Johnny: Oh yeah. I didn't feel right even if she was on cusp of 18. Though like I said in the interview it turned out to be a misguided decision. But we all make mistakes. I should stay with the older crowd from now on. She wasn't as mature as I thought her out to be. But I appreciate the fact that another takes notice of my chivalry. I'd like to think it's not entirely dead. Some would argue. I just worry about the backlash that may come from speaking my mind from her or others.

Edited by user 09 July 2011 04:19:43(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

ooc: Narrator will be in bold, the band will be in regular print, and scenes will be in italics.

Part 1: We All Gotta Start Some Where

The scene is set with a few pictures of the their home town and the hills around it. It's nothing special to look at but naturally there is more to some places than meets the eye. As the few shots fade into few the sound of a distorted guitar marching along can be heard over it. A ballad type tune of sorts that is being created and ad-libbed. Johnny's voice comes in to narrate with the pictures as they come into view.



Johnny: It was different. This is the type of area we grew up in. Beautiful to look at but not much in the way of being real metropolitan. We did what most guys our age did. Well versed in the outdoors you could say. Swimming, camping, and all that fun stuff. But I can remember music being a part of us just as much as the land was.




Johnny: I grew up out here mostly. This is where the band practiced and we do a lot of our recording there most of the time. It's come a long way from where it used to be. It really was the important link in the band. That big link in the chain you could say. It's gotta special place for us.



Johnny: But if my house was the chain this was the glue. Yep, that's my home town and there wasn't much to do on a weekend. You could play music or party your ass off. We kind of did both. But yeah, it's funny how it all worked out. We all kind of grew up together. So the chemistry was already there.

Johnny's voice fades out as a nondescript narrator sort of takes over for him. We being to see pictures of the high school where the guys went to school. There's a few pictures showing them playing together and hanging out. One of them is of them standing around a fire and drinking beer. Another photo features Johnny standing in the back of a pick-up truck pretending to play a shotgun like a guitar with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Oddly enough though the band picture is actually a three piece.

Narrator: Johnny McDougal and Joe Anderson were the two founding members of the punk rock group now known as "Those Meddling Kids." They grew up in a small West Virginia town together. Mack McKenzie came into the band a year later and took over Joe's bass playing duties. He was a childhood friend that had moved back into town after his parents had gotten a job in the area once more.

Along with a common friendship they had similar tastes in music. The band was formed in the early summer of 98 when the boys were 13. Drummer Clyde Bonner, cousin of Anderson, rounded out the trio who at the time was known as "Mudd Flap and The Cruzers." They weren't entirely serious about being the band that they are now.

Johnny: We largely considered ourselves a joke band really. Sure we all played our instruments fairly well. But we stripped down to the bare minimum. There was a general agreement to go the way of The Dead Milkmen and write songs in that manner. Ninjas, Pirates, Zombies, Kool-Aid, or whatever we could think up that would be a pretty fucking funny song subject was spit out.

Joe: Everything was kind of fair game then. If it was stupid we made a song about it or just if we thought it was cool. We went as far as writing songs that made fun of each other. Most of those though are songs we probably won't ever release. Just because they're that sentimental. Even if they're personal and poking fun at something that happened between us.

Johnny: We have a song that we used to do at our soundchecks for local shows called "Clyde's Stuck In The Toilet"

Joe: Long story short. Clyde went to McDonald's and went to the bathroom to unload. Well, there was no toilet paper. You do the math.

Clyde: You really look like a moron trying to reach under the stalls with your pants still around your ankles. *They all laugh together.*

Narrator: As mentioned earlier Mack McKenzie joined the band a year later. He was given the bass playing duties over Joe whose primary instrument was guitar. Though he was good at both instruments he largely considered himself a fill in until a better one came along. Mack was the perfect fit for the band and barely had to audition to join.

Mack: I pretty much just heard they had a band now. Walked up and asked to play. They were like sure dude! It helped that we knew each other I guess.

Joe: As soon as I heard Mack wanted to play he was in. Turned out to be a good decision in the long run. Dude bangs a bass like Claypool. So that was pretty much how the band was formed into its current state. Sort of....

Narrator: Trying to juggle between playing local and area shows on the weekend on top of going to school. It proved difficult as many times classes were spent catching up on sleep. It's said that the new name came to them through Johnny's father after the four of them had gotten trouble for playing a prank at school.

Johnny: We would travel at least a distance of 3 hours or more to play shows. There was a following there even if we didn't take ourselves too seriously. The drive was to be the greatest joke band in the area. At least until high school was over.

