Karen Ponzio Photos
The Redactions
The summer solstice, the longest day of the year, was just ending as Jeffrey Thunders sat in the back of Three Sheets.
“All I want to do is make music and have a good time with my friends” he said. The day had been celebrated as Make Music Day throughout the city, and many cities throughout the country as well. Thunders said he had no idea it was going on when he booked the show.
Karen Ponzio Photos
Jeffrey Thunders
His Die Hipster Records had put together tonight’s Punk Night in New Haven bill at Three Sheets with three bands. One of them was Some Kind of Nightmare, a three-piece band from San Diego that Thunders met while sharing a show in Albany a couple of years back. They were coming through the area and contacted him. Added to the bill were old friends and new local band The Redactions for their very first live show. The third band, Jeffrey Thunders and The Scabs, came about via friendship and resourcefulness.
“I got together who was available — which ended up being a couple of Lost Riots band mates and a couple of old friends — and formed the Scabs,” said Thunders.
Thunders and the Scabs opened the show with Thunders taking up his mic with an extended cable that allows him to be anywhere in the room he wants to be — including outside on the Three Sheets patio for a piece of one song — while being backed up on stage by Matt Mullarky on bass, Scott Fitch and Noel Tomasz on guitars, and Chad Blanchard on drums. Pounding through a few Lost Riots favorites, a back catalogue of songs from ten years ago, and “stuff we haven’t played ever,” the band members went at it as if they had all been playing together right along.
Scorching solos from Fitch helped the punk lean into straight up rock ‘n’ roll even more so, and Thunders, ever the hardworking front man, kept the crowd involved with numerous shout outs and running up to and into friends in the audience, who sang along with him and gave him hugs and high fives. He dedicated the song “If I Knew” — which included the lyrics “if I knew you’d be like that I would have never left New Haven / If I knew you’d be like that I never would have went to Jersey / Tramps like us we were born to run, but you weren’t running fast enough” — to “all the Bruce Springsteen fans.” The set ended with the Riots’ “We’re Getting Old,” but there was no sign that Thunders or any of his band members were aging past showing their fans a good time.
Some Kind of Nightmare — the members of which Thunders called “road warriors” during his set — came up next, delivering a relentless set of hard-hitting three-piece punk rock. Chy Mess on guitar and vocals, Molly Mess on bass and vocals, and Justin on drums barely took a break to breathe as they drove through song after powerful song. They eventually stopped before the tune “Never Gonna Stop” to dedicate it to their drummer, saying he had been “through hell and back with us” on the road for five years. The set stayed heavy and sweaty right up to the final song “Back to San Diego,” though Molly told the crowd they would be performing in Clinton the following night. The crowd gave back the love to this band. When a woman in the audience yelled “you go girl!” to Molly, she answered back with “I wanna play in a band next time we’re here with you,” going even further to ask if the woman played an instrument and fielding offers from others in the crowd who wanted to join them when they came back to New Haven in the fall.
Last to the stage was The Redactions, four long-time local musicians who, according to bassist and vocalist Kevin Mackenzie, have been playing together since October 2017. In their debut show, Mackenzie, John “Pugs” Licitra on guitar, Eric Hartlett on guitar and vocals, and Tom Hogan on drums melded as individually strong musicians into one solid band. Adding two covers — “Situation” by Slaughter and the Dogs as well as “Get Over You” by The Undertones, which got the crowd singing and raising their fists along to it — to five originals, this set endeared the growing crowd with their massive drum and bass beats and searing guitars. Everyone was smiling afterwards. It seemed to be just what they all needed, a perfect way to start the summer.
“This is why I love playing punk music,” said Thunders.
Some Kind of Nightmare is playing tonight with another of Thunders’s bands, The Ratz, in Clinton at Scottish Dave’s. The Redactions are playing in Meriden at Scotty O’Boyles, because punk rock don’t stop. See their Facebook pages for further details.
