INTERVIEW: JUDY AND THE JERKS

FLAVOR-BLASTED MISSISSIPPI PUNKS WITH NOTHING TO PROVE

Judy And The Jerks are a happy hardcore band. They write lyrics about ice cream and french fries and make music that sounds like Suburban Lawns covering 7 Seconds.

The band started in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a small college town that may or may not be the birthplace of rock and roll but is definitely where Afroman caught his big break. Over the past decade, it has been a hotbed for cutty punk. My only portal to this scene has been through YouTube videos of house shows, which, living in New York, can feel refreshing when compared to the kind of cultural insanity that defines this city but I do not have the energy to talk about right now. There is something special about these small town punk communities, especially if you are an aging former DIY touring musician who grew up in a flyover state and refuses to fully let go of their past.  

But I’m probably at risk of over-romanticizing a scene I’m not a part of. Ultimately, I like Judy And The Jerks because they are a sick punk band. They write catchy songs that have the skinny sonics of both new wave and 80s hardcore; they play them with the kind of intangible spunk that can separate a great band from a pretty good one.

The band’s newest record is called Music To Go Nuts and it sits in a contemporary lineage with other small town fun punk. But there is an openness that maybe makes it a little different: the LP has a song called “Nothing To Prove” that is the Judy And The Jerks take on straight edge youth crew hardcore. It functions both as a parody of the genre and an earnestly ripping song. It’s probably my favorite punk tune of 2022.

The band has toured Europe and is set to hit Japan in March: even though this reach is in part a product of the internet, Judy And The Jerks have zero social media presence. I chatted with the band last week after their great set at TV Eye in Ridgewood, Queens. They played for maybe 15 minutes.

I’m an outsider to contemporary punk music in a way, so what’s up with your hometown? I want to know more about that.

Hampton: In Hattisburg, Mississippi, I feel like when we first started doing shows, nine years ago, 10?

Julie: Probably, nine or 10, yeah.

Hampton: I feel like there wasn’t anything DIY and cool, it was all in bars and stuff. We started doing house shows, and just kind of reaching out to bands that we liked that we thought were cool from other towns. I swear to god, come to Hattiesburg, we’ll book you a good show. And we slowly started doing it, word of mouth.

Julie: And I started going just because my friends were having shows in their house.

Austin: Yeah, there’s something cool happening in Hattiesburg, there’s something to do finally, lets fuckin’ go to these cool shows.

Julie: And I played music in high school and stuff like that, but it made it feel like something I could do. It was like, oh, these people are just having shows in their house, I could start a band with these people. It was very approachable, and then it kind of snowballed.

Hampton: Yeah, it was just friends having fun in a living room. It’s snowballed ever since. It still has that same vibe.

Have you seen it ebb-and-flow over those nine, 10 years?

Hampton: Yes, definitely has.

Julie: For sure.

Austin: Yeah, naturally.

Hampton: The people who were going to shows back then, I can count on two fingers the amount of people who still go to shows now.

Julie: Me and Austin, in 2020, so like almost three years ago, moved to Atlanta. So we don’t actually live in Hattiesburg anymore. I lived there for like 20 years, the majority of my life, and it was time for a change of scenery. So we don’t actually even live there anymore, but we still, you know, we’re best friends, so we’ll do this forever together.

Hampton: The band started there and up until two years ago was just a Hattiesburg band.

Austin: For all intents and purposes it’s still a Hattiesburg band.

Hampton: It’s definitely ebbed-and-flowed, people come and go, and, like, whatever. I don’t need people to show up to a show and be like, “I’m here for life.” But as long as they have fun and take anything away from it, that’s success.

Are there multiple generations now? Of bands? Are there teenagers involved?

Julie: Yeah. Like, early-20s. 

Hampton: Early 20s, sometimes we get some teenagers. 

Austin: Hatteisburg is a college town, so there’s always a revolving door of kids looking for something to do there. And older people kind of leave like we did.

Julie: We’re still there in our hearts.

Austin: Mentally, I’m still in Hattiesburg, for better or for worse.

Hampton: There are definitely younger kids taking on more roles within the scene and booking shows and starting bands and doing their own thing.

