New Jersey is home to a lot of great punk rock. None Shall Sleep is another band to add to the list, and their EP, Hope Dies at Dawn is evidence of this. While a lot of punk rock bands burn through their four or five songs pretty quickly, Hope Dies at Dawn is about […]
New Jersey is home to a lot of great punk rock. None Shall Sleep is another band to add to the list, and their EP, Hope Dies at Dawn is evidence of this. While a lot of punk rock bands burn through their four or five songs pretty quickly, Hope Dies at Dawn is about twenty-ish minutes of music without a dull moment.
“Theme for the Clinically Depressed” feels like a Jawbreaker and Social Distortion love child. Its driving but steady pace and gruff vocals may be familiar but are done well here. I’m a sucker for a song about disillusionment, and this one checks the boxes well. The second track, “Life Will Have Its Way with You,” feels like a different type of beast—almost Fugazi in nature with its constantly moving bassline. “Is This My Uniform?” speeds up the tempo a bit and plays a clip from Bill Murray’s speech at the beginning of Rushmore. I always found the speech humorous, as Max Fischer takes notes about Herman Blume being the best speaker ever, but putting the words over their chords gives the song a bit of a different context. The album closes strong with “Look Good on Paper” and the hyper “Time Is the Enemy.” There’s nothing like a fast song about running out of time lasting four minutes—I mean that in the best way.
You could get punk rock like this in a lot of places, but NONE SHALL SLEEP does it so fucking well. They pull from so many influences it’s almost like listening to a playlist on shuffle. If you like this check out their full-length compilation, A Slow Steady Decline, which features older material from the band. Hope Dies at Dawn is a little more focused and seems to be more of the current sound the band is going for. It isn’t much different, but you can tell time has hardened these guys, in the best way.
Hope Dies at Dawn is a really strong record. I saw None Shall Sleep at Gold Sounds in Brooklyn a few months ago, they are amazing, great songs, great energy. If you get a chance check them out live.
In the worlds of substance use prevention and treatment – and public health in a broader sense – it wasn’t all that long ago that the term “harm reduction” was considered taboo in many circles. I can attest to that firsthand, as I was one of those people who was biased against it after years […]
In the worlds of substance use prevention and treatment – and public health in a broader sense – it wasn’t all that long ago that the term “harm reduction” was considered taboo in many circles. I can attest to that firsthand, as I was one of those people who was biased against it after years of working in abstinence-based programs like residential addiction treatment or alternative sentencing day treatment for people on probation and parole. And that stands to reason; in a residential setting, continued alcohol/drug use jeopardizes the safety and well-being of the milieu as a whole. In a court-ordered program for folks on probation and/or parole, obviously failing a drug test tends to result in your freedom being revoked, at least temporarily. And this is in a stereotypically progressive place like Massachusetts.
Perhaps I should back up. For the uninitiated, the concept of “harm reduction” in the substance use world involves a move away from an abstinence-based framework, and instead involves meeting people where they are at. It means trying to reduce the negative consequences of substance use – whatever those consequences might be. It’s tailored to the individual needs of the person and their community and seeks to minimize the stigma that is generally associated with the use of licit and illicit drugs without minimizing the harms and dangers of using those substances. It seeks to keep people alive and as well as they can be. Why are we talking about this on a punk rock website? Well, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, the harm reduction community existed for a lot of years in the shadows. In the streets. In parking lots and alleyways frequented by illicit drug users. In fact, in many places, it still exists that way given the taboo nature of the subject matter. At the core, it’s been a grassroots coalition of people working in a textbook DIY capacity, looking out for their brothers and sisters and doing so without prejudice or judgment. Sounds like the core ethos of “punk rock” in my book.
More specifically, we’re talking about it here as a means to highlight a great charity that’s working on continuing the principles of harm reduction work and bringing them directly into our scene. Meet Travis Williams, founder of an organization called Safe Scene NJ. Williams has been involved in the DIY punk scene in the Garden State for close to a quarter-century at this point. It’s a scene that remains as vital as it ever has during a time when many of its corresponding scenes around the country have been gentrified out of existence. It’s a world that, like many others, has also seen its fair share of the ravages of the opioid epidemic that started to balloon with the rise of OxyContin in the early ‘00s and exploded with the rise of fentanyl in the last decade. “I’ve probably in my direct friend group, I had four or five people die within like a year of graduating high school,” Williams explains. While Williams reports he was mainly a drinker, he also did his share of dabbling in other substances for a time – though he’s now been free from everything for five years.
It’s that dabbling that has helped fuel the rise in overdoses over the last handful of years, as the potency and contamination of the drug supply has rendered casual users increasingly susceptible to accidental overdose, and those overdoses resulting from the use of stronger substances have resulted in a skyrocketing number of accidental deaths. Says Williams, “I think now there’s a lot of casual drug use, which is honestly just as dangerous or even more dangerous, you know what I mean? Like somebody who uses drugs, they know they’re high and they know when something’s off, you know? Somebody who doesn’t and they’re just like a recreational, like pick a bag up on the weekend or whatever, you know, they don’t have the tolerance. They don’t have the knowledge. I think there’s a lot of that going on now.” Enter the world of harm reduction. Williams started by volunteering with a larger organization that frequented a large number of larger, prominent shows. And while that was a great experience, it seemed like something was missing in the smaller, vibrant corners of the scene. “The casual listeners that are coming to bigger venues, a lot of them travel, it’s not your locals and the people that are in the scene.” He adds “I checked out some street outreach stuff and kind of found a middle ground where we could focus on the people that are in our core scene in New Jersey, who are out hitting shows every weekend…I just kind of wanted to like, move back into the roots of where I came from.” It was from those roots that Safe Scene NJ grew.
Nowadays, you can find Williams and crew set up at all manner of punk and hardcore shows across New Jersey, handing out Narcan, fentanyl/xylazine test strips, mental health resources, and more. More often than not, bands and clubs are generally supportive of the group setting up a table and giving out resources at shows, though sometimes it does make for pointed conversations. “I’ve said it a bunch. “I go to a lot of shows; somebody’s doing coke in your bathroom. There’s no way around it, you know? Would you rather that person use a test strip, or do you want to find out the hard way?” The longer he’s around and the more shows he goes too, Williams has seen the scene itself become much more supportive. Of course, it helps having a band like the Bouncing Souls cosign what you’re doing, as the band and Safe Scene NJ recently collaborated on a fundraiser t-shirt. “That was really cool. I think we’re going to try to do more, because there’s a lot of artists who do support what we do,” Williams explains. “Whatever t-shirts and stuff that we sell help. So collabs help, and they make us a little more recognizable, so if the Bouncing Souls want to jump on a shirt with us, awesome. Plus, it’s a really cool shirt too!“
Check out our full chat below, all about Travis’s story coming up in the iconic New Jersey punk scene, and the ways that Safe Scene NJ and other organizations like it are working to make the scene and the state safer. “It’s like a weird underground network of harm reduction groups, and just a bunch of like punk rock kids that, you know, want to look out for people in their scene.” You can also check out more info on Safe Scene NJ if you’re in the Garden State. If not, you can check out the National Harm Reduction Coalition to find out what’s available in your area (like if you’re north of Boston, check out Healthy Streets)!
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): I’m trying to figure the best place to start in talking about SafeScene, and I guess maybe for the folks that don’t know, fill them in a little bit about Safe Scene New Jersey and how this, like the sort of origin of it over the last year. It’s been like six months to a year or so basically, right?
Safe Scene NJ (Travis Williams): Yeah, yeah. So I volunteered with another group, and I liked it. Hitting bigger shows is cool. And like, I’m still down to do that. Like I jumped on an Underoath show or whatever. But New Jersey has a huge VFW and basement scene. That’s where I grew up at, going to these smaller shows and checking out new bands. The casual listeners that are coming to bigger venues, you know, a lot of them travel, it’s not your locals and like the people that are in (the scene). So when I was a kid, you know, 25 years ago, first time going to shows, nobody was doing what we’re doing now; you know, like, handing out mental health resources, or, you know, overdose reversal drugs, or test strips. We were all just fending for ourselves. So like, I liked what this bigger organization was doing. And then I checked out some street outreach stuff and kind of found a middle ground where we could focus on, you know, the people that are in our core scene and around New Jersey that, you know, they’re hitting shows every weekend. And, you know, whether they’re people who use drugs or not, everybody’s affected by it. So it’s just a great chance to like oversaturate New Jersey with tools and resources so that less people die, get hurt, whatever, you know? So yeah, I just kind of wanted to like, move back into the roots of where I came from.
You grew up in New Jersey, yeah?
Yeah, yeah.
Like Central Jersey? Which I know some people say Central Jersey isn’t a thing, except for the people that live in Central Jersey.
It’s a thing, it’s a thing.
Of course it is.
But yeah, literally like, dead center on the shore. So like, you know, 30 minutes north of Asbury Park. When I was a kid, there were shows everywhere. You just go to, you know, a VFW or whatever, a church. It was a cool spot to be. We had really cool venues within like, 20-25 minutes of us. Chrome, Birch Hill, we had, you know, everything in Asbury, the Lanes. You know, we pretty much had it all as far as a scene goes.
I feel like as much as any place in the Northeast, really, especially for the last, like you said, 25 years, that sort of tracks with me. As much as anywhere else that I’m familiar with, that scene exists in New Jersey. Like, I’m from New Hampshire. Sort of like 45-ish minutes outside of Boston is where I grew up. And we had a little bit of like the remnants of the Elks Lodge clubs, the VFW clubs, shows like that. But because I’m a few years older than you, as the mid to late 90s approached, a lot of that stuff went away in the Greater Boston area. But I feel like in Jersey, that is still very much a thing.
Yeah, I mean, we’ll throw a show anywhere we can, you know? I mean, we still have New Brunswick. Somehow that city just…every new college generation or whatever, they just rename the houses…
Is that what it is, like mostly Rutgers kids, basically, that keep that scene sort of going?
Yeah, and it’s wild. Like, I did a basement show there recently, and they had, you know, touring bands – small touring bands, but still touring bands – come through and play. And it was during winter break, so there wasn’t a lot of people around, and it was still a packed basement, you know?
I want to go to a show like that again. It’s been so long. Like, I mean, even here, so we’ve had, especially since COVID, even the smaller clubs that would attract essentially like our version of those shows, places like O’Brien’s in Allston and whatever. That’s really like the last holdover from that era, like the hundred capacity maybe, dive bar shithole kind of place. Otherwise that doesn’t exist in Boston anymore, a city that has such a music history and has music colleges and whatever. But because of gentrification and all that, like it doesn’t exist in the city anymore. And we went through a whole thing with the cops, like infiltrating message boards and whatever to find out where all the basement shows were. And part of me misses those days. Part of me is also like, “I’m 45. I don’t need to go to a crazy ass basement show.”
But we still have places like the Meatlocker. I mean, I don’t know how it’s still going. And I don’t know how, like, you know…It’s a bring your own kind of place, it’s a basement under, I think, an Italian restaurant.
Oh, wow.
So like last seating is like eight o’clock and music starts at nine underneath. (*both laugh*)
Is the scene essentially the same as it has been since your younger years? Is it the same sort of punk rock, hardcore roots like it always has been?
I don’t know. It’s weird because like, we had a really broad range of music, you know, in the early 2000s. And there’s like a goth scene that like they have shows at a house in the woods in the sticks…
Really?
Like when I thought we had everything in, you know, the early 2000s, like there’s EVERYTHING going on right now.
Wow. That’s really cool.
