Brendan Kelly/Photo: Daniel Boczarski, courtesy Brendan Kelly
A few years back, one of my former college roommates, John, and I were walking up to Reggie’s on South State on New Year’s Eve, headed to see Chicago punk legends The Lawrence Arms. We paused outside and saw a big man with a big beard admiring their new sign, and we got to talking to him. At the time, I kind of thought maybe that was this guy’s job, to hang the sign, or perhaps he made the sign, or something like that?
It turns out, as he soon revealed, that he was “Little Dave” Merriman of the openers, The Arrivals, another punk band, one that was in the “soon to be legendary” category. Indeed, we saw him slinging merch inside, and singing and playing with his band later that night.
Being New Year’s Eve, it wasn’t unexpected that the attendees were a little rowdy, but it was still a surprise when John caught what seemed like a full can of beer with his forehead. He was dazed (and his usual confused)—maybe the substantial alcohol he had imbibed by that point had dulled the pain. He stepped outside of Reggie’s for a few minutes, but soon returned, seeming no worse for the wear. I’d seen him way more wasted or out of it back in school (this is the guy that used to tip the pizza delivery guy with shots of whatever he had on hand), and I was the designated driver that night (that “straight edge” joke still works if you’re actually on blood thinners).
I wish I could say there was a funny ending to that story, but I just remember how tight and awesome both The Lawrence Arms and The Arrivals were that night. That said, it’s probably a good time to talk about a different storyteller, Brendan Kelly, one of the singers and songwriters in The Lawrence Arms, along with Chris McCaughan.
Brendan Kelly describes himself as “somehow inextricably tied to punk rock, Arby’s and a political hotdog stand.” He’s also become a Chicago institution, and a hilarious one at that. He was kind enough to respond to a laundry list of questions I hurled his way via email. I admit I’m glad I’m not interviewing him for the radio, or at least not tasked with editing out the ubiquitous “salty language” with which he liberally peppers the spoken word, although some of that does translate to the written word.
We’re communicating right after a solo show in Woodstock, Illinois, just before the forty-ninth birthday of the raspy-voiced singer of The Lawrence Arms. About the former, he says, that “It went great. The couple that owns the Records Department in Woodstock are some good humans and great punks and scene archivists, and I’m stoked to do whatever I can to draw attention to their awesome spot. Also, you’re literally walking around the set from ‘Groundhog Day’ out there.”
Kelly says given that his birthday falls on a Monday this year, “I’ll probably try to hang out with my kids and then go somewhere and sing some karaoke or maybe take in a movie or something else low-key.” He warns that if that low-key choice is karaoke, then “some poor drunk shitheads are gonna be hearing sober, sophisticated and polished renditions of ‘Brandy (you’re a fine girl)’ and ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ while they are waiting for their names to be called.”
The Broadways
Regarding The Lawrence Arms predecessors The Broadways, Kelly details the history: “We [Kelly and Chris McCaughan] were in that band with Dan Hanaway ([later] of The Honor System, formerly of Slapstick with me), and it was really Dan’s band. He’s a brilliant songwriter and in hindsight if we’d just done nothing but his songs it would have been probably something really special. As it happens, I also wrote a bunch of (crappy half-baked) songs and Chris wrote some songs too which vary from pretty amusing in hindsight to really quite excellent. We all sang, we were laughably political, and we were VERY ambitious. Our eyes were bigger than our guitars and you can hear that in the record, though that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes, that striving for more is the special sauce punk rock needs, lo mein?”
In contrast, Kelly says, the expectations of the trio—after adding Neil Hennessy from the band Baxter on drums—were much lower. “The Lawrence Arms was ZERO ambition,” he details. “The songs were personal and the idea was ‘if we’re not having fun, we aren’t gonna do it,’ and that’s the germ of this thing. We used to cover ‘The Greatest Love Of All’ by Whitney Houston,” Kelly says, ”and it was SLOW and Chris and I were screaming it and it was awful by design, but it cracked us up to make people sit through it.
“In the same spirit,” he goes on, “We found a flag… This is weird, it was a billboard, but it was printed on like, nylon or something, and it would get roped to different billboards, I guess. Anyway, imagine a very mighty apocalypse-ready flag, but instead of being a flag for a nation, it was an ad for Kevin Costner’s ‘The Postman,’ an abysmal failure that no one EVER knew about even when it was being promoted at the most invasive levels. ANYWAY, we stashed this thing in our van and whenever they asked if we had a banner, or if we played with a band that had a banner, we insisted they put it up behind us.
“Again, it did NOTHING but bum lame people out and confuse everyone else, but we LOVED it. Watching people having to deal with an ad for a movie, from hoisting the banner to taking it down to staring at it while we played ‘The Greatest Love of All,’ it was one-hundred-percent for us three. It’s hard to have a bad time,” he says, “when you’re laughing so hard you have to stop the song.”
Kelly says that “The Broadways weren’t cool. Neither were The Lawrence Arms but then the world turned, and now we’re cool. The world will never turn and align with The Broadways.”
Brendan Kelly’s day job is as a copywriter, and he was long ago revealed to be the user of the Nihilist Arby’s Twitter account. Sample tweet:
Make no mistake, no one cares about you and when you’re down in a ditch covered in six varietals of diseased piss and need friends the most, that’s when they’ll prove your ultimate truth: the world is dark and you are alone and you’ll die as you lived: alone and scared
Eat arbys
I ask him the origins of the bleak worldview of the Nihilist Arby’s account, to which he says, “Being alive and being forced to pay attention.”
