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Punk news for people too lazy to read.
Episodes
Monday Feb 21, 2022
Monday Feb 21, 2022
Well, I guess this is growing up. On Marmite and Boudica and Red Dwarf and The Van Pelt and the best punk rock album of the year.
Earlier this month, Frank Turner released his ninth studio album. Entitled FTHC, it is by far his most "punk rock" album to date (I suppose one could argue that his previous album, 2019's No Man's Land, which was primarily a historical folk album with each song telling a different tale about a woman from history, ranging from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Christa McAuliffe, was his most "punk rock" album to date for entirely different reasons, but that's more of a semantic argument than we need right now). FTHC is his most personal album to date - no easy feat for someone who's made a career of wearing his tape deck heart on his sleeve. It may indeed be his best album to date. It is, most certainly and perhaps not surprisingly given the above factors, his first album to debut at #1 on the charts in his native UK.
We caught up with Turner the day after learning that FTHC was, in fact, named the number one selling album in the land. We talked about the importance of that distinction, particularly as it came fifteen years and nine albums into his solo career. We talked about the influences behind the album and about how getting married and turning 40 and still being alive has provided a different sort of perspective that wasn't afforded to his younger self. We talked about the making of the album (the image of Ilan Rubin recording drums in a Los Angeles studio over Zoom while Frank watched from London and producer Rich Costey watched from Vermont is still one I find endlessly amusing). We talked about the stories behind some of the album's more personal tracks, although I did leave out the songs about his struggles with anxiety and cocaine addiction and how his relationship with his father changed after the latter came out as a trans woman several years ago; those have been covered at length in other outlets. And perhaps most importantly, we talked about the legion of Turner fans, aptly known as the Frank Turner Army, that has been steadily building for the better part of the last decade and who, frankly, rightly share in a lot of the success behind FTHC. They even pitched in for a few questions that certainly ran a stylistic gamut.
If you haven't bought FTHC yet, get it at your local indie record store or here: https://store.frank-turner.com/
If you want to go back in time and read our chat with Frank from the steps of Boston's City Hall before his 2014 appearance at Boston Calling, go here: https://dyingscene.com/ds-interview-and-photo-gallery-frank-turner-in-boston-on-his-1567-show-rise-to-fame/
If you want to watch my then-four-year-old daughter sing "English Curse," go here. She said it was okay, I promise. https://youtu.be/VgBHrbP0kRU Listen to The Van Pelt here: https://thevanpelt.bandcamp.com/album/sultans-of-sentiment
To read more about Boudica, go here: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Boudica/
If you want to buy Marmite, go here: https://www.marmite.co.uk/
Watch Red Dwarf here: https://www.reddwarf.co.uk/tv/
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Wednesday Feb 16, 2022
Wednesday Feb 16, 2022
If you've read any of the press that came out surrounding LA hardcore band Sweat's debut LP, "Gotta Give It Up," you've probably noticed that the common theme throughout is that Sweat aren't a typical hardcore band. They've got a sound and a style and a swagger that are unique; hardcore, for sure, but with riffs and rhythms that range from thrashy to chunky to 70s rock (think Think Lizzy). At the center of the activity is the firebrand that is Tuna Tardugno. It's abrasive and confrontational and a whole lot of fun.
We caught up for a super fun conversation with Tuna about the band's history (they've only got nine gigs under their collective championship belts, a byproduct of the band's formation less than a year prior to the world shutting down) and recording with Grammy-nominated producer Jack Shirley and their upcoming plans (tour? new album?). We also talked a lot about Tuna's introduction to the world of punk and hardcore in upstate New York and the parallels between the DIY punk and wrestling communities, both of which are near and dear to Tuna's heart. Oh, did we mention Tuna's a wrestler as well? Admittedly, my knowledge of modern wrestling is actually more limited than my knowledge of hardcore, which is pretty effing limited in its own right. Still, I am from the same hometown as Paul "Triple H" Levesque, so maybe I can hold my own a little.
Anyway, this was a super fun conversation. Hope you dig it.
