Dying Scene

DS Interview: Sammy Kay on mental health, being a Jersey boy in Kentucky, his powerful new EP “Inanna” and more

When last we heard from Sammy Kay on the pages of Dying Scene, the world – both his and ours – looked very different. It was the back half of 2019. The original Dying Scene website hadn’t yet crashed, and Kay was releasing civil/WAR, his most recent full-length record. The record was funded primarily through […]

When last we heard from Sammy Kay on the pages of Dying Scene, the world – both his and ours – looked very different. It was the back half of 2019. The original Dying Scene website hadn’t yet crashed, and Kay was releasing civil/WAR, his most recent full-length record. The record was funded primarily through a Kickstarter campaign and, while it found him once-again recording with Pete Steinkopf at Little Eden Studio in his ancestral homeland of New Jersey as he had on 2017’s Untitled and 2014’s Fourth Street Singers, it represented a stylistic departure from the ska and roots-rock that had marked the earlier stages of his music career. Instead, civil/WAR found the gravelly-voiced Kay backed primarily by his own acoustic guitar, the subtle textures putting more emphasis on the weighty, at times heart-wrenching lyrical subject matter.

A fast-forward to the present day finds a Sammy Kay that is in very different places in both the literal and figurative senses. To wildly oversimplify things, there’s been a wedding and a move from Jersey to California and a divorce and a move to Raleigh and a move to Cincinnati and a global pandemic and a hiatus from and then return to sobriety and a better grip on some lifelong mental health concerns. Oh, and now, thankfully, there’s new music.

Kay signed with A-F Records for a full-length record that’s due out this fall. That’s a conversation for another day. In the very near future, however, there’s Inanna. It’s an EP that’s comprised of a few B-sides from the full-length sessions. There are reworked versions of a couple previously-revved up rock-and-roll songs from the earlier records. And then there’s a cover. But it’s not just any cover. It’s Kay’s funeral dirge-like take on The World/Inferno Friendship Society’s “My Ancestral Homeland, New Jersey,” a song that comes across both as an ode to that band’s recently-departed frontman Jack Terricloth, and a reflection on Kay’s own old stomping grounds. It’s haunting and forlorn and pitch-perfect enough that if you didn’t know it was a cover of a waltzy circus-punk tune, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a Sammy Kay original.

We caught up with Kay over Zoom a couple of Mondays ago, and in order to make the timeline work, Kay had to take an early exit from his normal Monday night online self-help meeting. (The writer in me was super appreciative; the friend and the person who’s worked in and around the recovery field for two decades in me said “NOOOO WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!”) One of the more positive things to have come out of the pandemic has been the new and creative ways that people have come up with to stay engaged with and connected to their life preservers. Online self-help meetings, FaceTime counseling sessions. Dropbox file-sharing songwriting sessions. Back-to-basics Nebraska-style bedroom four-track recordings. DIY artwork. TikTok. They’ve all allowed people to help overcome some of the boredom and isolation and monotony and separation that the pandemic created, and they were all put to use in positive ways by Kay as he has navigated whatever we’re calling the ‘new normal.’ Okay, maybe not TikTok, but still.

Read out chat below. It’s open and honest and raw and funny and so, so Jersey…even if Kay has started to establish a bit of a foundation (dare I say roots?) 640 miles from home. It’s a revealing look at a pretty intense and at times chaotic journey that has resulted in Kay seemingly in a more peaceful spot than we’ve seen from him. Oh, and pre-order Inanna here before its April 28th release, and stay tuned for more about the full-length this fall.

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): So yeah, let’s talk about the new record. When’s the official release day?

Sammy Kay: The 28th of April. Yeah. Inanna.

Are you excited? Do you still get excited after however many official records under your belt at this point?

There’s six. There’s six Sammy LPs, plus all the other bands growing up. It feels different. It’s a little weirder. Press is more of a thing now. When I was a kid, it was more like ‘I just hope people listen to it.’ And I still hope people listen to it, but also I hope there’s a good write-up about it. Because the internet is real, and you have to look cool on the internet. 

That is a thing, isn’t it? 

Oh it is a THING!!

Because as much as some of us want it to not be a thing – and I realize I say that as somebody who owns a website – but it really is a thing. You do have to pay attention to that shit, don’t you?

Yeah, and it’s weird because post-Covid, (song) premieres aren’t really a thing, and video premieres aren’t really a thing, and write-ups are kinda gone. There’s only a couple things that’ll happen. Some places do like a song-a-day, and it’s real cool and it’s a good little write-up, but because so many publications and websites are scaling back, the people that have always done stuff with me just don’t have time because everybody is trying to get to them. So it’s a little weird.

Yeah, and I feel like production of videos, at least the traditional way of making them, sort of shut down for a long time too. Some people were obviously making their own DIY things, but there weren’t really even videos to premiere anymore.

Yeah, and it feels like a lot of people went and learned how to do that during Covid. I am currently trying to learn how to TikTok and I am not having fun. (*both laugh*)

I will never learn how to TikTok. I kinda drew a line in the sand there. And I have a 15-year-old, so I kinda should know, but I just can’t…

Yeah, Morgan can do it! Buy her ice cream and let her do your TikToks. She’ll do it for you!

I don’t know, man. It’s a whole other world. And I get that there are people who are good at it, I just can’t wrap my head around it. 

Yeah, it’s one of those things that…I don’t obsess, but I study the algorithm and see what works, and right now, if there’s any sort of text in your image, it gets shadowbanned. And if you use the word “premiere” or “new song,” it fucking gets shadowbanned. “Come to my show” is like a shadowban term. I’ll watch my visibility drop to like a quarter of whatever it is if I say, like, “hey, we’ve got a new record coming out.” Just like that. Done. So it’s weird, and it’s a lot of sending notes like “hey, we’ve got a new record out, hope all is well. Love for you to give it a listen.”

Do you just have to flood the market with reminders that shit is coming out to make up for the fact that if you put one thing out there, maybe nobody will see it? I feel like you have to just be on top of it all the time.

Yeah. My visibility right now is a fifth of my followers, since we announced the record. And it’s not a lot. I’ll get like 250 views on a post, whereas the week before I posted something dumb about a cannoli and I got like 30,000 views, you know? (*both laugh*) I’ll look at the Reels or the TikToks or whatever and I’ll be like “Glenn Danzig is okay, and here’s a song about a breakup” and it’ll get 80,000 views or 120,000 views. Then the next thing is a song I actually wrote and it’s like 2,000 views, 4,000 views. The internet is a weird thing.

Do you obsess over it? 

Jay Stone, you know me pretty well. I obsess over everything! (*both laugh*) There’s no not obsessing!

Is there a healthy way to obsess over it, is maybe a better question to ask? I mean, I do the same thing on the website end.

No. I mean, I sit and I refresh and it’s like “why is there only 17 people listening to the song right now?” and it’s like “well, it’s 12:45 in the morning and the song just came out, what’s the problem here?” (*both laugh*) The problem is me. I’m the problem. (*both laugh*) But I’m stoked. The songs are cool. Do you know the secret about Inanna? 

I don’t feel like I do, but even if I did…remind me!

It’s the B-sides. I wrote with a sort of algorithm in mind. I was writing these twelve-line kinda sonnets…12 to 16 lines depending on if there’s a repeated tag or not. No repeating chorus. But as we were doing it, they were full-length songs with a chorus that hits two or three times, and a second or a third verse. And we had this cool little tape setup, this little Tascam that we kinda rigged to run but also ran as a pre-amp in the same vein as Nebraska, with just a cheap mic and a plate reverb. And we just kinda did this thing. Our buddy John Calvin Abney was sending us parts, so we recorded maybe thirty-five (songs). About 7 or 8 never left the acoustic guitar and scratch-singing floor. They’re there. They’re rough. The weird thing about a tape machine and minimal microphones is if it was fucking raining that day, there was just a buzz. We couldn’t get the buzz out, and we just said “fuck it, that song’s kinda done.” But you get gems. Like one song there’s a line about walking down the highway, and a fucking car lays on the horn outside and that gets picked up, right? Or there’s a real quiet part on “Couple Cardinals” on the EP and you hear the kids at the school across the street coming out for recess, and you hear them laughing and hollering and playing. It’s the perfect ghost.

So this tape machine was kind of a fickle beast, and we recorded probably about 28 or 29 that were done. That Misfits EP, the Bad Religion thing, those were all on this Tascam tape machine, this cassette portastudio 4-track. We kinda figured out the record, and then there were these songs that didn’t fit that twelve-line sonnet thing. There were a couple songs that we revisited, like “You Ought To Know,” I always had in my head like this quiet, delicate song, and when we did it with Pete (Steinkopf) ten years ago, it became this big rocker, and it partially became a big rocker because I didn’t know what “soft” or “delicate” meant. And in fact, I still don’t, but we were able to do a quieter, ‘after dark’ take. I think “Reservoir” always had a Greenwich Village folk feel in my head, and it came out as this big heartland rocker, and I love it, but I wanted to revisit it and see if we could do a quiet take of it. So there’s two old songs, three new songs, and then…I grew up seeing The World/Inferno Friendship Society, and I’m a big believer in that band and the cult that it is – and I use the word “cult” lovingly – the inclusivity and the welcoming-ness of the Infirnites. I always heard “Ancestral Homeland” as a song to be played at a funeral versus this waltzy, polka, punk thing, and being out here in Kentucky, I started fucking around with flat-picking, bluegrass picking, and we kinda turned it into this quieter, graveside song. And like with the Misfits thing, or throughout the years we’ve always done covers…I like to just take the chords and the words and forget everything else. Just the skeleton of the song. I was able to deconstruct it and turn it into this letter to Jack as a thank you and, if I was at the funeral, that’s what I would have done to pay my respects. Those lines “When I die, they’re going to bury me in Jersey” fucking resonate strong! 

That is a song that you can tell resonates strongly with you, and that’s without hearing your version of it. Obviously I’ve heard your version of it a bunch, and I think you did an amazing job with it. That’s a song that sounds like it could have been a Sammy Kay song. 

Yeah, “never trust a man who don’t drink’ my papa told me” … “The sun was shining the day I drove out of New Jersey and the girls all flashed me a smile.” It’s such a well-written song, in the sense of those great little descriptive lines. It just flows. And being from New Jersey – you know this being in Boston, the Southie kids and the Jersey boys, we’re not too far apart – out here there’s the good old boys. We’re all kinda cut from the same cloth. That hometown pride is strong.

When did you realize that you had it, though? Because that’s a thing that I’ve sort of been looking at a little bit differently the older I get, and the longer that I live in Massachusetts versus New Hampshire, where I grew up…and now having a kid who is growing up differently but in this part of the world still. When did you realize that you weren’t just from Jersey, you were FROM Jersey, and did it take leaving to realize it?

When I left…I left to go on tour young, and I was like “yeah, I’m from New Jersey, whatever, fuck you.” But when I moved to New York, I started saying “oh, I live in New York.” And then “Oh I’m in LA, I’m hanging out living in California.” I did New York, I did LA, I came back to Jersey, I did Texas for a minute…I jumped around. I’ve always been pretty nomadic. But I think once I got a job, even within music, where I had to bust my ass like my old man did. Once I realized I was saying the same shit my dad would say about the fucking day. Like “how’s your day going?” “It was a fuckin’ day, man.” You know? And also, I talk pretty, pretty, pretty Jersey…

Yeah, but you personally don’t know that until you get outside of Jersey!