You’ve all done a ton of bands in this town. What makes Judy And The Jerks a little different, if anything? Was there a specific focus with this band that was different, and has it kept going for a reason?

Julie: To be honest, not to sound really cheesy, I think it’s just because we’re friends. We just really get along really well and we have a lot of fun. It never stopped being fun, being in a band together. And we love to travel together. It’s never been a chore to do it, so we just keep doing it, because it’s still fun.

Sarah: I think it helps that none of us take ourselves too seriously, and we know how to get along and know how to, I feel so cheesy, how to pick each other up when we’re down, you know? The point of this is to have fun and travel and meet people and go places.

Julie: Build a community.

Sarah: Build a community, and share these experiences. And so, I think we all kept coming to this with that being such a focus and such a strong mentality, and it’s remained.

Hampton: This band didn’t start with any goal. If anything, me and Sarah had been playing in bands, and were dating at the time, and Austin and Juile had started coming to shows. We didn’t know them, and they approached us and were like, “We want to start a band with you guys.” We were like, “Alright, whatever, nerds.” So when this band started, we were kind of like strangers. And now, it kept going because it’s like, why would we stop? It’s still fun.

Austin: It continues to be fun.

Julie: And for some reason people sometimes still care. So we’ll keep doing it until nobody cares anymore.

Stylistically, is it different at all? Because I feel like you’ve carved out something a little bit with this.

Hampton: I don’t know how to describe whatever the Judy And The Jerks sound is, but we’ve definitely strayed from where we started, but not in a bad way. We’re trying on different things, and somehow we make it fit our mold.

Sarah: I think it kind of goes back to the same mentality where, like, we don’t take anything too seriously. And want to be a little off-kilter and try something new. 

Julie: We covered a youth crew song. And then we were like, “What if we wrote a youth crew song?” So we wrote one, and we play it in every set, because it’s fun.

Hampton: Yeah, yeah. We’re like, “Here’s a slow, moshy song, and then here’s a kind of fun rock-and-roll-y tune.” Whatever, because we’re playing it, it makes sense. 

It’s funny, that was going to be my next question, about that Gorilla Biscuits cover. Then there’s this song on your new record that is also this tongue-in-cheek kind of youth crew song. You’re probably not straight edge, or maybe you are, I don’t know.

Hampton: I think I’m the one straight edge person in all of Mississippi.

Julie: Maybe one of two.

Hampton: But it makes no difference on like, deciding music. We were like, “This song’s cool, let’s cover it.”

Julie: We’re listening to this a lot in the van, what if we did it? 

Hampton: Let’s cover it, yeah.

And you really nailed the tropes of the genre with “Nothing To Prove.” I’ve listened to your new record a lot, and that one is perfect, because there’s a little bit of a wink, there’s something, but it still drills down on what makes that music so good.

Hampton: I feel like writing that song, we were like, let's write the most color-by-numbers youth crew song, and now it’s one of our favorite songs.

Julie: That was the lyrics, as well. Positivity, my friends.

Austin: We mean what we say with that stuff.

Julie: Yeah, I mean, we do. 

Austin: It’s all true.

Hampton: It’s also like, I don’t know, taking what we like from other bands and being, like, let's do that, too. 

There seems to be, again, I’m an outsider to this stuff, but there seems to be a recent lineage of music in smaller towns in the middle of America that maybe starts with, like, Northwest Indiana. I don’t know, this is an unformed question, but it feels like you’re part of this larger lineage that’s been happening over the past decade.

Hampton: There’s definitely like, I don’t know where it started, but a real kind of smart ass, kind of smarmy, like, “We’re just here to have fun, who fucking cares about looking tough or cool.”

Julie: It’s that combined, I think, with the internet. People can put things online and other people can find them. You don’t have to be from New York City, you know, to make it, you know what I mean? Or not to make it, that’s not what we’re doing, but to reach people. You can just put things online and people can find out about them. 

Austin: Any nerdy person who is interested in music was like, “Oh I can totally do that, that’s fun, that’s not like that lame tough guy shit, that’s just fun punk.”

Hampton: And punk benefits from, like, oh the recording sounds like shit, that’s awesome. Any idiot can do this.