So like if you know where to look, you could find it, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s really cool. And it’s really sort of inspiring because you I always feel like the younger generation doesn’t quite care about music the same way that some of us – I hate to call myself an older person because I don’t feel that way – but the way that some of us older people do, right? I think about this a lot because I live in suburbia, but it’s still within 10 minutes or 20 minutes of Boston. You can’t walk through the neighborhood and hear like bands practicing in garages. And I feel like that was such a thing like early 90s, mid 90s, late 90s when I was growing up. There were always kids playing guitars in garages and basements and the one drummer that everybody had because nobody else could find a good enough drummer whose parents were like cool with them playing drums. I feel like that doesn’t happen here. And maybe that’s just exclusive to where I live. But so it’s good that scenes like that still exist.
Yeah. I mean, honestly, probably if you dive hard enough, you’re still going to find it. And like the reality is I’ve talked to a lot of people about it because, you know, I hit as many shows as I can, you know, with a family and young kids and stuff like that. There’s a lot of young kids out there making great, amazing music. I was talking to my buddy Benny about it. We were at a show in a log cabin in Tom’s River. Infest came out from California, like, you know, powerviolence, hardcore from the 80s and 90s and played a set. But these young kids, like they’re still in high school, like 16, 17. And they’re so far beyond like in talent from where we were, you know, in our teens. But like I think the thing is, like, there’s no boundaries in music anymore.
That’s true.
Like, you know, when I was in like middle school, like you were either into punk or hip hop or, you know, maybe you’d get lucky and get like an E-Town Concrete that like kind of crossed over so you could like feel out that scene. But like these kids, you know, they’re listening to whatever they want and they’re taking influence from everybody and everywhere. And like they’re just locking in and just turning out INCREDIBLE music.
That’s awesome. Because my kid is a junior in high school. And so I’d sort of think about like the people in her circle and her peers and the boys at school who traditionally are the ones playing in bands. And like, there’s nothing. We used to have Battle of the Bands at school all the time or at like the Knights of Columbus or whatever. And I was saying a few years ago, “are you guys going to have like a Battle of the Bands now that COVID is over and you can do things at school again?” She’s like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Seems like everybody just plays hockey and basketball.
Yeah, I’ve seen some like Battle of the Bands kind of gigs coming up, but it’s a lot of like college-age stuff, you know, and it’s people like organizing on their own. But we also don’t have like the Warped Tour, Battle of the Bands, you know, where you’re playing at the Stone Pony at a matinee, you know? Like that happened, it’s cool, but it’s not around anymore. Everybody got tired of that, like pay-to-play thing and hustling your friends for tickets and that kind of thing, too. So I just think it went in a way different direction. But like even my nephew is like an unbelievable musician and he’s happy with just like doing videos online, you know, writing riffs and like teaching people how to play and stuff like that.
We need those kids, too! We definitely need those kids, too! You mentioned that obviously when you were coming up, there was nobody handing out like harm reduction tools and whatever at shows. There definitely was not up here when I was going to shows. I think the most you would get for handouts really at any sort of shows was like Food Not Bombs stuff or Anti-Racist Action stuff, because we had a problem with the skinheads like a lot of places did. So then we had a like an anti-skinhead movement, especially around like Bosstones shows and that whole crew. And that was the extent of the activism and outreach really, I guess, until Dropkicks came along. But how embedded in the scene did hardcore drugs become in Jersey? And I ask because I think about this a lot because I have worked in and around like behavioral health substance use treatment, et cetera, for 20-ish years now. And I’m so thankful that I grew up like five years before all the OC. stuff came around. Which just like decimated like white suburbia, which is obviously like that’s why people started to care about it, because once it became a thing that infested white upper-middle-class suburbia, people were like, “Well, this is bad.” But obviously it had been a problem for a long time. But I consider myself thankful, lucky that I grew up just a little too early for that scene because the age bracket, like five, six years younger than me, just got decimated up here, I’m sure down there, too. But so how embedded in the scene did that world become?
So, I mean, obviously, when you’re in it, you’re kind of blind to it, right? Like, you know your friends are falling off or whatever. And like I’m right in that age bracket where I’m a little bit younger than you. So like I’ve probably in my direct friend group, I had four or five people die within like a year of graduating high school.
Wow.
You know, and it got bad. It’s weird. So like, you know, when I was younger, people were like hooked in it and they were on it and whatever. I think now there’s a lot of casual drug use, which is honestly just as dangerous or even more dangerous, you know what I mean? Like somebody who uses drugs, they know they’re high and they know when something’s off, you know? Somebody who doesn’t and they’re just like a recreational, like pick a bag up on the weekend or whatever, you know, they don’t have the tolerance. They don’t have the knowledge. I think there’s a lot of that going on now. But it did get really, really bad. And I mean, full transparency, like I was in it, you know? I’m five years right now without anything.
Hell yeah! Right on. Congratulations.
And, you know, it was definitely way more accessible than anything else. You know, just as easily accessible as beer or whatever or weed. If you want it, you can get it.
Yeah.
You know, I grew up in a town like I could go to my neighbor’s house and be like, “Yo, what can we do?” It was there. Honestly, any neighbor’s house and anybody on the block. And even like kids, you know? I want to say I don’t mean kids but like, you know, people my age. They were hustling. And it wasn’t just my town. It was adjacent towns and it spread out. And even the towns were like people had more money or whatever. It was there. It was just a little more quiet.
Is that like when you when you got clean, is that sort of like the beginning of the like the fentanyl era really sort of taking over? Does that kind of line up?
Yeah. I drank way too much, which, you know, turned into other things. But I was more like a recreational user as far as any sort of other substance goes. But like, I’m glad I stopped when I did, because that was like the boom. I mean, you remember, we were seeing it right around 2019, 2020. It was just everywhere. And there were no protocols. There was no accessibility to testing and stuff like that, so people were just kind of winging it.
Oh, it was taboo! I feel like up until very recently, even to have Narcan at places was. Because I worked at a program that was like an alternative sentencing program for people that were on probation and parole. And for a while, we weren’t allowed to have Narcan in the building. The court and the sheriff’s department didn’t want us to have Narcan in the building. Mind you, I worked in a city in northern Massachusetts where the fentanyl problem was so bad that it was on the front page of the New York Times about it being the epicenter for fentanyl regionally. Like above-the-fold, Sunday New York Times. That’s how bad it was. And we couldn’t have Narcan – the precursor to Narcan, the old school one that you had to like assemble together, before the nasal spray. We had a place that would give it to us. So we’d have to go like meet them in the parking lot and get like a bag and bring it in the building in like a brown bag. We’re like, “this is so fucked up…having to go meet somebody to get your bag in the parking lot and smuggle it into the building. So I’m glad, but it is wild to me how that has changed. I don’t know if it’s been, I guess, the last five years, like really since COVID, whatever, is kind of where I set the marker. But it’s amazing to me how far we have come with that.
Yeah, I mean, but honestly, like I have like friends that do harm reduction in other states and all around the country and stuff. And like, there’s still spots where like a xylazine test strip is contraband.
Yeah!
You know? Are you fucking joking? Like you’re making it illegal to just be able to test a substance to save somebody’s life. Like, they’re oppressing right there.
Right.
So, you know… it’s unreal.
Harm reduction, I mean, obviously has come a long way from whatever, 10 years ago. But what’s the sort of prevailing attitude towards harm reduction in Jersey? People are pretty much on board with the concept in most places?
I mean, there’s some venues that are still a little leery about it, just because they have outdated information or, you know, they’re run by a parent company that’s international and they have their rules and whatever. But I mean, like overall in the state, New Jersey really tries to push harm reduction. Like I’m sponsored by the Department of Health on the Narcan side, so that helps a lot. But just to keep the legality of like harm reduction, they still follow AIDS prevention protocol. So, like, unless you’re doing syringe exchange and stuff like that, you can’t actually be a harm reduction group.
Oh, really? Oh, interesting.
So like the blanket idea in New Jersey is that unless you’re doing bloodborne pathogen or, you know, AIDS reduction, you’re not a harm reduction group.
Interesting. Interesting. So then what I guess, what are you? What do they consider you?
So I do offer syringe exchange, safer smoking, injection alternatives, stuff like that. Not at shows because, you know, there’s a level of trust with the venues where, you know.
Giving out Narcan is one thing…
Yeah, yeah, but giving out syringes and then pipes and stuff like that…(*both laugh*). You know, I get it. But on like the street outreach side, we do that. So, yeah, technically, we’d be considered a harm-reduction group. I actually had to blanket under another group for a little bit until I think the 27th, then I actually get like an approval from the state to be like a harm reduction group.
Yeah, that’s cool.
But there was some like weird stuff because we don’t have a physical location, so it was hard for them to classify us.
Oh, interesting.
They don’t have a true classification for somebody who’s specifically mobile. So they might have like classified me as a vending machine. (*both laugh*)
Which, by the way, do you guys have those? Do you have the places that do Narcan vending machines now?
There’s one in New Brunswick. I think there’s one in Elizabeth. They’re starting to pop up. Not like not like the newspaper box ones like that. You know, like it looks like a like a hospital sort of vending machine or a hospital snack machine. But they also have Narcan, test strips, syringes, you know? So, like I said, New Jersey’s really, really into access on that stuff, which is really great.
Yeah, which is sort of why I’m surprised that they didn’t have a way to classify mobile outreach like that, because I feel like that was such the thing for a long time. Like that was that was the way a lot of places had to operate almost under cover of night. Like there’s an agency that I have worked sort of overlapping with for a long time here in a local community, that especially during COVID, they were operating out of the back of a U-Haul truck.
Yeah, yeah.
…in random parking lots, which is kind of what you have to do.
I just bought a van. Like a 2002 Astro that’s like half converted. So it’s like half passenger, half utility. And like, I mean, that’s how we’re going to do it for now. Hopefully once we get the approval, the State dumps a ton money – literally all the recovery funds go to what they classify as harm reduction. People doing, you know, syringe exchange and stuff like that…
Like the opioid remediation funds and stuff like that?
Yeah! So hopefully once I get approved next week, we can like pull some funds out of there. Right now, we operate on like literally the tightest budget, you know, and we make it work. But like to be able to set up at more shows or do more street outreach or even have like a physical, third space location would be so rad. Because like, you know, a place to train people that isn’t, you know, a library or whatever. Or just like, a place to host a fundraiser, you know? Like right now we’re starting to throw together some fundraiser shows, which is cool. And we’re working with some bands to do some fundraising and spread awareness, get the name out there, help some other social justice groups and stuff too. But being able to bring people to your doorstep and show them what you do would be like a really great opportunity.
I feel like it would. Yeah, I feel like it would. I feel like there’s always going to be a need for it.And I feel like the more that places do to reduce, I guess stigma is the word that we usually use, but the more that people do to reduce stigma and improve accessibility, you start to treat it like it’s an actual public health thing and not like an us versus them, war on drugs thing.
We lost the war on drugs. We’re never going to fucking win it.
Yeah.
I mean, like harm reduction groups, there’s probably like 40 in New Jersey, something like that.
Wow!
And like they take the burden off the public health, you know what I mean? Like literally, there’s numbers you can look at research. It’s fucking there.
Right.
You know, and honestly, I’m not standing in the freezing cold on a Sunday handing stuff out like for nothing…I’m doing it because I care and because it helps. Like, yeah, you know?
You don’t get into this world for the paycheck.
No, no, no. It makes a difference. You know, even if it’s a small difference, that small difference turns into a little bigger and a little bigger and a little bigger, you know?
Have you had people from other places like outside Jersey reach out? Because I could envision people from other scenes, people from other places sort of hit you up to get ideas about how they can set up their own sort of version of it or how to approach even even have those conversations with local public health people in places where it’s a little more taboo.