Right, I didn’t know that at all! And it’s funny, I’m in Kentucky right now, right on the Ohio border, just outside of Cincinnati, just across the river, and these fucking people tell me I have the worst accent ever, and I’m like “what are you tawkin’ about?” (*both laugh*) You say “crick…” (*both laugh*) But starting to live south-ish, south adjacent – even Bakersfield too. A lot of the Bakersfield accent and the way people talk, the dialect, they’re Okies. They’re Oklahoma folk or Texarkana folk. Because when the Dust Bowl happened, a lot them emigrated to the Kern River Valley because of the sooil there. A lot of those Okieisms are pretty strong, and Okieisms and Jerseyisms are the same but different. I didn’t let the concept of “Jersey” …we’ll use the word “define.” Being from New Jersey, the pride I have for my state definitely defines a lot of who I am, from the working hard, to the history of art and growth in all facets of life. Like, the things that were developed in that state, from shit like the lightbulb to Einstein figuring out nuclear physics post-Manhattan Project at Princeton. I’m pretty sure fucking peanut butter is from New Jersey, you know? (*both laugh*) It’s just a cool thing, and gentrification aside, I can count the things I don’t like on one hand about that state. I mean, I can’t afford to live in New Jersey. I can’t be an artist while living there. There’s no way to go on tour, there’s no way to create, so I left New York City. 

Yeah, we see that up here in Boston, especially with the art community. I don’t know that the stuff that made Jersey Jersey for so long, particularly in an artistic sense, I don’t know that it exists anymore, just like I don’t know that it exists about Boston either. 

Yeah! I think…there’s glimmers in Jersey as well as in Boston and even in New York…like, I’m playing a show next week, and I am fully going to talk shit right now and I don’t give a FUCK because it’s real dumb…but I’m playing a show next week in a city that rhymes with Shmos Shmangeles and they are charging every band like $200 for a sound fee. It’s just like the New York City rooms, but it’s a room that you go and play. It’s a notorious room. But the amount of shit…like, we asked if we could get in and do a rehearsal and they were like “yeah, we need to get paid.” And it’s more money than we’ll make for the night, to be able to go in there for an hour before soundcheck to just practice acoustic.

Wow…

Yeah. Like, fuck that. LA, New York…

Is that like the new version of pay-to-play, which maybe enough people have given places shit about that this kinda took over?

Yeah, it’s pretty prevalent in the folk/American world. Rockwood Music Hall is like that, all those Lower East Side rooms that used to be where alternative music bred, they’re like “you wanna play? It’s $200. We take the first $200, you get a portion of what’s left.” It’s pretty fucked that even those rooms that back in the day were rooms where a working musician could make a couple bucks don’t kinda exist anymore. With Jersey…god bless Mike Lawrence, who passed the torch down to Joe Polito (Asbury Lanes). House of Independents. Andy Diamond and Lee at Crossroads, which is great because it’s in the center of the state, but it’s not part of that Asbury Park community. Tina Kerekes and Danny Clinch are really the last of the holdouts. I heard The Saint closed. The (Stone) Pony isn’t booking locals. It happens once a year, that’s it. Bu the city of Asbury Park has been completely priced out of art. 

That’s sad. We really only started going there right at the beginning of all of that shit changing. We never saw the real old Asbury Park and we kinda missed most of the 90s/00s Asbury Park, and it’s different just since we started going down there maybe a decade ago.

Yeah, I went home in December and I did not know my city. But that’s how it goes. I left that city almost five years ago, and change is inevitable, especially in a gentrifying world. But yeah, even Allston by you…I would hang out there when I started touring with Westbound Train. Their practice space was there, and all the places that I used to go, almost 17-20 years ago, they’re gone. Like, the Sunset Grill is gone. That was a staple! I remember going there and seeing, like, a Bosstone at one table, and like Amy from Darkbuster at the bar, and it was just like “oh my god!” It was one of those places where you’d see all these people in bands and when those places start to go, that means the community is hurting. Same thing with the brewery in Asbury Park. That was a hub, especially in a post-Lanes world. 

Maybe that’s why there are pockets of places like Ohio, like Colorado, like maybe Chicago, places in Tennessee, where there are these pockets of people that maybe aren’t originally from there but they move there and then start another scene there because you can’t afford to do it on the coasts. 

Yeah! Like Ohio…I’m not trying to talk shit on Cincinnati because I genuinely love it here. The amount of phenomenal bands in this city that are gigging regularly, for the most part, and studios…DIY, home-built studios that are churning out amazing records. I’m a water guy, right? Everything good comes off the water. There’s definitely something beautiful here in the last ten years, from what I can tell. Like, we go see music five nights a week.

Is the scene made from locals or is it made from people like yourself who are transplants from other places?

90% of it are from Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Covington. There’s a couple Louisville kids, which is only 80 miles. Lexington’s only 80 miles. Indy is only 80 miles. There’s like one guy from England, this kid Jaime, who is in a bunch of bands that are really great. That band Vacation fucking rules. Anything Jerry (Westerkamp) touches is fucking amazing. Tweens. And then there’s DAAP, which is an art school, and there’s a bunch of kids. There’s a band called Willie And The Cigs that’s gigging a couple nights a week. And the hardcore scene, bands like Corker and Louise. Piss Flowers fucking rule. They’re one of those bands that, like Black Flag in ‘85, they start with their shirts on and then by the end of the gig the whole band is just shirts off. This guy John sings in it; he’s in a bunch of other bands. That’s the thing, everyone here is so fucking creative. John does folk stuff, he’s in a gnarly hardcore band, and he’s like a hell of a comedian too. Everybody is like…so and so is a hell of a painter, and this guy does photography as well as writing…the punks are fucking poets too. It’s fucking great. It seems like every other fucking person has a silk screen rig in their basement, or a dark room, and they’re creating. The fucking scene here is just beautiful.

Is that how you found it?

No, I just threw a dart at the map. I called Jonny Dopamine and told him I was looking for a job. I was supposed to move to Nashville, and the house I was supposed to move into got sold. And I was supposed to get a job some place, and the same thing happened. They announced they were closing like two days before I was supposed to leave, so I was like “I’m not going to go.” I called a friend of mine (in Cincinnati) who I knew had an apartment, and this is like twenty hours before I was supposed to move to Nashville. I called a buddy of mine and I was like “hey man, you still got that basement apartment? Can I crash there for a minute while I figure something out?” And he was like “yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta find a job though.” I was like “hold on a second,” and I hung up the phone and I called Jonny because he owns the (Northside) Yacht Club too, which is like a rock and roll gastro pubby venue-ish, and I was like “yo man, let me get a job,” and he was like “you live here?” and I was like “if you give me a job I do!” (*both laugh*) And he said “when are you going to be here?” and I was like “tomorrow, I think, hold on a sec.” So I hung up the phone and I called my other buddy who I was going to stay with and I was like “yeah, I got a job, I’ll see you on Saturday!” and he was like “okay, cool, that was quick.” And then I called Jonny back and I was like “so I’ll start Tuesday yeah?” and here I am, eighteen months later in Cincinnati. 

That’s wild.

Yeah, but you know me, everything’s a little wild. Nothing’s easy. 

Through that whole time and in the lead-up to moving…it seems like you’ve been able to write a lot and produce a lot of music. Were you in a lull at all prior to moving there and did that sort of reignite you, or is it more of like ‘okay, now that I’m stable a little bit, I can start writing again’?

You know a little bit of my mental health. I have a really complicated brain that has some schizoaffective disorder in it, and some pretty extreme highs and lows and some pretty chronic anxiety and pretty chronic depression. At the time, post Civil/WAR, Covid happened and the world shut down. And I wasn’t doing well. I’m a social butterfly if I have the option, and so being trapped in a one-bedroom apartment is not my idea of a good time. I kinda lost it there for a little bit and I surrendered and said “I think it’s time to get some medicine and try this route.” The issue that we realized was that my personality and my creative side and everything that makes me me is the same part of my brain as the crazy, so the second we started medicating and trying to understand even the schizo thing, and the multiple personalities, we didn’t learn that until I was here.

So the second we started medicating, looking back, all the voices in my head, the chatter got really loud, and we just kept upping it and upping it, and this didn’t work so let’s try this, and up and up and up. I was just a fucking zombie. And that was the me side of life, the goofy, happy side. Like, I slept for four or five months straight. Through Covid. I just slept. I had to get up and work an hour on Zoom, and then I’d go back to bed. So when I lost my corporate, cushy job that I had, when I left California, I lost my insurance so I was just fucking raw-dogging life, and the second the meds left my system, I just vomited six songs. Everything I had been trying to say just came out. I was finishing stuff that I had as glimmers of ideas during Covid. I only really wrote four songs all of Covid. “Better/Worse,” “Methamphetamines,” “Waiting,” which just came out, and a song where I call the Proud Boys a bunch of assholes. That was it. Just four. I had glimmers of like a one-liner or like an idea for a chorus. At the time, we were working with Jon Graber and Reade Wolcott from We Are The Union. We were writing a lot together and working at Jon’s studio, and I didn’t have anything to present them. We never finished anything, because the lights were on but nobody was home. 

Or all the lights were on at the same time.

Haha, yes. We learned that I function better with all the lights on and everyone home. When I left California, I went to Raleigh, and the first song came out two days before I was leaving Raleigh, and it’s the last song on the full-length that’s coming out in the fall. And it was Cecillia’s voice, which was cool. She kind of came back and had this conversation with me again. I was kinda working on “no meds, therapy,” and we realized that Cecillia was actually one of the voices in my head. We went through all my songs, the whole catalog, and we realized that Cecillia shows up in “Secrets” on Untitled. That’s partially her voice and her story. That “I know your secrets…” that correlates to “Sweet Cecillia,” where it says “tell me about your life…” And she’s in the convenience store in “Silver Dollar” in the picture I painted in that world, because the character that “Silver Dollar” is about is another facet of my mind. I thought I wrote this record about characters but I really wrote it about all the unknowns in my head that are now still very unknown but we’re understanding them more. Then, “Better/Worse” I killed Cecillia off and that was the funeral in that song. But really, it was her sobering up in a nutshell. Her voice in my head is “it’s so damn hard to hide behind the scars/I just want a better way to breathe.” I was like “oh fuck!” It was cool, but it took twenty therapy sessions to realize that and understand it. 

When you say “we,” as in, “things that we’re working on…” and putting a name and a diagnosis to the things you were going through, the “we” refers to a therapist, yeah?

Multiple. Multiple therapists. (*both laugh*)

What got you to the point where you were ready to go to therapy? That’s obviously a big thing that especially guys – cis white males…

…with fuckin’ face tattoos!

Exactly! That’s not a thing that “we” do. So what got you into therapy and really diving into that piece?

