Greaser lightnin'

The Amazing Royal Crowns are the rockingest gang in town

by Michael Caito

With 9000 copies of their debut sold, Providence's Amazing Royal Crowns had a chance to cash in when a new label asked them to re-release that disc with a few extras tacked on. "We decided that wasn't being fair towards people who already bought it once," singer Jason King Kendall mentioned downtown Sunday. "So we'll save all the new material for our next."

With guitarist Jonny Maguire, bassist Jack Hanlon and new drummer Judd Williams, the punk-rockabilly quartet, often reminiscent of the early Misfits or Cramps (with a splash o' the Clash spirit via Kendall and mega-Watt minuteman Hanlon), the foursome wrapped last year with a gig at the Centrum, organized by Boston's Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who had a pretty good year themselves, in case you've been avoiding most radios since last spring. The Crowns sacked and pillaged for a half-dozen mini-tours behind their self-titled debut, and there's no time to pause in the new year.

It was fitting that Dennis Kelly (aka DJ Hula Bomb), guitarist for one of Kendall's all-time favorite bands, Boss Fuel, was spinning wax platters in the Century Lounge during our Sunday chat. "Oh yeah, I got a lot from [Boss Fuel singer] Paul Slifer, no doubt," Kendall said, sipping his cranberry 'n' tonic. "As a matter of fact, we do 'The Ride' live now."

Q: Four times across the country, some with the Bosstones, some by yourself. How was attendance on your own tour?

A: Up and down. You know how it is. Texas is good to us, Florida, too. Certain parts of California, people had heard of us. You've just gotta keep hitting it and hitting it. We played with Cherry Poppin' Daddies in Riverside, then with Youth Brigade later in a skate park. Lotta ramps.

Q: At what point did you end up switching drummers?

A: Right after the Bosstones tour. It just wasn't working out. We had another tour going in two weeks, out with Pietasters for three-and-a-half weeks. A little bit of panic, yes, because when we parted ways we didn't have anyone else lined up. We had some guys audition who blew us away, amazing drummers, but they couldn't commit. We found Judd Williams out of Boston, who's toured with the Lyres in Europe. He'd been keeping himself open waiting for something like this. We're all like that -- no jobs, this is what we're doing, and we're ready to go at any time. To go out again. To go a lot.

Q: Upcoming?

A: Doing our own for a little bit starting February 3, then we're hooking up with Bouncing Souls for a few weeks, I believe. There's a tentative on a Horton Heat tour after that.

Q: That would seem a perfect fit.

A: Yeah, but it can be too perfect, too.

Q: Had any of you known Judd beforehand?

A: A little bit. We knew him from the Speed Devils, Country Bumpkins. He's been in so many bands. When he came to try out he knew all the songs from the CD cold, and he's so easy to get along with. We feel like a gang now. A band should be a gang . . . that's what the Clash used to say. You see it -- all these new greasers on the scene. If a band is doing OK, it affects that sort of style, and if other people wanna come along with it, that's OK. We recently wrote a song about the influx of greasers.

Q: What other recent studio work have you done?

A: We did a small thing for ESPN.

Q: The Winter X Games?

A: Yeah. That's the only studio time we've logged in the past few months, with touring and the drummer change. They rented out Chip's Bowl-a-Rama, which we love. We go down the street after practice and bowl there . . . Chip's a really nice guy. There's a bunch of different promo shots, it runs for something like four days and each band gets one whole day.

Q: With?

A: G. Love, Days of the New, and Letters to Cleo.

Q: Pretty big bands.

A: We're not selling out!

Q: Let's talk about that as an issue. What's up with Velvel, your new label?

A: Velvel sort of absorbed Monolith, where we already had a licensing deal. We're now on Monolith and Velvel, a bubble within a bubble, so were protected on two levels. We're doing this because we want the distribution and we want it to get out there. You know how it is . . . every label is a major label these days. I'm not talking Load Records, but when you get to a certain point, like Epitaph, they're majors. They play very hard ball.

Q: How bout Dischord?

A: Dischord, Fugazi, bands like that, it's different. They've created their own genre. But there are tenets that overlap. You'll only play all-ages, they won't let anybody sell their record over a certain price . . . That's also in our contract, and another reason we signed it. We have say in how much our album sells for, where it goes.

Q: Does all-ages-only restrict your locales on tour?

If it doesn't happen, we'll do it during the day, or play a record store. We get around it somehow. What else about the Velvel thing could I tell you? I mean, we all lost sleep over it. I wanna try to keep my punk rock credibility. These days, we're not selling our souls, turning our music over for cigarette commercials. We have full say in all our shit. They're not an evil company.

Q: When did you write the last batch of songs?

A: Over the last year. We try on the road but it's hard. During soundcheck -- if you get a soundcheck. I'm constantly writing lyrics, Jack and I are coming up with melody lines. But it doesn't come together unless we work on it together for a full day. The way the Royal Crowns write songs is all together.

