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DS Interview: Jesse and Justin Bivona on The Interrupters’ new album, “In The Wild”

The fourth album can be a bit of a curious point on a band’s timeline. The dreaded “sophomore slump” has long been in the rearview, and generally by the time the fourth album roles around, a band is at or around the decade mark in their career. It can be a time of transition; a […]

The fourth album can be a bit of a curious point on a band’s timeline. The dreaded “sophomore slump” has long been in the rearview, and generally by the time the fourth album roles around, a band is at or around the decade mark in their career. It can be a time of transition; a time to build off some old influences and also to incorporate new feelings and directions out of a desire to keep from getting stale or repetitive. Sometimes, the results can be ground-breaking, at least sonically if not always commercially or critically. Ignorance Is Bliss by Face To Face, for example. Darkness On The Edge Of Town. No Code. Sandinista!. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Life Won’t Wait. Question The Answers. ZOSO, or however that translate without the ability to add runes to the text here. So on and so forth. 

And so here we find The Interrupters. The widely beloved LA-based ska punk band are back with In The Wild, due out August 5th on Hellcat Records. Recorded during the forced doldrums that were the shutdown of the last couple of years, the album finds the band (which surpassed the decade mark during said shutdown) building on the high-energy, rock-steady core that they’ve built over the course of three records and hundreds of shows, revealing a work that is their most varied, most introspective, and, subsequently, their best effort to date. 

We caught up with the band’s air-tight rhythm section, sensational twin brothers Jesse (drums) and Justin (bass) Bivona to talk about the album’s recording and its personal nature. While much of the process for In The Wild was similar to the band’s previous output, there were a few marked differences that shaped the direction of what was to come. As Jesse explains the fourth album cycle, “one of our little press points about this record and relating it to the previous records is that the first album is kind of like a first date, where you just talk about surface-level things, nothing too crazy. Second album, you start to let them know a little more about you. Third album, you’re kinda getting into the nitty-gritty. Fourth album, all the baggage is out, the drama is revealed, all the secrets are out.”

The secrets are indeed out in more ways than one on In The Wild. It is by far the band’s most personal album to date, and it’s their most sonically diverse album to date, and both of those things are by design. Thinking back to the early days of the band, specifically around the recording of the band’s self-titled 2014 debut record, Jesse describes that the band was “just trying to keep it simple. We weren’t trying to reinvent anything, we were just trying to be a straight-ahead ska-punk band.” The more cohesive the band god, the more layered and textured the sound became, and the more outside influences began to creep in. While still very much an Interrupters record, In The Wild showcases sounds that include traditional reggae and rock steady and 2-tone and 80s punk rock and ‘50s doo-wop. The album closes with “Alien,” which centers around Aimee’s soaring, heartfelt vocals and is, as Jesse points out, “the first Interrupters song with no guitar on it!”

The seeds of In The Wild were initially sown in the early days of the pandemic shut down two years ago. The very early days. In fact, quite literally, the first day. The band had taken a few weeks off after wrapping a lengthy touring cycle for their 2017 album Fight The Good Fight – an album that continued the band’s launch into a higher stratosphere based in part on the crossover success of the single “She’s Kerosene” – in February, and was planning to return to Tim Armstrong’s studio in early March to begin work on album four. That plan was foiled just as it was beginning. “Day one of us going into the studio,” explains bass player Justin Bivona, “was that day where the NBA was canceling, and Tom Hanks had Covid…” After a few ‘wait and see’ days, recording plans – and, frankly, most of real life – got put on pause indefinitely, and the band retreated to what they affectionately refer to as The Compound; Justin and Jesse live in one house while the twins’ bandmates and, more importantly, older brother and sister-in-law Kevin and Aimee, live in the house next door. The two houses share a driveway and, more importantly, a garage, the latter of which would come in handy in a pandemic shutdown.

After some time spent doing what the rest of us did – binge-watching TV shows and movies, going for walks, and reflecting on their lives-to-date. As Justin tells it, that process “Aimee got to do a lot of looking back on her past and realized there was a lot of stuff she hadn’t written songs about.” And so even though the band had plenty of material they were going to work on in the studio at the beginning of 2020, writing eventually continued. 

So, too, did recording, though the band didn’t have to go far. “At some point during (quarantine),” explains Justin, “Kevin was like “we need to do this record at our house, in our garage.” It’s a tiny 10×20 room that we would practice in, but it wasn’t treated, there wasn’t any studio equipment. So we spent maybe a month building things. Me and Jesse with power tools building racks to put gear in and tabletops and stuff. Pretty much “tiny housing” the studio to make every part of it work.”

This created the freedom to work together at their own pace. There’s no need to reserve studio time or book an engineer when you can do it all, effectively, in your collective backyard. That moved Kevin, the elder statesman of the Bivona brothers, officially into the producer’s seat. Tim Armstrong, who both oversees Hellcat Records and executive produced the first three Interrupters records, “told (Kevin) to just grab the reins and take off” says Justin, with Jesse quick to point out that their big brother has “always kinda been the shadow producer of everything in a sense.”

And while it may seem daunting to have your bandmate – and older brother, steering the ship, the timeline and the setting and their relationship made for a smooth, collaborative effort. “If we’re working on something and it’s not working,” explains Jesse, “all four of us can be like ‘well, what if we try this, or what if we try this,’…there are no bad ideas until you try (something and realize it’s bad.” “It was just us as a cohesive band, the four of us, working out songs and writing songs, and it really informed the process,” adds Justin. “It was the best thing we’ve ever done.”

The more that writing and recording continued, the more that the direction of the album revealed itself. “Aimee realized that the record was pretty much her life story,” says Jesse, adding “so the songs that didn’t fit with that theme we pushed aside and focused on the ones that told her story the way she wanted to tell it.” Because the lyrics bare so much of Aimee’s past, the task of recording vocals involved being in the right headspace to tackle some of the memories that were evoked. “Doing on the property,” reveals Justin, “it allowed Aimee the freedom to record vocals whenever she felt emotionally connected enough to a song” to power through it, a freedom that proved vital as it is apparent on first listen that Aimee dug deep lyrically, reflecting on some of the messier parts other upbringing and past relationships and grief and loss and trauma and mental health struggles that she has worked on over the years.

The added time and convenience of the recording process allowed the band to work through multiple versions of songs, in order to make sure that the emotion of the music matched the emotion of the lyrics. “There are a couple songs on this record where they were recorded one way and pretty much done,” explains Justin, “but then it wasn’t just fitting in with the rest of it when we would get back there. I think specifically “Love Never Dies” had a totally different feel, it was more of a rock/reggae Clash-y song. And it was dope, but it wasn’t fitting in with everything.” Jesse elaborates: “(Kevin) said “Jesse, play a one drop” so I played this one drop, and then he said “Justin, play this bass line” (*mimics bassline*). And then he said “okay, watch” and he just started skanking, and then he started singing this melody the way that it is now, and we played that for like four bars and just stopped. We were like “yeah, that’s it! Now we’re on to something!”

The result is one of the more straight-forward reggae songs in the Interrupters’ catalog to date. It also features a guest appearance from The Skints, the UK reggae punk band who recently wrapped a successful run opening a bunch of US shows for The Interrupters and Flogging Molly. The Skints are just one of an impressive handful of guest starts that found their collective way onto In The Wild; Tim Armstrong lends his vocal talents to a track, as per usual, but so too do Rhoda from The Bodysnatchers and Alex and Greg from third-wave ska legends Hepcat. The latter recording session occurred at Armstrong’s studio once the initial Covid waves had subsided and society started to open up again. As Jesse tells it, “it was a magical session to be a part of.” Justin explains “Greg and Alex came in and…we wanted them on the song (“Burdens”), but we didn’t really have the part. We went in with them and showed them the song and within a minute the two of them are sitting there writing the parts and figuring it out together. It was so cool to see because they’re literally our favorite ska band.”

It was yet another moment in a decade-long journey that has found the foursome feeling eternally grateful for the opportunities they’ve been presented; playing with longtime idols like Rancid and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Joan Jett and Green Day, playing legendary venues, getting introduced by RuPaul on the Jimmy Kimmel show (as was the case the night before we spoke). Case-in-point: the three Bivona brothers served as the backing band for The Specials during a fundraiser event in Los Angeles back in February, a mind-blowing moment that got overshadowed by the fact that a mini Operation Ivy reunion brokeout pre-set as Jesse Michaels and Tim Armstrong joined for a cover of the Op Ivy classic “Sound System,” an event that damn near broke the punk rock internet. The gravity of those situations is not lost on the band, by any stretch. “The moment that starts getting old is the moment that you’ve gotta start packing it in and figuring out what 9-to-5 (job) you want,” says Jesse. 

Keep scrolling to read our full Q&A with the Bivona twins, Jesse and Justin. Pre-orders for In The Wild are still available here. And check out the full list of upcoming Interrupters tour dates, including their European run and leg 2 of the US dates with Flogging Molly, right here.

(*Editor’s note: The text below has been slightly edited and condensed for content and clarity.*)

JS: First and foremost, congratulations on another successful appearance on Kimmel!

Justin: Thank you!

JS: So this is probably then the second coolest thing you’ve done this week…

(*all laugh*)

Justin: For real though, it is good to see your face!

JS: Is that the third time now on Kimmel?

Jesse: Nope, two! Four years ago we did “She’s Kerosene.”

Justin: Almost four years ago to the day. It was like July 26th.

JS: Man, how time has flown. The Kimmel show seems like it’s a cool one to do because the audience is right there, versus some of the other late-night shows where they’re sitting back and you’re kinda playing to the cameras as much as anything. That seems like a cool one.

Jesse: Yeah, they make it seem like it’s an indoor club show, 

Justin: Which is really cool.

Jesse: It’s really cool. And the whole staff and crew there is excellent. They’re very nice. We had a GOOD time yesterday.

JS: And you got to hang with RuPaul, that’s pretty cool!

Justin: He’s super nice too!

Jesse: So nice!

Justin: An old punk rocker and a big ska fan too!

JS: I had no idea!

Jesse: Yeah, he played in a punk band in like the early 80s.

Justin: He loved The Selecter and The Specials.

JS: So then he’s totally going to dig your music, especially the new album!

Justin: He gave us the best soundbite! He just said “It’s time for some ska music, bitches!”

(*all laugh*)

Jesse: We were on stage and just looked at each other like “WHOA!” (*all laugh*)

JS: Does that stuff ever get old? And I know I probably know the answer to that question, and actually I think I’ve asked Kevin and Aimee that sort of stuff before, but playing in massive crowds, playing in places like Fenway Park, playing for RuPaul on the Kimmel show…does that stuff ever get old?

Jesse: Never.

Justin: No.

JS: I feel like I knew that was the answer…

Jesse: The moment that starts getting old is the moment that you’ve gotta start packing it in and figuring out what 9-to-5 you want.

JS: When I started doing this Zoom interview thing during the early days of Covid, it was really to sort of check in with people. I was used to doing more phone interviews and then I’d type them up and write a story, but A) the website crashed so there was no publish things anymore for a while, but I liked the idea of actually chatting with people when they were in quarantine and we were in quarantine and you could see each other and stay connected. We’ve been in this weird situation for so long now that music that came out of quarantine is coming out commercially. That’s sort of the long way of getting into In The Wild, which is a really, really, really great album and I know I say that about each one that you guys put out, but the bar just keeps getting raised. So let’s talk about that process. When during lockdown did you realize “well, we’re not going to be out on the road for a while, and we’re not going to be able to go into a studio for a while, so fuck it, let’s do it ourselves”?

Jesse: Well…

Justin: Here’s the thing. We finished the Fight The Good Fight album cycle tour in February of 2020. We ended in the UK with two amazing shows in London. The plan was to finish that and go home. Kev and Aimee were going to start writing for a couple weeks, and then we were going to go into the studio in March. Day, like, one of us going into the studio to record, was that day where like the NBA is canceling and Tom Hanks has Covid.

JS: Right! That’s when we really knew the world was ending!

Justin: Yeah! So we were going to go back in the next day, but everything started getting canceled, so we put the weekend on hold and then the next week on hold, and then the month, and everything just got shelved. So we were sitting at home, and couldn’t really do what our plan was. But it was nice at the same time, because we had just kept rolling for ⅞ years. There was no break. So we finally got to sit back and wait a little bit. We did the live record to give something to the fans during the break, and with that we did the documentary, This Is My Family, and put it all together as like a cohesive concert film. Kinda while we were doing that, we got to reflect on our past and Aimee got to do a lot of looking back on her past and realized there was a lot of stuff she hadn’t written songs about. At some point in the middle of that, Kevin was like “we need to do this record at our house, in our garage.” It’s a tiny 10×20 room that we would practice in, but it wasn’t treated, there wasn’t any studio equipment. So we spent maybe a month building things. Me and Jesse with power tools building racks to put gear in and tabletops and stuff. Pretty much “tiny housing” the studio to make every part of it work. And then they had some songs and we would just get in there the four of us with Kevin producing and work out these songs. It was a fun process because there were no outside distractions, there was no one else we had to worry about, it was just us as a cohesive band, the four of us, working out songs, writing songs, and it kind of really informed the process. It was the best thing we’ve ever done. 

JS: So there was stuff written to be recorded back in March of 2020 when you first got off the road?

Jesse: Actually the one day that we did spend at the studio, we were working on the instrumental for “As We Live.” That was the only thing we recorded at Tim’s studio before everything got shut down. 

Justin: I think they had “Alien” kind of on the docket, and “The Hard Way” was in there also.

Jesse: Yeah, they had done a few weeks of writing so there was a batch of songs. A lot of those songs got shelved because they didn’t fit the whole record idea. Once Kevin and Aimee started writing a lot, Aimee realized that the record was pretty much her life story. So the songs that didn’t fit with that theme we pushed aside and focused on the ones that told her story the way she wanted to tell it. We’re stoked on how the whole thing came out.

JS: How far into that writing process did the real direction of the album start to take shape, or at least when did she tell you that that was the direction that the album was going to go? And did that involve sit-down conversations…like, I know you’ve been family for a long time but that maybe there’s some shit she was going to sing about that’s a little…

Jesse: No, I think it happened kind of naturally, and it wasn’t until we had like 

Both: Eighteen songs

Jesse: …that we were working on that it was like, okay, this batch is all very cohesive. I feel like we’re saying that word a lot? (*all laugh*) 

Justin: It was a theme, you know?

Jesse: Yeah, and these other ones, they’re good, but they distract from the message we’re trying to send here and the themes we’re trying to talk about. 

Justin: Yeah, once it was like, there’s all these songs (*gestures*) it was easy to look at the board and say, “well, these fourteen (go together).” 

Jesse: And there was even a time where we weren’t completely…where we didn’t have like the last three figured out, and we dug up an old one, and once Aimee looked at it, it was like “actually, if I just rewrite these verses, this could fit.” That was “Worst For Me,” which was a sleeper favorite of mine. That song rips.

JS: That song is great, yeah!

Jesse: But it was on the back burner for months! It was just like, we recorded it and then we just forgot about it.