So, yeah, there’s a couple of groups that like we kind of all started at the same time, so we do a lot of bouncing ideas off of each other and like feeling out what works. It also turned into a network to, like, share information, like, what new additives or adulterants are in the street supply? Like, if I know somebody sees something in Philly, I know that shit’s coming to Trenton and then I know it’s coming up north. And, you know, it’s like a weird underground network of harm reduction groups, and just a bunch of like punk rock kids that, you know, want to look out for people in their scene. And it’s cool. As far as like groups in other places, though, I’ve had people, you know, suggest, opening up some stuff in other states, but I don’t know their legalities, you know? I’ve done a ton of research about what we could and couldn’t do, how we could do things that maybe we weren’t supposed to do but needed to do, ways that we could work around issues…
Easier to get forgiveness than permission sometimes, right?
Yeah, it’s easier to do the right thing than to sit down and do nothing. If anybody out there wants to get into it, you’ve got to dig deep and reach out to your local public health organization or advocacy groups that are out there in the area. See what the need is, see what the gaps are. I don’t want to say you have to just dive in, but you really have to go full bore into it.
You’ve got to do the work.
Yeah, you’ve got to do the work. Sure, you can get a few boxes of Narcan and set up at a show, but when it comes down to it, you’ve got to be able to talk to people about it. You’ve got to show people how to use it.
Yeah, and how to explain to venues that it’s a good thing for them to have you there; that it doesn’t cast you in a negative light if they have drug testing strips at their venue. That it’s actually a good thing.
Listen, I’ve said it a bunch. “I go to a lot of shows; somebody’s doing coke in your bathroom. There’s no way around it, you know? Would you rather that person use a test strip, or do you want to find out the hard way?”
Sure, or even like someone took an Adderall or a Xanax or something, because of how easy it is to press god knows what into pill form now.
Yeah, I could go onto Temu right now and buy a pill press. You want something that looks like Xanax? I got you. (*both laugh*)
That, plus Fentanyl and Xylazine the last few years is really what changed the game, isn’t it? Because forever it was the cartels controlling it, and you could really only get presses in Mexico or like Denmark. The fact that you can get your own pull press now changed the whole landscape. Because if you don’t know what you’re taking, but your friend takes Adderall and especially now with the Adderall shortage, and your friend says “here, take one of mine” and it would be nice if the thing they gave you was actually Adderall, and the only way to tell is by testing for what else it could be. It seems so simple.
It does. It does. And I’ve had some run-ins with venues and they’re like “you can’t!” and I had to play the card and be like “One, show me the law that says I can’t. And, listen, you’ve got a bar right next to where I want to set up. Why shouldn’t this be as accessible as a beer or a shot or a glass of wine, because I know you didn’t check every fucking boot in here. Somebody’s got shit in here.”
And maybe the people who work there. Heaven forbid we have that conversation…
Right! Maybe. And in New Jersey, the hardest part I’ve run into is obviously if a venue wants me there, great. But it comes down to artists. So I spend a lot of time talking to artist management or artists directly. I don’t want to scare them into letting me set up at their shows. People say “no.” But hopefully the next time they come around in eight months or a year or whatever, or they talk to their friends or see something online, maybe they’ll want us around next time.
I feel like it can’t hurt having a collab shirt with the Souls too. I feel like they’re the godfathers of the whole New Jersey thing, so having them vouch for you I feel like must help.
Yeah, that was really cool. I think we’re going to try to do more, because there’s a lot of artists who do support what we do. It helps, because we don’t take grants, we are 100% public funded through donations. Whatever t-shirts and stuff that we sell help. So collabs help, and they make us a little more recognizable, so if the Bouncing Souls want to jump on a shirt with us, awesome. Plus, it’s a really cool shirt too.
It really is. I can’t wait for mine to come in.
Yeah, Josh from School Drugs has helped me with pretty much every shirt we’ve done, and he knocks it out of the park every time.
He’s so great. I can’t remember if he and I have ever actually met in person, but we’ve certainly communicated a bunch and obviously know a lot of the same people. I feel like half my friend group at this point has ties to the Jersey punk scene, and everyone knows and loves Josh. He’s super talented.
There’s so many Jersey punks, you can’t avoid us! (*both laugh*)
Some of the punk rock community is not standing by idly as the former President – the 34 times convicted felon returned to 1600. FOTUS (felon of the United States) brought his dangerous, incompetent, and hate-spreading MAGA yes men and women in to dismantle civil and human rights, with promises to further whitewash history and […]
Some of the punk rock community is not standing by idly as the former President – the 34 times convicted felon returned to 1600. FOTUS (felon of the United States) brought his dangerous, incompetent, and hate-spreading MAGA yes men and women in to dismantle civil and human rights, with promises to further whitewash history and hurt the poor and vulnerable. So far, he has allowed one un-elected billionaire to throw up Nazi salutes and take control of the federal agencies with a cadre of young racist minions. Project 2025 is being put into effect as we speak.
So in the spirit of Joe Strummer and the Clash, the Specials, and many other railing against British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, and their American counterparts Dead Kennedys, MDC, and others taking on US President Ronald Reagan, the antifascist mantle is once again being raised. In truth, it never was wholly put down. It’s just being raised higher, more loudly and more frequently. It promises to continue indefinitely, which is a spark of light in the seemingly overwhelming darkness.
Punkerton Records very purposely released “Rock Against Trump Vol 1” on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, which also happened to be MLK Jr. Day. The digital album has 65 tracks from a wide variety of bands, including but not limited to, Blind Adam and the Federal League, Coxey’s Army, Feral Housecats, 77 Lies, Modern, Angst, Recession Proof, and The Boy Detective.
The label posted on its Bandcamp page: Punkerton Records is committed to amplifying voices for civil liberties and human rights. We stand in solidarity with marginalized communities and actively oppose all forms of discrimination and oppression. The election may be over, but our resistance and dedication to justice persist.We proudly support organizations dedicated to defending civil rights and providing essential resources. All profits from Digital sales and future cd sales will be equally divided among these advocacy groups. Organizations we support:ACLU – American Civil Liberties Union,The Innocence Project,Planned Parenthood;PRSL – Punk Rock Saves Lives,Six Feet Over,The Trevor Project
Bouncing Souls
Garden State heroes Bouncing Souls have long been advocating for their community. This year, the band teamed up with Safe Scene NJ, a charity that focuses its work on harm reduction and community education. Per its site:
Through our experience, we have recognized a crucial requirement in our community for initiatives that prioritize harm reduction, establish safe environments, and provide access to vital safety, wellness, and addiction support services. Our dedication lies in advocating for well-being, and nurturing a harm-reducing environment not only in the music scene but also extending beyond it.”
Bouncing Souls and Safe Scene NJ collaborated on a t-shirt (the back of which is pictured above and was designed by School Drugs‘ Josh Jurk) o benefit the organization. In addition, $5.00 from each shirt sale is being donated to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. While this fundraiser is now closed, the important works of Safe Scene NJ and ACLU NJ continue. Per the latter’s mission statement on its website:
For over 60 years, the ACLU of New Jersey has defended liberty and justice guided by the vision of a fair and equitable New Jersey for all. Our mission is to preserve, advance, and extend the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every New Jerseyan by the state and federal constitutions in courts, in the legislature, and in our communities.
In every facet of our work, we strive to be anti-racist and are actively committed to advancing racial justice in the institutions of New Jersey, for the people of New Jersey. We aim to center the voices and lived experiences of those who historically have not been fully protected by government systems or laws.
Musician Drew Prez is also raising funds for the ACLU. Part of the proceeds from a line of anti-fascist merchandise. There are hoodies and t-shirt stating “Punks Against Fascism” as well as others advising us all to “Kindly Fuck Fascism.”
As the Rock Against Trump Vol 1 album demonstrates there are quite a few bands speaking out against fascism.
There are two bands in particular which have spent the last several years voicing opposition to the encroaching fascism, and the estimated 50,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza. The first is the aforementioned Blind Adam and The Federal League. It is one of the groups leading the charge in Chicago. Not only are the members speaking out on stage, but they did so in the Palestine solidarity encampments that arose last year on college campuses, including those in the Chicago area. The band has also been very outspoken about police brutality, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, and a wide variety of related issues.
No Trigger
NoTrigger, out of Worcester, MA, has also been in the forefront when it comes to the cause of a Free Palestine and anti-fascism. No Trigger has also called out veteran punk groups for not speaking out.
Mark Andersen, founder of Positive Force DC, has been fighting in the trenches for four decades. The group has a Kickstarter to support Positive Force DC 40th Anniversary Gathering Five Days of Music, Protest, Service, Community and Education, June 19-23, 2025. Be on the lookout for a more extensive feature/interview with Andersen as the event draws closer.
Those listed here are just a small sampling of punks doing good by fighting back against fascism, Trump, and the MAGA movement. As the horrors we see daily in and on the news continue, we can hope many others will be inspired to step up, stand up, and fight back. We at Dying Scene stand in solidarity. Please let us know of others!
Oh, and as far as Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten simping for MAGA, well, in the words of the Dead Kennedys: Nazi Punks Fuck Off.
Home Grown was formed in Orange County, California by guitarist John Tran and bassist Adam Lorbach in 1994 with Ian Cone (guitar) and Bob Herco (drums). Blending punk, ska, and surf music they released their first LP, That’s Business, showcasing these sounds. The band picked up more traction as time went on and soon they […]
Home Grown was formed in Orange County, California by guitarist John Tran and bassist Adam Lorbach in 1994 with Ian Cone (guitar) and Bob Herco (drums). Blending punk, ska, and surf music they released their first LP, That’s Business, showcasing these sounds. The band picked up more traction as time went on and soon they were picked up for radio play when they released, Act Your Age in 1998. The album wasn’t too much of a departure from their roots, but definitely an evolution in their sound. Act Your Age showed they could play poppier songs just as well and still stay true to the space they made for themselves.
As life happens, so do line-up changes. Home Grown recorded a couple EPs, but lost band members in the process leaving John and Adam to carry the torch. Recruiting Longfellow drummer, Darren Reynolds, and signing to Drive-Thru Records, Home Grown recorded, Kings of Pop, twelve tracks of nearly perfect pop punk. The band added guitarist Dan Hammond and continued to play shows. This new lineup recorded one more EP, 2004’s When It All Comes Down. In 2005, Adam left the band, leaving John as the only original member. After playing some shows with a replacement bass player, Home Grown called it a day later that year.
Fast forward to now, Home Grown is back. After playing a couple shows in Southern California, the band has a hometown gig in Orange County and will be playing the Slam Dunk Festival in Europe in May. We caught up with Home Grown to talk about these upcoming shows, thirty years of That’s Business, and more. (Edited for clarity)
Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis): Thank you guys for this interview. I’m happy you guys are back together.
Adam Lorbach: Thank you.
John Tran: Yeah, I was happy to be back, too.
Dying Scene: How did reuniting come about? Were there any attempts before now?
John Tran: I don’t know what happened. I think it was like 2023, probably in the fall. Adam was poking around the idea and we were talking about it. It never came into fruition. Kind of like, we’ll talk next year because at the end of the year. You got a lot of stuff going on. We started getting offers from Something Corporate and asked us if we wanted to do a support tour with them. Then we just threw out a group text and asked if there was interest. We wanted to have a meeting first before we make anything official. We all met up and it was great. We literally didn’t talk about music or the band for like a good hour, hour and a half. Then we all started talking about what we all want for the band. We basically all met in the middle and here we are, reunited.
Dying Scene: In October, it’s going to be the thirtieth anniversary of That’s Business. Are you guys going to do anything to celebrate it?
