by Jane Roser
If The Beastie Boys and Gorillaz hooked up with the cast of Saturday Night Live to start a band, it might sound something like Southern California “G-PuNk” band NeW bEAt FUNd. They are currently storming through the US on a tour that sounds like the best house party I’d ever hope to get locked in a glass coffee table at (Sixteen Candles reference)!
“The tour has been a damn roller coaster,” frontman Burnie Baker says. “We’ve endured the polar vortex in a van. It’s been some of the gnarliest weather conditions we’ve ever dealt with and some of us got abominable snowman tattoos to wear as a badge for battling this winter.”
On the road with Aer and RDGLDGRN for a seven week tour to promote their recently released EP, Coinz, the guys are hitting up the TLA tonight with their wickedly fun and explosive live show and funky humor, “we’ve played the TLA before and the show was dope!” Baker remembers. “Kids get wild there! It’s one of our favorite venues in the country and we get some delicious Philly cheese steaks and cheap brewskis at Mac’s Tavern.”
NeW bEAt FUNd made many new fans when they played the Warped Tour this past summer and they are famously interactive with those fans. “Our fans are so rad! One of our favorite shows this tour was Madison, Wisconsin- it takes the ice cream cookie cake. The crowd was super riled up that night and we may or may not have kicked back a few too many cocktails. The show escalated quickly and before you know it Shelby was getting baptized in the audience. Then me and Snaps were toes on the nose crowd surfing, Silky was slamming on the drums to keep the song from completely falling to shit, then I started hanging off the balcony. We finally floated back to catch the final downbeat of “Scare Me” and the crowd was screaming for an encore. Since we were the opening band, we decided against coming out for an encore set, but you know, catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world!”
Raised on punk rock in Southern California, NeW bEAt FUNd was founded by Michael Johnson, Shelby Archer and brothers Jeff and Paul Laliberte in 2011. First hearing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was the inspiration to start creating their own music, “it changed everything for me,” Baker recalls.
“Then I got my first skateboard which brought a whole new lifestyle of SoCal punk and ska into spectrum. I had a one string acoustic guitar that my dad gave me and I’d spend hours jumping around my room to punk tapes, pretending to play it…yeah, I said tapes!”
When Baker bought his first album, he chose, Green Day’s Dookie. “My mom took me to buy it, then she opened up the lyrics and made me return it. She didn’t think getting stoned and jacking off was appropriate for a 3rd grader. I thought it was perfect, so I just got a copy from my friend whose mom didn’t give a shit, from there I couldn’t turn back.”
Three of the four band members had already been playing together for over a decade when they decided to form a band. “Well, Snaps and me are brothers and met at birth while learning the Seinfeld bass line,” jokes Baker when I ask how they all met. The rest of the band met up over either BBQ or a glass of Pinot and started playing in a garage, “we wrote and recorded an EP entirely on our own in bedrooms and garages. Now we’re here. Still can’t figure out where we parked the DeLorean.”
I read an amusing story about how the band got it’s name and of course, had to find out if it was true. “Yep! All true!” Baker says. “We had a piggy bank that we kept in the studio that was labeled “New Boat Fund”. We changed the “o” to an “e” and it became “New Beat Fund”. It only had a paper clip, pocket lint and a gummy worm in it. We took the bank and put it in our homemade three-man water balloon launcher. We launched that baby into the side of a corporate building, vacuumed up the dust, baked it into double fudge brownies and all four of us consumed a chunk. From that point forward, we were NeW bEAt FUNd.”
The band’s self-released first music video “ScARe Me” has been making waves on YouTube since it’s debut in 2012, with their official mascot GhOStY joining them as they are filmed hitting the streets in eye-popping, dance-alicious visuals. Those visuals are, of course, created by Baker who is also the band’s in-house graphic artist. “It was pretty simple, really. Our homie Chris Buongiorno shoots our videos and we shot this in just two days. We met our ghost friend on Venice Beach, ran around Santa Monica and Hollywood filming gorilla-style, then finished the shoot by throwing a big party in Laurel Canyon. GhOStY got a little outta hand and started slapping girl’s asses, but we settled him down!”
After they wrap up their current tour, NeW bEAt FUNd are headed right back to the studio to record their first full length album. They’re crossing their fingers for a September release and “a full new album of delicious G-PuNk gems for you to shimmy and tickle your eardrums to.”
