Kayla Renelle will always remember something her brother asked her about Voluntary Hazing, her 12-piece ska band.

“You have talented musicians,” he began. “Some are classically trained. So why are you playing ska?”

Of course, Renelle had to write about the experience. She also pieced together other odd comments people made about her band. One friend said the horn players were amazing, but they couldn’t dance to save their lives.

“I feel like every ska band has to do a song about ska,” Renelle says.

“Why (You in a Ska Band)” was the first original tune Voluntary Hazing wrote, back in May 2019, about a month after forming. The song is on the band’s debut EP, Crossroads, released in January 2020. 

The band’s story began a few years earlier, when tenor sax player Thomas Narveson formed the SJSU Ska Ensemble alongside Alex Quick and Gabriel Perez. At its height, as many as 50 members were coming and going, most from SJSU’s music department and marching band.

“Everybody kind of knew each other,” says trombonist Ryan Heisinger. “It wasn’t completely random people, which made it fun.”

At the time, Narveson wanted to create a high school class or after-school program that would teach kids music through forming rock bands. The SJSU Ska Ensemble was his pilot program, and he’d bring in charts for songs. At every rehearsal, they played Reel Big Fish’s ’90s ska hit “Sell Out.”

The ensemble dissolved when Narveson moved to the Pacific Northwest. But in early 2019, when Heisinger needed a band for his recording class, he gathered up the members of the Ensemble that had consistently showed up to rehearsals. Together, they tracked a cover of Panic! At The Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”—always a crowd-pleaser at their regular “Ska Ensemble Listening Hours.”

The recording came out great. Soon, the band adopted the name “Voluntary Hazing,” began working on new material and started gigging off-campus. In “Why (You in a Ska Band),” Renelle sings she “wrote this song the other day / to finally give our Reel Big Fish covers a break.”

Even by ska band standards, Voluntary Hazing is a large group. They began with 11 members, then bumped up to a dozen after Narveson moved back to San Jose and joined. Filling out the group are its seven-piece horn section (two trumpets, two trombones, three saxes), which they use to their full advantage.

“It makes it a lot of fun when it comes to arranging,” Heisinger says. “We can do anywhere from three to seven individual parts, so it gives us a lot of flexibility.”

The group managed to play Art Boutiki on Jan. 31, 2020—the day Crossroads was released—and fit in a few more shows before COVID-19 shut everything down. Once socially distanced, they didn’t rehearse or record in person again until May 2021. 

Instead, they got good at remote recording, releasing a handful of songs tracked piecemeal in 2021, like a cover of Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” for Lonely Ghost Records compilation Wow! Now That’s What I Call the 90s: DIY Edition (a benefit for MusiCares COVID Relief Fund). In June came an original called “Skemsco,” about their melding of ska, emo and disco, and in September a cover of Pat The Bunny’s “I’m Not a Good Person” for the Keep On Loving, Keep On Fighting comp, a benefit for Trans Lifeline assembled by well-known ska-memer William Schuster (co-founder of The Bands I Like Only Charge $18).

Voluntary Hazing begin 2022 with two more releases, a cover of Blink 182’s “First Date” for the Prevent Cancer Foundation benefit Fate Fell Short: A Blink 182 Compilation (released last week), and the original “Reciprocate Some” (out next week).

As a 12-piece band, every member’s relationship to the genre they play is different. Some are hardcore fans, others are more casual. All of them, however, find that the scene that they are now a part of is large and growing.

“[When I was young], hearing ska, it had the same ideals of the hardcore punk scene, but they had horns in it, which is what I liked. It was like a guilty pleasure thing,” says alto sax/violinist David Sanchez. “This is re-sparking where I left off with my interest in ska. It’s awesome.”

voluntaryhazing.bandcamp.com

Don’t call it the fourth wave. Though it truly never went away, in 2021 ska music is back thanks to a long-awaited critical reappraisal and a generation of new artists and listeners. Here in San Jose, Monkey are an absolute legacy of skankable rhythms and melodies, the Asian Man Records alum having spent the better part of three decades melding all of ska’s various waves into a peppy, danceable groove—and harmonizing all the while. At the ever-lovely Caravan, they’re joined by punk cumbia group El Maldito Crudo, and the triumphant cracking of PBR tall boys all night.

Monkey
Fri, 8pm, Free
The Caravan, San Jose

Since 2012, Western Standard Time has paid tribute to Jamaician ska originators—like the Skatalites—through the lens of big band. This West Coast all-star band is composed of established jazz heavyweights currently working the LA scene. Many of them are internationally acclaimed Grammy-winners. The band features world-famous ska musicians, such as Angelo Moore of Fishbone and Korey “Kingston” Horn of the Aggrolites. Funneling the intoxicating rhythms of ska through the sheer power and intentionality of big band arrangements, Western Standard Time cooks up a decisive concoction of high-energy grooves.

Western Standard Time
Fri, 8pm, $22+
The Ritz, San Jose

Set aside what you think you know about ska music and put on “How it Feels” by The Slackers.  The first track on 2010’s The Great Rocksteady Single, “How it Feels” showcases what the band had been doing so well for 19 years at that point and continues to do today: write great songs. Six stellar musicians crafting earnest paeans to the sounds of reggae’s early roots, The Slackers know how to hit all the right notes while still keeping things a little loose. Call it a throwback, or call it a classic. Either way, it rocks steady.

