Catching up with Goner Records’ founders, Zac Ives and Eric Friedl, is the best way to process the dizzying array of bands and sounds to be expected from their annual sonic soirée, Gonerfest, happening this year at Wiseacre on Broad from Thursday, September 24th, through Saturday, September 26th, and at the Overton Park Shell on Sunday, September 27th (visit goner-records.com for details). As always, the last day is free, but don’t sleep on the ticketed days, when so much of the rowdy, anything-goes magic happens. With four headliners this year, in addition to an international cast of other bands, here’s a cheat sheet on what to expect, courtesy of two key figures in Goner’s brain trust.
Horsegirl
Eric Friedl: Horsegirl comes out of Chicago and is loosely affiliated with a bunch of other younger bands there, like the Sharp Pins that played last year. They’re all kind of younger. There’s an energy coming out of Chicago and the Midwest now. The band Parking, that we also have playing, is tied in with them, too. It’s melodic post-punk, kind of angular and fractured a little bit, but not as abrasive or aggressive as other stuff. It’s pretty interesting, and they’ve gotten pretty popular doing a sound that I don’t think sounds like anyone else.
Zac Ives: They’ve been on our radar for a while. But when they started, they were all still in college. Like, they were always in the first semester of school and they couldn’t get off to come and play with us before. So we’re excited that they are out of college!
Toody Cole & Her Band
Friedl: People have followed Dead Moon [Cole’s renowned band with her late husband Fred Cole and drummer Andrew Loomis] forever, and having Toody in the fest is just amazing. She’s playing with a younger band, and you know, judging by the footage I’ve seen of them playing, she hasn’t lost a step. It’s incredible.
Ives: Her band with Fred before Dead Moon, The Rats, that stuff’s all gotten reissued. They did a good job of putting that back catalog, that had been gone for a long time, back out several years ago. Yeah, that first Rats record stands with any of those late-’70s/early-’80s American, especially Northwest, punk records for me.
Death
Ives: Death got on everyone’s collective radar when people started finding their 1976 single [“Politicians in My Eyes” b/w “Keep On Knocking”], and I think they ultimately made a documentary about how that 45 getting lost and then found was this big deal in record circles.
Drag City wound up pressing an album of a bunch of unreleased tracks that were as great as the single was, and so the whole idea that there was this proto-punk band from the early ’70s out of Detroit that was all Black and made such an amazing record, I think, just really caught everybody by surprise in our little ecosphere.
And while it all started with the three Hackney brothers [one of whom, David, died in 2000], recently the sons of those brothers, who are musicians as well, joined in. So now it’s this whole family-oriented kind of thing, a multi-generational Hackney thing with Bobby, who was from the original band, and two of the sons. The family nature of the band, both young and old, is really an amazing kind of thing.
Man or Astro-man?
Friedl: They are definitely legendary and just, really from the start [in the early ’90s, hailing from Auburn, Alabama], with no budget, they were determined to put on a show that you would not forget. They’re still the same way. And mixing that kind of punk-surf music with the outer space angle gives them a little bit of latitude to get crazy with things. Now Brian Teasley from the band owns a venue called Saturn in Birmingham — a great club!
At 10 a.m. on Saturday, Society Memphis, with Slovenly Recordings, will host a screening of We’re Loud Africa: The First Punk Festival in Kenya, documenting a 10-day tour of Africa by Death and many other bands in 2025.