Justin: That was the other great thing about the process. We had so much time just sitting at home that they would finish a song and live with it for six months, then come back to it and say “oh, this song needs a bridge.” Then they would just write a bridge and it would bring the whole thing together. We’ve never really had the opportunity to sit and live with something and then come back to it and fix it. Usually in the studio, it’s like record it, it’s done…

Jesse: Go on tour, it’ll come out when you’re on tour. The most time we’ve ever had off in this band was maybe two months, right before Fight The Good Fight came out. And that wasn’t really time off, that was us preparing for the album cycle and the release and all that. So to be forced to sit on our hands during the pandemic, it helped a lot.

JS: What did you do otherwise to keep creative, musically or otherwise, to keep from getting into those doldrums when it seemed like the world was never going to open up and that sort of thing?

Jesse: You know, that’s a good question. We did what everybody did…binge-watched a lot of TV…

Justin: We did get to a point after the first few months where it was like, “okay, we’ve gotta go outside.” 

JS: Touch grass.

Both: Yeah!

Justin: Going to the beach, or going on hikes.

Jesse: Going on bike rides.

Justin: And we had a small quarantine bubble of friends that we trusted to come over, or we’d go over there. But other than that, it was a lot of TV…

Jesse: A lot of movies.

JS: Were you still playing music, even if it wasn’t Interrupters stuff, or did you just like put it away?

Jesse: It was always there. Our back room is always set up so we could always go back there and jam, but there was definitely a time…

Justin: There was definitely a three-month period where I didn’t touch a bass. (*all laugh*)

Jesse: Yeah, I was the same with drums.

JS: Is that the longest you’ve ever gone, since you started playing?

Both: Yeah!

Justin: For sure.

Jesse: Definitely.

JS: Was it interesting working with…I know you’ve worked with Tim (Armstrong) executive producing before but this is the first one where it was listed that Kevin was the producer of (the album). Does that change the dynamic when not only one of the four of you is producing it, but he’s also your brother and your band member? Does that impact the dynamic in the studio or have you been doing it with each other for so long now that you just know how it works?

Justin: Yeah, exactly. We’ve been doing this our whole life. We’ve always looked to Kevin for answers when we have questions about what we’re doing.

Jesse: He’s always kinda been the kind of shadow producer of everything, in a sense. 

Justin: Yeah, so Tim gave him full rein…told him to just grab the reins and take off with it. 

Jesse: The other thing about the way we work is we try everyone’s ideas, so we could be in the studio and it wouldn’t be like him saying “no, this is how it’s going to be, we have to do it this way.” If we’re working on something and it’s not working, all four of us can be like “well, what if we try this, or what if we try this.” And he’ll say “okay, let’s try it.” There’s no bad ideas until you try it and realize it’s bad, you know? It was very good. And we have such a great relationship and we’re very good at communicating, so there wasn’t any headbutting. It was very fun and very easy.

Justin: And again, doing it on the property, it allowed Aimee the freedom to record vocals whenever she felt emotionally connected enough to a song to sing the vocals. 

JS: Especially on an album like this, that’s crucial.

Justin: Yeah! When you have studio time, you know you’ve got to be in there at 5pm and be there til 11pm.

Jesse: We’ve gotta bang out all these songs

Justin: And you’ve got to record these (specific things). That’s almost like a 9 to 5. This way, it was like, if we went back there and she was like “ah I don’t want to sing that right now, let me sing this one.” And also, if she got her second wind at 2am, she could just hop back there and record. 

JS: Do you guys live close enough where it’s like “hey, it’s 2am but we’ve got an idea…”

Both: Yeah!

Justin: We call it The Compound. In California technical terms, it’s a multi-family housing property, there’s one driveway, there’s two houses and a garage that we share, and a backyard. They live in the front house and we live here, so we’re right next to each other. 

JS: It’s like being on tour while you’re at home!

Justin: I know, but with that being said, when we come home from tour sometimes, we don’t see each other for a whole week. (*all laugh*)

JS: Obviously it’s still early because this album’s not even out yet, but does that inspire you to kinda work that way going forward, now that you know that you can make an album like that in your little garage studio?

Jesse: Yeah I think so.

Justin: I think so, I mean…

Jesse: We haven’t really started thinking about the next one yet, but it is easy to just naturally fall into that. If we have to do a song for something, we can just hop back there and do it. So when we have something (to work on), it’s like “when do you want to work on that?” “I don’t know, tomorrow?” So we just hop back there and do it. 

JS: How did the writing process work? Were there times when all four of you were writing together, or do Kevin and Aimee come up with the stem of the song and then you guys work on your rhythm parts? And does that ever change the direction of a song? Like if they start writing and a song has a certain feel, do they give you the freedom to say “hey, we think there’s a different feel that might go better with this song?” Because there are a lot of different feels on this album, and we’ll talk about that in a few minutes, but…

Justin: They would definitely have…it could be anything from the core idea of the song to an entirely fledged out song already, knowing how it should feel and what it should sound like. But, there are a couple songs on this record where they were recorded one way and pretty much done, but then it wasn’t just fitting in with the rest of it when we would get back there. I think specifically “Love Never Dies” had a totally different feel, it was more of a rock/reggae Clash-y song. And it was dope, but it wasn’t fitting in with everything. 

Jesse: It didn’t age well.

Justin: It didn’t age well. So when we got back there with the four of us, we said “What do we do with this?” And Kevin said “what if did it more like a roots thing?”

Jesse: Yeah, he said “Jesse, play a one drop” so I played this one drop, and then he said “Justin, play this bass line” (*mimics bassline*). And then he said “okay, watch” and he just started skanking, and then he started singing this melody the way that it is now, and we played that for like four bars and just stopped. We were like “yeah, that’s it! Now we’re on to something!”

Justin: And then we finished it and we were like “dude, we gotta get The Skints on this one.” 

Jesse: We built up this track, sent it to The Skints, and they sent us back a whole bunch of stuff that we kept. They’re fantastic.

JS: I was going to ask if all the guests got recorded in studio with you too. Obviously they didn’t if The Skints recorded their own stuff. People haven’t heard the album yet but obviously, Tim’s on a song because Tim’s gonna be on a song. Rhoda from Bodysnatchers, Alex and Greg from Hepcat, obviously Billy Kottage, the fifth Interrupter. Shoutout to Billy Kottage, the pride of Dover, New Hampshire.

(*Justin adjusts camera, revealing Billy Kottage sitting on the couch in the corner!)

Both: He’s right there!

JS: That’s awesome! I don’t think we’ve ever met in person, but Billy and I are both from the State of New Hampshire, so I always think that’s awesome. 

Justin: When he comes out here, he pretty much lives with us. 

JS: That’s great. There aren’t many of us in New Hampshire, the scene wasn’t very big, so when someone from the Granite State is cool and does cool things, I love it. So shoutout to Billy Kottage. So yeah, did they all record with you?

Jesse: It was all different. The Skints did it on their own in England, Rhoda recorded her vocals on her own at her place back in England. 

Justin: (For) Hepcat, we actually went into Tim’s studio for a day. 

Jesse: Which was great!

Justin: Greg and Alex came in and it was just one of the most fun days. That’s the thing, we went in to have them record on the song not knowing…Kevin didn’t really know what to have them do. We wanted them on the song, but he didn’t really have the part or anything. But we went in with them and showed them the song, and within like a minute, the two of them are sitting there going…

Both: “ooooh oooh” (*harmonizing*)

Justin: Like writing the parts, figuring it out together, it was so cool to see because they’re literally our favorite ska band. 

Jesse: It was a magical session to be a part of. They were sitting there laughing…

Justin: ..having a good time…

Jesse: …singing all the right notes. It was awesome. We did that at Tim’s studio. Tim also did his vocals at his studio. That was later in the process, where things were a little more comfortable, where we could actually travel to a studio and not worry about everything. And then also, we had a guest vocalist on “Alien.” It’s this guy named Arnold, who is a friend of Tim’s and a friend of Brett Gurewitz’s. When we were working on that song, I think it was Tim’s idea, he was like “Arnold’s voice would sound great on this,” and we were like “let’s give it a shot!” So we had Arnold come in and he sang all those background vocals, and he’s got this emotionally delicate approach to his vocals that just lifted that song to another level.

JS: That song is something else…

Both: Yeah!

Jesse: First Interrupters song with no guitar. 

JS: Right! That’s actually a thing I wanted to ask about. There’s so many different directions! Obviously you’ve always played on a lot of different influences, but I feel like with this album, you go deeper into the reggae thing, into the 2-Tone thing, and then “Alien” which is unlike anything else in the Interrupters catalog. What made you take the freedom to just kinda go with that. Is that stuff that’s always kinda been in the arsenal but maybe you didn’t want to go too deep on the first few records, but now that everyone’s along for the ride it’s like, “well, let’s push that.”

Jesse: Maybe a little bit of that, but also, it is more that the songs were telling us how we should play them, so to speak. So the way that that song was written, there was never really another way to approach it. That song went through a lot of different versions – not crazy different versions but it was layered up with heavy guitars at one point…

Justin: It was kind of like The Beatles’ “Oh Darling” at one point, where it was like rocking…

Jesse: There were heavier drums on it at one point. It went through a bunch of stages.

Justin: But the emotion wasn’t there. Aimee fought really hard to bring it back to what it should be. 

Jesse: What served the song better. 

Justin: And that involved one day just pulling it up and being like “take the guitar off, take that off, take that off”…it got down to literally just the drum beat and the string arrangement. 

Jesse: Even cutting a whole outro and just being like “no, the song should end right there.” 

Justin: And then also with “My Heart,” which is also kind of a different…

Jesse: That “doo-woppy” 50s feel.

Justin: She had already had the melody and was singing it and I was like “well, it’s gonna be in 3, and it’s gonna have this rock feel.” Even if we tried to make it in 4 as a ska song or a reggae song, it just wasn’t working. So the way those songs were written informed the styles. And at this point, we’ve kind of realized that no matter what style it is, if it’s me and Jesse and Kevin playing and Aimee singing, it’s going to sound like The Interrupters. Us just believing in ourselves and pushing it forward that way really helped the process.  

JS: When there’s an album I’m really excited about, I try to ignore a lot of the singles and just listen to the album all the way through because, I don’t know, I’m in my 40s and that’s the way we did it when we were kids, right? So I listened to it all the way through and I took notes and next to “My Heart” I wrote “whoa, an Interrupters doo-wop song.” It’s very much an Interrupters song still, but it’s got that sort of 50s diner, doo-wop vibe to it. Which I think is awesome, and it’s cool to see elements like feature in the mix but still be an Interrupters track.

Justin: Thank you!

Jesse: Yeah, initially that was one where we were like “let’s just play like The Ramones would play in 3.” So it was real heavy, but it didn’t serve the song well.

Justin: So dial back a little bit. 

JS: I think people are going to dig that song.

Jesse: I think that’s my favorite song on the album.

Justin: Specifically behind the scenes with that song, Aimee had a service dog named Daisy for 13 years, who passed away in 2018. It was like her little girl, and it was devastating when she passed away. She wrote that song about her, and not even just the first time but the first few times I heard it, I couldn’t keep it together. I’d cry every time.

Jesse: Yeah, because when we worked it out in the studio, we just had the choruses, singing “my heart keeps beating, my heart keeps beating…” so that pretty much informed the drum beat just being a heartbeat. And then a couple weeks later when they updated the Dropbox with the verses and said “listen to this,” me and Justin were both sitting right here in our living room with our earbuds on and we’re both just like crying. Like, oh my god this is so emotional, because we all lived with Daisy, she was fantastic. She was a German shepherd/wolf, and we all still miss her a lot. That was a heavy one.

JS: Have you been able to play a lot of this stuff live yet, or are you waiting until the album is out?

Jesse: On the Flogging Molly tour we just did, we were only doing “Anything Was Better” and “In The Mirror,” and then when we dropped “Jailbird” we started doing that. The plan is to play as much of it as possible.

Justin: We tried a few of them at soundcheck on occasion.

Jesse: Yeah, we’d always screw around at soundcheck and be like “do you guys know ‘Kiss The Ground,’ let’s try that”

Justin: Or “Raised By Wolves”

Jesse: But we’re in rehearsals next week for a few days to work on stuff for the European tour, because that’s when we’ve gotta do longer sets, but the plan is to try to learn the whole record.

JS: I think people are going to dig a lot of it. I was just curious about if you’d throw a curveball song like that at people before they’ve heard the album to see what the response is. Because I feel like “In The Mirror” is one of those songs that the first time you hear it, you go “yup, that one’s a classic. That’s going to get the crowd whipped up.” Do you know when you’re writing a song like that that it’s going to be “the one.” Like “She’s Kerosene” was like that. The very first verse when I first heard it, I remember going “well, that’s gonna be a big hit.” 

Jesse: When we’re working on it in the studio, I think we’re so lost in the process that we don’t give songs that sort of focus, like “that’s going to be the single, this is going to be the hit.” But there was a point when we were doing “She’s Kerosene” that we had Mr. Brett come in and he was listening to stuff and he when he heard “Kerosene,” he had his little notepad and he was just like “hit.” And we all just looked at each other like “Whoa! Really?” 

Justin: We thought there was so much more work to be done with that song and when he gave it that check of approval, we were like “alright, we don’t have to do much more to it.” That was cool. But then also for this record, when there was like 18 or 20 songs, “In The Mirror” was a standout, at least for me. I was like “I think that one is really good.” Then as it dwindled down, it was like “In The Mirror” and “Raised By Wolves” as the top two. They’re different enough, one’s ska, one’s sort of heavy rock, and you’re just like these two are the shining examples of the record and what we’re trying to sound like. 

Jesse: And “In The Mirror,” Kevin and Aimee wrote that song ten years ago. That was one that wasn’t written specifically for this record. But when they were doing the inventory for the record, Aimee was like “we should dig this one up, this is a great one.” I remember when we were trying to work that one out in the room as a four-piece, I feel like it was a more difficult one to get away from the demo version, because I’ve been listening to that song for ten years. There is a demo recording of it – it’s not even a demo, it’s a full fledged-out different version of it. And having that ingrained in your brain and trying to get away from it and being like “alright, how would The Interrupters do this,” that was an interesting process. There was definitely a day where I was like “that song’s not going to make the record, we have so many other songs.” (*all laugh*) Obviously, I was wrong, that song rips. 

Justin: But it’s wild too, because they wrote it ten years ago. From that time, that’s when they wrote “Easy On You,” “Gave You Everything,” and then “In The Mirror” was in that batch.

Jesse: “Love Never Dies” was in that batch.

Justin: Yup, “Love Never Dies.” I think now if we’re recording, it’s like “hey what else was from that time period? What else did you write then? Anything else we can dig up?” There was some gold.

JS: It’s interesting to hear that it’s from that time period. As I was driving around this morning for work, I listened to the first album and this one back-to-back, because they come out on the same day; the new one comes out on the 8th anniversary of the first one, so I thought it would be cool to listen to them back-to-back. And, I loved the first album when it came out, but it is startling how far you guys have progressed as a band in eight years.

Both: Yeah!

JS: And so to listen to them back-to-back, obviously you can kinda see how ended up here, but at the same time, you’ve progressed so far. So it’s really interesting that that song, in particular, is from that batch.

Jesse: So, one of our little press points about this record and relating it to the previous records is that the first album is kind of like a first date, where you just talk about surface-level things, nothing too crazy. Second album, you start to let them know a little more about you. Third album, you’re kinda getting into the nitty-gritty. Fourth album, all the baggage is out, the drama is revealed, all the secrets are out. That is kind of where we are with this. And talking about the recording of the first record, we were just trying to keep it simple. We weren’t trying to reinvent anything, we were just trying to be a straight-ahead ska-punk band. 