Order "Gotta Give It Up" here: https://shop.piratespressrecords.com/products/sweat-gotta-give-it-up-lp
Order Sweat's debut EP here: https://vitriolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sweat-s-t
Sweat videos:
"Joke's On Me" - https://youtu.be/hBoWvRItbAw
"Hit And Run" - https://youtu.be/uoX_OrpDAVU
Oh, and here's the video Tuna and I were talking about with Mackie on drums. turns out the song was Charles and Eddie's "Would I Lie To You," which somehow is from 1992, not 1964. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANL1tk0Qy9Q
Monday Jan 31, 2022
Monday Jan 31, 2022
This is an episode that I've been looking forward to since before (*both laugh*) was even an idea for a show. I was introduced to Sarah Shook's music when their debut album, Sidelong, was rereleased by Bloodshot Records back in 2017 (it had initially been self-released by their band, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, several years prior but I was waaaay out of the loop at that point). I found Sidelong to be an interesting listen; it felt like it ran a real throwback country-and-western vibe through a little bit of a modern roadhouse filter. It certainly wasn't like much else I listened to at the time, and Sidelong and its follow-up, 2018's Years, even stood out amongst the large quantity of Bloodshot artists I'd been listening to for a long time (Cory Branan, Scott H. Biram, Murder By Death, Lydia Loveless, etc).
The Disarmers went into the studio in California to record their third album in early 2020, just as the world was on the cusp of shutting down for the foreseeable future. Label issues and supply chain issues and inability to tour issues got in the way got in the way, as they're wont to do. Fast forward to 2022 and Sarah Shook is on the cusp of releasing their third album. It's called Nightroamer and it's on a new label (Thirty Tigers) and it's really, REALLY good. Fans of Sarah Shook and the Disarmers will certainly find plenty of recognizable sounds, but there are left turns and even-further-left turns and some new and different subject matter. All of that results in an immensely compelling listen, easily their best output to date.
We caught up with Sarah to talk at length about the new album; from finishing the recording roughly a week before the pandemic became "a thing" in the States, to the obvious label issues, to the choice of when to actually release it to the world. We also talked about some of the subject matter; parts of the album were written after Shook got sober, and obviously created a very different writing process for them this time around. Perhaps most compellingly, we talked about their increasing involvement as a vocal force to be reckoned with, advocating for the elevating of queer and non-white voices in the country music world. Oh, and we talked about their growing up in strictly religious household and teaching themselves to play guitar and write songs in spite of having no popular music frame of reference, a concept that is truly mind-boggling to me.
Nightroamer is due out February 18th. Pre-orders are still available here: https://www.disarmers.com/store/Music-c23349544
You can also check out the Disarmers' videos and live performances and more on their YouTube page here: https://www.youtube.com/c/SarahShooktheDisarmers/videos
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Wednesday Jan 05, 2022
Wednesday Jan 05, 2022
Back in early 2020, Hushdrops, the long-running Chicago-based power trio (John San Juan on guitar and vocals, Joe Camarillo on drums, Jim Shapiro on bass) were slated to go into the studio to finish work on what would become their third full-length record. Then in what's become a recurring theme on this show, plans were put on hold due to the onset of Year One of the pandemic.
While that part of the story is certainly not unique, the story took a sharp and unexpected and tragic turn a year ago. As Year Two of the pandemic kicked off, Camarillo was hospitalized for a stroke and a heart attack. While in the hospital, he suffered and ultimately succumbed to a brain stem stroke. At only 52, the literal backbone of the band was taken much, much too soon.
After some time, San Juan and Shapiro decided the best way to honor their longtime friend and collaborator was to pull together the album that they'd been working on prior to the pandemic. The problem, obviously, is that it wasn't done yet. As fate would have it, there was a soundboard recording of one of the band's last pre-lockdown shows, a set that included a few new tracks that were intended for the new release but that hadn't made their respective ways to the recording studio yet. What followed was the fascinating (to me, anyway) challenge of recording studio guitar, bass and vocals over the isolated live performance drum tracks for two songs that ended up on the album, creating what is a very unique feel to both those tracks and the album in general.
We were lucky enough to catch up with John San Juan to talk about all of this and more. It was the first time we talked, although we've talked about him on a few episodes of (*both laugh*) to date, as he plays bass in the trio that Smoking Popes' Josh Caterer put together for the pair of live albums that he released as bookends in 2021. We talked a lot about Josh, and about Joe, and about mellotrons, and all things in between.