The Slackers
Sun, 7pm, $15+
The Ritz, San Jose

It can be hard to believe now, but two decades ago ska had a pretty big moment. It was a time before Gwen Stefani’s solo debut and Bradley Nowell’s overdose, when alternative radio stations were spinning bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger and Less Than Jake with regularity. And then there were the Voodoo Glow Skulls.

The Riverside, Calif.-based six-piece ska-core band wrote hyper-fast street-punk tunes with distorted guitar upstrokes, and punctuated with bright horns, dark lyrics and hardcore-style shouting vocals—in English and occasionally in Spanish. They even released an all-Spanish version of their Epitaph debut (1995’s Firme) well before groups like Ozomatli carved out a substantial American market for rock en Español.

The Glow Skulls never got heavy rotation, but they toured hard and packed clubs. When the ska boom busted, a lot of the bands from that era broke up, changed their sound or altered their marketing strategy, but not the Voodoo Glow Skulls. They just continued doing what they did best: playing the distinct and kinetic fusion of ska and punk they’d been playing since the late ’80s. And they haven’t stopped.

“I don’t feel like we’re part of any scene. We’ve always been floating in our own little bubble,” says Glow Skulls guitarist Eddie Casillas, whose band comes to The Blank Club this coming Monday.

Even during the ska boom, it came as a surprise to the band when they MTV would play their videos. They never saw themselves as having any commercial appeal, according to Casillas, who says getting signed to Epitaph was equally as surreal.

“We’ve never tried to be commercial, or tried to be poppy,” Casillas says. “I like pop-punk. I grew up on the stuff. There will always be some Voodoo songs that have a little bit of Descendents in them or Green Day. Ours is just a little different sound. It’s not positive. It’s not poppy, or uplifting.”

Casillas and his two brothers, Frank and Jorge, founded the band in 1988. They released four albums on Epitaph, then three more on Victory Records. Their ninth was on the smaller Smelvis Records, and they are undecided for their 10th, which they are currently in the middle of recording. They are considering self-releasing a series of EPs and seven inches like they used to do in the early days, before they released their debut, Who Is, This Is.

“It feels like we’ve come full circle. Casillas says. “We went through this whole thing where we were on a couple successful labels, had full support. Now we’re back to square one. It’s like 1993 all over again. But the thing is, the band is known now, there’s a name behind it.”

The band’s writing and recording process has changed a great deal since those early days. The last three Voodoo albums were recorded by Casillas in his ever-expanding home studio. The band now record bits and pieces at their leisure, instead of on some executive’s clock.

The group have always been DIY advocates. Even in the early years, they opened their own record store and live music venue in Riverside. That not only gave them better footing in the scene, but also provided them an extra source of income—always welcomed by professional touring musicians. Ever business savvy, the band recently started a label of their own, called California Street Music, and have released a few albums of friends’ bands so far.

The Voodoo Glow Skulls’ touring schedule isn’t as jam-packed as it was back in the ’90s, but they stay busy, doing mostly short tours. Casillas continues to find motivation and inspiration in working on making better recordings. And the band keep an eye out for better gigs and festival shows that will expand their audience, but at this point that isn’t really what keeps them playing.

“Our goals have never been financial,” Casillas says. “We want to have fun and play music. I still just want to make that one next level record. I know people think we probably already made it. But there’s always more. I still think I can top it.”

The Voodoo Glow Skulls play The Blank Club, Monday, Oct. 6. More info.

For more than 15 years, Orange County ska band Suburban Legends have choreographed energetic, dance-filled shows in any location imaginable, from bars to punk festivals. Tonight they stop in San Jose at the Back Bar along with pop-punk band, The Maxies.

In October, Suburban Legends released their Disney cover EP Dreams Aren’t Real, But These Songs Are. With the success of their last two Disney covers, “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King” and “Under The Sea,” the band tried releasing more covers, which ended up fitting surprisingly well with their energetic, playful style.

Suburban Legends’ first few albums were focused on ska but they moved to incorporate pop punk, especially criticized by fans on their 2009 album Infectious. Though many of the songs were catchy, the album didn’t gain much support from the band’s fanbase. The move away from ska toward pop-punk seemed to have thrown fans a curve ball, which made the band realize that a pop punk sound, while it is an extra element, shouldn’t be their main focus.

“We’ve been through all those growing pains and changes and stuff over the years,” says lead singer Vince Walker. “We’re going back to what we think we did best which is just ska music the way we do it.”

Even though they’ve refocused back on their ska sound, traces of pop still linger in their songs, especially so in the Disney covers, except now newer releases seem to resonate better with both fans and the band. Using popular Disney tunes that the band and their fanbase could identify their childhood with, from a fist-pumping chant on “DuckTales” to a slightly chilly beginning retake on “Colors of the Wind,” ended up being the throwback fusion that worked in their favor.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For 17 years Mike Park has run Asian Man Records, one of the most successful (if not the most successful) DIY ska-punk record labels in the country, from a garage in Los Gatos.