It was just kinda time. I hate using a vague sentence like “it was time.” I was in therapy as a kid. My parents sent me because they didn’t know what was going on with me, and neither did I. So I went as a kid, and then I stopped and then I went back in high school because, you know, I lived the kind of life where a lot of my friends were dead by 15. Then as I got older, my mother still does not comprehend how many people that I know in my life are dead. At 33. So, childhood trauma, fucked up life, the road, a couple of really shitty toxic relationships. My ex-wife, when we talked about meds, she said “you should do therapy too.” At the time, I was also diving really heavy into Zoom AA because it was quarantine. Zoom AA is amazing. In fact, it’s what I was doing before this, my Monday group. It was like “alright, let’s find a guy, I’ve got good insurance.” I got a guy and we were talking and he was like “alright, this is what I think is wrong with you, and it is not my specialty, but this other guy can help.” 

Good for him for saying that, by the way.

Yeah! I still see him once a month. He’s just my general catch-up guy. I see him once a month and if I’m having a rough go of it, I go every other week. I have three therapists; I have the one that’s just a general catch-up guy, like if there’s anything I’m struggling with, we talk through it. I have one that I see about once a month that is an addiction specialist within the music industry. A buddy of mine in Nashville (connected me) and he sees people for free. He has his own practice and you get an hour a month. He’s real great and I bitch to him about the industry and the struggles that I have navigating it. And then I have one that’s for the heavier sides of my schizoaffective disorder and also disassociative identity disorder, which is essentially multiple personalities. That’s what they used to call it. So we work on that and the schizoaffective and the borderline personality disorder. It’s like bipolar disorder with the depression and the highs and lows and it’s very much a roller coaster. It’s like a light switch. 

Rapid cycling, yup.

Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. I’ll be real stoked on life and then *finger snap* I’ll be in bed for two weeks or shut down, or I do reckless things like quit my job or yell at my boss. And then I have a therapist that I see that we kind of navigate the voices and the personalities in my head and figure out what their story within my mind is and how they correlate. Like, I turned to Sarah, my girlfriend, and I was like “what do you want for dinner?” and in my head I was like “I think we should have Chinese food? No, Thai food. Why do you want Thai food? Do you even like Thai food? Why are you saying Thai food, I don’t even like Thai food, leave me the fuck alone.” That’s what the voices in my head are saying. And then there’s one that says “why don’t you just go do heroin? You want junk food? I’ll give you junk…” So yeah, I have a therapist that I see for that. I haven’t seen him so much lately because we kinda said “alright, let’s give it a month and see how you do. We’ll do a check-in.” I think we’ve done two sessions in three months, compared to doing two a week. We kinda have it under control and I’ve been trying to eliminate as much stress as possible in my life. I’m very much a stress guy. Stress and Catholic guilt make me go crazy, so I kinda have this new rule where if I’m at work and you’re stressing me out more than you pay me hourly, I just leave. My boss gets it. I say “alright, I’m gonna split for the day.” I’ll go in early the next day and get the job done. I work at a print shop in the morning and I work at a bar at night. The bar is pretty easy, but the print shop…if they’re doing dumb shit, I’m like “I’m not getting paid enough to be here right now and to deal with this, so I will see you.”

It’s not an entitlement, I just can’t afford to have my mind go crazy and unleash over bullshit deadlines because you’re selling the company I work for. Like, yeah, sorry, you fired me. If you’re stressing me out, I’m out. I’ll roll with you to the end of the line, but I’m not going further with you. Don’t ask me to pick up a power tool, but I’ll print t-shirts for you. (*both laugh*) As long as I’m being creative, I’m getting better – and I hate saying this, but I’ve been cutting a lot of folks out of my life that I’ve known for a long time. It’s shitty. We’re having adult breakups, because they don’t understand or realize and do these things that like…”I love you, but that thing you do to me every time we talk about life sends me in a spiral for two weeks. I love you, I love your wife, I love your kid, but I’ll catch up with you in six months, bud.” You know? It’s been shitty but needed. I’m not saying that they were toxic or negative, it’s just like I love you but this isn’t healthy for me right now. Just like a relationship that isn’t going great or a band that’s breaking up. “I’ll talk to you in six months and we’ll figure it out. For right now…I’ll see you around.” It’s kind of taking inventory. I’m working on my Fourth and Fifth Step of the program now.

That’s a lot. 

Yeah, I told myself that when I finish the record, I need to do it again, so that’s real fun (*both laugh*)

The Fourth Step is a tough one. It’s not the First Step, but it’s a tough one and it’s one that people want to half-ass, or want to fast-forward to and then realize that they did a half-ass job on the first ones and then you set yourself back further.

Yeah. I’m in the process of a Fourth Step now, and it probably will end up back in heavier therapy to understand the conversations that need to be had but that at the end of the day will better myself and will better my relationships with my friends and my family and the people I love and we’ll grow. That’s it. We’re human beings. We need to grow and we need to become better people and work on what we need to work on. I’m seeing what my flaws are now for the last couple years and I’m trying to fix them. 

You seem like you’re in a good spot. Some of that comes from social media and obviously we’ve texted a bunch and stuff over the years, but you seem like you’re in a good spot. 

Yeah, who would have thought that Kentucky was the place where I’d thrive! (*both laugh*) Fucking Kentucky! I’m from New Jersey. It’s funny…it’s partially the money thing. It’s inexpensive to live here, whereas New York or LA or even Jersey, I was working a sixty-hour week. Like in New York, we were working sixty hours to be able to go drinking one night a week. We could afford like thirty dollars worth of PBRs, right? And we were working just to cover our asses to survive. LA was the same thing. We were working to be able to go out a couple nights a week if we wanted, or go to a show. Out here, it’s like…I’m not rich. I’m making the same money I was making, but the cost of living is so low. Even the cost of car insurance is a hundred dollars cheaper than New York or LA. Everything is substantially cheaper. What’s that Big D song…”will this check support this tour, or will this tour lose my job?” That “LAX” song is so great, that line or that bridge or whatever it is has always been in my head. 

Maybe when I don’t have a kid I have to steer through school. Once she graduates and we can go wherever, there’s been talk about where that wherever is.

She’s what, thirteen now?

Fifteen. So she’s in high school, and college is a-comin’. 

Yeah, you probably won’t be able to afford this part of the world then. I feel like I’ve got a year left before it’s like “fuck, okay, I didn’t buy a house…” Like, you can still buy a house in the hip neighborhoods for like $300,000. 

You can’t even buy a one-bedroom condo here for anything under $550,000. 

Yeah. I think Asbury Park, the going rate for a one-bedroom condo is like $800,000. Like, I could afford ot buy a house here as a fucking barback if I really figured it out. But I’m not. (*both laugh*) Roots don’t exist in my life. 

There was a thing I wanted to talk about, and I’m trying to think of how to even ask it.

Just dive in!

As you know, I tend to ramble, which is really just me processing the question as I’m asking it, but as we were talking before, you mentioned how Cecillia for sure and I’m sure it’s true of other characters too. I’ve always felt – and I think that I’ve told you this before – that you strike me as a very honest songwriter and a lot of your stuff sounds very personal. Except that when we’ve had conversations about this before, you’ve told me that some of the story, for example, of what Civil/WAR was about, and they sound like they could be your stories, but sometimes you’re just telling the stories of other people. Now that you have started to put a name to and work through some of the mental health stuff and created a better picture of what that is, does that change the way that you write and that even how you interpret some of your own songs?

It definitely has provided insight on songs. Civil/WAR also contained a bunch of weird foresight, deja vu shit. A lot of the themes that I was writing about, when I was writing and recording, with the massive changes and then more massive changes…that whole story of that record ended up happening over Covid. That chapter was very weird and amazing but terrible at the same time. Now, I wanted to write the new songs about myself, my thoughts on the world, and tell stories of my friends. So, by the time, this comes out, “Double Nicks” is going to be out. I took my friend Jen Cooley to see Jeff Rosenstock. That’s her band. She’d never seen them, but she loves Jeff and she loved Bomb (The Music Industry) and Antarctigo (Vespucci). And Catbite played. I call them family. I spent years in a van with them. They were playing. (Jen) Cooley drank a large Twisted Tea and she was like “I don’t know if I’m drunk, but this band” – referring to Catbite – “makes me feel like I’m an astronaut.” I was watching her disassociate in the moment. Her eyes went blank, and she was just taking this moment in, and she said “this band makes me feel like an astronaut” and I was like “what the fuck does that mean?” and she said “it means I’ve got the whole world in front of me.” That song is a revisit of something that me and Alex Levine and Tim (Brennan) from the Murphys did a long time ago. The only thing that stayed were the chords and the chorus. It’s the same concept – the chorus is just “let me go, you can find me by your memories.” And I was watching her in this moment and I couldn’t tell if she was disassociating or in love with this and taking it all in, and I started writing this song about that feeling, and relating it to when you’re sitting on your couch daydreaming with your wife or with your partner or whoever, and I was telling the story and that line kept resonating. This feeling that I have when I sit next to whoever I hold close at the time, and knowing they’re fully engulfed in TikTok. The verses are like “there’s bullet shells on the boulevard / I just called to say good night // Now you don’t play games with love no more / But I think about those nights.”

You think about those times when you’re daydreaming about your high school crushes or your Teen Beat, Tiger Beat crushes, whatever. “Those nights and days they seem like they’re impossible to breathe // Cuz she makes me feel like an astronaut with the world in front of me.” It rambles about the shit that goes through your head, and then it goes into “The secrets in these sidewalks…” that’s the bullshit of TikTok, right? And the internet, and disassociating ahead. “They say fear is just a false relief with hopes you just don’t know” that’s just me trying to sound cool. (*both laugh*) “You were tired of daydreaming and I was tired of letting you know,” that’s when you’re on the couch and you’re trying to watch The Last Of Us, don’t check out, right? “Just let me go / you can find me in your memories,” that’s like “alright, I’m gonna go do something else.”

A lot of that now is telling a story of that moment with Jen or…I got in a fight with a guy over the summer, and I’m not proud of it, but he was a racist piece of shit and I heard him running his mouth. I’m an anti-fascist pacifist that has no problem punching a Nazi in the face. Or a racist. Or a bigot. Whatever. We’ll use the blanket term “asshole.” Some dude was running his mouth and I smushed him and threw him to the ground. He was a 40-year-old man, it was his birthday. He said “I’m gonna call the cops” and I’m like “I ain’t afraid of going to jail. Fuck off.” And that turned into the line “I’m not afraid of dying.” I will stand up for my fellow human being. I would tell these stories. And some of them are dumb. Like there’s a line “I just want to get stoned and listen to “Love Song.” My boss was yelling about that he wanted to smoke a bong and listen to “Disintegration.” And he’s a sober guy! He’s like “I don’t know what to think, but I just want to get high and listen to The Cure.”

Some of them are bullshit. Some of them are always bullshit. But some of them, like “Couple Cardinals” on this record, a friend of mine, her grandparents passed, and she was telling me about this swing on their front porch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she sent me this picture of it and I wrote what I saw. The second verse was her driving home from Tulsa to Kentucky. To Cincinnati. And the third verse is that she was telling me that at the funeral, two cardinals showed up. Some of them are just “this is the story. Thank you for telling me about your life, I want to tell the story with your permission.” That’s why the covers of the singles that are coming out are all photographs that I’ve taken of people who I know or moments that correlate to the songs, right? Like “Double Nicks” … I talked about Jamie before, he’s from England and he lives out here. I was on the corner trying to finish that song in my memos, and I was taking pictures to try to paint a picture without words, and I caught Jamie and his partner walking up the street. It all correlates because that was the same day that I really wrapped my head around that song. The imagery of him holding her close and that feeling – because I caught her at a moment where she was looking away – it was that feeling.