Order "The Static" the latest - and last?! - Hushdrops release from Pravda Records here: https://pravdamusic.com/album/2067945/the-static
Find "The Static" and all the other Hushdrops releases on Bandcamp here:
https://hushdrops.bandcamp.com/
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Friday Dec 17, 2021
Friday Dec 17, 2021
Greetings, comrades! We finally got around to recording Episode 30 and it’s now ready for insertion into your ear sockets, just in time for the holidays! Per the yoosh, we’re gonna play a buncha rad new tunes from incredible emerging punk acts and chat about some of the more noteworthy scene news from the last couple of months, but we’ve also got some really exciting new info regarding the website, as well! If that doesn’t get you excited, we also find out in this episode which celebrities Bob would receive a golden shower from! Soooo, ummmm…..there’s that… Have a safe holiday, gang! See ya in 2022....if we don't get cancelled.
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*In a band? Want to be featured on the podcast? Send your shit to dyingsceneradio@dyingscene.com and if it’s good enough, we’ll probably play it! If you send us some swag, it’ll increase your chances… just sayin’!
Episode 30 Playlist
Snuggle! - “Air’n Out”
Poor Me - “Classwar”
#1 Fan Spike’s Pick - Space Corolla - “David Bowie Whacks Postmodernism With A Crowbar” (ed: Ignore all of the commentary about this band being from Puerto Rico. They’re from South Jersey. But check out the band from Puerto Rico of the same name. Also, pretty rad!)
Soul Glo - “Nigga Don’t Uplift Me”
Modifiers - “Everything is Fine”
Royal Dog - “All Your Shit”
The Peabodys - “Got the Morbs”
Latecomer – “Bet Your Life”
Filthy Radicals - “Stampede of Assholes”
Talk Show Host - “Syntax Error OK”
Addict Suunshine - “Police State”
Over Time - “Utica”
Listen to these songs along with all of the other songs we've featured on the podcast on our iTunes and Spotify Playlists!
Monday Dec 13, 2021
Monday Dec 13, 2021
This particular episode was a long time coming, for a variety of reasons. Josh Freese has had the type of career - and has the type of personality - that has made me want to interview him for a lot longer than I've had the capacity to actually conduct interviews. He might have played with everyone from Sting to Guns 'N' Roses to Nine Inch Nails to The Offspring to Dweezil Zappa to Juliana Hatfield to Kelly Clarkson, but if you've been involved in the punk rock scene at all for the last three decades, he's still Josh from The Vandals. Or, for a small number of us, Josh from Viva Death.
Anyway, Josh just put out a new solo album, "Just A Minute: Vol. 1" - it was written and recorded from his home studio during quarantine. It's twenty songs in, you guessed it, twenty minutes, and it was released on Loosegroove Records, a label owned by Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard and Brad's Regan Hagar. It's wild: some of the songs are expertly crafted and fully thought-out punk rock songs and some of them sound almost like the descent into madness that a lot of us experienced when locked in our houses for an indeterminate amount of time.
We cover a lot of ground over the course of 75 or so minutes: Danny Elfman, The Vandals, Stone Gossard and Pearl Jam, living in Long Beach, playing with Sting, Queens Of The Stone Age, setting up a home recording studio a decade ago and actually finding the time to use it during a pandemic, and a lot more. We also talked, obviously, about "Just A Minute: Vol. 1" and probably spent more time talking about "Just A Minute: Vol. 2," which should hopefully be out during the spring of '22.
Buy "Just A Minute: Vol. 1" on vinyl: https://shop.thehardtimes.net/products/josh-freese-just-a-minute-vol-1-neon-coralvinyl?_pos=1&_sid=8d3887eea&_ss=r
Buy other Josh Freese merch, like stickers and pins and t-shirts and plaid shorts and a guitar: https://www.etsy.com/shop/JoshFreeseGoods
"Just A Minute: Vol. 1" Videos:
"Heavy Metal Car Collection" - https://youtu.be/GpaSvkwDTrU
"The Dwarves And The Queens" - https://youtu.be/ShnXbZDetyw
Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshfreese/
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Wednesday Dec 08, 2021
Wednesday Dec 08, 2021
The good ship (*both laugh*) keeps sailing along with our 48th episode, and it features one of our only repeat guests to date. He's the owner of one of my favorite voices in the pantheon of punk rock, and he's also one of my favorite songwriters and one of, in my opinion, the most underrated guitar players in the scene. A triple threat!
