BIG D AND THE KIDS TABLE

Menacing thrills from tenants at will
BARRY THOMPSON

Dave McWane, singer of Allston’s Big D and the Kids Table, says he’s been crashing on friends’ couches for three and a half years. So has the geeky-looking guy from Semisonic (that’s a guess), but for McWane, it’s part of the master plan.

“I was working at a restaurant and one of our bosses told us to clean the printers out with Q-tips,” says McWane. “So I cleaned a printer out really good. I walked away feeling this new sense of pride that I had done such a good job. At that moment, I realized I had to quit my job and put that amount of effort into the band every day, instead of cleaning this fat fuck’s printer. I think rent is modern-day slavery for the middle and lower class.”

A few members of Big D have done their share of couch-surfing, voluntary or otherwise. Are they freeloaders? Debatable. Are they lazy? Apparently not.

After a decade of cranking out uber-catchy ska-punk, constant touring, and a few instances of serious bodily harm (McWane says an onstage mishap left him with eight staples in his head), their dues are nearly paid. Smart money says the next Big D album will be released on a national semi-indie label you’ve actually heard of. The band says they’re talking to a few of those. The paperwork isn’t in yet, though, so there’s no need to jinx it with specifics.

This might’ve happened sooner if more 14-year-olds were into The Specials, like they were in the good old days—1998. Luckily for those of us growing up in Boston satellite suburbia back then, Big D regularly brought Op-Ivy levels of hyper-syncopation and gleefully brazen horn lines to all-ages venues.

“Those shows were crazy,” says bassist Steve Foote. “Kids would get as close-up as they possibly could. The vocal PA would always be sub-par, but you were like, whatever. It was all about the energy, and everyone fed off of it.”

While the vocal PA at their shows doesn’t necessarily suck anymore, the band has ventured further from rock standardization. The title track off their latest EP, Salem Girls, is an eerie dub epitaph for victims of the Salem witch trials. It’s probably a more effective post-9.11 political statement than the “fuck W” songs that have already been churned out by every band in the galaxy—including Big D.

I happen to prefer songs about the occult and public executions to generic “Bush is a jerk” tracks, but Big D doesn’t pander to my, or anybody’s, precious demographic. While they haven’t exactly overhauled their sound, not every hardcore kid will likely eat up Salem Girls. Two years ago, on their full-length How It Goes, the caustic working-class anthem “LAX” somehow fit nicely alongside quirky pop hookster “My Girlfriend’s on Drugs”; and excluding “Girls Against Drunk Bitches,” none of it sounded all that much like their more aggressive back catalogue. Salem Girls continues to mix it up. This degree of stylistic versatility has its perks: For example, Big D can share bills with Death by Stereo on one tour, Less Than Jake on another, and nobody snickers.

“Some audiences compare what you’ve done and what they expect you to do with your GPA and SAT scores,” says McWane. “They add it up and fax you what they think of the new song. Once you start trying to make those people happy, you’re screwed. Why would we ever go, ‘I fuckin’ love this song, but the kids aren’t gonna like it. Let’s not put it on the record’?”

The scene’s fickle trends and their own eclectic tendencies have kept Big D’s appeal relegated to a niche. However, members of this niche haven’t lost interest—particularly in Boston. Just watch them pack Avalon like it’s free everything night at the fuck disco.

Outside of New England, Big D’s DIY promotional blitzkriegs don’t seem to be hurting their draw. “When we were on the Warped Tour, every day we woke up and immediately put up 150 posters," says Foote. "We’d hand-write what time we were playing on all of them. Then we’d do the same on a couple hundred stickers. Then when we handed the stickers out, everyone stuck them on their body.” Suffice it to say, the All-American Rejects didn’t put this much elbow grease into spreading the word on their Warped Tour dates (lots of Aqua Net, though).

“Certain bands from different places were like, 'Whoa, man, that’s crazy,’” says McWane. "I’m like, 'Well, what are you doing? Just hanging out? Don’t you get bored?' We got some weird rep for being really hard-working just by doing what I feel are the normal necessary things.”

Let’s hope things pan out with the new label. If our hunch is correct and Big D starts selling bah-zillions of albums, maybe they’ll even be able to afford respectable places to live.


BIG D AND THE KIDS TABLE
WITH CATCH 22, MUSTARD PLUG AND THE FLATLINERS

SUNDAY, 4.2.06

AVALON
15 LANSDOWNE ST., BOSTON

617.262.2424

5:30PM/ALL AGES/$15

WWW.TEAPARTYCONCERTS.COM
WWW.BIGDANDTHEKIDSTABLE.COM