The next single is “The Reservoir” and I played at The Merc and there was this older woman sitting at the bar with her feet up drinking a Miller Lite with a straw, and there’s a flier on the wall that has something similar to a word in that song, and it fit. We’re just trying to tell the story of the last eighteen months and the people that I’ve met and the people that I’ve learned. They’re all these little hymns or sonnets and they’re short and sweet. The glory of these short songs is that you write a descriptive line. (*picks up guitar and it’s out of tune so he picks up a different guitar*) “I’ve seen it before a thousand times / the way you light the cigarette inside my mind.” That’s one line of this twelve-liner. “And I’m just hoping for this slim slim chance / that slim slim chance here that you’ll say yes.” Because they’re so short, you have to set it up and then fucking drop a line. There’s no filler. “Drinking coffee while the sun goes down / I said “black two sugars” you threw three dollars down.” “The hardest part about where you’re from / is trying to figure out how fast to run.” There’s no room to fuck around. It’s kind of like, I’m going to tell you this story and I would sit and elaborate and tell you, but the glory of being a folk singer, is only you know what’s real. Embellishing is like half the story. And I try not to embellish at all, to the extent that over the summer I went to a rodeo, just so I could straight up be honest when I said “this is not my first rodeo.” Like, I literally went and spent twenty dollars at the county rodeo just so I could not fucking lie when I said “this isn’t my first rodeo.” I’m a big believer in ‘say what you mean/mean what you say/don’t fuck around.” These songs, I wanted to tell the story of me and the shit going on in my life. Since the last record: marriage, divorce, three massive country moves, I completely wrecked my hand – cut the tendon and the muscle clean off my thumb – I started drinking again. I took a sabbatical, I went to therapy and I thought I was healed and I could have a beer. I am an alcoholic! I cannot have a beer. I went two weeks of ‘responsible drinking’ before I said “I am ready to start being a maniac again!” Went right back to the fucking program. All these things happened. I finally opened up my mind to starting to date again, and the second I started dating, boom, you’re going on tour, I’m done. Meeting people, closing doors, opening doors, it’s a lot.

There was a lot of life in the last eighteen months and I don’t want to write a song that had no meaning to me and that was just a story. That’s why this one is very much no holds. There’s no embellishments. If I mention a name on this record, that person is real. And I said “hey, I’m using your name in a song about something we did!” I finally got to write about my grandfather, which I’d been having trouble with for years. And my old man. I’m telling the story of my family, which I never really did. And where I came from and where I want to fucking go. I think I told you this about Civil/WAR, but I don’t know if there’s going to be another record! I might make one, I might not put it out, but at this point, I don’t fucking know. It’s expensive. It takes a lot of time. You have to go on tour to be able to pay for it and make record labels and everybody happy. I don’t know if I want to fucking do it again, so let’s do this one and see what happens! I write a song every other day, so if it works out, there’s songs! If it doesn’t, there’s going to be some one-minute TikToks with some cool dancing frogs and some light effects…

And that’s how you’ll make it! Twenty years of living in a van and you’ll get famous from TikTok after you quit music.

King Khan and BBQ Show, baby! I read something that he made more money off the one song that became a TikTok than he did his whole career playing music. 

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
asbury park Cincinnati inanna mental health sammy kay

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From The Dying Scene Vault #3: Lucero – Raising Hell for 25 years!

Thanks to everyone who has checked out all of the new content we’ve been cranking out since the relaunch of Dying Scene! We’re stoked to be back, and we’re even more stoked that you’ve been checking in! Because we have an awful lot of material from the old site in the Archive, we thought it […]

Thanks to everyone who has checked out all of the new content we’ve been cranking out since the relaunch of Dying Scene! We’re stoked to be back, and we’re even more stoked that you’ve been checking in! Because we have an awful lot of material from the old site in the Archive, we thought it would be cool to take a look back at some of the posts from our past.

The third installment dates back to 2016. It was initially written as the second-half of an article that was published a few months earlier in which we revisited Lucero’s self-titled debut album which was, at the time, turning 15 years old. Maybe we’ll dust that first half off when the time comes. But so this second half contained a few chats with some others of our favorites in the scene, namely Dave Hause and Frank Turner and Rebuilder’s Sal Medrano. They were all gracious enough to chat with us for a few minutes about Lucero and their legacy, and I think they offered three different and interesting perspectives on what that band has meant to people over the years. Fast forward to present day, and April 13th marks the 25th anniversary of Lucero’s first-ever live performance! We feel extremely lucky to have gotten to cover and more importantly know this crew over the years. Keep scrolling to check out the latest installment of From The DS Vault!

Toward the end of May, Dying Scene published a feature piece marking the fifteenth anniversary of Lucero‘s self-titled debut album. You can read it here if you haven’t done so already. In the course of digging around on the band’s history, however, it dawned on us pretty quickly that any sort of retrospective on Lucero was going to have to dive much deeper than just reexamining their first album. Because, to paraphrase the first couple of paragraphs of that last story, Lucero are, for a great number of people and due to an equally great number of reasons, one of those bands. A band that has a way of not only writing music and lyrics that strike you right in the emotional core, but fundamentally changing

When I started this project a few months ago, I had visions of turning it into a 5,000 word ode to Lucero in my own words. As you’ve probably established, they’re one of those bands for me. The mark of a good storyteller and songwriter is that you are able to paint a picture and strike a nerve that’s so poignant that you put the listener in your shoes, making them feel as though you’re not only singing to them but about them. For myself, like most Lucero fans, the list of songs penned in Ben Nichols’ trademark tone that were probably written precisely about me is at least a couple dozen deep, primarily because the band’s canon is part heartbreaking, part self-deprecating, part cathartic good-time anthem and filled with ever-evolving sonic differences. But let’s be honest; one part-time pseudo-music blogger’s opinion on what he thinks is one of the most important bands in the foundation of this scene isn’t, well…it isn’t that interesting. I mean who do I think I am, Dan Ozzi?

Anyway, with that latter sentiment in mind, we sent out feelers to a couple friends of the scene that we know share our admiration for the ever-changing band of misfits from Memphis, Tennessee. What follows below is, we think, a pretty compelling look at just what makes Lucero Lucero, and what it means to be a fan of the band and of Ben Nichols penchant for songwriting (never that good with words anyway my ass). There are stories of personal encounters (wrapping Christmas presents…drunken tour bus hijinks…etc), there are comparisons to bands like Slayer and NOFX…equal parts entertaining and enlightening and, thanks to the guys we talked to, an incredibly thoughtful read. Many thanks to Frank Turner, Dave Hause, and Rebuilder‘s Sal Medrano for the assists! You can head here to scope out Lucero’s upcoming run of US tour dates, which kicks off next weekend (September 24th) in Boston.

Lucero Q & A with Dave Hause

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): For a band like Lucero to have a home on punk websites or alt-country websites or Americana websites, and for them to feel right at home on all of them, I don’t think would have happened fifteen years ago when that album first came out. And I think that they’re one of the reasons why that sort of happened. There’s no real genre there, but there are a lot of people who dig them and their changing sounds and Ben’s songwriting.

Dave Hause: They certainly, for whatever reason, were regarded as a punk rock band. They made a home in the punk rock scene. I think you can make a good case to say that without them, there isn’t really like a Revival Tour…

 Yeah!

Or whatever that thing in our little world has become. At this point, it’s every swinging dick with a guitar. It’s like punk music thinks it can be Paul Simon… But anyway, I think that they did pave a lot of that road. And I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it’s the gravel in his tone and his sort of approach to songwriting. Maybe it’s the way they looked, so punk rockers could say “hey, this is our band.”

It’s interesting…Lucero is a band that I’ve played a bunch of one-offs with over the years. Like, many, many times. We’d play two shows in a row, or one here and one there. And I’ve been a fan. When the Loved Ones were out touring on the first record, for whatever reason, we ended up going out on a bunch of ska support tours. There were two or three in a row. We opened up for Catch-22 to get somewhere, like the routing was on the way somewhere. We did a run with The Mad Caddies, then we did a run with Less Than Jake. It really wasn’t a great fit, any of those tours. Maybe the Mad Caddies would be the closest thing, but even that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But, typically ska people are open to all kinds of music and they liked our band, so we ended up on some of those tours. But it didn’t necessarily translate to any new fans.

But oddly enough, on a bunch of those tours, Lucero was always in town on the same night. Many, many times we would go see them across town. There was a run at some point where we were in the same town for three or four days. And I would go either get on the guest list or go across town and buy a ticket and see Lucero play. It was really inspiring, because the shows were really small…this was probably in 2006, maybe? And the coolest thing about them then, which is also the coolest thing about them now, is that they always do exactly what it is that they want. They played for as long as they wanted. There wasn’t a lot of…you didn’t get the impression that they were “going for it.” You got the impression that they were fine with it being whatever it is. There were no big banner drops or intros, or all of the rock-and-roll “go for it” posturing, you know. All of that stuff I love, by the way. I think that stuff’s great, and I’m more than happy to involve that in anything I do.

But them, it was really just guys that were legitimately there to play. It seemed like Ben just wanted to play as many of his songs as he could. There’s a culture that seemed to grow and grow and grow. And now, they seem to be like the Slayer of that genre. You don’t really want to open for Lucero! When I first started playing solo, I didn’t have any records out or anything, it was maybe within the first ten shows I ever played. I opened for them in Philly, and it was not fun. It was not easy. There was definitely people who only wanted to see Lucero. But I think a lot of that is because they’ve built their own culture without really looking over their shoulders or involving themselves in things like Twitter…all of the things that you’re “supposed to do” to be successful in this business. They seem to shrug it off and just worry about getting to the show, playing the show, and writing the songs. I think that’s a huge reason why they have such a large, lasting culture.

I’m pretty sure that they didn’t even bring an opener out on the last tour. I think it they just did two full sets, basically. A full acoustic show and a full electric show, if I’m not mistaken.

Yeah, I mean, they’ve got so much material. It’s “A Night With Lucero” now. Even if they brought an opener, who would it be that would compliment the show? It doesn’t even make a whole lot of sense, you know? There’s certainly bands they could open for, I think they went out with Social Distortion and…oh, who was it…The Drive-By Truckers. That all makes sense.

I think they were out with the Dropkick Murphys a year or two ago? Or maybe that was just a one-off in Boston, I forget…

Yeah, that makes sense. But by and large, it’s just “An Evening with Lucero.” It’s a place where you can nestle in and have your whiskey and have a few beers and listen to well-made songs. The record that I love is That Much Further West…which number is that?

Oh god…that’s number three I think.

Yeah, that’s the third one. That’s the one where I think it all kind of came together. And I think they’ve obviously made awesome records since then. …  I’ve crossed paths with them many, many times and I know the guys. In fact, I had a really fun Christmas Eve with Brian a few years back. I was on tour with Cory Branan, and we were doing a co-bill solo tour. We ended up in Memphis on Christmas Eve, and we went over to Brian’s house. And he is the most Christmas guy ever.

Oh really?

