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PunchCard: proudly political punk
"That's the basis of punk, in my opinion."
PunchCard’s Chris Vanoli left the Bay Area and moved to San Diego in the mid-2000s. He was following the lead of his brother Mike, who had made the same transition about a year prior. Chris and Mike had both played in San Francisco bands, but neither had any plans of starting a new one down here. “It was just to get a change of scenery and to get a different job somewhere else too at the time,” Chris says. “So, I just moved down here and then our drummer, who's also from the Bay area, was already here. He had been here for maybe three or four years before that. He hit me up within a week of me being here. I didn't have any interest in starting a band or playing in another band at that point. I thought I was done, but we started something up.”
Jonny Vilchez, another Bay Area export, joined up on guitar. The only task left was to badger Mike (who had also assumed he was done playing in bands) into picking up his bass once more. “And he did it,” Chris says. “It's crazy to think that that was 19 years ago next month, and we're still here playing. We always think, like, '40-plus and still playing in bands?’ You kind of fight with yourself a little bit. Like, should I still be doing this? Is it weird? Do I look old on stage? Does everybody else think we suck? Stuff like that. But the reality is that everybody that plays our type of music in San Diego is about as old as we are. It definitely keeps you going for sure.”
“Our type of music” is punk rock with a heavy '90s flavor, a la Bad Religion, NOFX and Lagwagon. It’s a sound the band has stick with even after they trimmed down to a trio and Vilchez picked up the drumsticks. He had quit the band a few years prior but was ready to return by the time they lost their drummer. Vilchez "really couldn't play drums,” Chris explains, “but he's one of those guys that could just pick up any instrument and just figure it out. He's one of those guys that frustrates us all but can do anything. Basically, he learned how to really play drums over the next couple years. That's kind of where this rendition of PunchCard started.”
This current PunchCard trio has remained stable since 2013, releasing various EPs and two full albums in that timeframe. The first of the full-lengths (2018’s Making It Great…Again) was a pretty clearcut anti-Trump effort — a concept that, surprisingly, has not taken the punk rock world by storm. “I think we just had this conversation maybe a couple weeks ago about this,” Chris says. “Like, why are there not more punk bands being blatantly political about what's going on? It's either people are afraid to say too much, or they just don't care, or it's not important anymore. But I feel like in the punk world, lyric-wise, that's probably the most important thing. We should be talking about these things in our songs. That's where it came from originally, too. That's the basis of punk, in my opinion. So, we definitely try to stay political, whether it's anti-Trump or anti-government in general. You know, we're still very political in a lot of our songs, even in our most recent album.”
Their Soap Box Hero full-length was released this past February, even though the songs had been kicking around for quite some time prior. “This is a byproduct of Covid, when we had nothing to do,” Chris says. “We wrote a bunch of songs, because we couldn't play shows at all. We spent countless hours practicing, and when the world told us we shouldn't go practice in a tiny room together because you could get Covid, we still did it. We didn't care. All those songs came out of that era, for sure. Some of that stuff is five years old now, but a lot of the work was done during that time.”
The album was released on the San Pedro-based label Felony Records. “We've never really been on a record label that has helped bands more than anything else,” Chris says. “We were on a small record label a long time ago that didn't do anything, but this is our first experience with a label that actually wants to help and be a part of the band's success.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
PunchCard: proudly political punk
"That's the basis of punk, in my opinion."
PunchCard: proudly political punk
"That's the basis of punk, in my opinion."
PunchCard’s Chris Vanoli left the Bay Area and moved to San Diego in the mid-2000s. He was following the lead of his brother Mike, who had made the same transition about a year prior. Chris and Mike had both played in San Francisco bands, but neither had any plans of starting a new one down here. “It was just to get a change of scenery and to get a different job somewhere else too at the time,” Chris says. “So, I just moved down here and then our drummer, who's also from the Bay area, was already here. He had been here for maybe three or four years before that. He hit me up within a week of me being here. I didn't have any interest in starting a band or playing in another band at that point. I thought I was done, but we started something up.”
Jonny Vilchez, another Bay Area export, joined up on guitar. The only task left was to badger Mike (who had also assumed he was done playing in bands) into picking up his bass once more. “And he did it,” Chris says. “It's crazy to think that that was 19 years ago next month, and we're still here playing. We always think, like, '40-plus and still playing in bands?’ You kind of fight with yourself a little bit. Like, should I still be doing this? Is it weird? Do I look old on stage? Does everybody else think we suck? Stuff like that. But the reality is that everybody that plays our type of music in San Diego is about as old as we are. It definitely keeps you going for sure.”
“Our type of music” is punk rock with a heavy '90s flavor, a la Bad Religion, NOFX and Lagwagon. It’s a sound the band has stick with even after they trimmed down to a trio and Vilchez picked up the drumsticks. He had quit the band a few years prior but was ready to return by the time they lost their drummer. Vilchez "really couldn't play drums,” Chris explains, “but he's one of those guys that could just pick up any instrument and just figure it out. He's one of those guys that frustrates us all but can do anything. Basically, he learned how to really play drums over the next couple years. That's kind of where this rendition of PunchCard started.”
This current PunchCard trio has remained stable since 2013, releasing various EPs and two full albums in that timeframe. The first of the full-lengths (2018’s Making It Great…Again) was a pretty clearcut anti-Trump effort — a concept that, surprisingly, has not taken the punk rock world by storm. “I think we just had this conversation maybe a couple weeks ago about this,” Chris says. “Like, why are there not more punk bands being blatantly political about what's going on? It's either people are afraid to say too much, or they just don't care, or it's not important anymore. But I feel like in the punk world, lyric-wise, that's probably the most important thing. We should be talking about these things in our songs. That's where it came from originally, too. That's the basis of punk, in my opinion. So, we definitely try to stay political, whether it's anti-Trump or anti-government in general. You know, we're still very political in a lot of our songs, even in our most recent album.”
Their Soap Box Hero full-length was released this past February, even though the songs had been kicking around for quite some time prior. “This is a byproduct of Covid, when we had nothing to do,” Chris says. “We wrote a bunch of songs, because we couldn't play shows at all. We spent countless hours practicing, and when the world told us we shouldn't go practice in a tiny room together because you could get Covid, we still did it. We didn't care. All those songs came out of that era, for sure. Some of that stuff is five years old now, but a lot of the work was done during that time.”
The album was released on the San Pedro-based label Felony Records. “We've never really been on a record label that has helped bands more than anything else,” Chris says. “We were on a small record label a long time ago that didn't do anything, but this is our first experience with a label that actually wants to help and be a part of the band's success.”
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