bad sandwich chronicles

Hey hey! As Wandering Birds season gets fired up again, I’m pleased to share the lyrics here for our newest track, Boardin USA! which appears on the Music For Everyone comp, benefiting the ACLU and conceptualized by all-around great guy John Nolan. Super glad to be part of it. Dig the comp here On this track, the Wandering Birds are Derek Grant and Dan Tinkler. Anyway, here’s the lyrics. Fun fact: there’s a deeply hidden political statement contained in these here words. see if you can’t decipher it.

Boardin’ USA

There’s a groovy new craze and it’s really, really making a scene, now
It can make you go totally nuts, if you know what I mean, now
All you need is a rag and a cold, dark room, a pitcher of water and some restraints too
just tie your dude down, baby, come and waterboard with me.

Well, he’ll cry and he’ll shake and he’ll tell you that it feels like he’s drowning
(waterboard, waterboard)
Then you say you’ll take the corpse of his son and throw it back where you found it.
And the next thing you know, he’ll be singing a tune.
Then you can cut him loose and send him back to his dune.
Yeah, you can hear the waterboarders screamin’ all over the bay

Well, I know it’s torture when the sun goes down
but I wanna know what they’re all thinkin’ about
Let’s take that 8 year old girl, and let’s strap her down
baby come and waterboard with me

When the sun comes up, I’m haunted by the screams and the shakin’
but that all fades when I smell you cooking eggs with some bacon
a little bit of breakfast and some coffee too
and a guy who’s got some explainin’ to do
he’s already starving and he’s black and he’s blue
and still he’s waterboarding all day.

Waterboard. Let’s do the waterboard.
Whoa.

Hey gang, I know it’s been a while since I rapped at ya, but shit’s been crazy at casa kelly. Anyway, today I’m back to bring you a video by my friends, and new Red Scare band MakeWar.

Y’all remember the blizzard that hit NYC last winter? Well, I was doing acoustic shows out east at the time, and wouldn’t you know it, I got trapped in NY, up to my dick in snow and pigeons and feces. I took a train to Bushwick on the very last L line train before the state of emergency was declared, and i settled into a hotel that featured graffiti IN MY ROOM, IN BLOOD, ABOVE THE BED. I was there for 3 days. It was like being Eloise at the Ritz.

My friend Seth had JUST opened a bar called the Starliner, so I hung out there, rather than sit in my disgusting murder hotel. We decided “hey! I should play a show, since this is a new bar and I’m trapped. I get to play. People that wanna see me get to see me, and everyone can see what a great new bar this is.”

So we set it up. A band called MakeWar had a show at Suburbia get cancelled, and so the singer, Jose, was hastily booked to open the show. Now, I expected VERY little. Acoustic openers are…hit or miss at best, and a last minute addition to a last minute show promised to be a real shit sandwich.

Welp, to cut to the chase, I was sitting there having a Bud, and Jose started playing and i distinctly remember thinking “aaaah FUCK! This guy is awesome. That means I have to play well.”

After the show, we hung out, drank beers and talked about his band. I told him, sight unseen, that based on his performance, I wanted him to be on Red Scare. His response (and I’m paraphrasing pretty hard here) was something to the effect of “Sheeeit, son. Let’s party.” And party we did, when Edwin and Jose came down to Philly to ink their names in blood for our supreme overlord Toby and swear fealty to shitty vans and highways for the next few years. Greg, the drummer, missed said party but since he’s from Florida the jury’s still out on him. Rumor has it they eat faces down there.

ANYWAY, the result is MakeWar’s first proper full length: Developing A Theory of Integrity,. This song, Tiger Lili, is my personal favorite on the album. The song rocks, the video is great, aaaaaand it bears mentioning that we do a lot of whining here in the punk scene about a lack of fresh perspectives and voices outside the typical white suburban straight male thang, though that’s what most of us are, and most of us are little more than lazy complainers. No wonder shit’s smellin’ stale, eh? Well, prayers be answered: Jose is from Venezuela and Edwin is from Colombia, so here it is, y’all: a whip ass band with a genuinely different cultural perspective that can actually bring a fresh set of eyes, emotions, lungs and strings to this scene. The main thing is that MakeWar is great. Well, the MAIN thing is that I found em before Toby, but the refreshing thing is that it’s not more of the same tired old bullshit. Watch, listen and fall in love for yourselves. Tour dates here
xoxoxo