Justin: We did like twenty-four instrumentals in three days. Some of them didn’t have any lyrics or anything, we just got the music done. The ones that didn’t have any lyrics done, they just wrote to the instrumentals. There was no going back to redo parts, it was just like “this is it, we’re done.” 

Jesse: And keep it simple. Like, for me on drums, it was like “don’t do any crazy fills, just keep it straight, keep it steady.” 

Justin: Which is wild, because some of my basslines, I play so many notes! Why did they let me do that?!? (*all laugh*)

JS: Yeah, but they work, and as somebody who wanted to be a bass player when he grew up, I like that they let you play all the notes!  …. Thanks for doing this. This was fun. I talked to Kevin and Aimee for I think the first three records, so it’s nice to talk to you guys. It’s been a while!

Jesse: Yeah we’re being let off the leash a little bit. (*all laugh*)

JS: Well and that’s good, you should be. It’s fun that you guys have your own language with each other, and I know that that’s talked about in other places, like the documentary. So it’s perfect that you guys ended up as a rhythm section, and you end up doing this. Is that why you ended up as a rhythm section?

Jesse: Yeah, kinda. It kinda happened naturally. I don’t remember if we talked about it in the movie, but Kevin started out as a drummer. We had a drum set in the house because our dad was a producer and worked with his friends. So there was a drum set always in the house and Kevin gravitated toward that at an early age. But then, one day our dad came home with a guitar and a bass. So Kevin grabbed the guitar, and I was already dicking around on the drums, so then the only thing left over was the bass. So then naturally it was like “well, this is your instrument, this is your instrument…” And then we would just jam as little kids. There’s some video in that documentary but there’s a LOT more video when we were like 7 years old and Kevin is like 9 of us just trying to play like Green Day songs and Blink 182 songs

Justin: Sublime songs.

Jesse: Yeah, Sublime songs! Whatever we were hearing on the radio is what we were trying to play. The crazy thing is that we’ve come full circle and we know a lot of the people we were trying to emulate and we’re lucky enough to call them friends. 

Justin: Some are like family.

Jesse: Yeah, some are like family now. It’s been a crazy, crazy life that we don’t take for granted. 

Justin: They always say don’t meet your idols but...

Jesse: …we’ve never had a bad experience when we’ve met our idols.

Justin: I couldn’t tell you one person that I had looked up to that I met and they ruined it for me. Everyone’s been amazing.

JS: You know what, I’ve got to say almost the same thing. The amount of people that I’ve gotten to know through doing this for…well, The Interrupters started in 2011 and I started with Dying Scene in 2011. You’re one of the bands that came out right when I was getting started with this whole thing so it’s been a fun sort of parallel, but there’s only a small, small handful of people where you go “wow, that guy’s kind of a dick.” Everybody else has been super cool and super rad and supportive of each other. Especially those people that we grew up listening to in the late 80s and the 90s. It’s a pretty good, supportive group.

Justin: It is, it is. Even when we just started out, to tour with Rancid was amazing, but then to go on and get Rhoda from The Bodysnatchers, we get Horace and Lynval and Terry from The Specials love us. It’s just insane. To have that mutual respect and to get it back is just…yeah…it’s mind-blowing.

Jesse: We did a charity show back in February where we were backing The Specials. I was the drummer of The Specials for a night. We did the whole set, like twelve songs. Justin played piano, Kev played guitar. 

Justin: You saw that thing where we played with Tim and Jesse Michaels and did the Op Ivy song? 

JS: Yeah, yeah. That was amazing.

Justin: That was the same event. That one song with Jesse was amazing but it overshadowed the fact that we played in The Specials! (*all laugh*)

Jesse: It was just mind-blowing. 

JS: Yes! Everyone kinda lost it with the Jesse thing but yeah, that’s awesome. Just awesome. 

Jesse: And just being able to sit in a room for a week with Terry and Horace; Lynval got sick so he couldn’t come out, but just to sit there and run the songs with them was mind-blowing. 

JS: I’m glad this stuff keeps happening to you, because you certainly deserve it. 

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
2 Tone hellcat records in the wild jesse bivona justin bivona

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DS Interview: Let’s talk to Hockey Dad

Hey there, friends! It’s been one hot minute since I last had the chance to sit down with a band hailing all the way from the sunny shores of Australia. Today, I’m beyond thrilled to introduce you to Hockey Dad, a dynamic duo straight out of Windang, New South Wales. Since its beginning in 2014, […]

Hey there, friends! It’s been one hot minute since I last had the chance to sit down with a band hailing all the way from the sunny shores of Australia. Today, I’m beyond thrilled to introduce you to Hockey Dad, a dynamic duo straight out of Windang, New South Wales.

Since its beginning in 2014, Hockey Dad has been making waves with their infectious tunes and energetic performances. I had the pleasure of talking with Zach from the band about their upcoming album, Rebuild Repeat, which is out on June 14th.

In our chat, Zach gives us a little sneak peek into the creative process of Rebuild Repeat, how it differs from some of the other albums, their upcoming tour – where they share the stage with Militarie Gun for four dates around Australia, and their fall EU/UK tour with Ocean Alley.

I hope you enjoy getting to know them as much as I have done!

DS: Hi, I’m Karina and congratulations on your upcoming release of Rebuild Repeat.

Hockey Dad: I’m Zach. Nice To meet you. Thank you, I appreciate it.

It’s out June 14th.

Right.

How does Rebuild Repeat differ from your previous work, both musically and theme-wise?

That’s probably a little softer in a lot of aspects. I think we wrote it in a slightly different way, more from an acoustic start. A lot of songs just started on acoustic and just like acoustic tonality. Compared to a lot of the older stuff, we started with a full band from the gecko, so a lot of these, I think, are a little more fragile, maybe. Fragile string arrangements and a softer sound throughout. And it sounds like it’s got a little bit of a melodic sound, almost like our first EP, and our first record kind of pushes back into that realm more so than the last two records we’ve done.

Oh, see, that’s interesting because I was listening to the first album, Boronia. And from the singles I’ve heard from Rebuild Repeat, they sound similar but still different. So, I get what you’re saying. It’s a throwback to the beginning for you.

Kind of. Yeah, I think so. I think the songs came pretty quickly, as well. We made it a point for these on this record. We were going to like to push through, not spend so much time on the ins and outs of the songs, just writing them. I think that was how we used to do it a long time ago as well. Everything was, you know, half an hour, an hour, and it was finished, and you’d leave it alone. So, we took more of that approach with this record again. And I think you can definitely hear it in the songs. They have a similar vibe, but I mean, obviously (were) recorded a little differently. We’ve changed; our sounds have changed a little bit. So, it’s like a throwback, but a fresh, fresh throwback.

The album title Rebuild Repeat suggests a cycle. Can you tell me about the concept behind the title and how it influenced the creative process of the album?

You hit it on the hip. It really is a cycle-based thing. The kind of simple version of it is, really. It’s an album cycle. Bands do an album cycle. We’re thinking of this as you know, this is our 4th record now. We’ve done this a few times. You make a record, and you release it; you do the tour, you make videos, and you go back, and you write another record, and you release that. ‘You Are Here’ again, and I really like coming back into the start of this, like the start of the writing and the recording process; you really do kind of start fresh. Destroy everything, rebuild from there, and sort of start again. And then you repeat the process. It’s kind of like the life of a band really for us.

Yeah, because the last time you released a song, it was in 2022. And then you released the first single for the upcoming album in 2023. I was surprised to look at the track list and saw that “T’s to Cross” wasn’t on it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Typically, it’s like we have this song that we released in ’22 that we’ll put on as a bonus.

But when you listen to it, it sounds different from the singles you’ve released so far.

Yeah, definitely, yeah. “Ts to Cross” came from a time when we were really just recording in our locked down COVID kind of time. We recorded a bunch of stuff, and not a lot of it saw the light of day. So that was kind of in a different studio at a different time. So yeah, that song now, especially compared to the new record, which was all done roughly in the same time frame with the same people, had a whole different scope. So yeah, I don’t know if I don’t think we ever would have put it on the record. I don’t think it would have fit. I think we had enough ammunition with the newer stuff, and we really just wanted to push in that direction. So, it’s nice that single that, that single just kind of gave us something to do, gave us something to tour around during 2022. And yeah, now we move on.

Exactly. And I think you definitely show that you move on with the new album. But… One of the things that I enjoy hearing is some of the fun things that happen in the studio. Do you have any memorable experiences from when you were recording?

Ah. I think, yeah, we recorded in two or three different blocks over about six months, and we kind of did it in different studios every time. That’s because we had no real time to book a studio for an extended period, and it was cheaper this way. So, we kind of just moved around. And so, really, this record is from sort of like three different times. I’m just pushing into this one little record. I remember we were working in a studio close to home, and we had nothing really funny that I could think about. Usually, we’re just pretty relaxed and pretty chill in the studio. We had some cool names for some guitar amps we were using. We had a tiny little Amp called Danny DeVito, and then we had a huge guitar amp called Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bunch of stuff like that—just weird amp names.

There are always a few like phrases that kind of like stick phrases and in-jokes that stick while you’re making a record with the producer and stuff. I don’t know. We’re using things up a lot that that got thrown out. But that was it. I mean, most of the time, we were pretty relaxed and had a good time. We did it in the BMG studios up in Sydney, so there are like our publishers and our label. They’ve got a fantastic studio there now with artificial UV light. So, it looks like daytime in the studio. Anytime you can be inside, but it feels like you’re outside, kind of. So that was a nice touch from being in a studio all day. You actually have some sunlight and vitamin D, so that definitely made it. Maybe a little more relaxed, it probably comes out on the record as well.

From what I’ve heard so far, the album sounds very coherent. There’s a flow to the songs, and it doesn’t sound like you’re trying to be a different band from your roots. Which I think is nice because you have been in a band for 10 – 11 years now.

Yeah, ten years probably.

That’s a long time.

It is. I think that was kind of a driving force behind these new records. We really wanted to throw ourselves kind of back to the beginning to make kind of exciting again. I mean, the first record we did or the first EP, we were just so excited to be making music and making records. It’s so different. It’s so new. And you know, kind of, you get used to it, and you know, it becomes more work. It just becomes a regular thing. So, we really wanted to throw all that away and start really fresh and try and make another, you know, first record or something like that.

That’s probably why you sound so relaxed. Because the last album you released was in 2020, and apart from “T’s to Cross”, you did have a break, you could say.

Yeah. It was a forced break for a while. Which I think was probably good. We did a lot of writing during that break, but a lot of that stuff that was kind of where, like “T’s to Cross,” was made during that break. But a lot of the other stuff, we kind of just moved on. I mean, like, after sort of that COVID period almost like ended. It felt like those songs didn’t really make sense anymore. We needed a fresh start again to really just build up and create a new album from scratch. So, I think it was nice to really cut everything off from those last two years of just not doing a record and just waiting around. We kind of pull that away and started fresh again.

It does sound fresh. I mentioned I loved “Base Camp” and that it has those spring vibes to it. So, I was thinking, what’s the story behind “Base Camp?”

We did this like a little writing session. I think it was like the opening intro riff. We’re just mucking around. I think that came out first. During the whole process, we were aware of how corny it was; even the intro, everything, and the riff were pretty corny. It’s very poppy. I mean, we’re kind of in these two minds the whole time. It’s really corny, but it’s still. It’s just fun to play, and it still just works. So, we kind of almost just leaned more into it, like, OK, we’ll put the “da da’s” in there. You know, all the vocals in the intro, and we kind of pushed it as far as we can go. What we thought maybe was that corny. And I think it just works out because that spirit is kind of there. It’s not really trying to fake anything. And it’s just like it’s a bit pop-banger. It’s like 2 1/2 minutes. It’s just like in and out and done. And I think that was kind of just like a lot of the record ended up being made like that was, you know, a 10-second idea, like the riff. And we just pushed it out really fast and went with it. Just let it take over. And we got that feel with a lot of the songs, like on “Base Camp”. It’s just a happy, bouncy, springy song. It is, and I love that about it.

And now You’re going on tour in Australia in this, well, in your winter, but our summer, and then you’re going to Europe and the UK in September.

Yeah, that’s right. The Australian tours are going to be fun; we’re doing some of our biggest shows, really stepping it up and trying to make it a really good live show.

And yeah, to the UK and Europe with Ocean Alley, a couple of good friends of ours. That’ll be good. We were there, maybe this time last year. And sure, it would be nice to be back, and the weather should be pretty good. And then I think we’ll be coming back to the States later on in the year, as well before the end of the year.

Because I noticed that on three of the Australian dates, Militarie Gun would be joining you. Are you going to do a tour with them over in the States?

I mean, we would love to. That hasn’t been discussed or really organized yet, but yeah, we would love to. I think it would be great to hang out with them down here and show them Australia. Then, maybe they’ll come over and do it with us and be up for that because they’re a great band; I love those guys.

So, back to the album. How would you describe the evolution of your sound compared to the previous releases? Because now you mentioned that you go back to the sound on the first album. But, still, some things have changed because it’s not as rough.

I think it’s less guitar-driven. For sure, it’s like electric guitar-driven in the last two records. They were kind of like every song had at least probably three guitar tracks playing at the same time. You know? Really thick, thick guitars. That was kind of pulled back a lot for this record. It was a lot cleaner, with fewer guitars and just less guitar playing. Try to move more into using keys and synths and just playing guitar differently as well. Instead of just kind of the same thrashy thick wall of guitars that the last kind of records were like, I think that changed a lot of it. It definitely opened up the sound of the record and softened everything up. And it made room for more vocal, like, you know, about melodies and different interesting keys, parts, or whatever, you know, throughout the whole record. I think a lot of it’s probably got to do with the lack of thick guitars, like driving guitars through a lot of it. It’s more like pop guitar work and more than kind of like an indie-like grunge guitar sound compared to the last ones. It’s kind of just pop-like groove beats, more danceable beats than kind of a moshable beat, I would say.

Last question, OK, if you could have it…suppose there’s a dream collaboration, if you could have any collaborator on the album. Who would you have?

I don’t know. I will probably get somebody like Jeff Tweedy to come in and write a song. That’s kind of what I’ve been loving the last few years. I’ve fallen in love with Wilco and all that stuff. So, I would say Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, or even anyone from Wilco, just come in and show us how it’s actually done that would be.

Thank you so much for your time, Zach! It was nice meeting you.

by Staff Writer Karina Rae Selvig
Tags: 
Alternative australia hockey dad indie rock surf rock

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DS Interview: River Shook (Sarah Shook and the Disarmers) on their new genre-bending project Mightmare’s debut album, “Cruel Liars”

Remember back at the beginning of the pandemic when we all found ourselves with an overwhelming amount of unexpected free time and we told ourselves that we were going to be productive and work on ourselves and maybe pick up a new hobby? River Shook (who still performs as Sarah professionally and uses they/them pronouns) […]

Remember back at the beginning of the pandemic when we all found ourselves with an overwhelming amount of unexpected free time and we told ourselves that we were going to be productive and work on ourselves and maybe pick up a new hobby? River Shook (who still performs as Sarah professionally and uses they/them pronouns) is one of the small percentage of the population who actually made good on those vows. They had been fresh off yet another busy year of touring with their main project, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, when the world shut down for all intents and purposes. Instead of resting on their laurels or rearranging the pantry 37 times or whatever other mindless pursuits some of us undertook to pass the time, Shook stayed busy writing and recording. But this wasn’t their traditional writing and recording; Sarah Shook and the Disarmers’ most recent full-length, Nightroamer, was released in February of this year on Thirty Tigers but the recording process wrapped right before the world shut down.