John Tran: It’s in the works. We just signed with the new management company and we all met up a few weeks ago to figure out where to go and see if we even have the rights to our old albums. Once we get that path clear, then we’ll have more of an idea what we can do with all the releases. It’s been thirty years. Holy crap.
Dying Scene:I went back and listened to it. It’s longer than I remembered.Not in a bad way.
John Tran: That album is older than most of the people I work with. They’re all in their mid-twenties.
Dying Scene: I’m with you. I’m always talking about music and my coworkers always ask who I’m talking about?
John Tran: Don’t worry about it. Never mind. Taylor Swift.
Adam Lorbach: That record was back in the reel-to-reel days. To all the young ones that are still under thirty, this was before Pro Tools and recording in their friend’s bedroom or studio. The concept of having to just get it all in pretty much one take or cutting tape.
Dying Scene:Where was it recorded?
John Tran: We recorded at this place called Westbeach Studios. It was up in Hollywood and it was owned by Brett Gurewitz from Bad Religion. It was a very famous studio. Pretty much every Fat Wreck Chords band recorded there. We wanted to go there and it was actually awesome. Who’s the guy we worked with?
Adam Lorbach: Steve Kravac, Yeah, that was a great experience. We didn’t know what we’re doing. It’s our first time in a studio, really. We’re just being a bunch of goofballs and we had no idea.
John Tran: Yeah, I mean, no idea. We’re like nineteen years old, just driving up to Hollywood. There was a Chinese takeout place like a block away.
Adam Lorbach: Yeah, I think one of the guys from Ten Foot Pole was hanging out a little bit. It was kind of like a punk stomping ground.
Dying Scene: Were those songs you guys wrote in high school?
John Tran: No, the band was formed like right after high school, but we still sing about things in high school. I mean, thirty years later, we’re still singing songs about high school stuff. I think that album was basically about growing up in suburban Orange County. If you weren’t on the football team or cheerleading squad, you weren’t cool. If you were a skater kid, you’re a total outcast. Adam and I met each other through skateboarding through a mutual friend. And then I went to his house and hopped on the drums. First time playing drums ever. Adam was playing some Beastie Boys song. I started playing. He asks if I know how to play. I’m like, nope, I have no idea. I knew how to play guitar, a lot of air drumming. And then what happened was Home Grown was just a cover band. Our bass player at the time went to school. So I asked Adam to play for us and he hopped on. Next thing, we have three albums and four EPs.
Dying Scene: The album is really critical of people trying to infiltrate the scene a lot. You can hear that angst.
Adam Lorbach: Yeah, the skaters and the punks made our own space with the music. Everyone’s kind of figuring out how to write songs and put a couple of chords together. Playing shows and bad parties and then the scene started growing. The outcasts have something that is cool for ourselves. Then all of a sudden, I guess it sounds so silly to talk about now, but like the cool kids and the jocks started trying to claim the spaces that were created by the punks and skaters. They didn’t come with the same sort of reverence for what it was and how it was built. It kind of just made you mad. Like, get out of our space. This is our space.
John Tran: I remember growing up in high school, I got bullied a lot. I got into a lot of fights. The people that I got bullied by started coming to our shows. I’m like, what are you doing at our show? But thank you. It was weird, man. Adam and I, we were listening to the same kind of music. NOFX, Bad Religion, OP Ivy, Screeching Weasel. We just started writing songs, being influenced by them. All of a sudden we had an album. Then we got signed to a major label, and became seasoned studio veterans after one record.
Adam Lorbach: John, you remember back in the punk days. There’s this kind of skinhead culture and we played some shows in a warehouse. I think it was Guttermouth or something like that. There were always skinheads who would come to the show and I remember, it was a thing to think about. One of the main singers is Asian. We’re getting up on a stage full of all these racists. Who did we play with?
John Tran: It wasn’t Guttermouth. It was Circle Jerks.
Adam Lorbach: Circle Jerks? We played with Circle Jerks?
John Tran: It was a venue in Anaheim for one hot second. It was open for two months, and they had a lot of big punk shows and ska shows. We got on that show and there were a lot of skinheads there. It was kind of weird. Like someone told me to get off the stage and said some derogatory racist stuff.
Dying Scene: When Act Your Age came out, did you guys bump heads having to re-record “Surfer Girl”? Was it a studio request thing?
John Tran: It was a last-minute request from our A&R people because we already had the album. We did all the pre-production for all our new songs. At the end, they asked, “Hey, why don’t you guys record ‘Surfer Girl’ and ‘Hearing Song,’ just to have it.” I thought it was fine. I mean, at the same time, I was like, “oh, I don’t want to. We’re selling out, blah, blah, blah, blah.” They want to put that song on the album just for the radio. Looking back now, I understand, record labels sign you for a reason. We were on an indie label and then the progression to go to a major. Of course, they want to push your singles and still to this day, like thirty something years later, that’s almost everyone’s favorite song.
Adam Lorbach: I’m hoping that song gets us back to Hawaii, John.
John Tran: Oh, I’m trying. We’re working on it, man.
Dying Scene: One of the things my buddy and I were bummed out about was when you guys stopped playing ska. Was that because you guys were writing more popular music and just no one was listening to ska anymore.
John Tran: I don’t think it was like, “Oh, it’s not popular. We’re not going to write it.” I think our approach is we write what we want to write, whatever we’re listening to at that moment. Like Act Your Age, I can’t remember what I was listening to then, but I was really heavily influenced by Weezer and Jimmy Eat World at some point. You can hear some of that on Kings of Pop. I don’t know. We just kind of started going more rock, I guess. It wasn’t anything planned.
Adam Lorbach: We just were really influenced by it. Just became more rock and some of the chord structures we were kind of getting into and experimenting with. It’s just kind of the direction we went.
John Tran: Our drummer at the time, Bob, had the most eclectic taste in music. We had to listen to his music a lot. We listened to the Deftones. What was that one band from Sweden? That really crazy math, like metal band.
Adam Lorbach: Meshuggah?
John Tran: Yeah, Meshuggah. We listened to a lot of that.
Adam Lorbach: We were starting to get a lot more musical influences around us, I think, too. Some of the Fat Wreck Chords to some of the overseas stuff. I remember for me, like Bracket. They’re introducing some new chords, kind of out of the box, but some other kind of odd little augmented or diminished things like that. I wouldn’t even have known what to call them back then. It was just, oh, that sounds cool, Like the Impossibles. Remember the Impossibles?
Dying Scene:The Impossibles are so good. I love the Impossibles.
John Tran: I’m really influenced by them, too. Like all those crazy progressions and the ugly notes.
Dying Scene: That’s a band that’s criminally underrated and needs to come back.
Adam Lorbach: That band, in my opinion, I would love to hear them redo their old records and get an amazing recording. Don’t have to change a thing about it. Just redo it.
John Tran: Rory Phillips, if you’re reading, do it. I think it’d still be really well received. They did a reunion show. They came out here and they also played in Austin. That’s where they’re from, but I didn’t get a chance to see them. I think that was like 10 years ago.
Dying Scene:Mind you, as soon as we heard Kings of Pop, we were like, it’s okay they’re not playing ska anymore. We loved it. It’s an underrated pop punk masterpiece.
Adam Lorbach: Yeah, well, I mean, it’s really good. So, everyone loves it. The reason you love it so much is because it’s just so great. It’s so damn good.
(everyone laughs)
John Tran: I mean, I’ve been listening to it a lot just to remember the lyrics and all the chord changes that we do for all the shows. Honestly, looking back, that is one album that I am completely, one hundred percent proud of everything we did. Right after Act Your Age was released in 1998, our drummer, Bob, had a brain tumor. That was rough to deal with. Then we went through multiple drummers. Then the label went under and it really killed our motivation. Then trying to search for labels. Once Drive Thru came around, we hadn’t put an album out in like four years. This had to be the best album we ever put out. The pressure was there for sure, but at the same time, I think we really, really dug really deep. Best producer, best studios within the budget.
Adam Lorbach: Yeah. Steve Evetts was the one who engineered and produced that, and he did a phenomenal job on it. It sounds good.
Adam Lorbach: It’s a very raw record. Things are pretty untouched on it. It’s not auto-tuned or anything. We just played it really well and slapped it together. Everyone was ready to record and get it done. It was a good experience.
Dying Scene: Every album sounds different, but it’s all Home Grown. It’s not like there’s eras of the band, but each album has its own sound. Even the EPs in between, they each were like extensions of whatever album came before it. It all just works so damn good.
John Tran: Thank you. It’s just a big, long, giant progression. You know, songwriting wise, we’ve stuck to what we want to be. There was a period where we were unsigned and we had some A&R people like, “Hey, Papa Roach is selling like 30,000 records.” We’re like, no, we’re going to write what we want to write. If you don’t want to sign us, they don’t sign us.
Dying Scene: So after you guys split, did either of you play music in between that time?
John Tran: I know Adam did. I did also. I had a little project. I wanted to go back to Japan. I got a little deal, went to Japan, did a little tour over there, came home and didn’t play guitar for like 10 years.
Adam Lorbach: Oh, wow. You’re talking about Red Panda, right?
John Tran: Yeah, Red Panda.
Adam Lorbach: I got like a little project called Radical Radical. Then with a mutual friend from the past, just doing some synth wave stuff with a band called Signs of Summer, which is totally different. It’s fun. Whatever you can put in within the rhythms of family life. Home Grown’s got a lot of gravity. John’s in a really great cover band called Little Strokes, basically a Strokes cover band. They crush it.
John Tran: That’s with Dan (Hammond). I didn’t play music after Red Panda. We did a tour in 2008, came back, and I was like, “all right, I think I accomplished music, I’m good.” I didn’t touch my guitar, literally, for like 10 years.
Adam Lorbach: I didn’t know that.
John Tran: I was like, yeah, it can’t get any better than it was. I started focusing on my career. Then Dan, our guitar player asked, “Hey, you want to do a cover band?” I was like, sure I’ll play. Then, a few years later the whole Home Grown idea came about.
Dying Scene: When you guys play the older songs, are there any songs you stay away from playing or have you altered as your views have changed?
Adam Lorbach: Well, I know at least for me, I’m not swearing on stage. We’re all kind of older and a little bit more toned down. We have families and stuff too.
John Tran: Songs we don’t play, like we don’t want to play. There are songs we don’t want to play because we just don’t want to play them. Why would we play those songs off of That’s Business that are just awful? There’s definitely some skips. I told Adam the other day at our practice. I was listening to one of the songs, “Worthless.” That song is so bad. How did that make it on the album? We were 19. We didn’t care. We literally did not care. We’ll put it on the album. It was our first album. With the second, we only need to do like 12 songs. Next album, only 12 songs. That’s it. People listening, their attention span. They don’t want to listen to like an hour-and-a-half album.
Adam Lorbach: Yeah. Now they don’t even want to listen to albums. They want to listen to singles and maybe EPs. The world’s changing.
Dying Scene: You guys have some shows coming up. You got the one out here in Orange County with Limbeck, which I didn’t even know Limbeck was still playing.
John Tran: Yeah. They’re still playing. They don’t tour anymore because I think they all have families, their drummer and their bass player live in different States. They just played like six months ago with The Anniversary. Rob (Maclean) and I are still really good friends. Adam had mentioned in our group text it’d be cool if Limbeck played with us and made that happen. We’re playing that. We have a show this Saturday (February 8th) with Unwritten Law down in San Diego? We have two festivals (Slam Dunk in London on May 24th and May 25th) that we’re doing with a lot of friends that are in bands. Like Starting Line, Finch, The Used are playing. I don’t even know half the bands, man, but yeah, it’s, it’s gonna be fun.
