MP3: The Putz – Your Spaceship’s Taking Off

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The Putz is one of Indianapolis’ great punk bands. When you experience this band live, you get the feeling like you are engaged with the punk greats of the 1980 pop punk scene while realizing just how special they are to our current music scene.

One song in and they will have you smiling, dancing, gyrating…or a culmination of the three. With a new album Hole In One on the horizon and a rockin’ show tonight as their ’50s alter ego The Hepburns, Billy Sputz talks about both.

Link: http://www.reverbnation.com/theputz

So what is this business that the band is playing Punk Rock Night as The Hepburns? What is it about that style of music that you like and how does it fit in to the band’s ideals?

We started The Hepburns as side project because we had a growing catalog of ’50s and ’60s covers amassing under our belts. We originally learned the songs to add a little flare and diversification to our live shows, but once we realized we knew an entire set worth of them we decided to capitalize on that, and thus The Hepburns were born. The name was obviously taken from the most adorable actress of that era – Audrey Hepbrun. As far as that style of music is concerned…it’s fun and it’s catchy, which is our primary objective when composing our own tunes. Plus, everybody knows or at least recognizes the all the songs we play as The Hepburns, making it extremely easy to get a good solid reaction from the crowd.

The Putz is not averse to doing covers as I’ve heard the occasional Ramones and Descendents songs thrown out there to get the crowd spunky. What are some of the other cover songs that the band has played and what would be your dream songs to cover?

Covers are a lot of fun to do live because we’re still at that stage where audiences are just starting to become familiar with our original material, so a good cover can easily grab some extra attention or leave a good impression with a new crowd. Picking the right cover can be difficult though; you have to evaluate the audience every time you play and note which songs are getting reactions and which ones aren’t. That’s ultimately why we’ve taken so much time to learn so such a wide variety of covers, so we’re covered in any situation.

Tell us about the new album “Hole In One” and what it all entails?

Hole In One is essentially an album ten years in the making to put it dramatically. Some of the songs I wrote when I was fifteen and other we through together the week before recording. Hole In One is basically everything you would expect from a debut album I guess; full of quick catchy three-chord anthems. The approach we took was to was to assemble an album comprised of songs we wanted to hear, recorded the way we wanted to hear them. We had no audience or demographic in mind; we basically just wanted to have it for out own listening pleasure and other people liked it great, if not that was fine too.

The band began in the back-country town of Upland, Indiana, later re-locating to Indianapolis. How did you treat punk music then versus now and how has that meaning transgressed as a band?

Back in Upland we were kids still learning to play and discovering “new” chord progressions everyday and writing an array of juvenile tunes with the most obscure topics. Now we take a slightly more…uh…serious approach, tackling the big issues like hating annoying people, our jobs and our parents. I’d also say that we strive to find a new way to say old things because we like punk the way it is we’re not out to make it bigger, faster, or anything else it already is or isn’t; we just want to contribute to the genre and have a good time doing it. Oh, and we’re drunk a lot more often now too.

What are you plans for the rest of 2011 and supporting the new release?

First up is going to the release of a four song EP entitled “The Party of the Century,” which should hopefully floating around our merch table and the Internet in the next month or so. Then, in Mid-August, we have a ten day tour looping from Chicago, down to Florida, and then up the East Coast, spreading our infectious tunes to cities throughout. And finally we hope to work out all of the details and record our second full-length album tentatively titled “Knock It Off” by the end of the year. It should be an exciting and productive half of the year and we can’t wait to see it all come together and what follows further in the future.