Over the years, he’s discovered Less Than Jake, Alkaline Trio, Andrew Jackson Jihad and numerous other bands. He’s also a prolific musician on his own, first with Skankin’ Pickle, who were early third-wave ska favorites, before moving on to ska bands the Bruce Lee Band, the Chinkees and a handful of solo records (he even released a children’s album, Smile, two years ago). Here are Park’s favorite albums for 2013 in no particular order.

Laura Stevenson – Wheel
Laura hails from Brooklyn and is one of the most underrated singer/songwriters of our time. She should be massively huge and successful. Her vocal and guitar chops are insane. I get chills every time I see her perform live. All her records rule, and this one is no different.

Monkey may very well be San Jose’s longest running, consistently-active band. The band emerged in 1995, but unlike a lot of Monkey’s contemporaries, it never mixed punk rock and ska. Monkey always stuck strictly to the traditional more R&B-based sounds of ska’s first wave.

We caught up with Curtis Meacham (vocals/guitar) to ask him about the side of San Jose he knows best.

What part of Silicon Valley are you from?

Originally, I grew up in Sunnyvale, but I’ve lived in Downtown San Jose a couple of times and it’s always been a blast. There is actually a lot of community feel that can be experienced in San Jose on different levels. In a way, it’s always entertaining.

What’s your favorite place outside of San Jose?

Well, I like Telluride, Colo., for the beauty, Victoria, BC, for the people, and Belgium for the amazing food! Right now, I live in Campbell and it’s pretty cool… only, not as cool as Belgium.

What’s the best show you’ve seen in San Jose?

Easily, Prince at the Shark Tank a couple of years back. He came twice in the summer and I caught both shows—absolutely amazing. Aside from that, there’s the crazy Cactus Club shows, like the Twinkie fight during Big Sissy Brigade’s show, or the on-stage beer enema during the Diesel Queens.

Who’s your favorite local musician or band?

There’s a lot of really cool talent in San Jose. For fun factor, there’s always FTB. For good songwriting, there’s David Brookings. For ass-kickin’ guitars, there’s the Gillbillies.

Where’s your favorite place to get a drink in San Jose?

The Cinebar is always the cheapest, but aside from that, I always visit Rachel and her band of merry men, down at the Caravan.

Where’s a cool spot to get clothes?

Working Man’s Emporium. You can get some cool Dickies, Carhartt and Ben Davis there.

What’s your favorite spot for a cheap meal?

Any Vietnamese restaurant—and I do mean amy! Seriously, how can you make such a rockin’ sandwich for $3? it boggles the mind.

What’s the best thing about living in Silicon Valley?

It’s close to everything: 30 minutes from the beach, 40 minutes from SF and three hours from serious mountains.

Where’s the best place in SJ to go relax?

The back room at Trials pub. It’s low key and there’s a fireplace. How much more relaxing can you get?

Where’s the best place to see a show in San Jose?

Believe it or not, it’s the X Bar at the Homestead Lanes in Cupertino! Hands down. But then you say: “Hey, that’s not in San Jose, proper” …and to that, I say “Suck it Trebek!”

What’s San Jose’s best kept secret?

That damn orange sauce.

Local band Monstrauss has been an odd addition to the South Bay scene since its inception in late 2009. They mix elements of grunge, ska, funk-metal and prog-rock. While it might be confusing for some listeners to hear a song jump between ska and grunge, all that’s needed to fully understand Monstrauss, is that these guys love the music of the 90s—all of it. That includes Stone Temple Pilots, Primus, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and many of the other alternative rock bands that decade gave us.

What is fascinating about Monstrauss is how they authentically treat each and every musically element in their songs. They play grunge like kids who grew up listening to nothing but. The same goes for ska, prog-rock and funk-metal.

Unfortunately, this is the last chance to catch Monstrauss for a while. Guitarist Noaa Rienecker is moving to the East Coast to attend the Berkeley School of Music for at least a year, maybe longer. In the meantime, you can still catch other core member, Jason Hallyburton, in any of his several other bands: 8:19, No One is Joking, and Hereticus.

Monstrauss performs at the Art Boutiki on Saturday, August 4th. The show starts at 7pm. Tickets are $5.

Local ska, rock-steady group, Whiskey Avengers released the first video off their new album, Dead Man Rockin’. The song they chose, “Me, Myself and I” is one of the only non-ska songs on the record. It’s a banjo-driven, punk rock, sea-shanty with a feel that transports the listener back to a pre-rock ‘n’ roll era. Appropriately, the video has the look and feel of an old-timey silent movie.

Dead Man Rockin’ is the group’s third full length is their most cohesive and their most well-produced album to date. It has primarily a soulful-rock steady feel, with some variances.

The video, much like the song, is a fun romp. The old-timey effect is obviously fake, as are the band-members’ fake mustaches—all to comedic effect. And what would a Whiskey Avengers be if there weren’t lots of young ladies—or in this case, wenches—biding for each member’s attention?

Whiskey Avengers play the Blank Club on July 13 at 9p. Tickets are $10.