Joe: Sometimes stuff would break down or not work. It'd make it ten times harder. Then we'd have to go back to school like in the next day or so. Lotta wasted study halls that we slept through and most classes. We did our best really.

Mack: Our grades were all slipping big time. So we were thinking of all just quitting together. Getting our GED's.

Clyde: I don't know how we managed to scrape by and graduate. But we had conspired to all quit together so we wanted to do something memorable as a send off.

Johnny: Hence the band name.

Johnny: We had decided to rig up some home made stink bombs. Set them to blow off in the vents. Also we had rigged the microphone for the announcements to explode flour. So the principal got a faceful of it and we stunk up the school. However we forgot about the security cameras.

Joe: Two week suspension. They were pretty harmless pranks though. The principal actually didn't sue us or anything. He was a good sport about it later on. The stink bombs not so much.

Johnny: My dad was so pissed at us at first but he was trying to be angry and not find it hilarious at the same time. "You damned meddling kids!" He yelled it at me and well it stuck. I told the guys and we agreed that it would be our name permanently. Though we've considered name changes. However, this one is just us. It's who we are and changing it now would kind of tarnish a legend I guess. *He laughs.*

Narrator: The new name came with some minor changes to the band's current repertoire of playing mostly songs that were meant to be laughed and tongue-in-cheek sort of tunes to something slightly different. After Johnny got his hands on a Sublime cd given to him by a friend. This is what later lead to the band's major influence as he passed the album along between the boys in the band.

Johnny: I set it on random because I didn't want to hear it in order and wanted to be surprised. The first song I heard was "Santeria" and I was just blown away. When I got through with the rest of the record I realized that later on down the road I wanted the band to go that direction of not being specifically genre defined. It was something the rest of us agreed on. But it was the first serious song we actually played during a show.

Joe: It was a welcome experience to play something new that wasn't really what the band normally did. The reaction we got made us want to take the band more seriously. As an actual playing band and not just a joke band of sorts.

Mack: We wanted something we could get behind really. This seemed to be the rallying point when we started becoming more musically active. Practices were more intense and we wanted to record some demos that stepped away from our normal approach of being silly. It was at that point when we became more politically active as well and the sound changed to a haphazard distortion of over reverbed guitar to something a bit more polished. We were sort of channeling Rise Against and other activist bands fueled by our teen angst.

Clyde: Something changed and our songs began to really mean something. We sang about blue collar injustices, the plight of rural existence, and everything that we grew up with. Seeing men and people we love kind of broke down by the establishment.

Narrator: That direction would stick with the band through the rest of their career as they tried desperately to make it on the underground scene. It would come after a demo got into the hands of a local record producer and owner of small time indie label "Flying Boxcar Records" that would lead to their rise into stardom. At 18 years of age and fresh out of high school the boys would be playing first major shows courtesy of the Vans Warped Tour. Things were just getting started.

OOC: Part 2 coming soon. Thought it would be longer, sorry guys.

Edited by user 24 June 2011 03:08:52(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Lily: Haha, wow.

OOC: A warning would have been nice lol.

Lily: No problem. They can be really, really annoying.

OOC: Lol, it's okay.

Lily: Sure. After touring is over we can meet up.

The kids got there first taste of big crowds and the road when they won a contest that would put them on line up for the Vans Warped Tour. They played the entire summer on both coasts and in between. It would become a staple in their repertoire as a band that loved to rock and play to festival crowds. From Bamboozle, Coachella, Bonnaroo, along with two big European festivals. The Glastonbury Festival and The Electric Picnic in Ireland. Though the one big festival they haven't played in Europe is the Isle of Wight Festival and the band agrees that it would be one of their biggest accomplishments.

Johnny: Warped and onward is when we really started touring. The festival experience was unlike any other we had. So we try to make it a practice to play at as many festivals as possible. The crowds are always amazing and you never know what to expect.

Joe: We weren't really signed to a label and were really still going by self recorded demos at the time. It was amazing that Warped picked us up. We just put some songs out there for this contest that offered unsigned bands a shot on the Warped line up and a potential record deal. When we won we couldn't believe it. But the fests man, no matter where we are, it's always a good time. Warped just kind of opened up the floodgates for us. After that there was no turning back and we were hooked.

Mack: It wasn't just the crowds. We got to share the bill with other artists that we looked up too and admired. Too be on the same line up was them was something that was just simply amazing and mindblowing. Getting to play with Rancid,Dropkick Murphys, Bad Religion, and NOFX was like dying and going to heaven for us. We also had some majorly good times with them. Lots of partying and drinking. I remember Johnny having a drinking contest with Al Barr that sang for the Dropkicks. They got so drunk that they both passed out at the same time. Which was ironic as well. We called it a draw. The challenge between Johnny and Al still stands. Who can drink more still hasn't been answered indefinitely yet.