Anyway, he's the inimitable Josh Caterer, and if you remember back at the beginning of 2021, we chatted about what was to be his first solo release, The Hideout Sessions. It was an album recorded in front of a live stream online audience at an otherwise empty club in Chicago, and it marked the first real appearance of any sort by this particular project, which featured Caterer on guitar and vocals, John Perrin on drums and John San Juan on bass.
To mark the release of that album this spring, the band played an album release show, but because all of the clubs were still closed to the public, they did it via live stream and recorded it as an album...AGAIN! If you're keeping score at home, that makes not one but TWO live albums recorded before actually playing a show in front of an in-person, human audience. The result of that latter show is The SPACE Sessions, due out next week (December 17th) on Pravda Records. It was recorded at - you guessed it - at SPACE in Evanston, Illinois, and like The Hideout Sessions, it features an interesting mix of songs from Caterer's catalog (via Smoking Popes and, yes, Duvall!!!) and some standards that you might otherwise think of as from the big band era, because they were popularized by the likes of Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. and Elvis Presley and, in the case of "At Last," which happens to be my wedding song...Etta James.
The set also closes with Caterer being joined on vocals by his daughter, Phoebe, for an updated take on "Somethin' Stupid," popularized by Frank Sinatra and his own daughter, Nancy. If been even tangentially aware of the punk scene over the course of the last three decades, you're of course aware of a legion of bands that have covered songs from outside the typical punk rock milieu, but they've done them with a fair amount of tongue planted firmly in cheek, as in "oh, isn't it funny/ironic that we're playing this song this way!" Sometimes it works great and sometimes it's a gag that tires after the first few listens, much like a comedy album. What's different about the old standards that Caterer et al., take on is the appreciation that the band has for the source material, paying considerable homage in their modern retellings.
Anyway, I'm rambling (I know, right?)...if you liked The Hideout Sessions, you'll love the SPACE Sessions. I'll add pre-order links when they're available (it'll be available digitally and on CD next weekend but the vinyl will have to wait until...who knows, honestly. Friggin' Adele...).
Catch the Josh Caterer Trio (along with the Sunshine Boys) live and in person:
December 16th at SPACE in Evanston, IL
December 17th at The Lyric Room in Green Bay, WI
December 18th at the Back Room at Colectivo in Milwaukee, WI
https://joshcaterer.bandcamp.com/music
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Wednesday Dec 01, 2021
Wednesday Dec 01, 2021
Boston-area Americana-punk troubadour Jesse Ahern has shared stages with everyone from Dropkick Murphys to Rancid to Frank Turner to Lenny Lashley and countless others both across the US and across Europe. At long last, he finally sits down with us for a chat about his new album, "Heartache and Love." The album grew out of sessions that popped up during the pandemic when what had been some pretty expansive 2020 tour plans ground to a halt. The album both refines and expands upon the sort of roots-rock-meets-folk-punk thing that Ahern has been doing so well for years now. It helped earn Ahern a Boston Music Award nomination for Americana Artist Of The Year, where he's up against some local heavy hitters like Mark Erelli and Lila Wiles and Lashley himself.
At first glance, it might seem that Ahern would fit into a handful of other categories, from Singer-Songwriter of the Year to Punk/Hardcore or Rock or Folk or even Blues Artist of the Year...but maybe that's what makes Ahern so perfect for the Americana label, because his sound is an amalgam of all of the above, all of which make him an artist rooted in classic American working-class music.
As you might imagine based on the almost 90-minute length of our chat, we cover a lot of ground, from parenting three children during a pandemic, to touring Europe with Dropkick Murphys and Frank Turner, to his upcoming overseas run with Chuck Ragan and Chris Cresswell, to growing up in the Boston area music scene, to the struggles with addiction and the depths of the recovery community in the punk scene. We also talk quite a bit about Lenny Lashley, because he's a one-of-a-kind.