Oh, he goes all out. Wrapping and buying tons and tons of gifts. He’s very into Christmas. That’s his thing. He makes no bones about it, he wants his kids to have the classic, movie-style Christmas. I actually helped him wrap presents with his lady and Cory and his fiance at the time, his wife now, on a Christmas Eve…

That’s awesome.

And I mean, my mom, when she was living, was the most Christmas person I’d ever met. She loved it. And he had her beat. He was like Santa himself. It was pretty awesome.

It’s funny to think of a couple hard-partying and hard-drinking rock-and-roll people…obviously Cory’s got his own history too…and the story that comes to mind is wrapping Christmas presents. I think that’s really, really awesome.

Yeah, it was really awesome, and that wasn’t lost on me. Cory, Brian from Lucero and I have all had that follow us; the bottle is certainly brought up pretty quickly in whatever press we’ve done. And maybe it was two days before Christmas, but here we were wrapping away, with bows and glitter, and they were doing Elf On A Shelf, which, I didn’t know what that even was…

Yeah, I’ve only learned about that recently myself.

They were all about it. It was pretty funny. But yeah, my experience with them has been in watching the culture grow and change, and how that whole thing works. I’ve opened for them at various festivals and one-offs over the years and not only watched it grow but gotten to know them and their crew and just watched it develop. It’s wild that it’s already been fifteen years. In some weird way, it doesn’t seem like it’s been fifteen years, but then in some other ways, it feels like they’ve been around for thirty years. I don’t remember them forming and roaring onto the scene ever, you know? They just were there, and everyone was aware of them and excited to go see them. But it wasn’t like “oh, there’s this new band called Lucero…” at any point.

I think it’s cool to talk to songwriters about other songwriters, and about songs in particular that they wish maybe that they had written, either something that sums up what you’ve gone through perfectly, or something that you hear once and it just makes you feel like you wish you could have said that that way. Are there songs from their catalog that are like that? Because I’ll tell you, there are songs of Ben’s that I wish I had written for god’s sake, because they’re pitch-perfect.

Oh yeah. I ended up covering “Joining The Army” for the seven-inch series I did after Resolutions came out. Most of that record, I wish I had written. The weird thing about it is that it’s so distinctly him that at this point, when one of those little jangly  songs comes to me, you really have to watch out to make sure it doesn’t sound like Ben.

Oh really? That’s a conscious thing?

He’s kinda cornered that whole thing. Obviously it’s all in the words and the delivery, that’s the magic. He’s really done that thing so well for so long that you’ve got to be careful that you don’t write a Lucero song. You almost have to leave anything regarding whiskey and women to bed. He’s gonna beat you! (*both laugh*) And it’s funny because there are certain lyrics and certain things that you kind of avoid. You’re like “well, you can’t really say ‘love’ that much in a song, and if you do, it’s got to really count.” And you get into this these weird, nerdy songwriter rules…as if there were rules, there aren’t really but you can kinda delude yourself into saying that…but I think that the odd thing is that he’s kinda like Ryan Adams, in that he’ll go for a riff or a line that is so perfect, and has such common language…there’s no trickery to it. Whereas a guy like Cory (Branan) is well-versed and kind of a Paul Simon-y wordsmith. Or even someone like (Matt) Skiba. They’re obviously really well-read, and that comes out in the lyrics. Isbell is another one like that.

Whereas Ben, I think he can do all that, but he really just knows what his thing is. He knows what people that are involved in the culture want to hear next. And I’m not trying to say that gets caught in a loop at all. But there’s things that Ryan Adams will do, where you think “he said that, and he’s getting away with it, and it’s so perfect.” He’ll do something that will make you think “I can’t get away with that,” but he does. Like, you can’t say “stay with me” over and over and over again. But then Ryan Adams will do it, or Ben will do something like it, and you think “oh, well, of course you can.” You have to sell it in the delivery of the vocal and have the whole song support that idea, even if it’s very simple. And I think that’s part of the magic of what is going on with their whole culture. He’s keeping it intentionally simple, and that really sticks to people’s ribs.

It doesn’t seem … you mention guys like Isbell and Cory I think those guys sing from the heart of course, but I think that they sing from their brains too. They pay very close attention to the way words are structured. And it seems like Ben sings from his gut most of the time.

He is. He and Chuck (Ragan) have that cornered. I think they probably get songs done faster that way. I’ve seen Chuck write, and I’ve seen how quickly it comes out, and how little he allows that inner critic to get involved. Which is great. That’s what allows him to be prolific and allows so much magic to come out. Whereas I think, for me personally, and I know a guy like Cory or maybe Isbell…there is more of like that Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits or Paul Simon thing. I think maybe it all comes more from Dylan, I’m not really sure how it all organizes. But it certainly has more of an intellectual bent to it. Dan Andriano kinda writes more like that too; he wants it to be interesting. I think that’s the difference between a guy like Ryan Adams and a guy like Jason Isbell.

But Ben seems to be more of a writer who’s willing to wear it on his sleeve and get it out. I’m not sure what his process is, but it seems very, very natural. And I think people respond to that. I think, by and large, that I went with that approach more. I wish I was more apt to not sand the table; to just get the table done and get it out, and if you can see a few nicks and hatchet marks in the table, that’s cool! I think Ben does that and Chuck does that, and Tim Barry has that sort of approach. I really admire that about him, and I think that’s where a lot of the magic lies with that band.

Do you think that’s something that they learn, or do you think that’s something that they just have and it is what it is? Like, do you think that guys like Ben or Chuck purposely spend time not trying to overthink things, or do you think it just works that way.

I don’t know. I think my armchair quarterbacking of it is that these guys started doing it really young, when nobody was paying attention. The industry, so to speak, had to come around to what they were doing later as they had developed a pretty sizeable fanbase. And so, by that point, your confidence is pretty high because you know that people are listening and excited about your approach. So you’re not trying to kick the door down, the door’s already kicked down and at that point you’ve already built a culture.

The Bouncing Souls are like that in another way. By the time they were drawing a thousand people, they weren’t a buzz band. They were a band that had been around for a while. And Lucero’s got that going. So I think that getting in his own way was not very natural ever, because by the time people had figured out what they were up to, they had already been doing it for many years. I don’t think one way is right or wrong, I just think that’s what really special about their thing. I certainly don’t want to give people the impression that I think one is better. I think it’s really cool and admirable for somebody to be like “here’s what it is, the song’s done.” Rather than sanding and polishing. You can still get amazing stuff both ways.

It seems like that would be a tough switch to make mid-stream? Like, for somebody like you or Isbell or Cory to put out an album where you almost don’t give a fuck (about the rough edges), that the songs you came up with are what they are with little polish. It seems like that would be a weird thing to do a few albums in.

Yeah, because I think…for me, it’s interesting because when I do tap into the energy where here’s what’s in my heart and it comes out…that’s what people respond to the most. So the cleverness is not necessarily all that celebrated, you know? I think with a guy like Isbell it is because he’s so solid all the way through. But it would be strange to just have a Stones-style record come out for some of those guys. Whereas, with Lucero, you can do that. I’m hoping to do that, actually (*both laugh*). I’ve got so many songs now that I’m less pressured, and I think that once I cultivate whatever this next thing is, there will be a lot more of that coming out. You kinda have to relearn that there is an element where you just get it done and get it out. It’s never going to be perfect. That’s what Noel Gallagher has always said about “Wonderwall”…that he woke up with a hangover and wrote that in like fifteen minutes. If he had known it would be sung in football stadiums for twenty or thirty years, he never would have finished the song.

And the band has really changed so much over the years that there’s almost like three different incarnations of the band, including the horn section more recently. The core four guys have been the same, but they’ve had as many different sounds and styles as anybody over the years. And I think in part it’s because Ben just doesn’t care. He’s going to put out whatever he wants, whether it’s a soul record or whatever.

Yeah, and there’s really not a whole lot of pomp and circumstance about it. They don’t go about getting press that way, like “oh, here’s the big change.” They haven’t done that weird Flaming Lips or Radiohead thing where it’s like “we have our thing, and now we’re shifting it.” Which isn’t to say they haven’t changed; like you said, they’ve added new elements. They’re legit, man. It’s hard to find a better band at that thing in America, or anywhere for that matter. They’re inherently a very American-type of band. That’s why they’re the Slayer. They’re in their own league and there’s really no comparison. They keep doing their own thing, and I don’t think they’ll stop. I can’t really see them going on a planned hiatus, you know? Somewhere in a bar…and at this point it’s much bigger than bars…but somewhere in America tonight, Lucero is playing a show, and that’s a nice thing to know in these ever-changing times.

Lucero Q & A with Frank Turner

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): …Your name has come up in a couple of interviews recently surrounding this project, and somebody even called you like the President of the Lucero Fan Club. (*both laugh*) So whether you know that’s the reputation that you have… How far back do you go with them, really? Do you remember a specific time?

Frank Turner: I go back with them to the Revival Tour in 2008. I first got exposed to them when Chuck Ragan asked me to do four shows on the Revival Tour in 2008. It was the first kind of decent American shows that I really did. They were … before that I’d done (audio cut out) shows, which were fun and great, but there weren’t really as many people there. So Chuck asked me to do these shows, and it’s Chuck, and it’s Tim Barry from Avail who obviously I knew…not personally, but by reputation, and then Ben Nichols from Lucero. I wasn’t really familiar with who Lucero was before that tour, so I showed up and he was kind of the wild card on the tour.

And there’s kind of a story which has become the stuff of legend, which is on that first night of the tour, Ben had broken his leg a couple of days beforehand. And when I’d arrived, Jimmy, the tour manager, had taken me on the bus and shown me where I’d be staying, and it was one of the bottom bunks. He’d forgotten that because Ben had broken his leg, he’d moved from top bunk to bottom bunk and that it was actually Ben’s bunk. So I got super shit-faced that night, and I got into Ben’s bunk before he did. And when Ben came to get into bed, I was in his bed and he was like “goddamn it, there’s a motherfucking Englishman in my bed!” And that was kind of the first bonding moment for me and Ben! (*both laugh*). So that was my introduction to the band. It’s interesting to me to be referred to as the president of the fan club. I can certainly think of people who are more into them than I am. And that’s not to say that I’m not into them. I adore them to death, they’re fucking great.

Have you…a lot of what’s come up is that Lucero obviously aren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what you’d consider a traditional punk band. And yet, they obviously have just as big a following probably of anybody within the punk circuit. They’re a tough band to classify anyway. What do you accredit that to; their ability to fit in in the punk world or the rock world or the Americana world or the folk world…

Well I think that, with all due respect, the whole thing of genre classification is very much more kind of word games for music journalists than actual musicians. And I think that often in life, for some of my favorite bands, that kind of stuff is completely irrelevant. Like, Lucero is just a band making music they want to make. Personally, I would probably describe them as a country punk band, but there’s more to it than that. There’s more earnestness to them than that, but I don’t think anybody in the band could give a fuck. And that’s part of why it’s effortless and why it sounds good. They’re not sitting there trying to triangulate things like a recipe…it’s gotta be two parts this and one part that…they’re just making music that they want to make and it sounds good.

As you listen to their music, do you have specific songs or specific albums that you look to as your favorite? One thing that I always like to songwriters about is other songwriters…are there songs in Ben’s catalog that make you say “fuck, I wish I had written that?”