Shook has been writing songs for a long time and while most of us are familiar with their work primarily with the Disarmers, there’s always been an “other” pile; songs that were solid and complete and yet didn’t quite fit the Disarmers’ rabble-rousing alt-country mold. A couple of those “other” songs found their way onto Nightroamer, albeit in reworked fashion. “When we went in for our last rehearsal before we went into the studio to record Nightroamer,” Shook explains, “we hammered out arrangements and got them record-ready, and we ended up putting two songs (“I Got This” and “Been Lovin’ You”) on the record that were not intended to be Disarmers songs.”

Initially, Shook’s plan was to turn some more of the “other” tracks into more polished songs. As Shook tells it, that plan changed…and for the better. “I had a few in the works and at some point, I realized that if I changed a couple things and improved my methods in a few different ways, I could hypothetically make an entire album.” In addition to their normal role as guitar player and vocalist, Shook took to programming drums and beats and samples on their new material, with the newfound goal of keeping the material for themselves. “I sort of changed my perspective as far as being a little bit more serious and treating it more like a job instead of just something to pass the time,” Shook explains. “I have a tendency to hyperfocus, so I would wake up in the morning, make coffee, and start working, start building tracks. One of the things that I had the most fun with on that project is how many layers there are on every song. And being able to orchestrate that myself and not being accountable to anyone else, it was just me and my brain and our relationship working together to make this record happen.”

The project quickly picked up steam as Shook realized the extent of their home recording capabilities. “Realizing that (recording quality-sounding audio from their North Carolina home) was an option and knowing that I had maybe $1200 for my entire budget for the album,” Shook expounds, “I told myself that if I did absolutely everything that I could possibly do on my own, and then use all of that money to hire Ian Schreier to mix it and Brent Lambert from Kitchen Mastering to master it.” The latter point meant reuniting with the team that put the finishing touches on the Disarmers’ first two studio albums, Sidelong and Years. It was sort of an ‘if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it’ decision, and one that they were empowered to make completely on their own. “One of the things that I love most about (this project) is that I’m not accountable to anybody. It’s all me. On one hand, it’s very liberating, and on the other hand, it’s intense, because I had to start a small business, and all of this stuff is new for me.”

The end result of those writing sessions was Mightmare. It’s a new project; stylistically, lyrically, all of the above. It’s elicited labels like “dark pop” or “sludge rock” or “brooding rock” and it’s most definitely loosely defined as ‘indie rock’ and it’s definitely a radical stylistic departure from the Disarmers and especially from River’s prior project, Sarah Shook and the Devil. And so when it came time to find a label to release the Mightmare project on, it meant looking outside the normal alt-country channels. “Kill Rock Stars was my number-one pick,” states Shook rather emphatically. If you’re going to release an indie rock album, there probably aren’t many better options, as the iconic has been home to some iconic records by the likes of Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney and The Decemberists and Mary Lou Lord.

Oh, and of course Elliott Smith, Shook’s own personal introduction to the label. “I was maybe seventeen or eighteen and a coworker at the Wegmans in Geneva, New York loaned me an Elliott Smith CD, and this was, mind you, probably the fourth or fifth CD I ever listened to that wasn’t Christian music,” she notes. Shook’s strict religious upbringing has been covered in depth in other sources (like our chat earlier this year surrounding the release of Nightroamer – check it out here), but suffice it to say that Smith’s voice and lyrics and the label’s logo served as keystone moments in the building of what became their musical foundation. “I remember seeing the Kill Rock Stars logo on the CD or on the back jacket, and that’s a name that just sticks with you. When I gave the CD back to my friend, I thanked him profusely and said “if you have any more material from this person…this is what I want to be listening to!’.”

After some initial back-and-forth, Kill Rock Stars was on board, and the album, entitled Cruel Liars, had a release date of October 14th. Next came the task of booking some record release shows. There’s one small caveat that should be fairly apparent: “I talked to my booking agent Chris Rusk, and I was just like “it’s coming out on October 14th, and we need to do like a two-week tour around it,” and Chris was like “who’s ‘we’…you don’t have a band?!?” It’s here that we remind you that save for a few bass tracks recorded by Aaron Oliva, Shook performed and recorded all of the music on Cruel Liars on their own…meaning there wasn’t exactly a “band” to take on the road. They continue: “I was like “you worry about booking the tour, I’ll worry about putting the band together. I’ve never let you down, I will have something, it’ll be awesome, I’ll make you proud!”

The rounding out of the band that became Mightmare was done during small breaks between Disarmers tour runs. Real small breaks. The first call wasn’t exactly a long-distance one; it was to none other than newer Disarmers guitar player Blake Tallent. Shook’s longtime North Carolina scene veteran friend Ash Lopez joined on bass, and after auditioning some less-than-ideal candidates for drummer, along came Ethan Standard, who was previously unknown to Shook but had played with Tallent in previous projects from time to time. What followed was a crash-course in all things Mightmare as the band prepared to head out on a two-week tour that was not only its first headlining tour, but its first-ever shows. 

“Basically, the Disarmers got home from a tour and we had four days of back-to-back rehearsals with Mightmare, and then Mightmare went out for two weeks,” explains Shook. “The four days that we all had rehearsing together, we made minute changes to the arrangements, took crazy notes, and committed stuff to memory. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt the anticipation and excitement that I had playing that first Mightmare show…maybe that’s because I’m sober and more present.” Shook, as followers of theirs will know, got sober a few months before the pandemic kicked off, and has been an outspoken advocate of mental health resources like Open Path Collective, in addition to being a tireless champion of LGBTQIA+ causes. While we’ve used genre labels like “indie rock” and “alt-country” and “dark pop” to categorize both Sarah Shook and the Disarmers and Mightmare throughout the course of this story, we’ve got to say that being a queer, non-binary, sober singer/songwriter and champion of mental health causes is about as “punk rock” as it gets.

You can check out Mightmare’s debut, Cruel Liars, below, and keep scrolling to read our full Q&A!

(The following Q&A has been condensed for clarity and content purposes.)

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): So thanks for chatting again! I was looking through my list a little bit ago, and it’s been roughly ten years that I’ve been doing artist interviews, and I think in the 160 or so that I’ve done (editor’s note: the actual number is 188. Yikes.) I think there is only one other time where I’ve interviewed the same person twice in the same calendar year (*both laugh*). And never for two different projects. (Editor’s note: bonus points awarded if you can guess who the other one was. It was in 2016, but that’s all you get for a hint.) So this is cool! We talked at the beginning of the year for the most recent Sarah Shook and the Disarmers album, and now we have Mightmare. I feel like I think I knew at the time that this was coming, but now that people everywhere have gotten to hear it, this is a really cool and different record!

River Shook: Thank you!

And so I have to assume that that was the goal; that stuff that ended up as Mightmare couldn’t be turned into Sarah Shook and the Disarmers songs, right?

Not necessarily. When we went in for our last rehearsal before we went into the studio to record Nightroamer, I think there were twelve songs that we had worked up, essentially. We had hammered out the arrangements for (them) and got them record-ready. We ended up putting two songs on the record that were not intended to be Disarmers songs – intended is not the right word, but they were two songs that kind of just went into the “other” pile, versus songs that are very clearly Disarmers. Those were “I Got This” and “Been Lovin’ You.” It’s interesting; I feel like I’m in this spot where writing songs that aren’t Disarmers songs is nothing new per se, but now that I have this outlet, I’m in a position where I’m learning to sort of assign songs to one project or the other. Which is interesting. 

Are there other songs that became Disarmers songs over the years that didn’t necessarily start out as Disarmers songs but that you had to sort of shoehorn into the Disarmers mold? Because I feel like one of the fun things about Mightmare is that you can totally forgo any sort of semblance of a mold, really. You’re not pigeonholed into a style because it’s a brand new thing entirely. 

The only song that I would say really fits into that category would be “Been Lovin’ You” and possibly “I Got This” but I guess that’s just an indication that while I was writing all of these songs that to me were very clearly falling under the Disarmers umbrella, I was also writing a ton of other songs that in the pre-Mightmare days, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with. But if I wrote a song that I felt was worth saving and worth hanging on to but that wasn’t a good fit for the Disarmers necessarily, I’d make a pretty rudimentary demo of it on my MacBook with Garageband and sort of catalog it that way in case I wanted to come back and reference it, or in case I wanted to try to make it fit within the Disarmers context. But I feel like there’s always been enough material being written to satisfy both projects, so at this point in time, it’s kind of like full circle and I have two outlets and everything has a place!

Do you write differently for them? Or have you started to write differently for them? What was your normal Disarmers writing process? Was it the sort of standard you and an acoustic guitar and see where it goes from there? 

No, I’ve never been a disciplined writer, and any time that I have taken up a pen and paper and an instrument with the intention of writing a song, nothing good ever comes out of it. (*both laugh*) Nothing worth keeping anyway. (*both laugh*)

That’s interesting!

Yeah, I don’t ever have, like, an agenda or a plan when I write a song. I’m kind of just going about my day and I have to be in the right place at the right time. Typically I have to be alone, although since we started touring heavily a few years back (before Covid) I can sort of get songs going even if there are other people around, I just have a different process. But yeah, I go about my day and if the stars align and I’m able to, I sit down with a notebook and a pen and a guitar and typically I’m done with a song within like thirty minutes. There might be some light touching up or changing one or two words, but it’s pretty much the whole thing all at once and it’s the lyrics, the melody, the chord progression and a loose arrangement, and that is what I either take to the Disarmers to start working collaboratively at that point. Everyone has a say and we work out “well let’s do this for the nitro or the outro, or let’s put the solo here instead of here…” All of that stuff is decided together. In Mightmare, I have sort of unlimited time to get all of that stuff together. It’s a different process in terms of the actual logistics of it; I don’t have to go anywhere, I just sit on my couch and do everything myself. 

The Mightmare stuff sort of started, if I have read correctly from other places, during Covid, right? Because Nightroamer was essentially finished right before the world shut down. So is Mightmare all stuff that came after you were done writing Nightroamer?

 Not necessarily. I had a lot of demos just kind of sitting around and when I actually started making the album, that isn’t even what I thought I was doing at the time. My plan was to sit down and make more polished versions of one or two of the demos I had to make them a little more in the neighborhood of what I was looking for. I had a few in the works and at some point, I realized that if I changed a couple things and improved my methods in a few different ways, I could hypothetically make an entire album. And again, this was in the Covid isolation at the beginning of the pandemic, so realizing that that was an option and knowing that I had maybe $1200 for my entire budget for the album – because I knew I was going to be out of work indefinitely – I told myself that if I did absolutely everything that I could possibly do on my own, and then use all of that money to hire Ian Schreier to mix it and Brent Lambert from Kitchen Mastering to master it…those were the guys that worked on Sidelong and on Years, and I had wanted to work with both of them again on Nightroamer, and it just kind of happened that Pete Anderson was interested (in the latter project) and this was kind of my way to say “I kinda want to get back to this other format, because I feel like if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And I’m really happy with the work that these people do, so it was cool to be able to make that decision for myself, too. One of the things that I love most about Mightmare is that I’m not accountable to anybody. It’s all me. On one hand, it’s very liberating, and on the other hand, it’s intense, because I had to start a small business, and all of this stuff is new for me. 

That’s daunting, isn’t it. Because if it sinks or swims…but ESPECIALLY if it sinks…that’s all on you, right?

Yeah! Exactly. And it’s really hard, too, because I feel like most creative people really don’t have a business mindset, we don’t have a capitalist mindset. We’re not like “oh, I have to write this song so it appeals to the most people so I can make the most money.” That’s not what you’re thinking when you’re writing a song. You’re thinking “I need to express myself to kind of A) get something off my chest and B) hopefully be able to look at what I’ve written and be objective about my own situation. There’s so much more meaning in that than in making a quick buck.

Oh but there certainly are people who are in the business for those reasons and who do write music for commercial appeal…not that that music usually appeals to me.

Yeah! And their cars are much nicer than my car too! (*both laugh*)

How long into the process of realizing that you could record not just demos but essentially full songs did you realize that it was going to be a full record right out of the gate?

Once I had the realization that I could tweak a few things and make something that was a quality worthy of being a record, that instantly became the goal. I made the necessary adjustments; I sort of changed my perspective as far as being a little bit more serious and treating it more like a job instead of just something to pass the time, I have a tendency to hyperfocus, so I would wake up in the morning, make coffee, and start working, start building tracks. One of the things that I had the most fun with on that project is how many layers there are on every song. There are SO MANY LAYERS! And being able to orchestrate that myself and not being accountable to anyone else, it was just me and my brain and our relationship working together to make this record happen. It was snap decision after snap decision, and by the time I was done with it; by the time it was ready to take in to get mixed and mastered, I really thought it could actually be something. Kill Rock Stars was my number-one pick. My manager was talking to them but things weren’t really going anywhere. There were a couple other labels that expressed interest that I just didn’t feel were very good fits for the project. And then, at some point, Kill Rock Stars came back and they were like “hey, we know this is done, but if you can wait til next year to put this out, we can make it work.” 

I was going to ask how the Kill Rock Stars thing came about, because as a child of the 90s, Kill Rock Stars was HUGE obviously. So many legendary bands and legendary albums recorded like all of their work on that label, so I had wanted to hear it anyway obviously, but when I heard that Kill Rock Stars was involved, I went “ooh! This is going to be different (than Disarmers music).” 

Yeah! Absolutely! They provided the opportunity to release it the same year, but it wouldn’t have made as much sense to release it with only a couple months of lead time. It needed to have basically a year of preparation to get various ducks into various rows. 

Do you remember the first Kill Rock Stars album you had? I was looking back at their discography knowing that this interview was coming up and I was trying to remember where they first came onto my radar, and I think it was Bikini Kill. I know I have like every Sleater-Kinney album too, but I think the first was Bikini Kill. Do you remember what yours was?

Oh yeah it was Elliott Smith! 

I’m embarrassed to say but I got into Elliott Smith weirdly late. I don’t know how I sort of missed him when he was, uh, alive…I was definitely more Bikini Kill, Hovercraft, Mary Lou Lord…

I think I was also introduced to him posthumously. I was maybe 17 or 18 and a coworker at the Wegmans in Geneva, New York, he loaned me an Elliott Smith CD, and this was, mind you, probably like the fourth or the fifth CD I ever listened to that wasn’t Christian music, so I was very early into discovering what for everyone else was normal music. But I remember seeing the Kill Rock Stars logo on the CD or on the back jacket, and that’s a name that just sticks with you. When I gave the CD back to my friend, I thanked him profusely and said “if you have any more material from this person…this is what I want to be listening to!” I remember him giving me I think two burned CDs that had a big giant mix of Elliott’s songs, and with that, he gave me an actual newspaper clipping that covered his death, which I actually have to this day. Twenty years later or whatever I still have that. That was a very keystone moment for me. 