Dying Scene : I didn’t realize that the Drive-Thru Records bands were big in England.
Adam Lorbach: Yeah. Drive-Thru was a phenomenon, honestly. We were just talking about when we went over to England. You had to grind in the States here. You have to keep on people’s radars, put out new music, make sure that you’re staying on top of things. You can’t just keep going around and around. You build it up. We go over to the UK and it was almost instantaneous. It was crazy. I mean, shout out to Something Corporate for taking us out there and kind of getting us our first tour legs in the UK. After that, it was game over. You just go and everything’s raging.
John Tran: We went out there three times. I think we did a Something Corporate tour, a Drive-Thru tour, and then we also went out there with, maybe early November. The first show we played, we probably did a one and a half month tour in the US, and then went straight to England to do the Something Corporate tour. The first show was in Glasgow and because of the time change. We were just on the bus waking up probably like 4 PM. We opened the door and there’s a line of people already waiting for the show with posters. How do you guys know who we are? It was crazy.
Dying Scene: You guys are working on new stuff too?
John Tran: Yes. I promised Adam that I would come over to do demos.
Adam Lorbach: (laughs) We’re going back to ska. It’s all ska.
Ska is good (: glad you guys are back together. I talked with Adam on Instagram a few years ago and he teased to me that the band might be reuniting and so glad it happened. I was at the Glass House show, came from Idaho, and it was amazing. Thank you guys!
In 2024, The Get Up Kids celebrated the 25th anniversary of their seminal pop-punk/emo record, Something to Write Home About. In conjunction with the milestone, the band teamed up with another mainstay of the scene with Smoking Popes. The tour hit several North American cities and was so successful that they’ve continued to book Something […]
In 2024, The Get Up Kids celebrated the 25th anniversary of their seminal pop-punk/emo record, Something to Write Home About. In conjunction with the milestone, the band teamed up with another mainstay of the scene with Smoking Popes. The tour hit several North American cities and was so successful that they’ve continued to book Something to Write Home About dates through March of 2025.
The Get Up Kids were set to bring the show to Minneapolis in October of 2024, but unfortunately had to cancel due to Matt Pryor losing his voice. Thankfully for those of us in the Twin Cities, the group booked a makeup date on January 28th at the Fine Line.
The Fine Line is a fantastic venue that’s part of the famous First Avenue set of locales. The club features an eclectic mix of artists from all genres playing in one of the greatest music cities in America. This isn’t the first time we’ve covered a show at the Fine Line (check out our Chat Pile gallery & review), and it’s quickly becoming a favorite. The Get Up Kids show was another highlight as both bands treated the audience to some good old-fashioned pop-punk, emo and indie rock.
Smoking Popes
Since 1991, Smoking Popes have been playing their signature brand of melodic pop punk, indie rock and emo. Hailing from the Chicagoland area, the band has carved out an impressive place for themselves in the scene which includes a dedicated fanbase and several acclaimed projects. They were a perfect opener for the Get Up Kids on this night as well, setting the tone on a night of emotional melodic pop punk and emo.
Smoking Popes played a mixture of new and old material, showing off the quality that exists throughout their decades-old discography. The lion’s share of the setlist came from their seminal records, Born to Quit and Destination Failure. A particularly popular moment in the set came when the band played an interlude of the Replacements “Can’t Hardly Wait” during their own song “Gotta Know Right Now.” The interlude is a regular part of Smoking Popes’ set, but it was especially appreciated in Minneapolis where the Replacements are king.
The band played for roughly 45 minutes and was a perfect opener for the night’s festivities. Smoking Popes are a staple of the Great Lakes Scene and are always well-received at live performances. While the crowd received their old material well, it was also exciting to hear new music. The band is putting out a new album in April titled Lovely Stuff. If the songs they played at this show are any indication, fans of the band are in for a treat when that album drops.
The Get Up Kids
“What became of everyone I used to know? Where did our respectable convictions go?” The opening lines of “Holiday”, the opening track of Something to Write Home About, hit as hard now as they did when they first hit the airwaves in September of 1999. “Holiday” is a perfect opening track to the record as it sets the tone of cold longing and morosity that defines the album. It also is a well-constructed melodic song that is a real earworm. In both of those ways, it also functioned as an excellent opener for the band to play live as they started their set with a full playthrough of Something to Write Home About.
While “Holiday” is among the band’s most popular songs, a full album playthrough of Something to Write Home About allows for a set full of crowd pleasers. The crowd was behind all of the Get Up Kids material, but especially enjoyed tight renditions of “Valentine,” “Ten Minutes” and “I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel”. When revisiting Something to Write Home About, it’s clear how it became such a touchpoint for the pop punk and emo movements of the early 2000s. The writing is crisp, the hooks are addictive. It’s anthemic, but personal. The album is also perfect for a live format with several ebbs and flows of high energy fun songs, interspersed with emotional tracks too.
The main attraction of the night was the band playing their seminal hit album, but the Get Up Kids had more tricks up their sleeve as well. The band played excellent renditions of “Don’t Hate Me”, “Shorty” and “Stay Gold, Pony Boy”, all standout tracks from their celebrated debut record Four Minute Mile. The Kansas City outfit also reached deep into their discography for a couple of rarities as well including “Let the Reigns Go Loose” (first time playing since 2015 according to setlist.com) and “Martyr Me” (First time since 2019). From playing the classics to some of their lesser-known material, the Get Up Kids prove they are still as powerful in their lane as ever. Their show at the Fine Line was an excellent night of music. One that is certainly worth writing home about.
If there is one thing that any established or growing scene could improve on, it is perspective. No matter what scene you are a part of, there are aspects and elements that will be missed, whether they are purposely ignored, completely forgotten, or never given the chance to have their message amplified. Punk rock is […]
If there is one thing that any established or growing scene could improve on, it is perspective. No matter what scene you are a part of, there are aspects and elements that will be missed, whether they are purposely ignored, completely forgotten, or never given the chance to have their message amplified. Punk rock is no exception. Enter ¡Pónk! by Afrolatino writer Marcus Clayton, an anti-memoir of sorts told in the most unconventional way from a voice in the scene that does not get nearly enough time in the spotlight.
¡Pónk! is told mostly from Clayton’s point of view, who goes by his punk rock name, Moose. Moose plays in a punk band called Pipebomb! and teaches English with one of his bandmates at a local college. He crosses paths with other punk bands, students, and former high school classmates with varying degrees of reverence for his half-Black, half-Puerto Rican heritage.
The book is broken into smaller sections. Each part tells a particular story from his life. These are not just straightforward prose narratives; Clayton varies the presentation of some stories as a stage play, letter to friends, poems, text messages, and even postcards. Sentences are crossed out, with the edit beside them, creating a loose feel. This gives deeper context to what is being said, even if the original phrasing is sometimes worse than the edit—whether because of incorrect phrasing or revealing too much or unintended information. To call this an unconventional memoir is an understatement. It is both refreshing and unfiltered.
As for what type of book this could be considered, many would fit. The spectrum of stories you get from Clayton can fit into any number of genres. The experimental aspect of Clayton’s writing reminds me of the Beat writers, but it also feels like early Chuck Palahniuk, except much more grounded. There are many moments and thoughts expressed that may challenge you. ¡Pónk! delves deep into themes of inclusivity and the unspoken rules of the punk rock genre. Clayton challenges this, particularly calling out the white allies in the punk scene who impose their own rules on a rule-less genre. While Clayton’s callouts of Minor Threat, Fear, and the Sex Pistols irked me, they are not unwarranted. They give perspective and push back against the notion that the architects of the punk rock scene are gods among us, rather than kids who made art while still learning about themselves. Other chapters touch on experiences of Moose dating, going to school abroad, and meeting up with a high school friend who is mourning their dissolving marriage and the death of a classmate.
I did not know what to expect from this book, but it was not this, and I mean that in the best way. With its innovative style and profound insights, ¡Pónk! is not just a memoir—it is a must-read for anyone who appreciates raw, unfiltered storytelling. ¡Pónk! was a great book from start to finish and probably my first great read of the year. There is much wisdom and perspective between the covers. What makes ¡Pónk! stand out is its raw emotional depth. Clayton does not shy away from introspective moments; the honesty and vulnerability he shares make the book heavy in some spots and heavier in others. It has been a while since I have had a book challenge me the way ¡Pónk! did. Pick up ¡Pónk! by Marcus Clayton on Nightboat Books here.
(*all photo credits: Nick Hebditch. Cover Art: Timmy Tanker*) When Boston-area punk rock singer/songwriting legend Lenny Lashley releases his fourth solo studio record in the not-so-distant future, he’ll be doing it so in a manner that is both new to him and is, in the grand scheme of things a bit peculiar and revolutionary. Although, […]
When Boston-area punk rock singer/songwriting legend Lenny Lashley releases his fourth solo studio record in the not-so-distant future, he’ll be doing it so in a manner that is both new to him and is, in the grand scheme of things a bit peculiar and revolutionary. Although, given the trajectory of Lashley’s career to date, perhaps “peculiar” and “revolutionary” are exactly what we should expect. Barring any unforeseen technical glitches, Lashley – who not-so-coincidentally turns 60 this weekend – plans to make his new record, Pray For Death, available digitally for as close to free as is allowed. Physical copies will also, hopefully, be available for pre-order from Lashley himself in a manner that helps ensure that he makes no profit from the record; pre-order costs will be transparently capped at whatever the cost of production and shipping for the individual record was. Short of driving to your house and hand-delivering a burned CD to your mailbox, it’s about the closest thing you can get to a DIY release in the modern era, and Lashley wouldn’t have it any other way. That all is the “who” and the “what” and the “when” and the “how” of the story. The “why” takes a little explaining, so let’s back up.
Lashley initially rose to musical prominence in the Boston scene during his time fronting iconic, rabble-rousing punk rock band Darkbuster, and later, his countrified side project Lenny And The Piss Poor Boys. In 2011, he put out his first release under the moniker Lenny Lashley’s Gang Of One, a self-titled seven-inch on Asbury Park’s Holdfast Records. Save for his stint in Street Dogs prior to their hiatus, the Gang Of One project has been home to all of Lashley’s work since then, and has found him working with a wide variety of friends and fellow musicians and playing in lineups of numerous shapes and sizes. The initial 2011 self-titled seven-inch record was followed by his debut full-length, Illuminator, in 2013 and All Are Welcome in 2019, both of which were released by Pirates Press. After a parting of the ways there, 2022’s Five Great Egrets was released by Omerta/Durty Mick Records.
Chronologically speaking, that brings us to Pray For Death, Lashley’s fourth Gang Of One full-length, whose release remains imminent (hit him up on Instagram if you want it early though). As he has done on each Gang Of One release to date, Lashley once again collaborated with producer extraordinaire (and Bouncing Soul) Pete Steinkopf. “It’s almost at the point where I don’t think I’d feel comfortable working with anybody else now,” Lashley explains. Their working relationship began in 2011 after an introduction from Holdfast Records owner Joe Koukos. In addition to the store and record label he operated in Asbury Park under the Holdfast name, Koukos had been a staple in the local scene from his time working at the Stone Pony and Club Deep, and had booked Darkbuster at the latter establishment a few times. “Eventually, when (Koukos) found out I was doing this stuff,” says Lashley, “he said ‘Hey, I can put you in touch and we can do a seven-inch with Pete‘.” The pair hit it off virtually instantaneously: “I think it took all of fifteen seconds for me to ask if he wanted to do a full record.”