Oh yeah, very much so. There are tons of Ben’s songs which I slabber over jealously. To sort of continue the story if you like, my next big exposure to Lucero was when we did a long tour in the States in 2010 where The Sleeping Souls and I were first on, Lucero was the main support and Social D were the headliners. That was when I really got to know them collectively as people and as a band. Having already gotten to know Ben and see Ben play every day, that was when I really kind of immersed myself in their work and their oeuvre. My favorite record of theirs, by some distance actually, is 1372 Overton Park, which, coincidentally, was the record they were touring on at that time. Although I sort of have to qualify that.

One of the things about Lucero is there a band whose sound has evolved over time but more to the point, their musicianship has evolved over time. There are songs that I got into hearing them in a live context from touring with them that I adore that I don’t enjoy the recorded versions of as much because they’re from back in the day. For example, “Tears Don’t Matter Much” is one of my favorite songs of theirs but the recorded version of it is nothing next to the live version that they were doing when we were touring with them. They had the horn section and they had Todd on pedal steel and everything. That’s the thing about making the distinction between arrangement and production and songwriting, which are all very different things. Certainly the album Tennessee, which everyone loses their minds over, I think is a good record, but I think Ben’s voice is so much stronger and they’re so much more together as a band now than they were when they made that record.

That’s one of the things that even inspired me to look back at the first album at all. I sort of missed it at the time, I think I knew somebody that had it, and I kinda thought that Ben, at the time, sounded too much like Cobain for my liking, particularly because there were a lot of people that sounded like Cobain at the time. So I just kinda looked past them. They certainly grew on me over time, but then you look at the live album they put out a couple of years ago, where they play a bunch of songs from the first album and they’re almost unidentifiable. They’re all the same songs, “My Best Girl” and “It Gets The Worst At Night” are on there and they’re obviously the same songs, but because of the way that the band has shifted, they’re almost unrecognizable from the original versions.

That’s the thing. This is a weird comparison to make, but they remind me in that sense of NOFX, who are a band who are very much more together musically now, and who have learned to play in the public eye. If you listen to Liberal Animation and S&M Airlines, those records kind of suck to be honest, but they’ve gone on to become one of the best punk bands in the whole world. I’m not sure that Lucero’s aptitude of their improvement is quite so extreme, but it’s definitely the case that they’ve grown up as a band and as musicians in the public eye.

That’s the second time that I’ve had NOFX come up as a comparison for Lucero, and Dave (Hause) called them the Slayer of the whatever their genre is, because they’re a band that you don’t want to have to open for, because of their crowd and that they’re going to blow you off the stage (*both laugh*).

Also, the other thing I would say about that is that Mike from NOFX, who’s a good friend of mine, has actually quite specifically said to me that I’m not going to ask you guys to open for us, because our fans wouldn’t take particularly kindly to you! (*both laugh*)

As you look at Lucero as a band, they’ve never really made major headlines, at least the way that I sort of interpret things. They’ve never really been a major buzz band, but they’ve continued to be one of the more consistently popular touring bands with a consistently growing fan population. Do you attribute that to anything in particular? Whether it’s Ben’s songwriting or their live show or the fact that they don’t really give a fuck about people’s opinions in a lot of ways?

Yeah, there’s also a weird logarithm in the music industry where you are a band who start making waves. And if you don’t if you don’t, then, kind of continue and break through into new areas, in the short term that’s kind of a bad thing because there’s very much a premium on constantly building things and constantly expanding. But in the long run, that kind of trajectory can engender respect and longevity, because you were never a hype band. You were a band who just did what they did, and if people were into it, they were into it, and if they weren’t, they weren’t, and that’s just kind of the end of it. I think that retrospectively, that kind of career trajectory can build respect, which is really kind of cool.

I think that they’ve also been the intro for a lot of people into different styles of music, if that makes sense. I know that coming at it from the punk and rock prisms, they’ve opened a lot of people’s minds to the folk world, to the Americana world, to the country world, and now on the last couple albums to the Memphis soul world.

Yeah, definitely. I feel quite strongly that they, as a band, the whole thing were the punk scene started opening up to country music and folk music, they’re ground zero for that in a way. They were the band that sort of opened an awful lot of people’s minds to that. To a degree, I would include myself into that. Certainly my interest in not so much folk but country…proper country…was piqued by them. They’re a gateway band like that for a lot of people. Having said that, one of the things that I’ll add to that is that one of the things I like about them as a band is that the country thing that they do is not…I think there are a lot of people in the punk scene for whom the country thing has been a bit of an affectation, you know what I mean? You wear a trucker hat and a Merle Haggard t-shirt and you become an alternative within the punk scene. I think that for those guys, especially with Ben, that’s not that at all. That’s genuinely the scene that they’re from that they give a fuck about, and I think that comes across.

I was looking back retrospectively into even the country scene or world or whatever you want to call it, particularly in this country back when Lucero came out and the country world back then was Shania Twain and Garth Brooks and early Dixie Chicks and Faith Hill…that was “country music,” like they say “all hat, no cattle.” That’s exactly what it was…pop music, but maybe with a steel guitar in the back and they wore boots and a big hat, so people called it country.

I think they definitely fit into the tradition of outlaw country in a way that not many people in the modern country world do, you know what I mean? That whole sort of Willie Nelson or even Townes Van Zandt kind of vibe, being outside of whatever Nashville has okayed. I think that that’s a very big part of their self-identity as a band.

Do you think that’s why they’ve carried over as well as they have into the punk world? Because of the outlaw, whiskey-drinking, hard-partying thing that comes along with their music, but that’s genuinely whiskey-drinking and hard-partying, not just written by a Nashville studio, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, sure. And again, I don’t think they’ve done this in a calculated way, but they’re a very real and very accessible band. There’s not many people who are big Lucero fans who haven’t at some point shared a whiskey with Ben Nichols. They’re not “rock stars,’ and I think that reality in what they do certainly comes across.

Lucero Q & A with Sal Medrano (Rebuilder, ex-Dead Ellington)

Editor’s note: Caught up with Sal on fairly short notice after his band, Rebuilder, had played shows in Montreal, Quebec, and Burlington, Vermont, then drove all the way back to Boston in the same day. For time purposes, we just sorta dove right in to Sal’s stories. Enjoy.

Sal Medrano: Steve Theo was doing First Contact on (legendary, now-defunct Boston radio station) WFNX, and he asked me if I wanted to come in and like co-produce or whatever. He had Ben (Nichols) come in and play a few songs when Nobody’s Darlings came out, and they were cool, but I didn’t really know the band before that. But more than the songs, I remember thinking just how genuinely nice he was as a person. Fast-forward two years later, when Virgin (Megastore in Boston) was going out of business, and they had a huge CD sale….it might have been Tower Records, I don’t remember, but I think it was Virgin. Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers had come out, and it was on sale for like five bucks because they were just trying to get rid of everything. And I was like ‘I remember people talking about this band.’ So I bought it and listened to it and immediately gravitated towards it. I’m not really a country fan, but that’s not really country. There’s something else going on there. There’s so many bands that whine about dumb problems or dumb girls and stuff like that. But with Lucero, I believed it more, you know? There’s a genuine feeling of heartbrokenness and loss.

And it wasn’t until I was listening to it and looking through it that I was like “oh, this is that dude Ben that came and played!” And I remember how genuine he was, and I remember thinking “this is real shit, here…this is awesome!” I remember looking at their tour dates, and every time they came to Boston, I was on tour. I could have gotten into the band so long ago, and by then I had fallen in love with that band. I got the back catalog, and every record was that same feeling of, like, this is real. And I remember being on tour with Big D (& The Kids Table), and their tour was around the same time, and every single city we were in, Lucero were there either a day before or a day after. I kept looking to see if I could catch them on tour at all. And I remember listening to the CD in the van all the time, and the other guys weren’t really into it because they hadn’t really heard about them. And I was just like “fuck you guys, this is awesome.”

I remember us being in Texas, like deep in Texas, and we stopped at a restaurant and there was a Taco Bell, and we walked in and it was all cowboy boots and big hats, so we stuck out real bad, you know? So we were sitting there, and I see a bunch of other dudes with tattoos walk in, and they look equally as out of place. And I saw Ben, and I was like ‘that’s Lucero!’ So I walked over, and Ben looked at me really weird, and he was like ‘hey, aren’t you from Boston?’ And I was like, ‘yeah, dude, you guys played my radio show, like, years ago.’ He said ‘yeah, I knew I recognized you!’ So I met the guys, and I told them that I’d literally been listening to the new record every fucking day on tour. That I was on tour selling merch and trying to come out to a show if one would correspond in the same city. And Ben was, like, ‘let me know if you’re gonna come out at some point!’ We just kept missing each other for years, until I finally got to see Lucero play, I think at Middle East (in Cambridge, MA).

And every time I saw Ben, he always remembered me. He’ll say, like, ‘yeah, we ran into each other at the Taco Bell randomly on tour.’ Everyone in that band are just the nicest dudes. They’re just genuine guys. When you see them, they’re just a group of friends making music together. It’s evolved more…their merch girl Mary has become a good friend of mine, I help her with merch and stuff. They’ve met my brother before. It’s one of those things where I run into Ben or Mary, it’s like no time has passed since the last time we saw each other. We just pick up where we left off and stay friends forever. It’s one of those bands that, every record they put out, they’ve stayed in this pocket of not making the same record they’ve always done. A lot of bands, particularly alt-country bands, can kinda do that for a while. But they’ve evolved to where they can almost become a sort of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kind of thing, and still stay with the fact that what he’s singing is genuine and at the core of it is very believable and it’s not a bunch of bullshit. So that’s pretty much my history with Lucero!

That’s pretty awesome, particularly because you wouldn’t assume that he’d remember a chance encounter like that years later…to meet him at a radio station in Boston and then meet him at a Taco Bell in Texas…those two things, you wouldn’t think, would register to most people, let alone somebody who makes his living out on the road and meeting people.

Totally. And I’ve never seen Ben not meet people and hang out after a show. Like Frank Turner, they don’t consider themselves rock stars, you know? And they will get flocked by people and people will annoy the fuck out of them. It’s one of those things that’s good and bad. He’s so personable and their music is so relatable that people feel like the boundaries they have with normal people, people don’t pay attention to. And that sucks. People completely feel like they can just do whatever they want because they feel like they’re just your drinking buddies, because of how relatable Ben is and his music is and the other guys are. That’s the good and the bad. But you know, I’ve never seen them flip out on a fan. I’ve seen them get, like ‘alright dude, you gotta kinda calm down a bit,’ you know? But they’re just legitimate, genuine people. I think that’s what keeps that band around for a very long time, you know?

Yeah, you talk about them being relatable and that being at the core of why they’ve been around for a long time, at some level, fifteen years is kind of a weird time. At some level, it seems like they’ve been around forever, but it also feels like they never really arrived. Like Dave Hause said for this story the other day, there’s something comforting about knowing that somewhere in America on any given night over the last fifteen years, Lucero is probably playing a show. But they never really burst on the scene, they were never really a buzz band. They were never the next big thing, they just always feel like they’ve been around forever.

And I think it’s one of those things where Ben doesn’t write songs to try to be the buzz band or the next best thing. They want their music to be enjoyed by their fans…this is even why they do the Family Picnic all the time, it’s a gathering of friends. When Ben writes songs, it’s never, ever for “let’s write the biggest song ever.” It’s really more like he writes about his experiences, and unfortunately every guy and girl in the world can probably relate to heartbreak like that.

