Photo by Jessica Kaminski
Direct Hit have been around, in one form or another, since 2007. That may not sound like all that long, but it’s an eternity in pop-punk—a genre where bands tend to spring up quickly and burn out just as fast. Some context for just how long it’s been: The group released its first recordings online for free at a time when that was still a genuinely novel thing to do. The band’s name in part reflects that recording model: Singer Nick Woods and whoever he was playing with at the time would track some songs and then post them on Bandcamp while they were fresh. Boom, Direct Hit.
Woods never had much in the way of expectations for the band—his run with his previous band Box Social had taught him that it’s borderline impossible to make a living making music—but over time the group nonetheless built a considerable following around Milwaukee, the region and beyond. Along with Tenement, they’re one of the most in-demand exports from the Wisconsin punk scene, and in a sign of how far they’ve come, their rapid-fire new album, Wasted Mind, arrives not on a pay-what-you-like Bandcamp page, but on Fat Wreck Chords, the long-running punk label that’s hosted many of the bands Woods grew up listening to.
Direct Hit signed with the label just this spring, and as Woods tells it, “It’s been awesome. The label has been completely independent for 25 years; completely independent—not a major label subsidiary—and you can tell that they’re in it for the music. I don’t kid myself into thinking that every single person on the Earth thinks Fat is this incredible institution the way that I do, but having an actual, legit backer goes a long way for a band like us. People are a lot more interested in hearing our story or what our band does and how we do it, because we have that endorsement from a label that’s been so respected for so long.”
Woods says the band pushed themselves harder than ever to make their best record yet. After hearing the first batch of songs demoed for the record, their producer Mike Kennerty requested they go back and write more. “It was a crushing thing at the time, and really a blow to the ego, but we went back and wrote more material and basically came up with a whole other album’s worth of songs, then picked the best ones,” Woods says. “I think like a lot of bands we had a tendency to get a little lazy when writing songs, only writing as many as we needed, but Mike pushed us to come up with better material, and he deserves a lot of credit for that.”
There’s a certain irony to Direct Hit peaking now that Woods is in his early 30s, around the time that many punk musicians begin to move on. And to be sure, Woods sees the humor in being an adult playing pop-punk, of all things—the style of punk most associated with youth, and most easily dismissed. “Pop-punk gets a bad rap just because it’s dumb—usually just three-chord songs with stupid lyrics about girls and stuff like that,” Woods says. “But if you listen to something and it does something for you, I don’t think you should apologize for doing that. I listen to a lot of different music and I don’t apologize for any of it anymore.
“It’s kind of ridiculous to tell people I play in a pop-punk band when I’m 31 years old,” Woods continues. “But at the same time, if I wasn’t playing pop-punk, I’d do something that’s equally ridiculous. It’s just awesome to be able to stand on a stage and play songs for a few hundred people who sing along and tell me I’m incredible. I’m really privileged.”
Direct Hit play an album release show with Midnight Reruns, The Hussy and The Jetty Boys on Saturday, June 25 at The Metal Grill at 7:30 p.m.