While much of the previous recording that Lashley and Steinkopf have collaborated on took place on the latter’s home turf at Little Eden Studios in Asbury Park, Pray For Death was recorded at Somerville, Massachusetts’ Q Division Studio. For the project, Lashley called in a few longtime Boston area musician friends, many of him he met during his days tending bar at the legendary Midway Cafe. Chuck Hargreaves (Field Day) engineered the project. Andrew Stern and Cody Nilsen man the electric guitar and pedal steel duties. Sam Gelston plays drums. John Sheerhan (who played in a band called The Spitzz with Victoria and Tom from Showcase Showdown!!!) played bass. Tom West played the keys and the accordion. Jared Sims led the horns. New Jersey heavyweights Jared Hart (Mercy Union) and Doug Zambon (The Vansaders) and some guy called (*checks notes*) Brian Fallon helped with backing vocals. Stylistically, it’s very much a “Lenny Lashley record,” meaning that it draws influences and textures from a pretty wide palette, albeit maybe not quite as wide as the palette on Five Great Egrets. “From the get-go with this album sonically, I suggested to Pete that we chase the idea of Damn The Torpedos by Tom Petty,” he explains. “That was such a once-in-a-musical-history type of recording, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the history of that and what it entailed. So sonically, we tried to chase a little bit of that dragon. Not that we were making Damn The Torpedos, but we recorded everything in a live-ish way, and we went for takes. That’s kind of not done a lot that way anymore.“
The resulting nine songs that make up Pray For Death are among the most honest and well-thought-out of his career, which is saying something. Part of that is due to Lashley having much more time to solidify his ideas before going into the studio. “When I went in to record Illuminator, a few of the songs were really raw,” Lashley chuckles. “Matter of fact, I remember that (Michael) McDermott (The Kilograms, Joan Jett, ex-Bouncing Souls) did drums on “Hooligans,” and Pete asked me to play it for him on acoustic guitar, and McDermott sorta shot me a look because I couldn’t even play it at that point.” This time around, the songs were generally much more polished going into the studio. That, coupled with the caliber of the musicians he compiled, made for what Lashley refers to as the “most magical musical time of (his) life.” One track, “One Shot Down,” started as a rough sketch and was essentially composed real-time in the studio. Two other tracks, “Hate Anymore” and the John Lennon cover “Working Class Hero,” were recorded live in-studio in one take with no overdubs, with Lashley both singing and playing guitar simultaneously, something he’d never done before. “(That) probably would never occur if I hadn’t had quite a bit of time to get myself up to speed. The other guys are competent musicians, I’m a bit of a third wheel, you know?” he jokes.
Eschewing the traditional label distribution models that he’s used in the past, Lashley is going completely on his own for distribution on Pray For Death, virtually ensuring – by design – that he makes no profit from the record, though he jokes that “in my short span of twelve years of doing my own releases, (profit) has been negated to zero anyway.” In part, this takes some of the worry about expectations or being beholden to outside influences away, relying instead on the word-of-mouth support of the fanbase he’s cultivated over the last few decades. It also has to do with the wisdom that comes after achieving more than nine years of sobriety at this point, and after years of chasing the proverbial carrot that the music industry – even in the punk rock scene – tends to always promise but so infrequently deliver. “I’ve been chasing my tail and this idea that music is going to provide some type of lottery ticket for me down the road or some type of accolades,” he explains. “I’m much more comfortable being present with what I have and being grateful for what I have now…I can be okay with just the way it is.”
Check out our chat below, which covers all of this and more in great detail. It’s been somewhat edited and condensed for content and clarity’s sake. And stay tuned for where and when you can actually get your ears on a copy of Pray For Death – or just check in with Lenny on Instagram!
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): I tend to start every interview this way, but congrats on the new record! I feel like somebody commented online that they had heard either all or parts of the new record, I forget who it was, but they made a comment that “Lenny Lashley fans will like this.” Like, if you liked Illuminator, if you liked All Are Welcome, you’ll like this record. And I think that’s entirely accurate. Lenny Lashley fans are going to dig this one.
Yeah, I hope so. I mean, they’ve been the sole source of support throughout the whole process anyway.
You mentioned that you’re giving it away, essentially. Not to fast forward to the release of the record right at the beginning, but you mentioned that you’re essentially giving the new record away, or as close to giving it away as you can?
Yeah, you’re beholden to some sort of charge with the distro and the digital release system. There’s no viable way to just give it away. However, the way that it’s set up through the digital distributor, there is a lowest amount they’ll let you charge, so that’s the only option really in that department. My goal throughout, as far as physical copies of it, is to hopefully have people contribute to the manufacturing and shipping costs. In other words, no potential profit which, I mean, in my short span of twelve years of doing my own releases has been negated to zero anyway (*both laugh*). It was just a way to give it less pressure and not have to worry about any expectations about recouping anything on my part, you know?
So, there will be physical copies of it?
Yeah, I have yet to determine how many there will be. When it is finally released in the digital realm, my hope is to then announce a pre-order and see how many people are into getting a physical copy of the record. Because the manufacturers want the cash upfront, I’ll have to have people that are willing to come on board with that so I have a basic amount of how many. I’m hoping between three- and five-hundred, because I think three (hundred) is like a minimum pressing. So then, if you get the three hundred, they give you a significant discount to get to the five hundred option, so maybe I’ll be able to swing some money out of pocket to kick it up so I’ll be able to have five hundred copies. Then people can order them from me, you know, pay for the cost to make the record and ship the record. I want to be transparent about that and show people the invoices from the manufacturer about what it costs to make and ship media through the Postal Service or whatever, you know?
So, sort of like a Kickstarter thing, but just without the mechanism of using Kickstarter, and just essentially trying to do it yourself?
Yeah, right, exactly. The thing is, for me personally – and not to come from a place of sour grapes or contempt or anything – but the idea is to connect directly with the people that are interested in the music and take the middle people out. In fact, I saw a thing the other day from Kay Hanley of Letters To Cleo. She had a little Instagram thing and she was talking about the record industry. She was really talking about more of the major labels and how they’re not geared really to help out new artists. Now, for a number of years, who knows who they’ve really been geared to help out – but her point was that all of these people who are trying to make it in the music business or whatever, they don’t have a real viable way to make a living. They’re beholden to whatever crumbs they can get from these guys, you know? It doesn’t bother me anymore, it just is what it is. So for me personally, as a musician or an artist or whatever you want to call it, it’s empowering to run it the way I’ve always managed to run things, you know?
That just seems like a lot. I mean, knowing just sort of peripherally, and obviously I have never released music, so I don’t know all the details of how that works, but that, like, that just seems like such an overwhelming thing from where I sit, that I sort of get why people either stop making music, or just let the label deal with it, if you have a small label, because it just seems, like, daunting to try to take on. So, I give you all sorts of props for doing it this way.
Yeah, it’s really a matter of getting your ducks in a row as far as manufacturing goes and all that kind of stuff and then being diligent about who’s ordering stuff. It’s just taking notes really, and you do that quite a bit, Jason. I’m not really good at it myself. But the point is, the whole process has been pretty enlightening in that regard. And that’s not to diss anybody from any scope of the businesses that I’ve been lucky enough to work with in the past. This is much more me getting to have the last word on what things are from the album art to the content to whatever. There’s no middle person in there giving me an opinion on things, except for Pete (Steinkopf), who did the role well as a producer. And the other guys who were in the band or whatever. That’s as far as any critique goes prior to making anything, you know?
Was that always the plan when it came time to record album…four? This is technically the fourth full-length Lenny Lashley’s Gang Of One record, right?
This would be the fourth, yeah.
When it was time to write for this record, was it always the goal to do it yourself this time, or did that come together as you were writing it or pulling it together?
It wasn’t really. After not being with Pirates Press anymore after the second record and into the third record or whatever, Dirty Mick at Omerta was nice enough to help me get the Egrets record out. And he did that as a sort of family favor sort of thing, it wasn’t a profitable venture for them really, in the end. It was really just something where Mick had some experience from a previous record label that he had and he had some connections with Revelation, who was able to do some distro, and the Coretex people. He’s a friend and somebody I’ve known for a long time and basically had full support of regardless of what the content of the record was, you know? And that was important to me. You’re into music as much as I am, when you read things from a guy like Tom Petty or a guy like Frank Zappa, it’s always difficult broaching a higher-up in a situation like that and what their views are on what an artist is trying to do, you know what I mean?
You mentioned working with Pete again. Did Pete do all four records? He did Illuminator, right?
Yeah, he did Illuminator, and the first thing he helped me out with was a little three-song seven-inch that he helped me out with, and that was through a mutual friend, Joe Koukos, who had a record store down there in Asbury, Hold Fast Records.
Oh sure, that was a great spot.
So Joe, knowing those guys and being a staple in the Asbury Park scene – because he had worked at the Stone Pony for years, and Club Deep for three or four years before that. He had had Darkbuster down there at Club Deep, and eventually when he found out I was kinda doing this stuff, he said “hey, I can put you in touch and we can do a seven-inch with Pete” and then I think it took all of fifteen seconds for me to ask if he wanted to do a full record.
Yeah, of course. Pete’s the best.
I’ve been very fortunate. It’s almost at the point where I don’t think I’d feel comfortable working with anybody else now, you know?
Yeah yeah yeah. What’s his role in the process? Do you go to him with completed ideas? Or is your relationship the kind where you can go to him with a sonic idea and then go to him like for advice like “Should we do this? Should we do this instead?” Because there’s a bunch of cool sort of textures and different sonic themes, musical themes, on the record. How much of that is your vision or Pete’s vision or both of you together?
For this particular one, there was like a year or something in between. I had been writing and working on stuff, so a lot of things were quite a bit more developed than in the past, you know? When I went in to record Illuminator with him, a few of the songs were really raw. Matter of fact, I remember that (Michael) McDermott (The Kilograms, Joan Jett, ex-Bouncing Souls) did drums on “Hooligans,” and Pete asked me to play it for him on acoustic guitar, and McDermott sorta shot me a look because I couldn’t even play it at that point (*both laugh*). He was like “go upstairs to Kate’s kitchen and try to get it together a little bit.” This one had a little bit more time for me to develop things at home and try to work on my vocal range. Pete is a super encourager of when an idea is flowing. He did have some tweaks or ideas about extending a break or doing a chord break here or little things like that that give things a little bit more body in the whole. I’ve learned to trust him. He’s such a good producer that if he suggests something, he wants what’s best for the song. Even if it’s out of my comfort zone, I defer to his judgement.
It’s funny, before this, one of the last interviews that I did was with Sammy Kay, who has recorded like twelve projects with Pete now, between splits and seven-inches and full lengths and whatever. And he says almost the exact same thing about having the trust in his vision that you were just talking about.
It’s funny because I’ve developed, over the years, a real respect for the things I’m doing musically. I feel really lucky to be able to make music, even if it’s self-funded, but just the fact that people want to listen to it occasionally. Pete really gets the gravity of that stuff. I remember after a long day of work on that first record, Pete would say “well, this is forever. This is going to be forever.” So that kind of changed my perspective on mailing something in. It’s a tremendous amount of effort and resolve to get something done the way that I want to get it done.
When you write at home, if you’re sending him demos, let’s say, or even just when you’re writing at home in general, are you, I mean, for somebody who plays so many shows as a literal gang of one, right? Like, there’s a lot of different sounds. You’ve always got horns. You’ve always got, like, pedal steel, especially lately. Like, how much of that comes from, like, do you write that stuff in your head or do you demo stuff like that while you’re writing as well? Or do you wait until you kind of have the song fleshed out in the studio with Pete to figure out what to add to it?