And yet, it doesn’t seem like he’s gone back to the well too many times, you know? Their on 8 or nine albums or whatever it is now, but it doesn’t seem like he’s gone back to the well of women and whiskey too many times, you know? He can still write songs about the same subject matter but still make it sound new. And maybe that’s the changing sound, but lyrically it still sounds new.

The way I look at it, Lucero’s never going to stop playing their old catalog. It’s just that these new songs are going to be sprinkled in throughout the set, so it’ll make the set change up a little bit from being the same thing over and over again.

Were they a gateway band for you, because I know they have been for me, for the alt-country thing or the folk-punk thing or whatever the hell we call it…even Frank Turner said as much the other day, that they were a gateway band for him in terms of the outlaw country thing until he heard them do it. And for a lot of people, that opened a lot of doors to everything else.

It’s one of those things where they really weren’t a gateway band for me to really dive into alt-country. It’s still not one of my favorite things. But, it was like…after that, it did get me into Drag The River. But more than anything what it did was, being in Dead Ellington and writing songs and not really feeling like a competent guitar player and feeling I should just sing…seeing people like Ben and Frank, they’re not the greatest guitar players in the world, but they’re easily able to lead a band. It really kinda made it easy for me to say “fuck it, I’m just going to pick up a guitar and if I’m not awesome at it, I’ll just keep learning, I don’t need to be the greatest guitar player.” Listening to Lucero and Ben and Frank Turner made me think that maybe I can do it.

Because you don’t have to be Jimi Hendrix or, in our world, Brian Baker or somebody. Ben’s been playing the same half-dozen chords (a specific reference to how Ben physically plays; check the tabs) the same way for fifteen years and it always sounds different and it always sounds awesome.

Exactly!

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
25 years dave hause Frank Turner from the vault lucero

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DS Exclusive: Los Angeles pop-punks Moldy Roses premiere music video for new single “Palm Tree Blues”

Dying Scene’s latest exclusive premiere comes from Los Angeles pop-punks Moldy Roses! We’re stoked to debut the music video for their new single “Palm Tree Blues”. It’s the first taste of the band’s upcoming EP Not as Happy as I Thought I’d Be. Check out video below, and stay tuned for more on that EP; […]

Dying Scene’s latest exclusive premiere comes from Los Angeles pop-punks Moldy Roses! We’re stoked to debut the music video for their new single “Palm Tree Blues”. It’s the first taste of the band’s upcoming EP Not as Happy as I Thought I’d Be. Check out video below, and stay tuned for more on that EP; I hear it’s due out this May on Wiretap Records!

Video shot by Jay Braley with Greys Multimedia

Recorded by Steve Ornest at Total Access Recording in Redondo Beach, CA

by Staff Writer Screeching Bottlerocket
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ds exclusive Los Angeles moldy roses pop-punk Wiretap Records

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DS Gallery: Vein, Escuela Grind, Sunami Opposition, Instigate, Hate Still Burns in Hingham, MA (3/26/23)

A sold out show at the Sons of Italy Lodge in Hingham, Massachusetts, on 3/26, played Vein, Escuela Grind, Sunami, Opposition, Instigate, and Hate Still Burns. The rawness performed and crowd was to die for …

A sold out show at the Sons of Italy Lodge in Hingham, Massachusetts, on 3/26, played Vein, Escuela Grind, Sunami, Opposition, Instigate, and Hate Still Burns. The rawness performed and crowd was to die for …

by Staff Writer WSNT
Tags: 
band photos Hardcore massachusetts photo gallery Punk

DS News: Slam Dunk Festival returns for 2023 (The Offspring, Less Than Jake, Flogging Molly and more!)

Finally, it’s time to travel across the pond and hit up some festivals that aren’t in my backyard (nearly, you get the point). This year we’re eyeing up Slam Dunk, and after looking at the lineup, we are hyped to see so many great bands in one day. Look at the poster below, and if […]

Finally, it’s time to travel across the pond and hit up some festivals that aren’t in my backyard (nearly, you get the point). This year we’re eyeing up Slam Dunk, and after looking at the lineup, we are hyped to see so many great bands in one day. Look at the poster below, and if you’re already going, we look forward to seeing you!

You can buy tickets here

by Staff Writer Karina Rae Selvig
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emo england Punk Rock Slamdunk

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DS Show Review & Gallery: The Rise Against Residency, with The Smoking Popes, Kali Masi (Chicago, 03.30.2023 – 04.01.2023)

Chicago punk legends Rise Against took over Metro Chicago recently, playing three completely unique set lists on three nights. The iconic Chicago venue hosted Rise Against – Alive & Well: The Metro Residency as the concert hall celebrates its 40th anniversary. I had the chance to witness this unique weekend, presented by Q101 FM, all […]

Chicago punk legends Rise Against took over Metro Chicago recently, playing three completely unique set lists on three nights. The iconic Chicago venue hosted Rise Against – Alive & Well: The Metro Residency as the concert hall celebrates its 40th anniversary. I had the chance to witness this unique weekend, presented by Q101 FM, all three nights. The first night, with The Bollweevils opening ahead of the band’s new record release, I was there to hang with and support good friends. Admittedly, it felt a little strange, not having my camera gear and not spending time in the photo pit, yet it was a fun time. The crowd, though heavily represented by hometown fans, also saw many traveling from all over the country and even from the United Kingdom. Oh, and a very special event took place under the Metro marquee for two RA fans. More on that in a bit.

Thursday Night

Rise Against opened the weekend on the same day as the first-ever criminal indictment of a former President occurred. There were more than a few “Happy Indictment Day!” exclamations heard both outside and inside the venue. For some, it felt appropriate, on such a precedent-setting day, that the band they were seeing is known for its socially conscious lyrics and offstage activism. Indeed, rather than opening music, the band chose to play an audio clip from one of my longtime top 5 films. It was “Howard Beale”‘s (portrayed by Peter Finch who won a posthumous Oscar for this leading performance) iconic “I am as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” speech from the classic, multi-Oscar winning film, Network. It was the whole speech, and it was brilliant.

The Rise Against residency was a sort of retrospective. Each night had a totally unique set list sans any repeats over the course of the weekend. Unlike the common practice of a band playing a different one of its albums start to finish each night of a multi-night stand, Rise Against mixed up songs from different records. Surely this was highly appreciated by those who were present for all, or at least more than one, of the nights.

Night one’s set list included, “Tragedy + Time,” “Broken Dreams, Inc.,” “Bridges,” “Paper Wings,” and “Entertainment.” Two notes on this song lineup: this was the live debut performance of “Bridges,” and the first time they have played “Entertainment” live in about a dozen years. As with the other two nights, this was an expectedly strong evening of music. Just as the film “Network” and “Howard Beale”‘s rallying cry are still relevant decades on, so too is Rise Against’s music. I don’t see any of these changing in the near future.

Supporting act on night one, The Bollweevils, jump-started the weekend in a big way. As in a big jump from the Punk Roc Doc, Dr. Daryl Wilson. Wilson has been catching major air since the formation of the band decades ago. His bandmates, guitarist Ken Weevil, a middle school teacher/former middle school principal, and “the double Petes”, bassist Peter Mittler, back from Florida for this performance, and drummer Pete Mumford, on the backbeat, delivered a boisterous performance. The set included  “Predisposition,” “Fencesitter,” “Peggy Sue,” “Bottomless Pit,” and “Cutting Solution.” The band’s new album, Essential off of Red Scare Industries, is set to be released on May 5, 2023. It features backing vocals by “the 5th Bollweevil,” Joe Mizzi of The Mizzerables, who also provides live bass duties when Mittler is not available. The release takes place just weeks before the band heads to Pouzza Fest. 2023 is shaping up to be a great year for The Bollweevils. I’m all here for it.

Friday Night

Night two also started with an audio clip, from the HBO, Aaron Sorkin created series, “The Newsroom.” In this case the oft shared scene whereas series lead Jeff Daniels, as news anchor “Will McAvoy” responds to a college student’s question of what makes the US the greatest country in the world.

Tim McIlrath, Joe Principe, Brandon Barnes, and Zach Blair throw emotional punches with their songs, and this was on full display throughout the Metro residency. While too often political punk bands can seem didactic, Rise Against never does. Instead, fans are fully engaged to the message of the lyrics, and how said message is being delivered intoxicatingly via the music.

As with the first night, RA performed some songs which have not been played live in years or never played live prior to this. Included in the former category were “My Life Inside Your Heart,” and “Torches.” It had been roughly 18 and 8 years respectively since the songs were last performed live. “About Damn Time,” and “Whereabouts Unknown,” were live debuts. The set also included “Black Masks & Gasoline,” “Survivor Guilt,” “The Great Die-Off,” and “State of the Union.”

The Smoking Popes opened night 2 with a bouncy and satisfying set. The first tune of the night was the one often, but not always played first, “Simmer Down.” It was followed by tunes including “Let’s Hear It For Love,” “Rubella,” “Megan,” and “Amanda My Love.” The Smoking Popes, consisting o the brothers Caterer (Josh Caterer, Eli Dixon Caterer, and Matt Caterer), and Mike Felumlee, per usual, were the charismatic and unusually fun punk band its fans love so much. This is at least my second time in the last 6 months or so documenting the band for Dying Scene. Hopefully it won’t the last before 2024.

Saturday Night

Admittedly, if Rise Against played an audio clip before its Saturday night set, I did not catch it. However, the band continued another pattern established during the first two nights with a set list including the live debuts of “The Black Market,” “Sudden Urge,” “Endgame,” “Lanterns,” and “Escape Artists.” Rise Against also performed “Anywhere But Here” for the first time since 2006, “Rumors of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” for the first time since 2007, and “From Heads Unworthy,” for the first time since 2011. If the crowd’s electric reaction to these songs is any indication, perhaps the bands will consider making some, if not all, at least semi-regulars on its future set lists. RA rounded out the setlist with “Chamber The Cartridge,” “Heaven Knows,” and “Drones.” This might have been an exhausting weekend for the crowd, the band, and all others involved, yet it was also an immensely fun one.

Kali Masi was the youngest of the bands playing on this bill, with its debut album released in 2017. Yet the members of this dynamic band performed with confident abandon. Sam Porter on guitar and lead vocals, drummer John Garrison, bass player/vocals Adam Romero, and Tim Roark is on guitar/vocals tore through their set, which included “Paint me Jade,” ”Sputter,” “Some Friends,” “Trophy Deer,” “Recurring (I),” and “The Stray.”

The band will soonish be returning to the Wrigleyville area of Clark St. when they play at the Metro’s neighbor, GMan Tavern in June. I’d advise you to be there if you can. As good as Kali Masi are presently, there is ample evidence that they will only get better and better.

Now to that special moment. Rise Against super fans Nick Novak and his long-time girlfriend, Lisa Bulwan, had plans to attend the Saturday night show. What Lisa did not know was that Nick had a ring on him and was planning to propose before doors opened. Full disclosure part 1: Nick hired me to take photos of the event without giving away the surprise. Careful planning allowed that to happen and Lisa, of course, said yes. Fans lined up the block exploded into cheers. Full Disclosure part 2: I clued those fans on to what was about to happen. Hey, for this one moment I was there, not as a photojournalist, but as a hired photographer. Letting others know what was about to go down was part of doing the job well! Congratulations Nick and Lisa, from all of us at Dying Scene!