The Lawrence Arms/Photo: Epitaph
One thing Brendan Kelly and his bandmates do have fun at is The Lawrence Arms’ “War On Christmas” event each December. It’s been over twenty-five years since they started doing these shows. “We wanted to do a thing that people could look forward to, specifically something to look forward to around the holiday season, which for some people, myself included, is more something to dread and suffer through. It’s a really fun thing and people come literally from all over the world for it, which is mind-blowing to us… We’re so lucky to have the greatest fans in the universe (all bands say that but they’re lying. Backstage all bands know that we have the best fans and even [they] tell us and they hate their fans and love you guys and we love you even more so yeah).”
They “don’t repeat songs over the (usually three-or-four day) ‘festival’ so The Lawrence Arms ends up doing something like sixty to seventy songs. Which is crazy but when you’ve been a band as long as we have you have the luxury of being able to lean into the DNA of the band and find that you’ve got a dickton of songs that you know how to play competently no matter what.”
Although the details hadn’t been announced, he can confidently say that this year, the “War On Christmas” will happen the weekend of Friday, December 5, so save the date. And, as Kelly says, “tell all your friends.”
Before that, his solo fall tour starts in his hometown of Chicago and culminates with two performances at The Fest, a punk rock festival held each year in Gainesville, Florida, organized by Tony Weinbender, now in its twenty-third year. Red Scare labelmate Sam Russo is opening for all tour dates and playing The Fest as well. I ask Kelly how many times he thinks he’s played The Fest, what makes him want to play that festival in particular, and what does he think accounts for so many Red Scare acts on that lineup?
“In order, way too many, money, drugs, pussy and the scones at this one coffee shop that I just can’t get enough of, we [Red Scare] are one of the labels that is, for better or worse, flying the same flag as the fest sonically and attitudinally,” he says. “That’s not a word but fuck it, Tony is a great friend, and I have been playing it since fest one I think, so we grew up together and we have kept in touch. Everyone wins.”
Red Scare Industries was founded in 2004 by former Fat Wreck Chords employee (with their blessing) Toby Jeg, when Brendan Kelly wanted a new label for his new quartet, The Falcon. Aside from Kelly and The Lawrence Arms drummer Hennessy, that band includes Dave Hause (formerly of Rise Against) and Dan Andriano (of Alkaline Trio). Their debut EP came out later that year, and The Falcon’s first full-length is still Red Scare’s all-time best-selling release. Not coincidental to all of this, of course, is that everything else Kelly has released has dropped via Red Scare (except for The Lawrence Arms, whose last two albums were on Epitaph). Oh yes, and Toby Jeg has also been The Lawrence arms’ tour manager for the last seventeen years.
Today Kelly describes his role in the label as “a part overlord of Red Scare. Toby is the prime minister and I’m the queen. I sign bands and help with sequencing and shit like that and take bands out when they need a tour and it’s lookin’ bleak. All Red Scare bands share values of all the important shit (late stage capitalism is killing us all, trans people are human beings, no klansmen, etc). But Toby and I do like all the bands on Red Scare sincerely. Except one that we both absolutely fucking hate.” I’m pretty sure that last sentence was a joke, because, as has been established, Brendan Kelly is pretty funny.
Referencing the title of his debut solo album, 2012’s “I’d Rather Die than Live Forever,” I ask Kelly if that statement is still true, given that we’re both dads, and we’ve both been getting AARP membership offers for some years. “My daughter was four and I asked her not to get any bigger while I was away in Australia,” he says, “and she replied that ‘I have to get bigger so I can get old and die, otherwise I’d just be the last person standing’ and uh… I’m definitely on her team since she seems like she was born knowing a lot of shit I don’t.”
About his legendarily raspy voice, Kelly says, “It’s always been that way, and it’s always the same and my range is still the best in punk rock (winks at the camera person). Or at the very least as good as it’s ever been, so I’ve never felt the need to get my vocal cords looked at specifically.”
And the dreaded health foibles of middle age? “I’m fine. Everything hurts and I’ve had to slow down and then stop being a maniac and I look like shit and I go to the doctor like five times a year instead of never, but my health is good aside from my blood pressure which is apparently great. ‘Wow, it’s high’ is what my doctor says, so I take medicine for that and I’ve gotta get a CPAP because my sleep apnea is ruining my life but otherwise, I’m just a typical middle-aged man with shitty knees and carpal tunnel.”
His advice for keeping a band like The Lawrence Arms together for over twenty-five years?
“The secret is, and I can’t stress this enough: be literally the best band of all time. If you can pull that off, it’s no problem. And before you follow up: yes. It’s super easy for us to be the best band of all time.”
In terms of differences between his songs and those written by Chris, he says “Chris’ are notably not songs I wrote, so I can listen to them as a fan first and feel the turns and emotion for the first time. Chris is a great songwriter. I believe this is the kind of thing that I’ll say and everyone will think I’m sniffing more glue than I already am, but I think our songs are very, very the same. The differences are all cosmetic. We’ve been writing songs together for thirty-seven years. They’re the same.”
He says the next record from The Lawrence Arms is mostly written. “Just need a few more from Chris and we’re good to start tracking, so hopefully next year?”
As for future music from Brendan Kelly and The Wandering Birds, he says “Wandering Birds I will just one day find Nick [Martin, his self-described BFF and co-conspirator] again on some astral plane and we’ll meld and there will be a new Birds album. It could come out this month or in ten years, I can’t predict the Wandering Birds.”
When asked if he’s happy with the level of success he’s achieved, Brendan Kelly says, “I don’t care about anything but having fun with my friends. Still.”
Brendan Kelly plays Gman Tavern on Clark with Sam Russo and Good Friend opening, October 15. He’s also playing at Color Club on November 24.
Published in the print edition of the October 2025 issue, with the headline “Fun With Friends: Chicago Institution Brendan Kelly Answers Questions .”