It kind of depends on what would serve the song. Luckily enough, the group of folks that I’ve worked with are super talented. Cody Nilsen, who’s been phenomenal as a pedal steel guy, is someone I’ve done a bunch of shows with just him and me. It’s a very unique sort of sound that it brings to the country-er sounding stuff. So automatically, I know that that should be a voice that’s in there, and Cody is so intuitive about what to put down. He doesn’t need a tremendous amount of coaching or whatever.
He’s so good. I’ve seen the two of you together a few times. He’s so great.
It’s mind-blowing to me to be in the type of position like Cody or like Andrew Stern. They are both phenomenal guitar players that can translate what they have in their brain to their fingers and they can play it instantaneously. It’s like alien shit, you know? (*both laugh*)
And to be able to sort of know what you’re going for, probably without you playing it for them all the way through. Like, you could start playing them a song and they know what to do while they’re hearing it, basically. Even though they haven’t played it yet and they didn’t write the song.
It’s a real strange talent that folks like that have. Tim Brennan of the Dropkicks is very intuitive like that. So the one song that has the horns on it on the new record, “Devil Behind The Wheel,” I had worked with those guys before. I had them do some stuff on the previous record, so I knew that they had it in their wheelhouse. I did give them a little direction, because there was a line that I had in my head. They had a more elaborate part worked up, and when Pete heard it, he said “well, maybe we can scale it down a little bit” because he didn’t want it to step on some of those beautiful organ lines. I just kinda deferred to Pete. He knows enough to tease people into some ideas and not totally just standing on a table, jumping up and down and beating it into the ground. I’m a ‘beat a dead horse’ kind of person, so I appreciate that. (*both laugh*)
So who else plays on the record? Obviously Cody and Andrew, but who else plays on the record this time, because I want to make sure those people get their flowers too.
The guy who played the drums is a buddy of mine, Sam Gelston. He worked with me at the Midway (Cafe) for a bunch of years. Super talented all-around musician. Plays guitar and sings and is a really good drummer, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t realize he was as good of a drummer as he is. A buddy John Sheeran played bass. I’m going to space it on some of the bands he’s been in, but he was in The Spitzz with Tom and Victoria from Showcase Showdown. He’s been around forever and I’ve always kinda known him but never had gotten a chance to get to make music with him. He does a lot of stuff with Andrew Stern, who I also developed a relationship with through the Midway. He was coming in and playing a lot of Wednesday night gigs there when I was tending bar, so we got to be friends. Andrew suggested “oh, we should do something together at some point!” And then on organ is a guy Tom West, who is just like the coolest old cat ever. He’s done stuff with Peter Wolf from J. Giles Band and fills in with a bunch of other folks. I had met him too from coming in the Midway. It’s kind of mind-blowing that all of the people that I had watched doing other projects and was in awe of wound up being a part of this. And also Jared Hart did some background vocals. And (Doug Zambon) who is so nice, did some other background vocals. He did a bunch of stuff on the previous record too. And also, a real big surprise is Brian Fallon from Gaslight Anthem. I had been back and forth with him a little bit on Instagram, messaging about how much I loved the solo stuff that he had recently done. The common denominator was Ted Hutt, who has done a bunch of stuff with Dropkicks and did The ‘59 Sound with those guys. But that solo stuff from Brian really, really struck me more than the Gaslight stuff, you know what I mean? I reached out to him and conveyed that and on one song, I actually heard his voice in my head. I’d listen to his solo records so much that it must have subconsciously seeped in and I heard his voice, you know? I just asked and he said “sure, I’d love to do it!” That was a real mind-blowing thing. He’s such a nice guy to do something like that, you know?”
What song does he do backup vocals on? Is that “Mrs. Breeze”?
Yeah, “Mrs. Breeze.” He actually starts the song. It’s his vocal from the get-go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That totally didn’t dawn on me. I mean, I actually wrote in my notes to the song “who’s doing the other vocal here?” So it’s funny that I’ve been listening to him for 20 years and didn’t register that that was his voice.
It’s funny because Pete had him over and they did that at Little Eden. And Pete said “you guys have such a similar tonality, it sounds really good with you guys singing together.”
It does, yeah.
Brian really bought into the whole thing. There’s the whole call-and-response part on the bridge, and he just took the ball and ran with it. It just brings so much to the song. At the end, he’s singing with me. I sing a line and he sings a line and we sing it together on the last line. I’m just so pleased with how it came out.
Yeah, I almost wondered if I was just hearing like… because I was listening to it in my car and my 10-year-old Honda Accord doesn’t have the best stereo system in it. But I was like, oh, I wonder if I’m just hearing like left channel, right channel as the different voices. So it’s interesting that that’s Brian. I love that song, by the way. I was making a list and trying to prioritize the songs that I wanted to talk about. And I think that one might be my favorite one on the record. I’m not entirely sure…
Here’s a thing that I’ve come to terms with over the years, Jason. I write on a really emotional level. It doesn’t fit in with a lot of the criteria in the music business because it’s kind of depressing, sad-ish stuff, you know what I mean? I’ve always gravitated toward that stuff even since I Was a kid and listening to the AM Radio. With that one, there’s an obvious nod to classic rock, like “Call Me The Breeze” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The tale of eating orange sunshine, those are my teenage years. That was high school, you know? Popping kegs and eating acid or whatever. I don’t know how relatable that is to the younger generation, but the emotion I think comes through. It’s about a lost kid or a kid that just gets swept up and away from their parents.
I thought from like the first line of the song, it’s sort of like retelling the Petty song, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Because “the Indiana Boys and the Indiana nights.” I was like, oh, it’s interesting to think about this as like the same character, but from like if things went a little more sideways.
It’s so funny that you mention Petty, because last night, when we were rehearsing, we did “Gone World,” and Andrew said “That feels like a Traveling Wilbury’s tune” and until he said that, I didn’t quite get that, but from the get-go with this album sonically, I suggested to Pete that we chase the idea of Damn The Torpedos by Tom Petty. That was such a once-in-a-musical-history type of recording, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the history of that and what it entailed. So sonically, we tried to chase a little bit of that dragon. Not that we were making Damn The Torpedos, but we recorded everything in a live-ish way, and we went for takes. That’s kind of not done a lot that way anymore.
No, I think because of like digital music and the way that like people will just take 40, 50 takes and like make sure you nail a part and whatever. So I think one of the things that that sort of recording style has gotten people into bad habits around, like just record a bunch of takes of it rather than the old-fashioned, like get you all in a room and play the damn song together. Because that’s like… Those are the records that translate the best, I think, to a live show anyway, right? Because that’s essentially what we’re going to hear.
Ideally that certainly is a thing. It’s a little bit of a tightrope walk, but the spontaneity and the magical, unquantifiable moments don’t happen if it’s all pre-determined. That’s how we did “One Shot Down.” That was pretty much just a sketch of a verse and we worked it all out right there. Nick Hebditch did a video of the whole experience in there and at some point in my life, I can’t wait to watch that, because you can kinda see the whole thing transpiring. Me explaining it to the guys and Andrew picking up a twelve-string and everybody working it out, and the next thing you know, we’re ripping through a take. It was pretty magical, you know?
That’s awesome. I mean as necessary as it is for people to write and record sometimes digitally and by themselves and whatever, you’re right about that sort of studio magic thing, which I hope never goes away.
I defer to Rick Rubin’s sort of methodology, that everything is a tool in the box. And don’t really ever say no to anything. But this particular record was really the most magical musical time of my life. Two of the songs on the record were first takes, all the way through from start to finish. And that’s with me singing and playing guitar, and I’ve never done that in my life. I always go back and track a vocal as a separate thing.
Which two? I’m curious about that. I mean, you sort of mentioned “One Shot Down” but…
So that one was worked out in the studio. Every song was done full takes, but first, complete takes without having to go back was “Working Class Hero,” the Lennon cover. Pete heard that one the first pass through with me singing it and playing it and said “well, dude, I just got some goosebumps. You don’t need to do that one again.” And then the closing track, “Hate Anymore,” was done all in one pass too. It was me playing guitar and singing and the band playing and it was one take and that was it.
Wow. That’s really impressive.
It probably would never occur if I hadn’t had quite a bit of time to get myself up to speed. The other guys are competent musicians, I’m a bit of a third wheel, you know? (*both laugh*)
They’re your songs but you have to catch up. (*both laugh*)
It took me a year to get to be able to play the stuff good enough to record. I’ve never had that luxury going into the studio. I’m always learning on the fly and a little bit behind the curve with everybody.
When did you start writing for this one? Do you essentially just write straight along and then when you have a batch done you make a record?
Generally I’m always writing or getting ideas, and if I’m lucky some things seem totally close to where they should be. Other things I’ll just kinda bank and won’t hammer them out too much until it’s time to pull a record together, you know? I like to keep ideas that are fresh. Sometimes things go by the wayside and you hear them again three months later or a year later and you’re like “What the heck was I thinking on that one?” you know? (*both laugh*)
Fallon, to go back to him for a minute, I remember during Covid he was doing a songwriter Instagram podcast sort of thing, and he and another writer would go back and forth and play songs, and one of the things he talked about all the time was “just write all of it.” Don’t worry about what it is, just write all of it, you’re going to throw out most of it, but then you can look back at it and you might find some line or some chord progression in there to build on if you just keep going.
Years ago, I read a book called The Artist’s Way. Coppola’s wife I think wrote it. (*editor’s note: it was Julia Coleman, Martin Scorcese’s wife) That was like “when you get up in the morning, don’t think, just put the pen to paper and write.” It was designed to help eliminate some kind of writer’s block. Editing is such a big thing. But that being said, it is nice when you can catch lightning in a bottle where the whole thing just writes itself. A lot of people argue that those are the best ones. I don’t know. I think those are the lucky ones, but the best ones can require a little more effort, you know?
Do you like the songs where you’re telling your story more first person, or the songs where you’re telling a character’s story? A song like “Mrs. Breeze,” for example. Do you like one exercise more than the other?
It’s really, to be honest, when I look at it introspectively, aspects of it are really all me anyway, you know? Like the line in that song “Mama, don’t you worry ‘bout me,” is really kinda trying to make amends to my mother, because I put her through a lot of hell when I was a kid. Fortunately we got to see the other side where hopefully she doesn’t worry about me anymore. But I was a troubled kid. A troubled not even kid, a troubled adult. I must have caused her a lot of anxiety over the years. So there’s always a little bit of a personal thing. It’s much easier to build characters around it because it doesn’t hurt as bad, you know? It’s nice to tell a story in the Springsteen fashion. That was a great thing that I picked up from him years ago, that “the big secret is I made it all up!” And he didn’t make it all up. I don’t believe that’s true. If you listen to his stuff, you believe that it was him because he believed that it was him when he was writing it, you know?
He had the ability to be an empath enough that he could observe what was going on around him and tap into the emotions that other people were feeling and relate to them. So it maybe didn’t happen to HIM, but it did happen and it certainly happened around him.
He had the gift to be able to convey that to the listener. Like when you listen to “Factory,” there’s no way you could tell me he wasn’t getting up in the morning walking to the factory, or walking home at the end of the night with death in his eyes, you know?
That’s a thing that we give songwriters like Springsteen shit for but we don’t really do that in other artforms? Like we don’t do that in film, we don’t do that in painting or sculpture. You don’t assume that Francis Ford Coppola or Marlon Brando went through the things that they were putting on the screen, they weren’t documentaries, you know.
The music scene is pretty savage about the vetting process, yeah. And I don’t get it, really. I’m a Gram Parsons kind of guy – good music is good music, you don’t have to classify it or prove that you like Taylor Swift by reciting every song that she ever wrote. Or the Circle Jerks or whoever. And maybe that’s the 60-year-old in me too. I don’t feel like I have to justify anything. If I like it I like it and if I don’t, I don’t.
