The Bad Penny (beta)

The second annual Flipside Fest, staged just outside Boise, began in magnificent form on Friday, with an afternoon wave of cool air giving way to an evening filled with clear skies and music courtesy of Australian rockers Babe Rainbow and Virginia-based electronic musician George Clanton. Saturday’s forecast — a welcome relief from the muddy start to Treefort Music Fest in late March — calls for even more beautiful weather … with a touch of gnarly experimental-hardcore-rock courtesy of Boise’s own Trauma Kit.

One of the city’s strongest young bands regardless of genre, Trauma Kit are slated for a plum time slot at 8 p.m. at Push & Pour, after which Flipside Fest 2023 headliners the Walkmen will grace the main stage. Trauma Kit’s latest close-up comes mere weeks after they opened for red-hot metal band Portrayal of Guilt and then Seattle punks So Pitted.

“We were like kinds in a candy store,” Trauma Kit bassist Shadrach Tuck recently told The Bad Penny about the shows.

Trauma Kit’s Flipside set also arrives shortly before the mid-December release of their full-length debut, Train Wrecks Take Time. Ahead of another trip down the aisle this evening, the band — fleshed out by vocalist Mason Waters, guitarist Dustin White and drummer Max Ball — also talked about their evolving sound, playing house shows and battling COVID.

A lot of Boise musicians are in multiple bands. Is this the primary project for all you guys right now?

Tuck: I’d say largely, yeah.

And you guys came together around 2019?

Tuck: Max and I started making music together around 2018, when we started filling around the sounds that we wanted to make with Trauma Kit. We had three or four shows under our belt before COVID happened.

Bell: And then we took a big break.

Yeah. What was like the “a-ha” moment where you guys realized that you were clicking really well and that you wanted to proceed together?

Ball: When Dustin hopped in on guitar, we all sort of realized that there was a direction worth going in. Prior to that, we didn’t really know exactly what kind of music we wanted to make. We had a rough idea, but Dustin coming in really solidified our sound.

I’d seen Mason in an old band of mine, and he thought I’d be a good fit with a Trauma Kit. I learned a couple songs real quick and started trying to cater my writing style to their sound. I think it shows. We have a large variety of songs, even though they’re pretty much all really heavy. Every song kind stands on its own as something that is unique.

Waters: We have very collective tastes across the band. We all like punk-rock, of course, but we also like hip-hop and metal and noise music and grunge and all kinds of other stuff. We’re actually also big pop fans.

Tuck: Max and I had a pretty good foundation as a rhythm section. We tried out another guitarist, but Dustin gave our writing some muscle. That really was the support for Mason’s storytelling and lyricism. We don’t spend a whole lot of time writing. When we do write, it’s so fast.

[Check out Trauma Kit on Bandcamp here.]

So how many songs do you think you’ve written so far?

Bell: Nice. We got 15 total. Four in the grave. There are probably three or four OG songs that we don’t play anymore, from the early Trauma Kit era.

Got you. Okay. And what about your first release?

Tuck: The album is almost done. We’re nearing the final mastering stage.

Where did you record it?

Tuck: At The Chop Shop [Recording Services] with Andy Agenbroad.

Have you played a lot of house shows?

Tuck: We have, starting with before Dustin came around. We did a lot more house shows when it was just the three of us.

Bell: I used to throw house shows at this mansion I lived at a few times. I was able to get a hold of the Show Me the Body guys, and they were down to play at my house. We opened for them once. That was the first big show we had ever done.

Waters: It was pretty fun.

Tuck: Until recently, Trauma Kit has been only a creative pursuit. We have ideas for visual elements of our performances too. This first record has some of our early collage-noise music and bits of hip-hop and all kinds of other sounds as well.

There you go. OK, so an experimental noise rock hardcore punk band that wants to open up for Taylor Swift the next time she tours, right?

Tuck: Dude, you know how much money we would make if we open for Taylor Swift? Those tickets go for like a thousand a pop.

Bell: We’ll have an album release show, then …

… your album release will be in mid-December, right?

Bell: Yeah, we’re going to buckle down but make sure we roll it out in a way that makes sense to us, not rush things.

Do you have any expectations for your Flipside Fest set?

Tuck: We’re going to rock and roll it fast and hard — the way we’ve been doing it.

[This interview was edited for length and clarity.]

This entry was posted on 09/23/2023 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.