We have referenced CDs and newspapers in the last few minutes…that’s a sign of dating ourselves. (*both laugh*)

I prefer to think of it as nostalgia! (*both laugh*)

Fair enough! Getting back to the music a little bit, did you have different influences, not so much lyrically but sonically, when it came to writing the material that would end up on the Mightmare project, especially with all of the layering that you were talking about? Was that influenced by things you’d been listening to or was that more a product of just experimenting and seeing what you could do?

I really don’t have influences. From the press that I’ve seen likening Mightmare to other artists or bands or projects, I honestly haven’t recognized any of them.

That’s awesome, actually.

Yeah, I know that it’s very common – pretty much industry standard – to sort of have a reference list. I’ve made records in the past where the producer has asked for a list of reference songs and I’m just like “there is no reference! There’s no reference, this is its own thing entirely!” I don’t want it to sound like us. Especially with the Disarmers having their own distinct sound, we don’t need to try to sound like anybody else! (*both laugh*) I feel like Mightmare has that as well. It has a very distinct personality, and everything is done in service to the song. Every decision that I made for every single track, and every tiny, minute little portion of a melody line or a sample…all of that, the only goal is to make the best decision for what is going to make the song shine the most, for lack of a better way to say that. Everything is to illuminate and emphasize the lyrics and kind of bastion them.

Especially the layering thing…and thinking bigger picture than just your role as a guitar player or a vocalist, but when it came to adding all of those layers and textures and instrumentation yourself, does that stuff get addictive for a while, for lack of a better phrase? Once you learn all of the little tricks that you can do and things that you can add, does that become an addictive thing and make you think “ooh, what else can I do next?!?”

Absolutely!

Because I feel like it was a really fun record to make in that regard, especially to make by yourself. 

Yeah, absolutely. I think there were one or two songs I had to go back through and choose one or two tracks to omit, even though it fit with what was going on, it was crowding this other more important melody line, or it needed to be removed to give this other part more room to do its own thing. Yeah, if I could make my living sitting in my living room for eight hours a day and never have to talk to another human…(*both laugh*)…I would probably be okay with that!!

So how did the experience go with playing that stuff live. Because once you formulated the album, did you have “the band” in mind, or did you have to go through a list of people to fill out the sound, and then, how did that stuff to you translate into the live show? Getting all of those sounds to come out of a rock band…how did that process go?

Well let me tell you, bud…(*both laugh*)…when I started putting this together and it became clear that I was going to sign with Kill Rock Stars, I talked to my booking agent Chris Rusk, and I was just like “it’s coming out on October 14th, and we need to do like a two-week tour around it,” and Chris was like “who’s ‘we’…you don’t have a band?!? (*both laugh*) What exactly is the lineup? Is it you and one other person with laptops and a light show?”

Yeah, you could totally envision that. I could see that!

Yeah, but that was never what I had my heart set on. I was like “dude, it’s supposed to be indie rock, and it’s supposed to be even more indie rock than the album sounds, and the only reason the album sounds the way it does is that I had to program beats instead of using a live drummer. Otherwise it would have been a totally different animal.” I was like “you worry about booking the tour, I’ll worry about putting the band together. I’ve never let you down, I will have something, it’ll be awesome, I’ll make you proud.” 

That is awesome. Talk about punk rock, by the way. (*both laugh*)

And mind you, the Disarmers are incessantly touring this entire time, so I have these tiny, tiny little windows at home where I’m scrambling to find players and trying to audition people. There was one such window where I held some auditions at a local studio, and I had one drummer who was really just kind of weird and talking about God and church a lot. I think he was just trying to get me to be like “hey I’m queer, and if that’s not a good fit for you that’s fine. I’m non-binary, I do a lot of work in the LGBTQ community as far as activism goes,” and as soon as I said that, he was like “yeah, I don’t think this is going to be a good fit.” That was my first time being blatantly discriminated against (*laughs*) but it’s not going to be something that holds me down. I know it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong. But it was just something else in the pile of dead ends that lead up to Mightmare as the band that it is now. The Disarmers were actually on tour with a new-to-us guitarist, Black Tallent, and we’d been out a couple times and I remember talking to the Disarmers drummer Jack Foster and I was just like “dude, I think I’m going to ask Blake if he wants to be Mightmare’s guitar player and I’m so nervous.” He was like “why are you nervous, he’s going to say yes!” And I said “I don’t know why I’m nervous…maybe I’m nervous because he IS going to say yes!” And so I asked him and he said yes and he became the first official member.

Nervous because if he said yes, then it’s like a real official “thing”?

Yes! Yeah! Like, “now I’ve gone and done it!” And then the one good result of the auditions is that my friend Ash Lopez who I’ve known for years and we’ve run in the same circles here in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill area, he auditioned on bass, and I sent him the music and asked him to learn three songs and he showed up and we played the three songs and I was like “do you want to go over any of that again?” and he was like “do you want to go over anything else, I learned everything.” I was like “well, shit, cool!” And then the final audition was Ethan Standard, who I had never met and never played with, but he was a friend of Blake’s and Blake has worked with him on various musical projects. So, basically, the Disarmers got home from a tour, and we had four days of back-to-back rehearsals with Mightmare, and then Mightmare went out for two weeks, and then the Disarmers immediately went out for two weeks. I just got home from all that. We had these four rehearsals and because the Disarmers had been on the road so relentlessly, Blake and I had maybe one or two practices together, and there’s only so much you can do with two guitars and no drums or bass. We accomplished what we could in that respect. Then the four days that we all had rehearsing together, we made minute changes to the arrangements, took crazy notes and committed stuff to memory. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt the anticipation and excitement that I had playing that first Mightmare show. I’ve never felt that with another band. And maybe that’s because I’m sober and more present…

I was just going to ask that!

Yeah! Sarah Shook and the Devil was an “I want to get drunk with my friends at a bar and get paid in beer” band. The Disarmers, I kinda got dragged into kicking and screaming. I was afraid of commercial success, I didn’t want any of that stuff. With Mightmare, I get to choose my own idea of success, which is not money. As long as I have enough to pay the bills and pay the people that work for me, Mightmare is what I think I referred to in another interview as my little rebellion from the Disarmers. And that tour was really, really special, and really fucking empowering, especially to go on a two-week run headlining, with no tour history, playing some pretty significant venues. Like, Empty Bottle is an institution. There were definitely some Disarmers fans there that were like “hey, I like this too!” And then there were some new faces who only know us as Mightmare, they don’t even know the Disarmers exist. 

That’s pretty amazing at this stage of a project. 

Yeah! The whole thing just feels like this continuing roller coaster of discovery and new things, and it’s a pretty great feeling. 

Does playing that stuff live influence how you may write going forward as a band, and knowing what the band can do, and do you think that for Mightmare things, you’ll still program things or do you think that it’ll turn into a full band recording thing? Or is that giving away too many secrets about what’s coming down the road? (*both laugh*)

I wish I could tell you. I will say that about a week into the Mightmare tour, I was already like “we have to record this. We have to at least run it through a board and mix it down later. We have to figure out how to capture this. Or, we just have to go into the studio for four days and cut Cruel Liars as it was meant to be.” But I’m not totally sure. I feel like moving forward, Mightmare is a band now, it’s not just me. Much as I do all the songwriting for the Disarmers, I’d probably do all the songwriting for Mightmare and then get into collaborating as the other instruments go. If that’s the case, there might be a point in the not-too-distant future where I have the Disarmers and Mightmare and those bands are live and recording as groups and I still need to do my own little thing over here.

A third project…why not?! (*both laugh*) I’m so used to seeing you in Disarmers mode playing full-body Guild or Loar guitars, but in Mightmare, did I see you playing a weird little Harmony?

Oh yeah! It’s like a 1980s Korean Harmony Rebel. I found it on Craigslist a couple years ago, and this guy was selling it for like 300 bucks, which is nothing! Somebody on this past run was just telling me that during the pandemic guitar nerds went crazy for 1980s Rebels. I don’t know why, but I love that guitar. And yeah, for Disarmers tours, I have two Loar guitars that I take out and for Mightmare I have smaller-body guitars that I can wear hire and sort of closer to my body. Another unexpected thing about Mightmare is I basically had four days to completely change the pedal setup I was using, and also every single song, every single chord is a barre chord in Mightmare. I was having a lot of pain in my hands, because in the Disarmers, there may be like one every couple songs, but it’s not an every single chord of every single song situation. So there are a lot of things that I had to relearn and tweak and figure out how to do better, and having smaller guitars that I can wear higher is a lot easier on my wrist and my hands. 

And it looks like an indie rock band! Like, seeing you with those smaller body guitars at first was jarring because you get so used to the big hollow bodies, but the “regular” and weird guitar was like “oh, this really is a totally different band!” 

Yup, lean and mean! 

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
Interview kill rock stars mightmare river hook sarah shook and the disarmers

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DS Original Material: Top Nine Queer Songs for Straight Old Punks

Hello everyone. This is my first feature for Dying Scene. So, to break things in gently I thought I’d do a simple listicle. A Top Ten type thing. They’re easy, right? I can just do a list of links to some stuff that I’m into right now and try to link it with some sort […]

Hello everyone. This is my first feature for Dying Scene. So, to break things in gently I thought I’d do a simple listicle. A Top Ten type thing. They’re easy, right? I can just do a list of links to some stuff that I’m into right now and try to link it with some sort of loose theme? That’s playing on Easy Mode. Yeah. Let’s go.

Except… fuck… this is a punk site and I made it through the initial gatekeeping process for contributors by pretending I got the site editors’ jokes about Pennywise, I’m really out of the loop about most punk bands and music that’s around right now. Are Pennywise even a right-now thing? I mean… I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them play at a festival when I was so wasted I was ordering slushies from the ice-cream van and then taking them to the bar and asking them to add vodka. Fuck. Now I want a vodka slushie again.

Anyway – point being, I’m an old straight dude that’s into punk rock but also kinda out of touch. But maybe I can write something for other guys like that about some aspect of music that I love as a sort of highly subjective one-oh-one, instead of some bullshit about best songs for drinking vodka slushies to (The answer is Jaya the Cat, by the way).

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a straight dude, but I feel a lot more at home in queer spaces than most straight ones. A sports bar is *not* my idea of a good time. I actively avoid places where there’s sports playing on TV screens. The homoeroticism of most male contact sports notwithstanding, I’m far happier in a gay bar or fetish club than any standard social third-space that men normally gravitate towards. I live in Britain where we don’t really have the titty-bar or lap-dance club scene that there seems to be in the USA, which American friends talk about as if normal, but the thought of a place like that horrifies me. However – I’ve been quite comfortable in places where puppies are led about on leashes by bears and the only answer to any question about how many genders there are is ‘infinite’. 

And one point to make – most old straight punks can relate to the idea of sitting in their bedroom, listening to music on your own, and feeling misunderstood. Now, just imagine what it’s like to have parents, or a school, or a general social or home situation that’s actively hostile to something that’s at the core of who you are, and who you love, and not *just* your questionable choices of t-shirt. 

Buuuut… how and why do I – or any straight old dude – relate to that? Or show that we’re cool and not a tourist or potential threat in queer spaces?

Music.

The answer is always music.

I’m not about to attempt some sort of overview of queer music, as that’ll take far longer than I’ve got the attention span for, and it’s not really for me, as the aforementioned old straight dude, to do.


But here’s *something* for you. Some places to start. Some feet in the door.

And you’re gonna realise you probably already know more than you think you do.

9.  Laura Jane Grace – “SuperNatural Possession” 

You maybe are aware of Against Me! already. Laura Jane Grace is the singer in Against Me! and I coulda chosen one of their songs as an example of modern queercore, but “SuperNatural Possession” is a fucking tune and I love it juuuuuuuuust a tiny bit more than “True Trans Soul Rebel.” So that’s why it gets in there as an example of fairly contemporary queer music that’s got an international profile. 

8. Tuffragettes – “Tuffragettes Against Terfs“

This is a track that’s at the other end of the scale of awareness levels. The Tuffragettes are a band I saw when drunk at a festival, in that way I discover most of the new bands I end up liking, and they reeked of queer violexcellence. I think the band nearly broke up during their second song, as they fought on stage, but decided they couldn’t recruit another bass player in time for the final chorus, so had to make up and keep playing. I felt all protective of them in a way they’d hate, because they were like angry tiger cubs. We must defend bands like Tuffragettes at all cost. But, uh, in a way that doesn’t piss them off. As they bite and scratch. 

7. The Menstrual Cramps – “Body Politics” 

I’m gonna say this is more of the same as the Tuffragettes, but that’s in no way intended to be an insult. Or even accurate. They’re coming from the same place except not at all. Young. Queer. Pissed off. I also saw them when drunk and loved them. It might even have been at the same event. Fuck. I can’t remember. Listen to them. Love them. 

6. Sharon Needles – “666” 

Drag. Leather. Spikes. Electro beats. Satanism. Fetish clubs. Boa Constrictors. Hearses for taxis. Licking bloody knives. Now, *this* is what it feels like when I go for a night out with some of my friends. Or at least, it’s what the filtered memories are like anyway. This is exactly what I mean when I’m talking about the kinds of queer spaces I feel right at home in. There is just so much here that crosses over with who I am that the gender and sexuality aspects are minor. Maybe that’s the same for you?

7. Dahli – “Cvrsed Images” 

Okay, Dahli might need a little bit of context. Dahli won Dragula, also known as The Greatest Reality TV Show Of All Time. But also, in a past incarnation, was half of an emo/crunkcore (okay, I don’t even know wtf crunkcore is, but anyway) band who were kinda a thing for a while, but whose other member was a sexual abuser and who also prevented Dahli from getting the HIV medication he needed to, you know, stay alive. Fuck that guy. He belongs in prison. I’m not even gonna name him. But Dahli survived it and has become a wonderful independent artist and performer who embodies a kind of queer culture that’s the alternative to even the alternative. Go look up Dahli and Dragula and The Boulet Brothers, as I’m not gonna do any sort of big intro to them right here, but they’ve probably got way more in common with a Dying Scene reader than they have with RuPaul. 

###

Okay, now I’m gonna help you out a little. One straight old guy to another – and let’s face it, statistically that’s who you are, reading this site. Apologies if not. And a fuck yeah to you if you’re not just another one of those old straight guys too. We will defend your right to be here and in punk spaces.

However – talking of spaces, I’ve mentioned feeling happier in queer spaces than most straight ones. But – what if some queer person calls you out and questions if you’re a poseur and does the equivalent of pointing at your t-shirt and asking you to ‘name three songs’ by the band that on it?

Fuck people that do that, by the way. They’re arseholes. But anyway…

Let’s change the hypothetical situation then. Let’s, instead, say you’re in a queer space with a jukebox, and you’ve been asked to put in some coins and select some tracks that aren’t gonna mark you out as a clueless infiltrator, and which *may* get you some nods of approval.

If you went for Kylie or Gaga or generic Disco, then you *might* be okay. But let’s do a bit better, so here we go, your Cliff Notes, and the next tracks in my Top Nine Queer Songs for Straight Punks:

8. Divine – “Walk Like A Man” 

Almost too obvious. But still the right way to go. Divine is naaaaaaaasty but also a total fucking icon. And. Punk. As. Fuck. Don’t even try to argue with me that Divine isn’t punk rock as you will lose and I got a few thousand words why that I’m not gonna type here and am saving until you come for me.