Clyde: My favorite Warped memory is probably just meeting Bud Gaugh at a Warped show. Naturally he wasn't on the line up but he was just hanging out there. We'd played some Sublime covers and had heard second hand that Bud and Eric wanted to meet us. Meeting one of our major influences was probably a highlight of our entire career.

Johnny: Hearing Eric say that I did some of those tunes just as well as Brad would almost made me bawl like a little bitch in front of them. It was one those heart stopping moments that just stays with us forever. After that we knew that doing festivals was the way to go and made a pact to always do them. We hope to organize our own one day. But we're not quite sure who to talk to and how we want the line up to go. It would definitely be a select group. We want bands that are mostly on the alternative side really.


In the fall after playing a summer of dates on the Warped schedule the band was picked up by a local major independent label. At the time it was owned by promoter, musician, and agent Jerry Parsons. Who liked the band's sound and wanted them to sign on right away. The band turned down most major label contracts in the hopes of being signed by a major indie label that would not constrain their music or try to change their sound. This label, of course, was Flying Boxcar Records which was later turned over to Johnny after Parsons decided to retire from the music business.

Johnny: A lot of previous records that we did with Jerry have gone out of circulation. When we went mainstream, if you want to call it that, that's when we pulled out our first self titled album for re-release. It was more of a traditional punk rock album. We didn't really decide to bust out the more eclectic stuff that we were known for until the second release. Though if you dig into our singles catalog you may notice something. A lot of our singles don't go with the albums. They're actually remastered tracks from older albums and demos that are out of print. It was our way of secretly releasing our older material without anyone really knowing. Though we plan to dig out a few more from the vault for re-release eventually.

Jerry: The kids are a one of a kind band. They are able to create a punk rock fusion that would seem highly unlikely and make it work. It's hybrid of punk that has folk, blues, and country sounds in it. That's what turned me on to them. They could crank out the traditional noisy punk rock when they wanted to. But when they wanted to change it up and then do something completely different they would do that too. Then they'd play this amazing symphony of folk punk Americana that was actually beautiful to listen too. This is what makes them a great band. Not everyone's cup of tea but a great band nonetheless.

The band stayed on the road for a long time. They actually recorded their albums at several different recording studios while on tour. It was a hard and rigorous schedule to keep that often left the band feeling worn out. Though there latest full band album "Under The Table" was made in this way. The band reflects on this way of recording as trying though rewarding.

Johnny: Warped put touring in our blood and it became like a disease there was no cure for. We break more now though which I'm sure the fans notice. We realized it's not always the healthiest tradition for a band to keep. But recording Under The Table was hard and we got pissed at each other a lot.

Joe: It's definitely the most stellar album I think we've done as a band covering darker subjects. But doing that on top of touring just created one big cluster fuck of a mess. We all wanted to relax and wind down at the end of the day after a big show. Though it wasn't allowed. Straight to the local studio we went to record. Not the funnest thing in the world when you wanted to be sleeping or wanting to watch your favorite movie.

Mack: You couldn't get time enough to get laid or even rub one out. Though we pounded out some good jams we were getting tired of the road and tired of each other. Joe missed a note when we were doing "My Old Man" which was about Johnny's dad. Johnny just kind of snapped. He dropped his guitar and walked out. It was the only time I ever saw him and Joe nearly swing at each other. That's when I knew it was about time for a break.

Clyde: It was just one of those moments when people that like each other have just spent too much time together. We were getting sick of each other. It was a weird feeling to get sick of being around some of your best friends. But the touring and making it on time to the studio in town to record was just too hard on all of us. I kicked over my drum kit after we went through "My Old Man" for probably the fifth time. Johnny was real sensitive about it being good since it was about his dad. So it seemed like he was finding fault with everybody. Even himself. He said I was playing too fast, or too slow, or that I missed a beat. I just looked at him and said "You know what?! Go fucking synth the shit yourself if it ain't perfect enough for ya! Fuck off maestro!" I kicked over my kit and stormed the hell out.