Yeah, and I think that punk rock especially has had so much gatekeeping involved historically. What is punk, what isn’t punk, who sold out, whatever…who gives a shit, if you like the music, you like the music.
You want to talk about the big lie, there’s a big lie. Punk rock was supposed to be all inviting. I really defer to that thing about making music that speaks to you. That’s a Bowie thing. Make music for yourself, and if people happen to like it, that’s cool.
I haven’t seen the cover art for the record yet, but I saw the video for “Gone World,” that Lewis Rossignol did, who did the Egrets record. I love him. That came out so great.
Yeah, he’s awesome.
And it’s a weird thing to say that about somebody who paints the way that he paints.
Yeah, he gets a lot of hate for the childlike way he paints. It really speaks to me too. Yeah, he did that video, and it came out so good. The album art was done by an artist who goes by Timmy Tanker. He does woodblock stuff. He did a design for me a number of years ago. I find a lot of people through social media or mutual friends or whatever. If something speaks to me, I’ll usually beg them to do something for me. So a bunch of years ago, I begged him to do a shirt design, and as is often the case, not everybody is always as enthralled with some stuff as I am. Some people are Renoir guys, some people are Van Gogh guys.I really always appreciate Tim’s style and his honesty and the place of emotion that comes from the stuff that he does, so with the Pray For Death title, it’s a little doom-and-gloomish, so he seemed like the obvious choice, you know?
I hope that the pre-order thing goes well, because I’m excited for people to hear it and I’m always excited for it to be a real, physical thing. It’s a super fun record. It’s a Lenny record.
Yeah, I hope so. I think there’s some variety. And to put my professional musician hat on, the plan is to not repress it or anything. The industry in a large scale has developed a commodity sort of ideology, with short runs of different colors and variants. There’s nothing wrong with that, it seems like a great trend for people who are collectors, but this will be all black, one pressing of however many it is. I don’t plan to press it again. Kind of like the Piss Poor Boys thing years ago. You get in where you get in, otherwise pay a tremendous amount down the road on Discogs or whatever. I feel like it should have a finite kind of thing about it.
I can appreciate that. I get that people are collectors, but for me personally, I think it’s a little weird to chase down like 40 different variants of the same record. I think that music was meant to be listened to, so I’m not a “collector” like that. I love Born To Run, but I don’t need fifteen copies of Born To Run, you know?
And I’m guilty of it a little bit too. The supply and demand thing has always struck me a little funny insofar as commerce. We’re so lied to as a people generally, and I tried to make an example of it when Illuminator was out, with the gold records. If you look at DeBeers, the diamond company, and you look at the value that the world places on diamonds…if DeBeers just opened the doors to their warehouses and flooded the world with their stockpile of diamonds, the value of a diamond would be like a glass marble, right? It’s basically a smoke-and-mirrors kind of thing. It’s the way a lot of the world is now, and I don’t want to be someone who goes down in history as someone who was smoke-and-mirrors.
Oh I don’t think there’s anybody who would accuse Lenny Lashley of being smoke and mirrors. (*both laugh*) I can stand on that. I know you, and the other people I know who know you I can guarantee would never accuse Lenny Lashley of being smoke and mirrors.
That’s something that makes me feel good.
And we laugh, but I do mean that genuinely. The amount of people that will comment when I have my Lenny’s Gang Of One hoodie from time to time, that they “Love Lenny, he’s such a good dude.” Whether they’re in the music scene or not.
It’s not lost on me. I really love that other people, especially peers, appreciate it. I would be lying if I said that that stuff wasn’t important. Because when people like Pete or Brian (Fallon) in the industry can say they appreciate it and get a little bit real, it’s encouraging to know that maybe I’m not far off the right track with what I do.
That stuff helps, right, with the imposter syndrome stuff that we’ve talked about before? Like knowing that someone like Chuck Ragan is a big fan. Tim Barry…
Yeah, and there could probably be a list, but thing about it is, I’m a recovering drug addict and recovering alcoholic, right? The internal stuff, it does make me feel good. But there’s never really enough for that, somewhere deep in my psyche. So to just be okay with who I am now, that’s been a real transformative part of this process and this particular record, you know what I mean? Therein – like the Lennon song says – it’s okay to just be not chasing my tail for some sort of bigger success. It’s the King Midas thing, you know? Be careful what you wish for, because if everything you touch turns to gold, then everything you eat is gold. There are no long-term emotional benefits from that, you know?
I think the first time you and I talked like this was back for Illuminator, maybe just before it came out. Do you think we’d be having that sort of conversation and you would have that sort of insight back then?
Absolutely not. No fucking way. I’ve been chasing my tail and, if I’m being totally honest with you – this idea that music is going to provide some type of lottery ticket for me down the road or some type of accolades. I’m much more comfortable being present with what I have and being grateful for what I have now. It’s night and day compared to how I was back then. It’s not illusory, it’s not always how I want it to be, but it’s better than I deserve most of the time. And that goes into the recovery piece, you know? And some Buddhism and some other spirituality that’s crept into my life. I can be okay with just the way it is.
Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge formed Blink-182 in Poway, California, with drummer Scott Raynor in 1992. Tom and Mark met through a mutual friend after expressing a shared love for the same punk rock bands. They started a band. Blink (without the 182) released a tape titled Buddha, which they sold at their shows. Eventually, […]
Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge formed Blink-182 in Poway, California, with drummer Scott Raynor in 1992. Tom and Mark met through a mutual friend after expressing a shared love for the same punk rock bands. They started a band. Blink (without the 182) released a tape titled Buddha, which they sold at their shows. Eventually, the band gained more traction and was signed to San Diego’s Cargo Music, where they would release two albums, including Cheshire Cat, on February 17th, 1995.
Tom’s distorted guitar opens album-opener “Carousel” with some power chords before moving on to a high-octave bass riff from Mark while the guitar rings before speeding up. Mark and Tom trade riffs before Tom reflects about a girl he has residual feelings for. As far as opening tracks go, it’s pretty impressive. This goes double for the second track, “M+Ms.” Piggybacking off the tempo of “Carousel,” Scott’s drums precede a riff played by Tom on the high E string. If you look at how the riff is played, it’s not hard, but maintaining the speed Tom does makes this song stand out. Lyrically, “M+Ms” is a Mark song about traveling somewhere far with a girl he likes. Tom picks out the notes of the power chords during the verse and strums the chorus before starting the whole thing again. What makes the song remarkable is the speed at which he is playing.
The second verse on “Carousel” establishes many tropes for Blink-182, including their signature humor. While lyrics about masturbation and suicide aren’t the best way to convey your feelings for someone, Blink-182 has a knack for writing some of the sweetest lyrics and juxtapose them with some dark humor:
My love life was getting so bland
There are only so many ways I can make love with my hand
Sometimes it makes me want to laugh
Sometimes I wanna take my toaster in the bath.
Seven of the sixteen songs on Cheshire Cat were pulled from their demo cassette, Buddha. Cheshire Cat’s first side contains four of them, “Carousel,” “Fentoozler,” “Strings,” and “Sometimes.” The shortest and fastest of these songs is “Sometimes.” The song feels like Blink-182’s homage to late 1980s Bad Religion, filtered through Mark’s lyrics about relationship anxieties. Listen to that lead part and tell me it’s not Greg Hetson inspired.
Most of the early Blink-182 albums include one slower song in contrast to the rest of the tracks, whether it’s “21 Days” on Buddha or “Adam’s Song” from Enema Of The State. This type of Blink-182 song opens the second side of Cheshire Cat. “Cacophony” is another Mark song reflecting on his fear of commitment and not being on the same page with your partner. I know if you throw a rock at pop punk in the 1990s, you will hit this type of song. Blink-182 isn’t necessarily a pioneer of this, but lyrically and musically, it’s done well, even if the lyrics are a little on the nose:
Words like forever
They scare the shit out of me
Maybe I’m afraid of commitment
Maybe you’re too distracted to see
Leaving half of Buddha in the dust was mostly a good choice, but I feel a couple of the songs left off would have made Cheshire Cat a better record. However, the changes made to the songs that were moved over from Buddha did enhance them. While the second side also boasts “Wasting Time,” a song where Mark wonders and fantasizes about what it’s like to date his crush who may not feel the same way back. The second half burns through the remaining songs brought over from Buddha and ends with joke songs
Side by side, Buddha is a better demo for a band in general, but Cheshire Cat is a better representation of Blink-182 as a band. The guitar on this album could be a little beefier, but also the track sequencing bothers me too. The jokey songs could have been spread out a little more. Ending the album with “Ben Wah Balls” and “Depends” is a bit of a stretch even for the band that wrote the song “Family Reunion” a few years later.
In all fairness, Blink-182 fixed these issues on their next album. While Dude Ranch may have been the album that got the band noticed and established these crazy kids from Poway, CA as one of the biggest bands in the world, but it was Cheshire Cat that put them on the map.
Prolific pop-punk artist and The Prozacs frontman J Prozac released his latest full-length album Obsession last spring, and he’s now parlaying that into a brand new track called “Take Me Away”. This will be available as a 7″ single with Mr. Prozac’s cover of “On My Own” by The Bates occupying the B Side. The “Take Me […]
Prolific pop-punk artist and The Prozacs frontman J Prozac released his latest full-length album Obsession last spring, and he’s now parlaying that into a brand new track called “Take Me Away”. This will be available as a 7″ single with Mr. Prozac’s cover of “On My Own” by The Bates occupying the B Side.
The “Take Me Away” 7″ won’t be released until April 18th, but your pals at Dying Scene have you covered with the exclusive premiere(!) of the single! Go ahead and check that shit out below and – after you’ve done so – head over to J Prozac’s Bandcamp and pre-order the 7″. If you’re in Europe, you can shave on shipping by ordering from Soundflat Mailorder.
This premiere is brought to you in part by Punk Rock Radar. If you’d like your band’s music video, song, album or whatever to be premiered by Dying Scene and Punk Rock Radar, go here and follow these instructions. You’ll be on your way to previously unimagined levels of fame and fortune in no time.
Knife Proof Earmuffs is a new project from the dynamic duo of Lanny Durbin of Local Drags and The Copyrights frontman Luke McNeill, who’ve also played together in Starter Jackets. They enlisted friends Schy Willmore (pedal steel) and Alyssa Currie (backup vocals) and threw in some weird synth and keyboard to layer out the sounds […]
Knife Proof Earmuffs is a new project from the dynamic duo of Lanny Durbin of Local Drags and The Copyrights frontman Luke McNeill, who’ve also played together in Starter Jackets. They enlisted friends Schy Willmore (pedal steel) and Alyssa Currie (backup vocals) and threw in some weird synth and keyboard to layer out the sounds on their debut album One of Them Real Good Times.
Recorded in Springfield, Illinois by Luke in his studio, the songs that make up the album were something to do to keep winter boredom and depression at bay. One of Them Real Good Times will be streaming everywhere soon but there’s only one place to listen to it right now, and that’s DyingScene.com! Damn fuckin rite!
Scroll down the page a lil bit to give that shit a listen, and then head over to Knife Proof Earmuffs’ Bandcamp to grab the album for 7 bucks! A truly unbeatable value.
This premiere is brought to you in part by Punk Rock Radar. If you’d like your band’s music video, song, album or whatever to be premiered by Dying Scene and Punk Rock Radar, go here and follow these instructions. You’ll be on your way to previously unimagined levels of fame and fortune in no time.
Ruairi
Hope Dies at Dawn is a really strong record. I saw None Shall Sleep at Gold Sounds in Brooklyn a few months ago, they are amazing, great songs, great energy. If you get a chance check them out live.