9. Crucified – “Army of Lovers” 

Now this is something that might not be expected from an old straight punk but, despite the boobage on show in the video, is gay as hell. It’s so not gonna be expected of you to put this one on the jukebox, but it’s a total power move to do so. 

10. Robyn – “With Every Heartbeat“

And here’s one for the ladies. Robyn’s ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ is basically the lesbian national anthem. But I like this one better, which is why I’m suggesting it instead as it’s close enough. And despite not being rock, it rocks, and does something to your brain to make it release shitloads of serotonin or dopamine, like a thousand Grindr or Tinder matches suddenly pinging into your phone at once. There’s something about it that hooks into our mental wiring to make us feel good. That stuff is something that the ravers have understood for a while, which punks sniffing glue behind the bike sheds didn’t really get, but don’t diss it. Just enjoy the happies and take note that if you’re in a queer space where there’s more girl-looking people than muscle bears, you’ll be safe putting Robyn on the jukebox. And if there are muscle bears about, they’ll probably be into it anyway. 

23. Cyndi Lauper – “True Colours”  

Talking of releasing brain chemicals that make you feel good, this’ll do it too. Maybe you’ll cry as well, as it’s just so lovely. And Cyndi is punk as fuck. Hard to believe maybe, but it was one of her songs that was cited in the list of degenerate filth that led to the need for the ‘Parental Advisory’ label on records. 

Aren’t you reassured that children are protected from Cyndi Lauper songs by a sticker? Oh yeah, the people that campaigned for that shit sure had their priorities right, didn’t they?

I won’t hear for a fucking parsecond that Cyndi is anything but sweet and pure and also to be defended at all costs. In terms of her quiet activism and support for vulnerable people, she’s really up there with Dolly. If they come for Dolly or Cyndi, we fight hard, yeah? 

vi. Bronski Beat – “Smalltown Boy“

Alright, moving away from the Jukebox recommendations, and going back to that bit in the intro about feelings of alienation and being misunderstood, this is the distilled essence of that sentiment poured into a sweet gay kid’s search for a place. In the original video, the moment where the dad pushes whatever little cash he’s got in his pocket into the hand of his kid, and then declining his offered handshake, is heartbreaking.

Remember, this was back in the 80s, in Britain, when the government tried to ban any discussion of homosexuality in schools and the prime minister wanted to eradicate it ‘except as an abstract concept’ and attacked people who suggested that anyone ‘had a right to be gay’. Yeah, really. That’s the background of this song, and the link between this and punk was how it used stripped back, simple instrumentation – even though it was electronic not guitar-based – to make political art. Heartbreaking, and thank fuck we’ve moved on somewhat from people writing songs about feeling like this.

42. Soft Cell – “Sex Dwarf“

However – at the same time, there were some people who decided not to give a fuck and just lean right into being unaccepted and unacceptable. I’m gonna try and link to the original video for this, which tends to get taken down when it’s posted on youtube, for its general DGAF wrongness. I fucking love it and again, it’s punk rock because the cheap and simple Boss DR-55 beat and one-finger synth was as accessible as three-chords on a Squier.

69. Judas Priest – “Breaking the Law“

This is the sound of a guy that’s mastered a genre that’s not ready for him to come out yet, giving us a million clues about his sexuality. 

Again, a reminder that this is queer songs for old straight punks, not queer punk songs. Unlike some of his peers (Ozzy, I’m looking at you) Rob Halford’s voice and performances have stayed wonderful, and it’s lovely to see how accepted and comfortable being a gay metal god – THE metal god – he is nowadays.

Okay – a slight digression to make a point. In Rob Halford’s superb autobiography, he mentions his last meeting with Lemmy, just before Lemmy’s death, when he clearly wasn’t feeling good at all but was pushing on with touring regardless.

Now, once again, I’m not gonna give much of an argument as to why Lemmy is punk as fuck. He was in The Damned for a while, and no one’s gonna argue they’re not punk, so any other arguments are unnecessary.

Anyway… Rob mentions that he saw Lemmy waiting at an airport and went to have a chat with him. But he found Lemmy uncharacteristically subdued and not doing good at all. So Rob just sat with him and held his hand and kept him company.

Point being – if you’re a fucking metal god but your friend isn’t doing well and doesn’t want to talk, you can still just sit and hold their hand, even if there’s nothing else you can do.

And even if you’re a maelstrom of hard-living hetero-hellsangelhero-rocknfuckingroll legendary badassery like Lemmy, and your gay friend offers to hold your hand in public, you can set an example to literally the rest of the world that isn’t Lemmy, by just holding his hand and hanging out, to show you love and appreciate the support.

That shit made me tear up almost as much as Cyndi singing “True Colours,” or the Iron Giant saying ‘Sooooooperman’ or Robocop telling the old dude his name’s Murphy.

Holding your gay friend’s hand in public – punk as fuck. But shouldn’t be. It should be nothing notable at all. 

8. Kiss – “I was Made for Loving You” 

This is the sound of a guy that’s mastered a genre that’s not ready for him to come out yet, giving us a million clues about his sexuality.

9. Buzzcocks – “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’tve)“

I told you you already knew more than you thought you did.


Oh? So what did you think this song was about? 

Falling in love with someone you shouldn’t? Sure, it’s perhaps a statement that can apply to all sorts of situations, but again, this was Britain in the seventies, not ten years since the laws against homosexual acts were repealed. For context, that’s less time than from now back to when the Avengers movie came out, or the Batman movie with Bane, or Teenage Bottlerocket’s Freak Out!. People in general were still not okay with gay stuff. Pete Shelley, of Buzzcocks, wasn’t gay. But he did fall in love with a man. And he felt he shouldn’t have. Or was made to feel that way anyhow. Punk rock was his was of turning that feeling into art. “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’tve)” is one of the seminal punk tracks. And it’s about being queer. Which, yeah, brings me right back to the point I was making originally about just how closely linked punk and queerness have always been, and how, although you should still be as respectful as fuck (and this is kinda what that’s about – giving you some notes on that) you’re already more of an ally than you even thought you were, if you’ve internalised this song and sympathise with the dude singing it.

So there you go. I lied about it being nine tracks. I lost count along the way. Whatever. But I hope this helps. However – ignore the fuck outta me if anyone that’s not just an old straight dude tells you I’ve got something wrong here. I’m fine with that. 

NOTE:

Progress Pride Flag

Created in 2018 by nonbinary artist Daniel Quasar, the Progress Pride flag is based on the iconic 1978 rainbow flag. With stripes of black and brown to represent marginalized LGBTIQ+ people of color as well as the triad of blue, pink and white from the trans flag, the design is meant to represent diversity and inclusion.

by Staff Writer Jack Dark
Tags: 
army of lovers bronski beat Buzzcocks cyndi lauper divine

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DS Photo Gallery & Show Review: KT’s Kids 19 – Nefarious Fat Cats / Bama Lamas / Eve’s Parlor Burlesque / Sweet Figurines (Liar’s Club – Chicago, IL 12/17/2022)

This was a super exciting event for me to shoot. I’ve tuned into the live stream in previous years, but this was my first time at the star-studded event in person. If you’re not familiar with the KT’s Kids, it’s an annual fundraiser held at Liar’s Club, running for its 19th year this installment. Christmas […]

This was a super exciting event for me to shoot. I’ve tuned into the live stream in previous years, but this was my first time at the star-studded event in person. If you’re not familiar with the KT’s Kids, it’s an annual fundraiser held at Liar’s Club, running for its 19th year this installment. Christmas may have passed this year, but KT’s Kids is a 501c3 Non-Profit, so it’s never a bad time to make a tax deductible donation. Also, as of this writing, the livestream is still available to stream on Zuma Live.

Herb Rosen and Mike O’Connell were the lovely hosts for the evening. They arrived in style to kick everything off, wearing matching red blazers fully bedazzled with sequins. Once they finished telling us what to expect for the evening, Sweet Figurines got things rocking. The whole band also looked quite fashionable, but I have to give a call out to the bass player. His shiny blue blazer, combined with his gold bowtie and matching gold bass guitar drew attention in a very good way. Keeping with the festive theme, the band came out of the gate with an excellent rendition of “Father Christmas” by the Kinks. The rest of the set, bursting with a great old-school rock sound, did not disappoint. This was my first time seeing Sweet Figurines and hopefully not the last.

Angela Eve’s Parlor Burlesque was up next, but before the risque review started, KT herself came on stage to give a brief history of the event. 19 years ago KT was pulling double duty, working at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital and bartending at Liar’s. When Herb and Mike heard how little the kids at the hospital had, and how their basic needs were not being met, they wanted to help. That started everything, and every year for 19 years they have been able to raise more and more, and reach more kids every year.

Mike announced it was indeed time for sexy time now, and the fabulous Angela Eve hyped up the crowd and introduced the dancers. Last year Angela was sadly absent from the show thanks to Covid, as well as being 5 months pregnant. This year she was back in full force with little baby Nonda joining her on stage. Adorable. Kevlar B Lightning started the show right, tastefully removing her festive red garbs to the Peppermint Twist to reveal some tasty peppermint pasties. Jezzibel was up to perform next, who Angela described as a “pincushion of sorts.” She did not fail to live up to that description. Upping the ante of a traditional burlesque act, various sharp instruments went into and through her face! After a quick break for Angela to give one lucky attendee the gift of spankings, Queerella Fistalot graced the stage. Queerella wasted no time disrobing to make sparks fly. I’m being quite literal, the ol’ angle grinder came out to play and Queerella showered the stage in tiny glowing embers of hot metal.

The stage got quite crowded for the next act, The Bama Lamas! Self-described as down and dirty, hip-shakin’ old school rock and roll / R&B. Performing good and greasy the way it was meant to be played. With everyone adoring Friar’s hats, The Bamas managed to fit a drummer, a bass player, a sax player, a singer, not one but two guitarists, and a full 88-key digital piano with the accompanying keyboardist on to Liar’s Club’s tiny, tiny stage. Everyone in the band was having a great time and clearly the audience was too, reinforced by some very happy patrons getting their dance on. All in all a great throwback to an exceptionally fun era of music. Definitely recommend.

More burlesque was up next and who doesn’t like that? The first performer of round two was Miss Spitfire. Angela described her as bendy and she wasn’t kidding. Dawning a red onesie for the occasion, Spitfire’s Acroartist background was evident in some truly impressive contorted choreography, yeow. After a quick changeover, out came Miss Millie May! She may have been dressed like an ice queen but that didn’t stop her act from heating up the room. There was a brief intermission for more spankings before Lady India came out and owned the stage. India was oozing confidence as she danced her clothes off, and then the angle grinder came back out. Once more the stage was showered in an incandescent rain of shrapnel. Finally, Angela Eve herself closed out the burlesque portion of the evening. After many twirls and kicks, and littering the stage with articles of clothing, the house lights dimmed. Angela then showed off the most electric tassel spinning of the night. That’s right, fully illuminated Christmas light tassels. I can’t figure out where she could have hid a battery for them, so I’m going to assume they were charged by the pure power of sexiness.

And then it was time for The Nefarious Fat Cats to close out the music for the evening. Scott Lucas and Ryan Harding of Local H made up the initial lineup along with Herb Rosen. If you only know Herb as the owner of Liar’s Club, he is also known for playing in the Beer Nuts. Scott Lucas’s goatee made me wonder if we were seeing our Scott, or an evil doppelganger. If it was Evil Scott, all I can say is he was just as talented as the real deal. The Fat Cats came out of the gate strong with a cover of “TV Eye” by The Stooges. They continued on with that lineup for the first 4 songs, finishing up with “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. At first lineup change, Herb switched to lead vocals and turned bass duty over to Joe Principe of Rise Against. This lineup wasted no time before serenading us with “The Kids are United” by Sham 69. Next Joe Haggerty of Pegboy relieved Ryan on drum duty, allowing Ryan to pick up his Telecaster for a few songs. Herb took the bass back and the group proceeded to rock my ass off with their cover of “Bloodstains” by Agent Orange. For the next song another legend came on stage. To play “Suspect Device” by Stiff Little Fingers they brought out none other than Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers, taking over vocals and replacing Ryan on guitar. Mike O’Connell came back on stage to sing “New Rose” by the Damned. Sean Hulet of Masonic Wave, took over bass guitar next, for the band to play “Tush” by ZZ Top. Joe Principe picked up the bass again to play “Tin Soldiers” and “Alternative Ulster,” also by Stiff Little Fingers. The show was coming to an end, but there was still one more lineup change. Ryan rejoined on drums, Sean on Bass, Scott still on guitar, and for the first time that evening, Herbert Plant! Herb definitely didn’t have a beer bottle in his pants (I’m lying, he absolutely did) while the 4 piece played a couple Zepplin tunes for the evening’s finale. With that, live music was over for the night and it was time for me to drink.

Check out more pictures from the evening’s exciting festivities below!

by Staff Writer manvsfriction
Tags: 
Benefit chicago Liar's Club Punk punk rock

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DS Photo Gallery: A Vulture Wake, Stuck Lucky Headline Nashville Punk Rock Flea Market 6.11.22

I can confidently say this is the best punk event held in Music City at least since I began calling here home in 2013. Held at the notorious Further Farms just a short drive from downtown, and judging by the fact that event shirts, water and food had all sold out just halfway through the […]

I can confidently say this is the best punk event held in Music City at least since I began calling here home in 2013. Held at the notorious Further Farms just a short drive from downtown, and judging by the fact that event shirts, water and food had all sold out just halfway through the event, expectations were shattered and we had ourselves a party. All eight bands playing completely kicked ass, over 50 vendors set up camp and drew a crowd I would guess numbered well over a thousand people, and Denver-based nonprofit Punk Rock Saves Lives was swabbing people left and right for their bone marrow registry. Beer was drank and fun was had!

Indianapolis native Mike Muse of Amuse kicked things off with a solo acoustic set after the other 2/3 of a Amuse were unable to make it. Nonetheless, the acoustic set was a great precursor for what was to come. To close, the boys in SecondSelf hopped up to join Mike for a much needed and well-timed Skate or Die cover, much to the pleasure of the continuously growing crowd.

SecondSelf has solidified themselves as one of my local favorites over the past several years; they’re a great bunch of dudes that play hard, fast, killer punk rock, what more could you ask for. These dudes have something really cool going, and for Nashville punk rock’s sake, I hope it continues. I’ve caught these guys live more than almost anybody, and Nate’s guitar solos still nearly melt my face off on the regular.

Sugar In The Gas Tank were a somewhat last minute addition to the NPFM, but they offered a nice change of pace with their early 2000s blink 182-esque brand of pop punk. Their catchy riffs and upbeat tempo gave me flashbacks to my younger Warped Tour days and showed me a side of Nashville punk that I hadn’t seen in years, but was glad to have present.

I’ve caught Tank Rats a few times over the years, most recently a few months back opening for the Cryptics. And man do these guys bring some damn energy! The Tank Rats brand of Nashville street punk was on full-display with this awe inspiring performance. From the start of their set on, the atmosphere picked up and our Music City party was in full-swing, thanks in large part to the absolute mayhem that these guys brought to the stage.

Stuck Lucky holds a special place in my heart. They headlined the first punk show I ever attended in Nashville, and from then on, I’ve followed along to any local show these guys are a part of. A masterful blend of ska and punk that I have trouble drawing similarities to, and, like a fine wine, these guys have only gotten better with age.