Johnny: It was a bad time that made us stronger in the long run. I felt like I wasn't playing right for my dad's sake from being so dog tired. So everybody else wasn't playing right. Then there was all the shit with Nicole that was going on. Everything was so tense in the studio that you could feel the small waves of animosity flowing through the studio. We'd fight, make up, and then record. The song would then just come out perfect. I don't know how being pissed at each other and making up made the album so good. But it did. After it was all over we agreed never to record on the road again. It was just too much for all of us. We decided that we all needed a break for a while. This is where the solo album came into play.

So the band had done there fair share of touring and had got signed by a major label. They have a distinct sound that mixes with their punk rock roots that make them altogether an amazing band to listen too. After releasing several albums. Johnny recorded his first solo album that was met with great acclaim. It was altogether different from the traditional punk rock sound that the kids had often done. It was an album of musical Americana that had strains of acoustic blues, country, southern rock, bluegrass, and even New Orleans jazz. The album itself was an amazing collrecection of folky music that was a huge nod to Johnny's roots and even featured his Grandfather "Ramblin'" Jack McDougal on mandolin and drums. He was a contemporary of Hank Sr. who lost decided to retire from music at 60. Though many believe he should've continued on. He is currently 88 and was at the time when Johnny recorded this album.

Johnny: I'd wanted to record a solo album for quite a long time. Since we were taking a break I decided it would be a good time to start working on it. I made sure I'd had a recording studio installed in my new home. It wasn't just there for my enjoyment. The specific thought in mind was to record of some of my own solo material and have a place at home for the band to record. A gift for all of us really. There was a racket going on down there one day and I went down to investigate. I saw Grandpa Jack down there just plunkin' away on the mandolin and singing. So I just looked at him and said "Pap, how do you feel about doing a tune on this thing I'm working on?" He was a little bit reluctant at first but I got the orignal rambler on the album and I'm very proud he contributed to something so stellar and personal to me.

Jack: I have really done anything since 1973. I dabbled here and there in some guest work for some friends an such. But I wasn't really interested in getting back on the road or making another album. After I got inducted into the Opry Hall of Fame I figured I'd done everything I wanted to do in country western and bluegrass music. But after hearing some of the music my grandson was working on for his solo deal I kind of missed playing the music. He caught me in the act and after a bit of coaxing he convince this old horse to come out of the barn. So I called up some friends of mine and we did that Randy Newman tune Kingfish. Johnny got on piano and I got on mandolin. Then I had some boys down in New Orleans come on up and we did that thing. The damn thing just came out like gold. It was a proud moment playing with my grandson and passing the bottle around after it was over. I may come with him for a few acoustic gigs on the road. They don't call me Ramblin' Jack for nothing you know. *He laughs and nods*

Johnny: It was a real homage to my roots. That pure Appalachian soul with that bluegrass stomp and everything in between. My favorite song was Carry Me Across The Mountain. It's one of the most beautiful bluegrass songs I've ever heard. I love those songs that tell a story. It was one of them. But the entire album was one big nod to my surroundings and the music that it bred. It's sold more than any other TMK album and that says a lot to me. It also says a lot about the fans. They're willing to open up and explore areas that are untested waters to them musically. Punk rock kind of provided that bridge for them to cross over.

TMK has bridged the gap with punk rock. Using it as a tool to get out a whole new yet older brand of music to the masses. They seem be growing better as a band with every song and show. Their unique brand of folk punk is something that brings a whole new spectrum of sound to the music world. They plan to go even further with their upcoming concept album and planned solo projects all their own. There's even been talk of a reunion of sorts for "Mudd Flap and The Cruzers." Which is a unique stage concept that was thought up by the band.

Johnny: We're thinking about going Andy Kaufman-esque and reforming Mudd Flap and The Cruzers as a totally separate band from TMK. Dressing up with wigs and all. I plan to only sing and play harmonica in the band. We're still discussing how to work it in but it's going to be very interesting for sure.

Joe: We're hiring another guitar player along with myself and turning into a five piece southern rock group. The thoughts have been flying around about dressing like redneck hippie hybrids or just extremely flamboyantly.

TMK's plans for the future seem to bright and on the horizon. What this amazing and interestingly unique group of musicians will bring to the table is anyone's guess.

ooc: Part 3 coming soon for the ending! Thanks for reading!

Edited by user 09 July 2011 04:17:24(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Magie: Really cool guys, your interaction with crowd on festivals, and your solo experiences, these are things band mates have to go through!

OOC: good writing

OOC: I'd love to hear Mr. Smith's opinion on all this of course. Add to the pile and comment sir!

Edited by user 10 July 2011 08:22:12(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Lily: Hey you, whenever we both have time we should talk.

Lily: Well my next show is in Minnesota and I would like to talk in person so see you whenever I guess.