Check out Ahern's website here: https://www.jesseahern.com/
Order "Heartache & Love" here: https://www.jesseahern.com/store
Watch the video for "Just A Moment" here: https://youtu.be/CJFlBaypUME
Watch the video for "Lost In This World" here: https://youtu.be/4ebNhULQ3E4
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Friday Nov 19, 2021
Friday Nov 19, 2021
Despite having a career that has consisted of more than three decades of writing and recording and playing music professionally in bands like Rancid and the Old Firm Casuals and Stomper 98 and Last Resort and Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards and Oxley's Midnight Runners and probably more that I'm forgetting, next Friday (November 26th if you're keeping track) marks the release date for the inimitable Frederiksen's debut release as a solo artist. The album is called "To Victory" and it'll be released on Pirates Press Records (and yes, physical copies of the vinyl version do exist!) and it features reworked versions of a half-dozen tracks that span Frederiksen's entire career arc as both a music fan and a music maker. Fear not, fans off Frederiksen's particular style of aggressive songwriting; this solo release doesn't see him abandoning his street punk roots for a beard and a flannel and a campfire acoustic guitar. It's still raw and aggressive, yet the stripped down version of a song like "Motherland" or "Skunx" finds the lyrics resonating on a much more personal level. We were lucky enough to have a lengthy and wide-ranging conversation with Frederiksen about all things "To Victory," from the initial batch of several dozen songs that were proposed, to playing his first show as a true solo artist, to the sort of shifts in perspective and priorities that come from going through a divorce and the death of his mother and finding a new partner and turning 50 all in the span of a couple of years...a span that included a global pandemic that forced the shutdown of the entire music industry for the foreseeable future.
Lars Frederiksen "To Victory" music videos:
"Skunx" - https://youtu.be/vJ-JHDHQD9Q
"God And Guns" - https://youtu.be/B7UvBZE_RS4
"Army Of Zombies" - https://youtu.be/qsO0ANtKpjM
Order "To Victory" here: https://shop.piratespressrecords.com/products/lars-frederiksen-to-victory-12-ep-cd-cassette
More Lars merch: https://kingsroadmerch.com/lars-frederiksen/
Follow "Lahz's Lockah" on Instagram to catch when he sells some of his personal memorabilia...could be old records, could be wrestling action figures, could be old pants...you never know: https://www.instagram.com/lahzs_lockah/
Check out the Wrestling Perspective Podcast that features Lars, two former MLB All Stars Jason Kendall and Dmitri Young, 4x Stanley Cup champ Darren McCarty, Impact Wrestling's Petey Williams and Dennis Farrell: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJXIX4REmMnNkqVTIaohL6Q/featured
(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021
Friday Nov 12, 2021
Friday Nov 12, 2021
Welcome back, (*both laugh*) fans! We took a little hiatus there for a few but we're back in action.
For episode 45, we caught up with Sonia Sturino of the kick ass trio known as Weakened Friends. They're due to put out their sophomore full-length, "Quitter," on November 19th and let me tell you...it's a great one! We talked an awful lot about the band pushing themselves on this record (which was produced by the band's bass player, Annie Hoffman, and engineered by Hoffman and their drummer, Adam Hand) in ways that they hadn't quite before. We also talked about being on tour in March 2020 as the world was shutting down, and getting back out on the road last month in the, I guess we're calling it, "new normal." Oh, and we definitely talked about The Tragically Hip (a band I've quite honestly never knowingly heard) and Our Lady Peace (a band that I've definitely heard and enjoyed for years) and about how cool a record label Don Giovanni is and lots more stuff as well (like our mutual pal Adam Parshall, who is an amazing concert photographer...hi Adam!).
This was a lot of fun and everyone should check out "Quitter" ASAP and go catch Weakened Friends on the road with The Beths early next year!
-Pre-order "Quitter" from Don Giovanni Records here: https://www.dongiovannirecords.com/store
-...or find it on their Bandcamp page here: https://weakenedfriends.bandcamp.com/
-Visit Weakened Friends' website here: https://www.weakenedfriends.com/
-Theme song as always is "Hurts To Laugh" by the lovely and talented Kali Masi. from their 2021 release [laughs].