Their mastery was put on full display during their set, which involved trombonist Will Carter hopping down in the crowd and straddling a stuffed banana mid-song.

Flummox was a great representation of the sheer diversity that the Nashville punk scene encompasses. We had West Coast skate-punk well represented by Secondself, pop-punk by Amuse and SITGT, ska by Stuck Lucky, and oi! by Tank Rats. Flummox was weird, but in all the best ways, and it’s hard to pin them down to any one genre.

Breaux! was the first of two acts that I was especially excited to see for the first time. I don’t know how I had never heard of these guys, but their performance made me reminisce about seeing A Wilhelm Scream in Nashville a few years prior. Lead singer Price Cannon entertained the shit out of the steady crowd that continued to fill the market, and they were an excellent predecessor for the punk rock mastery that was to follow, A Vulture Wake.

Now we’ve reached the main event, the band that I had been dying for years to see ever since I stumbled across Chad Price’s One Week Record in 2018, A Vulture Wake. When I found out about guitarist Dan Wleklinsi’s tenure in early Rise Against, this only added to my anticipation. To put it bluntly, these dudes know how to rock and exceeded everything I had expected.

There’s not too much to be said about this type of performance other than I would recommend these guys to anybody asking for a great punk show to see. Wleklinski can shred the hell out of the guitar, and I was in awe of Chad Price’s vocals for their entire set. If anything, look at that dude’s hair; worth the price of admission in and of itself.

Attached below are any other photos I got from the show (these make up the tiny percentage that did not come out as complete garbage). Feel free to peruse at your own leisure and I hope to have many more of these galleries up in the coming months. Cheers!

by Staff Writer NastyNate
Tags: 
Amuse avulturewake breaux! fleamarket flummox

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DS Photo Gallery: Dry Cleaning with Spirit Of The Beehive and Nourished By Time from Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works (2023-02-02)

UK post punk band, Dry Cleaning have been touring North America for most of the new year and finished this leg of their 2023 World tour last week when they passed through Red Hook, Brooklyn at event space Pioneer Works. Along for the ride were openers Spirit Of The Beehive and Nourished By Time. 2022 […]

UK post punk band, Dry Cleaning have been touring North America for most of the new year and finished this leg of their 2023 World tour last week when they passed through Red Hook, Brooklyn at event space Pioneer Works. Along for the ride were openers Spirit Of The Beehive and Nourished By Time.

2022 was quite a busy year for Dry Cleaning, with the release of their critically-acclaimed sophomore LP, Stumpwork not to mention almost non-stop touring, all of which has proven to be a huge boon to the band’s popularity. Last year at this time they played the relatively tiny Market Hotel here in Brooklyn, while this show at Pioneer Works was sold out with well over 1000+ in attendance. It certainly is my guess that next go-around will see them knocking on the doors of even larger venues once again.

Dry Cleaning offers up a sound which is different and quite unique. Lead singer Florence Shaw doesn’t sing as much as she speaks in cadence. It’s not a rap kind of speaking but more of a flowing stream of sentences washing over a background of exquisite music provided by Tom Dowse on guitar, Lewis Maynard on bass and Nick Buxton on drums. Opening up their set with “Kwenchy Kups” and “Alan Ashby” off of their Stumpwork album it was immediately clear that the band has grown into a well-oiled machine with the virtual nonstop touring with which they’ve been doing. Shaw opening up the show with the opening lines “Things are shit, but they’re gonna be okay” seemed perfect. Her whispered voice over the cascading guitar fills echoing out of Tom Dowse’s amplifier mixed with the bouncing rhythm provided by Maynard and Buxton on bass and drums respectively set the tone for the entire evening. Whereas “Kups” was slow and almost dirge-like, the follow-up of “Alan Ashby” with its rolling, almost danceable rhythm was a near-perfect segue. And so the evening went. Shaw was absolutely mesmerizing front-of-stage clutching her microphone stand for much of the evening or pantomiming with her hands when she was not while she murmured the lines to each of her songs.

Tom Dowse

As captivating as Florence Shaw’s stage presence and vocal presentations were, the work which Tom Dowse was pulling off to her right on stage was almost otherworldly. With a unique style which I don’t think I’ve ever seen from anyone else, his playing lead guitar riffs on an electric 12-string was jaw-dropping to say the least. Never overstated or showy, the sounds and progressions which he was created throughout the evening has me scratching my head for most of the night wondering how he did it. Despite his understated style of neck play, he still managed to create enough of a whirlwind of sound to float just behind the words that Shaw was hushly reciting.

Lewis Maynard

Which brings me to the rhythm section, specifically Lewis Maynard on bass. Watching him play, you would have thought you were seeing a bass player in a funk band grooving on the beats. His crazy long hair flowing each and every way as he rocked forward and back to what seemed like every note plucked from his bass. Yet what you were actually hearing was a backbeat which perfectly accentuated the fluid tide which Shaw and Dowse were sharing. Bouncing to the subtle beat it took me some time to put 2 and 2 together but what I was hearing from Maynard was a bass style right out of the Robbie Shakespeare book of rub a dub-style riddem…and it was a perfect compliment to the entire ensemble.

Dry Cleaning is by no means a dance band but certainly, they are quite adept at creating dance music. Not jump up and down kind of music, but perfect ambient, sway back and forth in a cosmic buoyant haze kind of dance music. A band whereby the whole is way greater than the sum of the parts. I for one can’t wait to see them again even if it means having to experience it in a significantly larger space due to their ever-growing popularity.

A quick word regarding the two opening bands. Nourished By Time, the nom de plume of Baltimore native Marcus Brown started the evening off with a spirited and interestingly enjoyable mix of R&B, Hip Hop, and electronic music which managed to grab ahold of much of the early-arriving crowd. Next up was Philadelphia’s SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE who despite being plagued by technical issues throughout their truncated set still managed to present a forward-thinking hypnotic brand of rock. With all three primary bandmates (Zack Schwartz on guitar and vocals, bassist/vocalist Rivka Ravede and multi-instrumentalist Corey Wichlin) all sharing various duties on synths, the band created quite a captivating sound. I hope to see them again in the near future.

Dry Cleaning

SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

Nourished By Time

by Staff Writer Ray Rusinak
Tags: 
brooklyn dry cleaning nourished by time post-punk spirit of the beehive

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DS Record Radar: This Week In Punk Vinyl (AFI “Shut Your Mouth…” bootleg, Green Day “Kerplunk” repress, Record Store Day 2024 & More!)

Greetings, and welcome to the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is the weekly* column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl; new releases, reissues… you name it, we’ve probably got it. Kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, crack open a cold […]

Greetings, and welcome to the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is the weekly* column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl; new releases, reissues… you name it, we’ve probably got it. Kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, crack open a cold one, and break out those wallets, because it’s go time and this week’s Record Radar is fucking yuuuuuuge. Let’s get into it!

Check out the video edition of this week’s Record Radar, presented by our friends at Punk Rock Radar:

AFI’s Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes has been out of print since 2015, but it seems there’s a new unofficial pressing, potentially on yellow colored vinyl, making the rounds. I’ve seen this pop up at Death13ss Records a few times in the past week and it sells out really quick every time. If you’re chasing this record as hard as I’ve been, your best bet is to Favorite the product page on their Shopify store to be alerted if/when more copies are in stock.

How about some officially sanctioned releases? Kourtney Kardashian’s husband’s old band The Aquabats’ first three records are getting some snazzy colored vinyl reissues. Coming to a record store near you on May 24th, it’s The Return of The Aquabats! (on wax for the first time), The Fury of The Aquabats! (previously out of print for 6 years) & The Aquabats Vs. The Floating Eye of Death! (also on vinyl for the first time ever). You can pre-order all three records here.

St. Louis’ Wes Hoffman & Friends are releasing their new album How It Should Be this coming Friday, February 23rd. Jump Start Records has two sweet color variants as well as black wax on their webstore, while Canada’s Wrecking Crew Records has an exclusive coke bottle clear variant (their store seems to be down but I guess you can message them on Instagram to buy a copy if you want that variant). Check out the latest single below! Highly recommended listening for fans of newer MxPx.

Here’s something cool! Washington, DC label For Love of Records is putting out a yuge Dischord Records tribute compilation featuring local bands covering songs by Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, Jawbox, etc. Head over to their Bandcamp where you can listen to the whole thing and pre-order the 2xLP titled DC Does Dischord on some really awesome looking color variants.

Bracket’s 1994 debut album Forestville St 924 is being reissued by SBAM Records in honor of its 30th birthday. There are two color variants – blue marbled & white marbled – supposedly limited to 50 copies each, which I feel like has to be a typo considering these have been up for pre-order for over a week and haven’t sold out. Either that or this is the least in-demand reissue of a record that’s been out of print for 30 years. Anyway, get your copy here!

After giving their new single “Still” one listen, German melodic punk band For Heads Down went from being a band I’d inexplicably never heard of, to a band with one of my most anticipated records of 2024. The band’s self titled album is due out on April 19th, with Thousand Islands Records handling the US release and Disconnect Disconnect Records spreading it throughout Europe. Check out that single below and buy this record!!!

British ska-punks Call Me Malcolm have a new album called Echoes and Ghosts coming out on March 1st via Bad Time Records. Check out the latest single below and get the record here on a color variant that is equally as beautiful as its name is long: Electric Blue w/ Bone & Red Splatter. The band has another variant with a slightly less impressive character count (Electric Blue / Red color-in-color) available on their webstore as well. Members of the Bad Time Record Club will be receiving their own exclusive variant via snail mail next month, too.

Face to Face gave the very polarizing Ignorance is Bliss its first-ever vinyl release a few years ago (now that I think of it 2019 was actually 5 years ago, is that a few?). That was a 2xLP release and I remember it selling out fast as fuck. Anyway, now they’re reissuing the record for its 25th Anniversary and it’s a 4×10″ release this time. There are 3 color variants – Graphite, Cyan Blue & Doublemint – with 1,000 copies total. The price? 60 fuckin’ smackers. I’ll pass, but maybe you want it: send your money here.

Green Day’s Kerplunk is back in print for the first time in a long time. For some reason this record hasn’t gotten a repress since 2014 and I don’t mean to alarm any of you but that was a fuckin’ decade ago. Sheesh. Anyway, Kerplunk’s back on the menu! 1-2-3-4 Go! Records seems to be the place where this is most readily available online, but I’ve seen a few rekkid stores posting that copies have started to trickle in, so maybe your local store has it? Perchance.

If you like the Flatliners or mid-period Millencolin, you should check out Scotland’s Cold Years! They’ve got a new record called A Different Life coming out on April 26th. Check out the lead single “Roll With It” below and go here to pre-order the record on Half Black, Half Blood Red with White Splatter colored vinyl (say that 10 times fast!).

Fat Music for Fat People turns 30 in the year of our lord 2024, so naturally it’s time for a repress. This has been out of print (on colored vinyl at least) since 2012, so Fat’s US store sold out of the standalone LP pretty much immediately. They do have some Colored LP + Shirt bundles left, however (as well as black wax), and you can still get it on colored vinyl from their Australian webstore.

After whetting our whistles with a 20th anniversary compilation album last year, Belgian punks the Priceduifkes have announced a new album with new songs! Dancing Dirty comes out on March 15th on Striped Records, who you can purchase the record from here if you’re in Europe, or you like paying a lot to ship records to the US. If you don’t like paying a lot to ship records to the US, you’re in luck! Our friends at Mom’s Basement Records are selling this record, in the US! Also be sure to add that awesome new Odorants record to your cart before checking out.

Have you heard about the new Hot Water Music album? No? Well, let me tell you about the new Hot Water Music album. It’s called Vows and it’s due out May 10th on Equal Vision Records. There’s a bunch of color variants for this one, some of which have already sold out. You can find links to all the places you can purchase them with your preferred fiat currency here.

A bunch of dudes from Voodoo Glow Skulls (who, fun fact, I recently learned have blocked Dying Scene on all their social media accounts lmao), Death By Stereo and a few other bands have a new band called Mutiny. Their debut EP is being released by Ska Punk International as a 12” with a 30 page manga for the weebs. The first pressing is limited to 300 copies and that shit sold the fuck out. Maybe there’ll be a second pressing? I have no clue. Stay tuned!

Asbestos Records is releasing a split 7” from The Homeless Gospel Choir and Dissidente, both covering Dead Milkmen songs. There are three different splatter variants, each of which looks sick as hell and is limited to 250 copies. Get it here.

As if The Offspring didn’t already have enough Greatest Hits album, here’s another one! Puck Punks: Powerplay Hits was released as part of the Anaheim Ducks’ Come Out and Play Night with The Offspring!. It’s limited to 1,000 copies on orange vinyl and features “Want You Bad”, “All I Want”, and a few shitty songs from Let The Bad Times Roll. Surprisingly, “Come Out and Play” is omitted from the tracklist. People are trying to sell this piece of shit for $100+ on discogs, but you can get it from the Anaheim Ducks Team Store for the somewhat more justifiable price of $34.95.

The full release list for the 2024 our third favorite retail holiday Record Store Day was just announced. I gotta say, the lineup is actually pretty impressive this time around, and there’s quite a few releases on tap for the punk rock-centric collector. The full list can be found here, but these are the ones I think you guys will be interested in picking up:

Speaking of the Offspring, here’s another Offspring record! You can’t buy this one right now though, you gotta wait til Record Store Day (April 20th, 2024 for those who are unaware). It’s a 20th Anniversary reissue of Splinter, limited to 2,500 copies on… wait for it! Picture disc. For some reason. This record’s a bitch to come by though, so I’ll probably pay $35 for it or whatever the fuck they wanna hawk this shit for.

It wouldn’t be Record Store Day without the Ramones estate repackaging previously released material for the 20th time to top up their bank accounts. But hey, I’m not complaining, I eat this shit up every time! RSD 2024 blesses us with The 1975 Sire Demos, which is exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of early Ramones demos. Limited*** to 13,500 copies (lol) on ultra-clear w/ black splatter vinyl. In the extremely unlikely case that Mickey Leigh or Linda Ramone happen to be reading this, I beg you, please reissue the following: Acid Eaters, Mondo Bizarro, Adios Amigos, Loco Live & We’re Outta Here!. Maybe you can do a 90’s box set? And then double dip with some standalone color variants for each. Hire me for your marketing department! I’ve no shortage of million dollar ideas.

Speaking of double dipping with standalone color variants, look no further than this RSD Exclusive reissue of Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros’ Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. Following last year’s Mescaleros full discography box set (still available for $140 on Amazon btw) is the standalone reissue of this record. I think they did the same with Streetcore, too. Anyway, I guess if you just want this record this is a good value proposition for you. It’s a 2xLP limited to 1,800 copies on pink wax.

The Dead Milkmen’s 1987 album Bucky Fellini has never gotten a repress, until now that is. The record has been remastered and is being reissued as a 2xLP on “Ducky Yellow” colored vinyl, packaged in a snazzy gatefold jacket. The official RSD site says this limited to 4,500 copies… but also says it’s limited to 5,000 copies. You decide what you want to believe.

Frank Turner’s got a new record called Undefeated coming out in May, but he’s also got a 7” featuring a song from that record – “Girl from the Record Shop” – coming out a few weeks early for Record Store Day. This 7” is limited to 2,000 copies and is also gonna include a B-Side called “All Night Crew”.