Julie: That’s what’s so great about it.

Hampton: That’s the beauty of it, yeah.

And you’re touring Europe with zero social media presence. That’s gotta be exciting, right? Or there’s something about that energy.

Hampton: It feels pure. The music’s speaking for itself, as cheesy as that sounds, when you say it out loud.

Austin: It means a little more to me when people come out because we don’t do the PR shit and it’s just word of mouth and someone who is looking for something fun to do might be at the show, maybe they’ve never heard of us, but we’re going to meet them there.

Julie: And we’re all going to have fun. 

Hampton: We’ve all booked shows before. We all book shows, so it’s like, we understand it’s up to the person booking the show or the community to hype up the bands coming into town, to promote, to be like: hey, come out. To build a community. I feel like by having no social media presence, we’re relying on these communities to build themselves and help us out. And it’s awesome, you know?

Julie: I think that’s like, personally, one of my favorite things that we’ve found and built through this DIY punk, because that’s truly the mentally in Hattiesburg. We started from nothing, truly, just kind of scrappy little ding dongs building something from nothing and trying to pull people together. There have been so many incredible bands and people that have come through Hattiesburg, and I think that we were able to build that name for ourselves, just by being good hosts, frankly.

Hampton: Yeah, totally.

Julie: And loving it, genuinely, and wanting to do that for people, that it’s been really awesome to have that reciprocated and have so many people, literally all over the world, open up their doors to us. It’s kind of mind blowing.

Sarah: It is truly mind blowing.

Julie: We are touring Japan in March, and it’s truly just like, M.A.Z.E. from Japan played Hattiesburg a few years ago and had a great time. It was actually our 7 inch release show, I think, we had an inflatable donut, you know, we just had a really good time. And Hampton took them to the river.

Hampton: We took them to the creek the next day, buried them in the sand.

Julie: When Japan opened up again recently, they reached out, and were like, “Hey do you want to come to Japan?” We were like, “Yes, we do.” It’s almost too easy sometimes. And it’s just because of that friendship and community. 

It’s the best, touring Japan. 

Hampton: I can’t even begin to imagine.

It’s going to blow your mind. One more: what’s your roadside snack of choice? There’s a lot of sugar talk in this band. You’re talking a lot of heavy sugar talk in the lyrics. Tough sugar talk.

Hampton: Sometimes we write out the set list, and it’s like half of the fucking set is like lard, sugar, sweet. Just the dumbest bullshit.

Sarah: Candy troll.

Hampton: I gotta think on it. 

Julie: I have my power, my pleasure, my pain, to be honest, which is the gas station boiled egg, which doesn’t line up, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but sometimes you need a little protein snack on the road.

That’s a pragmatic choice.

Julie: I’m here to be honest. I’m here for the people.

Hampton: I love all junk food.

Austin: You’re a Snickers guy. 

Hampton: I love a Snickers.

Julie: Big cheese snack.

Hampton: I love a good cheese, a gas station cheese snack.

Are there any fast food choices, or do you stay away from that?

Julie: It used to be Taco Bell, but in the current state…

Sarah: It still is. It is for me. The Hattiesburg Taco Bell is the world’s best Taco Bell and I’ll die on that hill.

Julie: In the touring situation, they let you down a lot.

Austin: None of us eat meat, so Taco Bell’s the only one that’s going to come through with the veggie options.

Hampton: A Dunkin’ Donut has been a favorite option recently.

Julie: A Dunkin’ Donut, for sure. 

Austin: Dunkin’ Donuts is reliable.

Julie: I’m trying to think of my favorite sweet roadside snack. It’s tough.

Sarah: I usually go M&M’s. 

Hampton: Austin likes a Yoo-hoo after a gig. A chocolate Yoo-hoo.

Austin: I could go for one right now.

Sarah: Zebra Cake.

Julie: Ooh, a Zebra Cake. Zebra Cakes forever. As you can see, we’re very easily… I kind of take [touring] as an opportunity to try something new, so if there’s a sugar cookie M&M, if there’s a key lime pie Skittles, that’s the time I’m going to do it, because you can share it with your friends, you know: conversation piece.

Music To Go Nuts is out now on Thrilling Living