Dirty Puppets get their act together

A true tale of homemade music: through social media, Drew, a bassist, met Lucky, a band-less rock singer. Drew had a vision, and he shared it with Lucky: he wanted to start a combo, and he wanted her to front it. Lucky green-lighted the project after a week or so of mulling over the possibilities and just like that, they were a band. Well, almost. It was still just Drew and Lucky, and they had not actually met, and what’s more important, they had no music, nor a clear direction about where to take what would ultimately become Dirty Puppets.

Drew is Drew Gino Zollo, a hometown rock-and-roll bass player with a résumé a yard long. Many will remember him from the San Diego Music Award–winning Sickstring Outlaws. Lucky is Lucky Bailey, a freelance animation producer, drummer, and singer. Drew, meanwhile, got to work in an Oceanside recording studio and hammered out some concepts with a producer named Bort Schrader. What the two of them came up with is some of the most forceful, hard-rocking music on record I’ve heard since the Stooges were brand new. Heavy guitars, a big fat bottom end, with vocals that are borderline rap. “I started sending tracks to Lucky,” Zollo explains, “not quite knowing our sound yet. I approached her from every direction musically to see what she would bite into.”

Finally, on Christmas day last year, Drew and Lucky met in the studio. “I had this one particular track,” Drew admits, “that I was about to toss in the can. But Lucky heard it, sang on it, and she knocked it out of the park.” The lead track on the Puppets’ forthcoming album was birthed. With guitarist Donny November and drummer Nicholas Carter rounding out the band, the Dirty Puppets, as Zollo says, are looking to burn rubber in the fast lane at their debut live show. I suspect they will.

John 5 and the Creatures, Taz Taylor, and Aniridia also perform.