Over their 10-year career NYC’s Bad Mary have been a prolific and powerful force in the punk scene. Following the recent release of Glamour & Trash, the band sat down and rolled the dice with TGEFM to discuss the new record, their take on current cultural and political state of things and what’s next.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats in advance on the release of the Trash & Glamour album. What was the process like in fleshing out that record and bringing it to life?
It’s always very exciting to bring a new record of new songs together. For T&G this is the first original EP/Album we’ve released in almost 4 years (thanks COVID), so we were so pumped to get some new songs out. The process for T&G was pretty similar to the process for all of our original stuff, Mike and David would typically create some song skeletons with lyrics and ideas and bring them to rehearsal. From there the band would really flesh out the songs, Bill would add his masterful drum ideas and Amanda would rebuild the vocal lines and help our lyrics and ideas take flight. Since we do everything in house, we recorded them on our own schedule and started releasing singles in 2022. We’re so excited to get these out!
How did this recording compare to the experiences you had with Better Days or Return of Space Girl?
With Better Days we were just learning how to do these types of things. We had written 12 original songs and wanted to put an album out. It was a process that really pushed us to think about how and what we recorded. We love those songs, and since it’s the 10th anniversary of that record in 2023, we plan on re-recording a lot of those for a release later this year. We want those songs to sound as good as our newest stuff! With The Return of Space Girl, we had this ambitious multi-media experience with the concept album and the animated movie. It was incredible to put those songs together, but writing a concept album is tough! We’re so happy with how it came out.
With T&G we wanted to get back to some trashy, flash, rock & roll music. Write songs that are simple, fun, and just a little pissed off.
The world has been going through some shit over the last few years. What affect, if any, have the cultural (and/or political) landscapes of the last few years had on your music and the live scene going forward?
We think it’s pretty difficult to go through the last few years without some degree of frustration and anxiety. 2020 – 2022 were so incredibly difficult for so many people, we wanted to hit the floor running in 2023 with new and fun music that gives people the excuse to come out and rock out with us. TROSG was an album written about the dangers of Social Media misinformation, our song Motor Mouth (from Glitter Bomb) is about the frustration from internet trolls. Bits of “It’s All Trash” are about massively spread misinformation that we’re sort of forced fed on a daily basis. So yeah, the whole pandemic and landscape definitely aggravated us a bit. So that energy is in a lot of our music. But at the same time, we also want to provide some degree of escapism, because we want our fans to have fun. We want people to come to a Bad Mary show and we want to give them a 60-minute vacation from the BS. For us, we hope our music is also a release of positive energy.
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should know about?
Oh wow. Our local scene is pretty incredible. We’re friends with great bands like: Samurai Pizza Cats, Mega Infinity, Crisis Crayons, The Going Rate, Sargasm, All New Episode, The Knottie Boys, Flak Jacket, Playing Dead, The Muckrakers, almost too many to count. But these are all Long Island/NY local bands we adore. If we left any out, we’re so so sorry… but there’s so many.
Not to put the cart before the horse, but your discography shows you aren’t ones to take a lot of time off, what’s next for Bad Mary after the release of “Trash and Glamour”?
HAH! yeah as we said earlier, we’re going to re-record and re-release a bunch of songs from Better Days in the fall on an EP? Album? Called – Better(er) Days!
Was there anything we missed or that you’d like to put more focus on?
Join us on twitch! Every Tuesday night we do a live stream on twitch and it’s the most fun. 8pm Eastern – twitch.tv/badmaryband
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
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/
