Grab your s’mores, your bug spray, a shot of Malort and pack your bags as Riot Squad Media is returning to Northeast Pennsylvania to take over the West End Fairgrounds in Gilbert, PA with Camp Punksylvania! The 3-day festival with multiple stages and amazing national and local acts like 7 Seconds, The Bronx, Less Than Jake, will take place from 5 July until 7 July tickets are available here. Charlie Hull, drummer of Brooklyn’s Mary Shelley has joined TGEFM to discuss this year’s festival for the latest installment of our Camp-centric interview series: Happy Campers. Check it out below and I’ll see you at the campfire!
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! What should our readers know about Mary Shelley; your mission, your sound?
We jump around and swap instruments. If you cheer loudly enough Jackson will take his shirt off and do a little sultry dance before climbing the nearest structure like an ape. Try it when you come to see us.
Musically we’re high energy, playing across different genres and sounds. Every song is a character or a caricature. But just reading about our sound won’t help you, if you’re curious give us a listen!
You are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
It is amazing to have a platform to introduce our music to brand-new unsuspecting audiences.
We know everybody’s there to have a good time and find some new music! That mindset is unbeatable. It’s so much fun to meet other artists and build new connections that way. We’ve ended up playing with bands from across the states that we met at different festivals.
What does Mary Shelley have planned for us beyond Camp Punksylvania?
We just released our second album Bloodhounds earlier this month on 6/14! We’re super proud of it and it’s a damn fine record. Now that it’s out, it’s high time we head back to the lab and experiment on some new tracks.
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
May 2023 we had the pleasure of playing the FOCUS Wales festival in the UK – and let me tell you, the Welsh go hard. Last March we played 13 shows over 6 days at and around SXSW which was the closest any of us have come to running a marathon. Most recently we toured opening for the incredible Gogol Bordello along the West Coast, and that was definitely the best experience we’ve had as a band so far. It was a great opportunity to play in theaters and venues waaaaaay larger (and more ornate) than we could have dreamed. I can’t tell you how many Californians came up to us after the show and started dancing or singing to show us some love. Wonderfully bizarre, and always appreciated. Can the Punksylvanians do better???? We’ll find out.
Regarding live shows, what are you most excited to bring to the Camp Punk audience? What do you want the campers to say about your set when they write home from camp this year?
Raw energy: Muckin’ around in the slop with the other piggies.
We are definitely a theatrical band and our singers love to hop into the crowd, so be prepared mentally and physically. Maybe emotionally as well. Spiritually you’re fine, we rarely hit on a spiritual level. That being said we may commune with the trees in an ancient Drudic ritual, and in that case, yeah be prepared spiritually.
We’ve all got a few, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?
A classic tale of buyer’s remorse. While replacing his decapitated guitar our lead singer Jackson was faced with a choice: An updated Gibson or a new Telecaster. After hemming and hawing he figured that he ought to stick with the sound he knew and loved and took the Gibson. About a month later it fell from a guitar stand onto carpeted floor and snapped its neck clean off. RIP, should’ve taken the Tele.
The punk and ska scenes have almost always been at the forefront of inclusion and diversity within the music scenes. The flipside of course is that the gatekeeping in the scene is also very prevalent? Why do you think the genre brings in such a welcoming community and is so happy to let everyone in and also seems to shut the doors so quickly behind themselves?
It’s tricky because of course you want to honor and appreciate a community that welcomes you, but in glorifying you also kind of fossilize what it can or cannot look like. We played at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas and it was genuinely funny to perform in front of a literal gate that separated us from the exhibits of the Clash, Lemmy, and so forth. The museum is protecting an idea by keeping it in the past and rejecting the present. I kind of get it, art and especially music evolves so rapidly, and we’re three or four generations of punk deep. The people, music, and community we love right now will someday look completely different. It’s scary to think our places and presence shift and shrink, but it’s also kind of beautiful to be a building block for the future.
Just like the character of your namesake’s most famous work, Mary Shelley seems to be crafted from multiple styles and influences? How important is the diversity of sound in your writing?
There’s plenty of overlap but we all bring different musical influences to the table, and we all share in writing the songs. We deliberately experiment and try every idea suggested which takes time but pushes us in new directions or strengthens our understanding of the piece. The exploration is fun and it brings us to genres or styles while we learn and further develop our musical abilities.
Alright, name is based on the author of Frankenstein, the music itself has some haunting elements and you’re playing at Camp… are you more fans of the Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp or Cabin Fever style horror?
I’d have to give it to “Cabin in the Woods”, but with “Freddy vs Jason” as a close second because it’s all about friendship.
If Punksylvania were a real camp, what activities are each of you leading?
Charlie, drummer: Hiking to the lake and fishing for Mongo, the local river monster.
Jackson, singer: Basketball or Kickball, no in-between. Okay, maybe Dodgeball.
Taylor, guitarist: The Cool Chill Counselor that lets you get away with fun stuff but is also genuinely a good role model.
Sam, bassist: The Art cabin where you try new art everytime you go in. Painting, pottery, homemade-fireworks.
Let’s pretend there’s some post show jam sessions… what song are you playing at the Campfire sing-a-long?
“PUNKSYLVANIA Mountain Mama…Take me home…Country Roads”
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
We absolutely have to see Dr.Frankenstien’s Monsters, for obvious reasons. We’ve got a couple OKC natives in our band who know some of the people in Skating Polly, and finally to relive the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater days, Less Than Jake.
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Listen to our brand new album BLOODHOUNDS! We should have an AudioTree session up on youtube in the next couple weeks as well. But more importantly the album, for sure. Thanks for reading! And thank you for the interview!
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
