INTERVIEW: Bradley Jokerst of The Disappeared

As this year's punk rock circus parades into Maryland Heights, there will be one extra St. Louis act hitched to the rock n'roll wagon: The Disappeared.  While they might be newcomers to the festivities, they're anything but newcomers to the St. Louis music scene.  Over the past few years, "The D" have been sweating it out in practically every St. Louis club, basement, and south city dive (i.e. “Hey Bud, This Ain’t No Game of Poker—shot at The Mack).  Between those shows, they've managed to establish some national following thanks, in large part, to their national touring.  InsideStL recently caught up with singer, Brad Jokerst, to discuss getting "Warped," 80's movies, and your new favorite band, The Disappeared.

Why don't you start by giving our unfamiliar readers a little primer on The Disappeared.
Unfamiliar is right. We like to think that we're the best band from St. Louis that nobody's heard of, haha! But really, we are just 4 guys who wanted to have fun playing music again. The business of being in a band can really take a toll you and can get very frustrating. We just want to play fast, loud, no frills punk rock. We try to take a little part of what we all grew up listening to and put our own little modern twist on it. We've received some pretty varying comparisons as to who we sound like. I've heard multiple times that I remind people of Glen Danzig. Which is cool, I guess. I never really got into the Misfits or Danzig. But they're definitely two genre defining bands. I think the best one I've heard is "Every Time I Die...on crack." So you can take that for what you want. Seriously though, we grew up listening to bands like Pennywise, Quicksand, Snapcase, H20. Not that we're trying to sound like those bands, but we try to play with the same attitude as those guys.

You guys were nominated by the fans to play this year's Warped Tour in St. Louis.  How does it feel to be playing such an event at the request of "the people?"
To be honest, we went into the Alternative Press contest just being honored that they'd even ask us to participate. It was cool enough just to be featured in that mag as a "Top Unsigned Artist". I had no expectations for us to win at all. The bands we were up against were typical, bullshit poppy boy bands who all had like 250,000 hits on they're myspace pages, thousands of plays on they're songs. There's no way I thought we could compete with that. But when we found out we won, it was the first time I've ever thought about one of my bands, "Wow, people really do care about what we're trying to do." It was pretty special to tell you the truth.

What are looking forward to the most about playing this huge event?
This is going to be the most exposure at one show that we've ever had. I think we're most looking forward to getting on the Ernie Ball stage and tearing that fucker down! Haha! I really just want people who might be just walking by while we're playing, to stop and say, "Holy Shit. These guys are from St. Louis? How come I've never heard of them before?"

Do you plan on altering your set considering it's quite different than your typical club gig?
Depending on how long we get to play, I'm thinking like 20-25 minutes, we will probably cut out the songs off of our first 7 inch and focus on the EP material and some of the songs that we've written so far for our full length.

What motivated you guys to sign with St. Louis's I Hate Punk Rock Records, as opposed to other national outfits? Mike Jones [owner] cares. Bottom line. He cares about the music, he cares about the packaging, he cares about getting the word out there. It helps that we've been friends for a long time.  IHPR might not be the biggest label around, or have huge distro, or booking agent ties, but what he's doing with it right now is something really great for St. Louis. We just want to be a part of it. If it wasn't for Mike, I don't know where we'd be right now.

On top of your national touring, you guys gig the hell out of St. Louis.  Now I know--in one way or another--you have been a part of the punk/hardcore scene here for a while.  How would you rate the music scene in St. Louis compared to other cities?
St. Louis is a fickle bitch. I love this town. It's where I was born, and probably where I'll die. But getting people to care here...it's tough. It's a very cliquey town. We're lucky right now though, that the circle we run in, has some really awesome bands coming out of it. We're trying to take back the punk scene one show at a time. We're pretty picky about the local shows we play though. We will NOT play a show that we have to sell tickets for. That's one of the lamest things going on in this city right now. We want to play shows with our friends. We just did a show at the Firebird where Gabe (Usery; Drums) recorded the entire event live, which will eventually be put out as a live 12 inch with us, The Haddonfields, The Cuban Missiles and The Holy Handgrenades on it. It was a blast to do something like that.

Tell me about your most recent release, "Radical Miracle." I'm pretty proud of it. I think we all are. We produced it all ourselves. Sticking with our DIY ideals. The songs are fast, loud, sing along hardcore punk songs. I love playing them live. We take pride in how tight we are a band, I think that's one of the best things about our band. I can't wait for people to hear some of the new shit. We've definately come into our own as a band.

Is that title a "RAD" reference?
It sure is. Anyone who knows us, knows that we are obsessed with BMX bikes. River City BMX!

Any departing comments you'd like to read with the InsideStL readers?
Hopefully it gets a few people to check us out at Warped Tour. But if not, we've got a couple shows lined up in town. We've got some tour dates coming up too. We're gonna have a blast anywhere we're at.

Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/thedisappearedarecoming
Buy their album at http://ihatepunkrock.net/