Please see below for more photos!

  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Rise Against: Night Two
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Smoking Popes
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Rise Against: Night Three
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
  • Kali Masi
by Staff Writer MerGold
Tags: 
chicago kali masi Metro Chicago Midwestern Punk Rise Against

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DS Interview: Catching up with Australia’s worst-kept secret, Slowly Slowly

DS Interview: Catching up with Australia’s worst-kept secret, Slowly Slowly

For those wondering how a band like Slowly Slowly made their way to Dyingscene.com, I would like to tell you to sit down and stfu. I’d like to introduce you to Australia’s best-hidden gem and, in my opinion, worst-kept secret. They let us know about their snakes and crazy spiders. But they dropped the ball […]

For those wondering how a band like Slowly Slowly made their way to Dyingscene.com, I would like to tell you to sit down and stfu.

I’d like to introduce you to Australia’s best-hidden gem and, in my opinion, worst-kept secret. They let us know about their snakes and crazy spiders. But they dropped the ball on this band. What a shame.

So how do I know about them? Well, for those wondering. I was born in Brisbane, QLD, Australia. But my family moved to Denmark when I was a child, but my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins remained in Australia. But during 2021, between the albums St. Leonards and Race Car Blues, I stumbled upon them during a midnight catch-up with my aunt in Australia and fell head over heels for their sound.

But in November of ’22, Slowly Slowly released their fourth album Daisy Chain. So, once again, as it’s become a daily thing, I decided to annoy to living shit out of Jay, and he allowed me to interview the band. So here’s Ben and I talk a bunch of things! First, I’d like to thank Ben for being a fantastic friend and vibing with me at 1 am. And for keeping me company when I miss home the most.

by Staff Writer Karina Rae Selvig
Tags: 
australia Interview pop-punk slowlyslowly

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DS Album Review: Codefendants – “This Is Crime Wave”

Fat Mike is back with a new band called Codefendants, and they have released a debut album that might be one of the sickest debut albums this year; it’s called This Is Crime Wave, and funny enough, Crime Wave is the genre that’s made up in the minds of Fat Mike, Sam King from Get […]

Fat Mike is back with a new band called Codefendants, and they have released a debut album that might be one of the sickest debut albums this year; it’s called This Is Crime Wave, and funny enough, Crime Wave is the genre that’s made up in the minds of Fat Mike, Sam King from Get Dead, and rapper Ceschi Ramos. So it’s hip-hop, new wave, punk? There are some acoustic guitars and THE BEATLES! Trumpets? It’s everything and awesome. But let’s move on to the album.

Opening the album “Def Cons,” which isn’t a good song by any means. It’s uneven and doesn’t know what it’s doing. Ramos delivers on the raps, but it’s not a memorable song. This is odd because “Abscessed” featuring Onry Ozzborne and Get Dead, make room for each genre on this track; there’s no mismatch where the punk falls behind and sounds like it was added to justify the punk in the new made-up genre. Instead, the punk is heard loud and clear, with the raps coming faster than a groupie in the 70s. This song has everything I would want in a song when I hear punk, hip-hop, and new-age hip-hop mashed together in a blender. This song is the summer anthem for 2023. 

The D.O.C., yes, the actual D.O.C., a legend, is featured on the “Fast Ones,” and this song marks his return after nearly 20 years out of the game. The fact this legend came out of retirement to get involved in this song should be acknowledged because this is important for everyone. To those who were around in the 90s for hip-hop, I would say that this song sounds influenced by it but met with an updated sound that reminds me of the sound Lil´ Dicky spits out in his songs. 

“The last person I dated accused me of trauma dumping / and they were absolutely right” opening lyrics to “Disaster Scenes” featuring Stacy Dee from Bad Cop/Bad Cop is a strong song. Stacy Dee puts on a vulnerable display and opens up about the abuse she experienced early in her childhood. On “Suckers,” we finally get some trumpets and a somewhat jazz vibe over it. The pop-punk sound on “Brutiful” – yes, clever title – shows that a whole song doesn’t need one or the other but that there’s a natural progression from a Celtic folk vibe to a chorus with pop-punk chords throughout it. 

The album itself has minor flaws, but along the way, those flaws turn out to be what makes the album complete. The lyrics and the different instrumental arrangements we hear on the album work. And for a debut album, it can be worrying if they can keep the level of rawness throughout their following albums if they ever come. The themes that they tackle on the album; child abuse, trauma dumping, gang violence, racism, violence, and many more, definitely seems to show another layer of Fat Mike, but not surprising Sam King or Ceschi Ramos, who has had a first-hand experience with drugs and the prison system. This album highlights much darkness and blurs the line on what is genre-defying. This Is Crime Wave is raw and shouldn’t be taken lightly. I am pleased with the turnout, and all I have left to say is; I better wipe my fucking face (see what I did there?)

It gets 4 stars out of five from me.
I recommend the following songs: Abscessed, Fast Ones, Suicide By Pigs (It’s funny but not funny, you know?), Disaster Scenes, Coda-Fendants

by Staff Writer Karina Rae Selvig
Tags: 
codefendants hip-hop punk Punk This is crime wave

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DS Exclusive Video Premiere: Voice of Addiction – “Shinigami”

Chicago political punks, Voice of Addiction just dropped (do the hip kids still say that?) a new video for the single “Shinigami” from their phenomenal 2022 LP Divided States. But, here’s the really cool news, they wanted DS fans to get a sneak peek before the rest of the world! So, peek away, comrades! *Also, […]

Chicago political punks, Voice of Addiction just dropped (do the hip kids still say that?) a new video for the single “Shinigami” from their phenomenal 2022 LP Divided States. But, here’s the really cool news, they wanted DS fans to get a sneak peek before the rest of the world! So, peek away, comrades!

*Also, the lads are rounding out their current US Tour down in the Southeast (see their Facebook page for details), so if you’re in that area, go see ’em and take an extra pair of socks for Ian!

by Staff Writer AnarchoPunk.LA
Tags: 
chicago Illinois melodic punk Political Punk VOA

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Dying Scene Album Review: Wolves & Wolves & Wolves & Wolves – “cursecursecurse”

How can anyone truly believe the statement “rock music is dead,” especially after all of the music that has been released within the past decade. Music is continuously evolving, despite the criticism and really at no surprise to the people who are most passionate about it. Take a close look at the genre of punk […]

How can anyone truly believe the statement “rock music is dead,” especially after all of the music that has been released within the past decade. Music is continuously evolving, despite the criticism and really at no surprise to the people who are most passionate about it. Take a close look at the genre of punk rock.

Arguably one of the most diverse genres of music out there, punk rock has also evolved into something more meaningful and emotional than the original ideas of “going against the establishment” or “teenage angst.” Although those ideas still can be found within punk, the music has taken on a completely different attitude through new bands and new sub genres.

Growing up in the late ’90s and early 2000s, I was introduced to skate punk and ska and pop punk. Bands like Green Day, MxPx, Blink 182, Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, New Found Glory, The Offspring and NOFX is what I knew as punk rock. Little did I know that there was so much more out there and that in the years to come the genre would evolve. It wasn’t until college that I discovered bands like AFI, Silverstein, Alkaline Trio, Hot Water Music, Taking Back Sunday, and legends The Bouncing Souls. These bands weren’t just punk bands, they had a different style and sound to them. They would start the evolving of punk into more than just a skate punk or pop punk sound.

While I could potentially write on and on about the further sub genres punk has evolved into over the years, I don’t want to steer this ship around the entire world in one album review. I mentioned the band Hot Water Music in the previous paragraph, let’s take a closer look at their impact on punk rock and the influence they have had on a lot of the bands I listen to today. Hot Water Music is known for their raw and gritty vocals, chugging guitar riffs and catchy but compelling songs that leave the listener feeling something special. I think this band and their sound helped punk develop into post-punk and alternative rock in some aspects. My opinion of course is subjective, and I’m sure there are a lot of other bands who have taken this same path, but HWM was the first band that I listened to that exposed me to this kind of punk rock.

It is now 2023. I am 40 years old. While I do still enjoy the punk I grew up listening to, I also have an admiration, respect and passion for other bands that likely are in the same sub genre as Hot Water Music. One such band is wolves & wolves & wolves & wolves. This is a band I actually discovered thanks to the wonderful music sharing website called Bandcamp (which I think is one of the Internet’s greatest creations). While wolves & wolves & wolves & wolves probably was influenced by and shares some of the same fans as Hot Water Music, they have carved their own path through hard work and dedication and making a name for themselves through their live shows. The Winston Salem, North Carolina based post-punk act has released two full length albums over the course of the past nine years.

“The Cross and the Switchblade” is the title of the band’s second album, which was released from Wiretap Records in 2016. That’s the album that hooked me on these guys. So much energy, emotion, and captivation in ten songs that I knew this band was going to leave a positive mark on my life. So much so that I’ve listened to the record with a good friend countless times and we couldn’t believe what we were hearing. Naturally, when I found out a new album was coming, I jumped at the opportunity to give it a review.

The third full length album by wolves & wolves & wolves & wolves, “cursecursecurse,” will be released Friday April 7 through the label A-F Records here in the United States, and through Gunner Records in Europe. I did have a chance to speak to Brian Woodall, the voice and songwriter of the band and it seems the album title is fitting after hearing about the process of making the album. “The recording took a while. We started tracking drums Summer of 2018 before we went on our last European tour,” states Woodall, who went into some detail about the band’s struggles between 2018 and 2019. “Then Covid happened. If it hadn’t, Wolves x4 probably would have broken up, but it gave me some time to reflect and find the love for music that started to dull. I ended up finishing the recording in 2021 at the Sandwich Shoppe in Oxford, N.C,” this quote from Woodall gave me goosebumps. Dedication. Determination. We have a brand new wolves & wolves & wolves & wolves album.

You can hear the effort that was put into “cursecursecurse” in the track “Oh, Catalonia,” a three minute and twenty-seven second ode to overcoming adversity and a fist pumping ripper of a track that will leave you smiling from ear to ear after every listen. Is it my favorite track on the album? Damn, that’s a tough question. It’s a tough question because the entire album, comprised of 9 songs, is absolutely something special and will probably wear the needle on my turntable out when I get the vinyl. Another standout track “Excommunicate Me” is full of high energy and raw vocals. The song blares as an exclamation from singer Brian Woodall, and once it’s over you’ll want to play it again. Don’t sleep on “Empires,” this is the anthem for those of you who are ready to get past all this bullshit we’ve gone through over the past three years. I have to mention the opening track, “Hey Run Away” because not very often does the first song set the tone for the rest of the album and leave such an impact that you can’t wait to hear what’s next. The vocals, slamming guitars and that unforgettable chorus, this is where “cursecursecurse” shines and will be on everyone’s best albums of 2023 list. Folks, it’s only April and we have been gifted with some fantastic music. Order a copy of the vinyl from A-F Records here. Your record player will thank you for it.

by Staff Writer PunkJunkie
Tags: 
A-F Records cursecursecurse post-punk Punk Rock

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