Q: The bloody rehearsals have subsided?

A: Everybody has hit each other, thrown punches, bloodied each other up. That's punk rock. We got thrown into the situation and learned to deal with each other. We had to. Now we're our own family. We had to go through hating, throwing punches, breaking up all the time, leaving people in New York, kicking people out of the van while it was moving. That's long gone.

Q: It's New Year's Eve with eight or 9000 people there. You're on in five. What do you feel?

A: Fear. Stark white fear. No sound check, no monitor check. We got up there cold. It was like coming into the Safari . . . just get up there and do it. From the first note we couldn't hear each other, the audience is way, way over there. It was a lotta fun -- a huge chance to do something I never thought we'd be able to do. I wish we could've been closer to the crowd, but other than that, it was great to hear 10,000 fans screaming "Do the Devil." That was all right. The high ticket price I didn't dig, but there was nothing anybody could do about it. That's the Centrum. The Bosstones did get a lot of bands on, and it was great that they did that. So there you go. Mixed.

Q: Band business all day every day. Is it tough to keep focused?

A: That's what the road's for. That's why we want the road so bad.

Q: Any new songs about cars?

A: Naw. There's that one about the new greasers all around the country, how they know the style but don't know where it all comes from. Talks about Providence: "Back in the day when we hung at Rocket/Fight started in the street but we tried to stop it/Bars and bikers at Haven Brothers/Come drink in Safari with the tattooed brothers/Beer is cheap at the start of the night/But you end up drunk by the Silvertop light." Another song called "Bitter Life" is about being a working-class slob, which is what we are. Then there's "First Last Date." That one's about a car! It's about a guy who steals a car for his first date with a girl and they end up in a wreck. It's a real dance number.

Q: You got more Boston Music Awards nominations than Aerosmith.

A: We're playing that [on January 15 with Jen Trynin, Paula Cole, and Orbit].

Q: Speaking of them, can you see yourself doing this at age . . . ?

A: (Laughing) Hope I die before I get old. If it's still viable, we'll keep doing it. It still gives me goose bumps, and when it stops doing that, and if people stop caring, yeah, I'll stop.

Q: The worst thing a band can do on tour?

A: Burning bridges at clubs. Eating fast food all the time. Big disservice to your bandmates. Acting like an asshole at a show because of the number of people there, bitching out the owner. Maybe it's not drawing as well as you'd like, but it's no one's fault if you don't get your ass out there and keep touring. If you have a bad show, good. Well, you know what I mean -- what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I remember once overhearing a conversation with Phoebe Summersquash, and somebody asked her, "How the hell did your band get all these gigs? How did small factory get [to play this club]?" And she said, "We're nice to people." You do yourself a disservice by acting like a rock star.

The Amazing Royal Crowns perform at the Met Cafe on Friday and Saturday, January 23 and 24, with a slew of bands.

STARS & BARS. Spotlighting the tumultuous Charles Ives in a Classical Series event went beyond the point of paying 20th-century composers lip service. Music director Larry Rachleff, in fact, paid Philharmonic fans a gigantic compliment by trusting their tastes enough to know that a little polyphony from a maverick, impressionistic spirit can be just as valid a contribution to the world's classical canon as Dvorak's ensuing ninth. The shock of the new was in Saturdays case a profound piece involving pre-automobile quietude shattered in a public park. Intently listening to waxing and waning blue-collar pageantry one summer eve in Central Park, insurance-guy-by-day Ives reconstructs a frozen moment that anyone can relate to, especially those living near urban parks. Ragtime pianists going toe-to-toe, horses bolting (Christ, all I needed was a little gunplay and I would've ripped up my lease right there), and then a peaceful trek home. In the confident hands of the orchestra and Rachleff -- leading RIPO for the first time in months -- it seemed less impressionistic and more a Kodak moment. I was waiting for Redford to show up wearing his threads from The Sting. Excellent. Following that was Portuguese virtuoso Elmar Oliveira in a walloping Samuel Barber violin concerto which Oliveira played as if he'd written it himself. The guy is unreal. The post-intermission Dvorak ninth sashayed from elegance to barely contained fury to melancholia and back, rife with the Czech composer's conflicting feelings of homesickness and the joyful discovery of a new land's -- in this case, America's -- musical roots. It was almost too much at one sitting after the Ives and Oliveira's dazzling Barber, but any talk of Rachleff and a sophomore jinx is as dead as that kid in South Park every Wednesday. Wotta night.

ROUNDUP. Astoveboat and Bossman at the Safari Saturday (Les Savy Fav week next); Jonathan Stark and Joe Auger unplug at the Met on Friday. Recordingville finds SoCo's Mobcore Records -- which gave us La Cosa Nostra by Arson Family -- finishing up an imminent single by Highway Strippers, and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Fallon checks in with a fabulously tuneful (if schizophrenic) debut CD that you can read about in seven days.