Knuckle Puck: The oral history of EPs, LPs, touring and friendships
Knuckle Puck guitarist Kevin Maida had some well-managed expectations when his band started. “I never thought it was going to be anything past playing a good local show, to be honest with you guys,” he tells his bandmates. “That was the personal goal in my mind.”
Obviously, Maida and the boys did much better than that. For 10 years, the Chicago aggregate have continued to spike the enthusiasm of pop-punk fans. Through the course of half a dozen EPs and two full-length albums (2015’s Copacetic and 2017’s Shapeshifter), Knuckle Puck have their spot in 21st century pop punk.
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APTV’s oral history of Knuckle Puck has all sorts of details regarding the band’s mythology, straight from the members’ mouths. The quartet shared a lot in front of the APTV cameras, with the kind of relaxation only close friends have with one another. They’re still as enthusiastic as ever about what they do. When they talk about how stoked they were finishing the first song they ever wrote eight years ago, it feels like they did it last week. “The story of our whole band is [that] we’re doing it for fun,” guitarist Nick Casasanto says. “And it’s crazy that other people are getting value out of it.”
In this APTV exclusive, Knuckle Puck provide the complete history of their band. There’s plenty of minutiae here, from recording early demos in Casasanto’s parents’ kitchen to feeling (and overcoming) the tremendous pressure to make a follow-up LP to Copacetic. (Spoiler alert: They recorded Shapeshifter twice.) Fortunately, the story doesn’t stop there. Knuckle Puck are giving you the first details of their upcoming third full-length.
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This complete oral history is a must-watch for every Knuckle Puck fan. “Building something with your friends that feels genuine and not really expecting anything to be given back to you,” Maida reflects. “I’m very grateful to just be with my friends.”
