Local Music - Trashy and the Kid

Shooting the Breeze with Trashy and the Kid

On the Road and Release of Songs In The Key of Blow Me

By Sean Claes

Photo by Ricardo Acevedo

Austin-based outfit Trashy and the Kid are an interesting bunch. According to their bio the band includes a flamboyant cross dresser, a brooding chef, a cheerful hippy, a lecherous dyke, and a hyperactive Christian. Together they pump out some raw high-energy punk. I thought it’d be nice to get to know them a little more… so while they were on their “Passed Out Prom Queens” Tour I e-mailed them a few questions. In true Trashy style they let me know they answered by video “while getting hammered at the Greenwich Treehouse in New York city, after playing the Suffolk.”

I learned of them from their EP Run For Your Life which was released a year of so ago. Well, they have just finished their first full-length album, Songs in the Key of Blow Me, and they will be playing an INsite Night on May 15 at Encore to celebrate.

Trashy and the Kid are Paul Tyler (vocals), Brian Delano (guitar), Sterling Ridings (guitar), Shannon Deane (bass) and Staci Grim (drums).

Claes: What’s in a name? How’d you come up with “Trashy and the Kid?”

Paul Tyler: “It would be sad for us to give the real story away, because I so love people coming up to me on the street and saying 'What's up, Trashy!' And I know they're not trying to be mean so I have to resist the urge to be like 'Nothing, Douchebag! What's up with you?'”

Brian Delano: “But if you're Trashy, that means the rest of us collectively are the Kid, which doesn't make sense.”

Claes: You’re first full-length, Songs in the Key of Blow Me, is being released this month. Hearing some of the rough cuts, it sounds like the same “mothers-hide-your-kids” punk extravaganza that the Run For Your Life EP did, but fleshed out.

Sterling Ridings: “Well, we can't all be Bono, talking about the rape of Ireland, or whatever.”

Tyler: “We re-did a lot of the songs from our EP because it's almost an entirely different band. The new cuts are so much harder and more complex, really thick and cool.”

Ridings: “There's a lot of depth.”

What songs from the new album do you look forward to playing live?

Delano: “I like Rampant Sex On The Hell Train. That song's got great energy, it's a blast to play.”

Staci Grim: “I'd say Poledancer. It's always the first song that sounds magical and it sets the mood for the whole show.”

Is there a song on the new CD that holds a special meaning above the rest?

Tyler: “Probably Little Dirty. It's one of the earliest songs I wrote. I don't think this is a new idea, but for a song about a prostitute, I like how explicitly it goes into the idea that every job is a kind of prostitution, as in, how much is your life worth to you, that you would slough it off doing things that really don't mean that much to you? Which in the end is how so many of our jobs are. And we're talking about prostitution because lots of people think sex is so meaningful, but how meaningful is your time, on this earth?

Grim: “I'd say Run For Your Life just for the very bold statement. 'I'll see you all in Hell … oh well!'”

You spent most of April on the road doing the “Passed Out Prom Queen Tour.” How difficult was it to be out there and still finish the new record?

Delano: “No record is ever truly finished. That's what I've learned. At a certain point you have to say 'I'm satisfied with where it's at.”

Tyler: “At some point you just stop listening to mixes. But the current mixes are so good, we're being really picky … we've gone deep with this motherf***er.”

Staci Grim has been playing drums for you in this current tour. How did that happen?

Tyler: “We drugged him and kidnapped him.”

Delano: “We gave him TheraFlu.”

May 15 you will be releasing your new CD at an INsite Night at Encore (611 Red River) . Who else is on the bill and how’d you choose them?

Tyler: “The opening band is Bad Lovers, a rootsy pop punk band, more like Buddy Holly on speed than Green Day or anything like that. They're another band that records at SuperPop, we saw them at a SuperPop showcase and we liked their energy and the fact that their fans got rowdy and threw shit. We've also got Exile, a straight-up mosher punk band we're friends with. And the headliner is Jason McMaster's Metallica tribute band, Kill 'Em All, which is going to kick ass. It's going to be one of the most high-energy, high-quality lineups I've heard of in Austin in a long time, and a real mix of the classic and the new guard, which is what our band is about in a lot of ways. And putting it together ourselves has been a treat.”

Claes: Any special plans for the release?

Ridings: “I promise to not kill myself before the CD release.”

Tyler: “Intentionally or …?”

Ridings: “Yes, intentionally.”

Shannon Deane: “No promises for afterward?”

Ridings: “**** no, I make no promises for afterward! In fact, that's how I'm going to make you mother******s famous … I'm going to do the record release party, and then live onstage I'm going to cut my head off with my own homemade guillotine.”

Delano: “Made out of guitar strings?”

Tyler: “And papier-mâché.”

Ridings: “Right, guitar strings and papier-mâché. And I'm going to leave a note saying 'Paul, it's all your fault.'”

Grim: “Ha ha! Live with that one, Paul.”

Deane: “Might happen in Georgia.”