Here’s a real fuckin’ big time reissue. Unwritten Law’s debut album Blue Room is getting released on vinyl for the first time ever, 30 years after its original release. It’s limited to 939 copies on navy blue colored vinyl and is branded as a “RSD First” Release, which leaves the door open for other variants down the line (and I’m sure there will be many). I’m pretty excited for this one and it’s probably going to be enough motivation to line up early outside the local store.

I feel like I’ve heard the name The Didjits before (it sounds familiar anyway) but I’d never listened to these guys until now. This shit’s bad ass! They’ve got a Double LP called Strictly Dynamite: The Best of Didjits coming out on Record Store Day. It’s limited to 1,500 copies on 180g green vinyl and includes a bunch of rare bonus tracks and shit (all of which would have been new to me regardless since I’d never heard of the Didjits lol). Editor’s note: Actually I take that back, the Offspring covered “Killboy Powerhead”, so I guess I’ve kinda sorta heard at least one Didjits song before.

The last Record Store Day 2024 release I’ll be featuring in this week’s Record Radar is 40 Years of Kepi & The Groovie Ghoulies, which is doing double duty as a greatest hits collection for both the Groovie Ghoulies and their fearless frontman-turned-solo artist Kepi Ghoulie. It’s a Double LP set with an orange record and a purple one, limited to 900 copies. Hey Kepi, Let’s Go! to the record store and buy this bad ass record!

Wrapping things up, I thought I’d do something a little different on this week’s Record Radar: featuring a CD release! Yes, you read that right, compact disc. Those are pretty fucking cool, too. Especially when they’re released by an awesome band from your hometown that you didn’t know existed until your friend in New York told you about them. Clearwater, Florida’s Toe Knife kicks ass. Their new EP Endless Cycle kicks ass. It’d be pretty kick ass if you checked it out and bought the CD (or maybe just buy the digital download if you don’t share my affection for shiny little plastic discs).

Well, that’s all, folks. Another Record Radar in the books. As always, thank you for tuning in. If there’s anything we missed (highly likely), or if you want to let everyone know about a new/upcoming vinyl release you’re excited about, leave us a comment below, or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram, and we’ll look into it. Enjoy your weekend, and don’t blow too much money on spinny discs (or do, I’m not your father). See ya next time!

Wanna catch up on all of our Record Radar posts? Click here and you’ll be taken to a page with all the past entries in the column. Magic!

by Staff Writer Screeching Bottlerocket

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DS Record Radar: This Week in Punk Vinyl (AFI, Guttermouth, Operation Ivy, Sloppy Seconds, The Putz & More!)

Greetings, and welcome to the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is the weekly* column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl; new releases, reissues… you name it, we’ve probably got it. Kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, crack open a cold […]

Greetings, and welcome to the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is the weekly* column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl; new releases, reissues… you name it, we’ve probably got it. Kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, crack open a cold one, and break out those wallets, because it’s go time. Let’s get into it!

Check out the video edition of this week’s Record Radar, presented by our friends at Punk Rock Radar:

Cassette releases continue to infiltrate the Record Radar, and we’ve got a very special one batting leadoff this week! The friendly people at Tapehead City are partnering with Hellcat Records for this 35th anniversary cassette reissue of Operation Ivy’s Energy. This is the first time this has ever been reissued on the tiny, plastic, rectangular format.

Tapehead City owner Charlie Kaplan had this to say about the reissue: “Me and my friends grew playing in bands that would always cover Rancid and Opivy. These songs have been a part of me for so long. Working on this project was so much fun and such an honor. I really hope the fans are happy with the tapes. I think they came out great.”

There are two variants, limited to 1,000 copies each: a “2-Tone” tape made using scans of the original shell, and a “UV Edition” with an awesome all-over art print on the tape. You can pre-order both here, along with a fun Op Ivy x Tapehead City mashup shirt.

Here’s another bad ass 35th anniversary reissue, and this one’s on vinyl! Indianapolis junk rock pioneers Sloppy Seconds‘ classic debut album Destroyed is back in print for the first time in a long time, thanks to Puke ‘N’ Vomit Records. You can get it on coral (orange) and/or black wax right here.

Up next, we’ve got a big batch of awesome new records coming very soon from our friends at Memorable But Not Honorable Records, the first of which is Rhode Island pop-punk band Pavid Vermin’s debut LP Brutality Is My Only Friend. It’s limited to 100 copies on blood red colored vinyl and will be available on their webstore this coming Friday, May 24th. Keep your eyes glued to Dying Scene the day before, I think we might be doing something cool!

MBNH is also putting out a killer 7” featuring four brand new tracks from pop-punk favorites The Putz. On and Up and Out is limited to 200 copies on clear blue colored vinyl and is being co-released by I Buy Records in Italy. It’ll also be available to purchase from Memorable But Not Honorable Friday, May 24th.

And last but certainly not least in Memorable But Not Honorable’s impressive release lineup is the 2nd pressing of their Saturday Morning Lineup compilation, limited to 100 copies on (Ninja Turtle?) green colored wax. This was originally released this time last year on white colored vinyl, which quickly sold out. It features covers of cartoon theme songs from The Putz, Zoanoids, Atomic Treehouse, Goin’ Places & many other great bands. You can buy it with your money from their webstore on – you guessed it – Friday, May 24th!

A few weeks ago Down By Law announced their new album Crazy Days, due out June 15th on Cleopatra Records, but at the time it was only available to pre-order on CD (otherwise known as compact disc but us in the trade). Now you can get it on beautiful red marble colored vinyl right here.

Guttermouth’s Eat Your Face turns 20 this year and to celebrate SBAM is releasing it on our treasured polyvinyl chloride music format for the very first time. There are two color variants, limited to 250 copies each allegedly. You can get them from any of SBAM’s regional webstores.

AFI’s 1999 classic Black Sails in the Sunset is getting a big time expanded reissue in honor of its 25th Anniversary. It’s due out July 19th and features bonus tracks in the previously unreleased “Weight of Words” and B-Side “Who Knew?”. This is being released on a handful of color variants but all but one of them sold out almost immediately. The one that’s still available to purchase is the Neon Orange retail variant, which you can get from Amazon and pretty much anywhere else (Amazon’s the cheapest though, of course).

Another anniversary! Perhaps not quite as significant as Black Sails but worth mentioning nonetheless. It’s the 10th anniversary of The Flatliners frontman Chris Cresswell’s One Week Record, and Fat Wreck Chords has repressed it for the first time since its original release. There are two color variants to choose from: Pink/white vinyl (150 copies) and green w/ yellow splatter (250 copies). Or, I guess there were two color variants to choose from, because the pink one’s already sold out. The green w/ yellow splatter is still available from Fat Wreck’s European webstore.

That Descendents / Circle Jerks split 7” finds itself on the Record Radar for the third time; perhaps that’s a new record? Anyway, I guess it’s noteworthy that a new European exclusive clear color variant has popped up. You can get it here. And in case you missed it last week, the red color variant (limited to 500 copies) is still available on the Descendents’ US store.

Sammy Kay’s got a new record called July 1960 due out on July 19th. It’s being co-released by Sell the Heart Records (US) and Engineer Records (UK) on Coke Bottle Clear and black wax. Mr. Kay has some copies with a special silkscreened jacket on his Bandcamp as well. Also available: CDs, shirts, etc!

We started this week’s Record Radar with a cassette release, so why not wrap things up with another cassette release? Two street punk bands, Philadelphia’s English Teeth and Las Vegas’ Fool’s Errand, have a brand new split EP out now and you can get it on snazzy orange cassette right here. It’s only $1 but I know damn well they had to have paid more than that to make these so I’d implore you to pay a bit more than that. If cassettes aren’t your thing, digital download is an option as well!

Well, that’s all, folks. Another Record Radar in the books. As always, thank you for tuning in. If there’s anything we missed (highly likely), or if you want to let everyone know about a new/upcoming vinyl release you’re excited about, leave us a comment below, or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram, and we’ll look into it. Enjoy your weekend, and don’t blow too much money on spinny discs (or do, I’m not your father). See ya next time!

Wanna catch up on all of our Record Radar posts? Click here and you’ll be taken to a page with all the past entries in the column. Magic!

by Staff Writer Screeching Bottlerocket
Tags: 
AFI black sails in the sunset down by law ds record radar punk rock

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DS Record Radar: This Week in Punk Vinyl (The Real McKenzies, Cock Sparrer, SACK… PLUS Black Friday Vinyl Deals)

Greetings, fellow degenerates! Welcome to the latest installment of the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is a weekly column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl. In addition to new releases and reissues, this week we’ll also be highlighting some Black Friday sales […]

Greetings, fellow degenerates! Welcome to the latest installment of the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is a weekly column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl. In addition to new releases and reissues, this week we’ll also be highlighting some Black Friday sales on vinyl records that may interest you. So kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, crack open a cold one, and break out those wallets, because it’s go time. Let’s get into it!

British punks Grade 2 have a new self-titled album on the way. The record produced by Rancid‘s Tim Amstrong is due out in February 2023 on Hellcat Records. Check out their new single “Under the Streetlight” below, and go here for links to where all the different color variants of the LP can be purchased.

If you read our latest Ten Underrated Punk Bands That Should Be On Your Radar column, you know who SACK is. If you didn’t read it (fuck you, why didn’t you read it? I worked really hard on that!) SACK is fronted by Kody Templeman (Teenage Bottlerocket, Lillingtons, etc.). Their new record Ripper! was released on CD earlier this year, and is now finally available on vinyl thanks to the friendly people at Red Scare. Pre-order this beast here.

Also from Red Scare (in case you missed our story about it earlier this week): A first-time vinyl release of Sludgeworth‘s Losers of the Year. For those who aren’t in the know, this was a short lived project of Screeching Weasel‘s Dan Vapid that also featured his SW bandmate Brian Vermin on drums. This album was originally released on CD in 1995 through Lookout! Records, and old school pop-punk aficionados have been clamoring for a vinyl reissue for a long time. The wait is over! Head over to Red Scare’s webstore to grab your copy.

Punk supergroup Fake Names (ft. members of Bad Religion, Refused, Fugazi, etc.) have announced their new album Expendables will be released on March 3rd, 2023 through Epitaph Records. Check out the first single “Delete Myself” below, and pre-order the record here (yellow vinyl, US) or here (“black & white galaxy” vinyl, EU).

Today marks the release of Celtic punk veterans The Real McKenzies new covers album Songs of the Highlands, Songs of the Sea. Fat Wreck Chords is sold out of colored vinyl, but you can still get it on black wax from their webstore. For those outside of the states, the record is available here (CA), here (EU), and here (AUS).

And because you can never have enough Fat Wreck Chords in your life, here’s another new release from Fat! NOFX frontman Fat Mike has teamed up with Get Dead‘s Sam King on a new project called Codefendants. Check out the band’s new single below and order their 10″ split with Get Dead from Fat Wreck’s webstore.

A few Record Radars ago, we let you that the Transplants‘ self-titled debut album was getting a 20th Anniversary reissue. Well, those sold out really fucking quick so Hellcat Records has announced some additional, retailer-exclusive color variants. 1-2-3-4! Go Records and Smartpunk each have their own unique variants here in the US, and Banquet Records has an EU exclusive “cool blue” color variant.

Pirates Press Records is reissuing all seven Cock Sparrer LPs in honor of the band’s 50th Anniversary. You can get them individually for 20 bucks each, or as a set for $125 (that’s a savings of 15 dollars, folks!). No pretty colors here, just good ol’ black wax.

Just in time for the holiday season, Chris Farren‘s Like a Gift from God or Whatever is back in print on neon green colored vinyl. Head over to Asian Man Records‘ webstore and get a piece of this yuletide wax 🎄

Fraser from the Murderburgers is a busy guy! In addition to his current band Wrong Life (featured in Dying Scene’s Ten Underrated Punk Bands You Need To Check Out Right Now column) he has now announced another project called Absolute Melt. Check out the single “2am (The Face Changes Shape)” below, and go here to pre-order their upcoming 10″ EP. All profits from physical and digital sales will go to Scottish Women’s Aid, who help women, children and young people in Scotland affected by domestic abuse.

Black Friday Sales

The first Black Friday sale we’ll be highlighting comes to us from the purveyors of pop-punk at Mom’s Basement Records. For one day only, everything on their webstore (including that awesome distro section with The Windowsill‘s album that I just gave a 5-Star review 😉) will be 30% off! Stay tuned to the label’s social profiles for more info. This is the sale of the year as far as I’m concerned.

Merchbar’s entire store is perpetually “on sale”, but their Black Friday Preview sale sees stuff marked down a bit more than usual. The sale has already started, and considering it ends in three days, I assume they’ll be having a proper BF sale later in the week. If you’re just looking for punk records and don’t want to waste precious time searching, you can find most of them here. Some highlights include the Ramones‘ Rocket to Russia ($17.99), NOFX‘s Pump Up the Valuum ($15.99), and Operation Ivy‘s Energy ($15.99).

If you’re looking for some gifts for the rude boy (or girl) in your life, Jump Up Records has you covered. They’re not having a sale per se, but they do have some awesome new shit on their webstore for Black Friday, including brand new reissues of some 90’s Moon Ska LPs, alongside a bunch of 7″s, CDs, and cassettes. Happy skalidays! 🎅

Everyone’s favorite indie record store Walmart is having a sale of their own. All vinyl records are $15 in-store at all Walmart locations (exclusives are discounted on their website as well). I’ve seen plenty of pearl-clutching going on about this sale, but I don’t give a fuck 😊 There are some good deals to be had here. I got The Clash‘s 3xLP Combat Rock + The People’s Hall for $15. There were a ton of WM’s new exclusive pressings of Green Day‘s American Idiot and International Superhits at my local store as well. There’s an ample supply of soundtracks and Luke Combs records, too, if you’re into that kinda thing. Sale ends Sunday, November 20th.

And of course, Wally World’s red competitor Tarshay has a sale, too. Starting Sunday, November 20th, all records (and movies, CDs, misc. other media) will be Buy 2, Get 1 Free. Is that cheaper than Walmart? I don’t know, I’m too lazy to do that math (probably not though). This sale will be online and in store, and there’s no limit on how many records you can buy. So if you really want all 375 copies of the new Adele album your local Target has in stock, load up that god damn cart!

Last but not least, we have Record Store Day Black Friday. Again, not much in the way of deals here, but there are some exclusive releases that may interest you. In addition to the 10th Anniversary reissue of Masked Intruder‘s debut LP we highlighted last week, you may also be interested in Goldfinger‘s Hello Destiny (reissued in honor of its 15th Anniversary), and a new Joe Strummer live acoustic album Live at Music Millennium. The only place you can (potentially) get these and all the other RSBF releases is your local record store on Black Friday (November 25th).

And that’s all, folks! Another Record Radar in the books. As always, thank you for tuning in. If there’s anything we missed (highly likely), or if you want to let everyone know about a new/upcoming vinyl release you’re excited about, leave us a comment below (or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram), and we’ll look into it. Enjoy your weekend, and don’t blow too much money on spinny discs. Please note: the Record Radar will be closed next week in observance of Thanksgiving. Have a safe and happy holiday, friends!

*Wanna catch up on all of our Record Radar posts? Type “Record Radar” in the search bar at the top of the page!

by Staff Writer Screeching Bottlerocket
Tags: 
black friday chris farren dan vapid Fat Wreck Chords Grade 2

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