On a chilly afternoon in March, the members of Boston’s premiere cowpunk trio—known for blending twangy, confessional country-folk with vibrant, uptempo punk—piled onto the green couch in my Mission Hill apartment for their first interview as a band. It was singer Chase Allardice, guitarist Matt Hannon, and drummer Dominic Caudill, although these roles are used loosely. Foxy Grandpa has garnered recognition for their raucous live performances in which its multitalented members routinely switch instruments. Caudill explains, “For my songs [that] I write for the band, I sing and play the guitar. That’s basically how it goes for us, like if you write the song you sing it.” Because of this, in Allardice’s words, “the whole gimmick of us switching instruments started out of necessity.”
Foxy Grandpa came to be while Allardice, Hannon, and Caudill attended Berklee College of Music together. Allardice recalls, “I met Matt at a party on Halloween, and we bonded over like, Swans, and the Dead Kennedys—” “And Black Flag,” adds Hannon. Allardice and Caudill later met at The Bebop, one of Boston’s go-to spots for live music. But even before these initial encounters, Foxy Grandpa was years in the making. Allardice explains, “The last day of the fall 2021 semester, Matt and I were at a party, and Matt jokingly was like, ‘Who wants to make a punk band?,’ and I was like ‘I do!’ and he was like ‘I’ve had a name since like high school,’ and I was like ‘let’s hear it,’ and it was Foxy Grandpa.”
The name originates from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, where Mr. Krabs is having a yard sale that SpongeBob and Patrick go to. SpongeBob buys a drinking hat, but then, Mr. Krabs realizes the hat is worth way more than he sold it to Spongebob for. “Without telling SpongeBob how much the hat is actually worth, he gives him various hats to trade him with. He presents this last one and it just says ‘Foxy Grandpa’ on it.” Hannon immediately thought it would make a great band name. After doing further research, they found out that the “Foxy Grandpa” hat in SpongeBob referenced a popular, prank-filled comic from the early twentieth century of the same name. The origins behind Foxy Grandpa’s name perfectly encapsulate the band’s ethos—they never take themselves too seriously and draw inspiration from unlikely places to craft their stories.
The trio frequently incorporates humor into their music through outlandish country tropes with a modern-day twist, to which they credit the inspirations of Danny Brown, The Muppet Show, and Weird Al. They describe their songs, typically featuring loud, grungy punk-rock instrumentals , as “character pieces” that simply stem from funny ideas they have. “A lot of my songs,” Allardice says, “They’re not lived experiences entirely, but they’re the furthest extrapolation from that lived experience.” The title of their debut album, Here’s to Feeling Good All the Time, takes its name from a Seinfeld episode and ironically alludes to the bleakness of its song contents, ranging from “someone’s mom dying from a cowboy shootout,” and “some guy’s car leaving him,” to “a guy getting the shit kicked out of him because he goes to a bar and tries to hit on a guy’s wife,” and “fucking dementia.”
But after writing the song “Foxy Grandpa” about “an old guy getting older,” the band realized that these stories could be connected by a singular thread—each song on the album could act as experiences of a singular life lived. They unanimously agree that their favorite guy they’ve written about is Woody, a bluegrass musician who ran sound at their first gig in New York. After the show, he approached Caudill, offered them a massive joint, and started going ham on his guitar playing bluegrass music. This loosely inspired Caudill to write “The Ballad of Woody” from the band’s May 2023 EP Yeah, Buddy!, a song about a cowboy in love with a man named Woody.
When describing their sonic inspirations, Allardice explains, “When I send emails to places to play that I’ve never played before, I say it’s like the combination of three things: The Beach Boys for Dominic, The Replacements for Matt, and Hank Williams for me,” to which the other two agree. While their current music centers around country, folk, and post-punk, the trio says they’d like to venture into other genres, primarily ambient and no-wave. “We want to do a really out-there album one of these days,” says Caudill. The band is also inspired by their other musical endeavors and the local Boston scene, which consists of primarily rock, punk, and indie bands playing in basements-turned-DIY-music-venues. In addition to Foxy Grandpa, the three members work on solo projects and play in other bands, in what they refer to as a “whole ecosystem” known as the “rat city punk scene” or the “cuck scene” (rat city being a nickname for Boston’s Allston neighborhood, and “cuck” referring to the show promoting collective Cuck Zine). According to Allardice, “There’s a lot of collaboration, and I think that’s what makes the music scene right now really cool. Like I think that it’s a very burgeoning scene and there’s a lot of things waiting to pop.” Allardice plays in the popular local band Ski Club and another country band, Muzak, alongside Caudill. Hannon says, “I feel like just seeing the talent in the scene has significantly raised the bar for me. I feel like I’ve had to punch up, I’ve become a better writer because of it.” Despite Foxy Grandpa’s integration into the local scene comprised of mostly college students, twentysomethings in Boston aren’t their only fans. “A lot of old people like our music,” Hannon says. Allardice continues, “ My dad sends our album to like anybody who breathes within a mile of his direction because he’s great like that.” When they play live shows, impressed barflys often compare them to Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, which the band finds amusing.
At the time of this interview, it had been almost a year since the release of Foxy Grandpa’s Here’s to Feeling Good All the Time, and they were recording their second, self-titled album. In reflecting on their journey, they say that they like the debut album less and less as time goes on, but people seem to like it more. “We’ve grown so much since then,” says Hannon, “and a lot of these songs are two to three years old.” In fact, Hannon first attempted creating “My Self-Driving Pickup Truck Left Me” while in high school. “The songs have taken on completely different lives since recording, and they’re so much more refined now.” They tend to add three-part harmonies to the live versions of the songs that weren’t there in the recordings, and their recent music includes more production and vocal layering when compared to the more minimal first album. The self-titled sophomore album, released last month, falls somewhere between the more punk-heavy debut and their subsequent acoustic EP. But after this summer, the band anticipates taking a break for a bit as Caudill is moving to Nashville and Hannon is moving to New York. “It’s a weird thing, being in a band in college when you go to music school, because usually college bands, they’re like cover bands, and when you end college it’s just like ‘alright, that’s it.’” Allardice says. “But we’ve already put so much time into this, and we really like it too. We have a lot of fun, and we’ve grown a lot as people, and it’s like, why wouldn’t we grow more if we keep doing it?… I think we’ll always keep playing together.”
Regardless of what’s next for Foxy Grandpa, it’s clear they’ve made a deep impression on the Boston music scene in a short span—their use of humor and Western aesthetics sets them apart from the myriad of indistinguishable college rock bands that the city is home to and their expansive sound that ranges from punk rock to acoustic folk has garnered fans of every age. Moreover, Foxy Grandpa embodies the principle that music should, first and foremost, be fun. Every step of the way, from their songwriting process to their live performances, the band makes it known that their catchphrase “Stay Foxy” is synonymous with having a good time.
