by Aaron Hyndman, JoeHirshWeb Staff Writer
HACKETTSTOWN, NJ (July 6, 2012) – I find myself in a local coffee shop on a Friday morning, talking punk rock with the front man and bass player from Hackettstown-based BDFM, one of the area’s brightest up-and-coming young bands. The pungent aroma of freshly-ground exotic blends fills the cozy space, and yet, chocolate is the metaphor of choice at the moment.
“Our music is like a candy bar,” explains bassist Ben Scardo. “The ukulele is crisp, my bass line is chunky, and our drummer is just nuts.” And from that delectable description, we get to the finer points of “uke-punk,” the sub-genre being pioneered by lead singer and ukulele player James Blake, Scardo, and drummer Ricky Hall, along with auxillary percussionist Jeremy Labadie, who occasionally appears at gigs to make the trio into a foursome.
The uke-punk sound of BDFM could initially be described as a folk-infused punk rock styling. Sometimes acoustic, often electric, you could say it’s the product of some sort of deranged amalgamation of bluegrass, folk, and hardcore punk. But make no mistake, BDFM isn’t hybrid anything. They are straight-up, unapologetic punk rock that grabs you by the shirt collar and makes you want to jump and dance like a maniac.
Case and point: four days ago, Monday night in Willamsburg, Brooklyn. The venue is The Trash Bar, one of the hottest venues in a New York City neighborhood that’s growing trendier by the minute. It’s happy hour, the PBR is flowing like water, and some of the local hipster set are taking full advantage. But, as the guys from BDFM get set to take the stage in the back room of this trendy dive, it’s obvious they’ve brought their own inventive style to an area where the illusion of counterculture is steadily morphing into a tired norm.
Such observations are inescapable when someone like Scardo so freely shatters the mold, taking the stage in a Hawaiian shirt, jorts, and a scraggly beard accented by what could only be described as, well, a Hitler moustache. But seen in its full context there’s nothing outlandish, absurd, or provocative about any of it. It’s simply apparent that BDFM is dead-set on just being themselves: genre-defying, quirky, and never cliché.
Gradually, the hipsters file out, and BDFM takes the stage in front of a group of devoted hardcores. Some of them travelled across the borough; many of them travelled all the way across North Jersey. Regardless of the distance, everyone was in for a hell of a show that would make the trip well worth it. As the piercing riffs of Blake’s electric ukulele, wired for maximum distortion and just the right amount of feedback, echo through the room with scintillating intensity, Scardo and Hall lay down a driving beat that renders the crowd powerless to resist the urge to thrash about in sheer ecstasy.
Fast forward two days later and about 40 miles due west, where the bright lights of the city are but a distant glow on the horizon. Tonight’s venue is The Stanhope House, a classic roadhouse nestled in one of northwest Jersey’s many lakeside villages. The location isn’t all that’s changed for BDFM; the equipment is different, too. Scardo’s four-string electric is replaced with an upright bass, Blake lays the chords down with a banjo, and Labadie joins them on stage with his full set of bongos. This evening, BDFM is serving up a few songs with a decidedly acoustic flavor. And yet, they still undoubtedly rock. And when they once again go full-on electric to finish off the set, the crowd gets blasted with that mind-blowingly awesome cocktail of riffs, rhythms and sounds that are absolutely nothing like anything they’d heard all night.
Back to today, as we sit in the coffee shop discussing the history of the band and the evolution of its unique sound, I’m fascinated to learn that its origins were rather humble. “I went crazy and went away to San Francisco for like 3 months,” says Blake. “Three Februarys ago, I bought a uke for my birthday; in March I was in San Francisco and all I had was 1500 dollars, my uke, and my computer.”
When Blake returned to New Jersey, he was more or less broke. But he did return from the West Coast with what would become a treasure in its own right: six or seven songs that he’d written, and a bunch of riffs. “I needed an outlet and I needed something to keep me busy,” said Blake. And so he pursued his music.
As he explains it, “I never wanted to do a band, I just wanted to have these songs and basically have an audio diary. I never thought I was gonna’ buy my own amp, I never thought I was going to buy my own pedals.” So what changed? Blake looks at his bass player and utters two simple words: “this guy,” as he gestures at Scardo.
With Scardo now in the picture, the two of them spent hours on end developing their songs, many of them the product of creative sessions that took place beside the eerily calm waters of nearby Ghost Lake, in Great Meadows. And while these were simple acoustic songs, it wouldn’t be long before they would, quite unexpectedly, evolve into the style that became BDFM’s signature sound.
“When we started, there was no distortion,” said Scardo. “One day,” he explains, “I said this needs to be heavier, and I added some.” The rest, as they say, is history. And though other bands have meshed folk music with punk rock sounds, it’s nearly unheard of for a band to do it with quite so much fury. If anything, BDFM is a throwback to the early days of the genre in a way that doesn’t replicate bands like Flogging Molly as much as it conjures up Black Flag at its most gripping and intense moments.
“We can have fun with feedback,” says Scardo, with Blake adding that his “real mission with the uke is to make it not sound like a uke.” And in that attempt, he certainly succeeds. It almost begs the question of why a prominent band hasn’t thought to try something like this before. The stripped down chords of the ukulele fit so perfectly with the simple chord progressions of the genre, it’s like a match that was made in punk rock heaven.
As pioneers of this unique hard-rocking sound, it’s a wonder to think that BDFM started out as a folksy acoustic duo without a true percussion section. “I think the drummer definitely helped,” says Blake. “I definitely prefer us with an extra shot of espresso.”
BDFM’s turbo-charged uke-punk will undoubtedly provide a caffeinated jolt to this year’s JoeFest. And with that in mind, it’s fitting that a coffee-shop would be the place to discuss the band that’s sure to give JoeFest, and the area music scene, the perfect wake-up.
Don’t miss BDFM when they take the stage at JoeFest II on Sunday, August 5th, at Vasa Park, Budd Lake, NJ.
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