just kind of singing things that I felt like I needed someone to say to me when I was in that place, so I think it’s a worthwhile message to put out there. We had a guest appearance on this one too, funny enough. The violin you hear throughout is Kyle from Beggar’s Canyon, who are some local friends of ours. To put another fine point on that, our keyboardist Brit, who is also Jay’s sister, is married to Beggar’s Canyon’s accordion player Matt, and our lead guitar player Luke is a friend we’ve seen play in his band Pi Fire around town and also works in production at a few venues, so like I said before this project is really just friends and family having fun and trying to expand traditional punk music in some way and in an organic way. 

DS: Given the steady flow of single drops this year, can we expect a full-length or a physical ep release from Distorted Times any time soon?

KH: Yep, once all eight of these songs are out, we’ll re-master them for vinyl and put them out that way. Maybe a Cassette or a CD, too, we’ll see. One thing that has been fun and unique about our single releases is how we’ve had stand-alone pieces of art made for each one, and each song is intended as a stand-alone piece of art in that same vein. We were hoping to have it all pulled together sooner for a full release, but I think it’s working out okay given that we’re doing all of this by ourselves. We also dropped our first music video last month for “Thieves and Leeches”, so we’ve been staying busy.

DS: Right on! I look forward to checking it out. So, what is coming up next for y’all? Any big plans in the works that you can share with our readers?

KH: We’ll have another single coming out next month, and then we’re off to Montreal to play Pouzza Fest, followed by a little run down to Punk Rock Bowling to play a club show with Strung Out, Good Riddance and our buds in The Last Gang. After that we’re back to Oregon to play the Coastal Choas Festival out in Astoria, and then probably the biggest show of any of our lives when we play Portland Waterfront Park for Punk in the Park on June 28 with Descendents, Propaghandi, 7 Seconds and so many awesome bands I won’t even list them. It’s insane! If you’d told me when I was a teenager running around playing punk shows at EJ’s, Satyricon and Stage 4 that someday they’d be throwing punk shows of this size at Waterfront Park with all of these legendary punk bands, I would have thought you were out of your fucking mind! It really is kind of insane to think about.

DS: Sounds like you all have a busy year ahead of you! Thanks for your time, Kevin! It’s always a pleasure to catch up with you. Any final thoughts or messages you’d like to finish with?

KH: Nope, just that I know these are some really weird and distorted times, but that’s when communities like us punks and weirdos come together and help each other out, so let’s all keep that in our minds and hearts. Be good to each other out there, people!

Catch Distorted Times out in the wild at the dates below!

May 16 – Pouzza Fest – Montreal, Quebec

May 21 – The Sound Lounge – Grants Pass OR – w/The John Dough Boys, Sucker Punch

May 22 – Midnight Coffee Roasting – Reno NV – w/Donkeyjaw, 1876

May 24 – Fremont Country Club – Las Vegas NV – w/Strung Out, Good Riddance, The Last Gang

May 25 – Punk Rock Museum – Las Vegas NV

June 28 – Punk In The Park – Portland OR – w/The Descendents, The Interrupters, Screeching Weasel, Propaghandi, 7 Seconds, Mustard Plug, Swingin Utters