By Keith Walsh
With his band called Public Nuisance and songs like “Kick You In Your Face” and “I Ain’t Havin’ It, “I asked guitarist Ryan McClelland if there’s a literal threat or if it’s all theater. “Oh yeah,” said McClelland. “I don’t want to sound like a poseur, but you know, we’re not necessarily violent in what we do and how we act. I don’t want to go admitting it’s just for theatre. Just kind of, you know, it sounds a little ballsy.”
McClelland joined the hardcore punk band about five years ago when Bob Valenzuela became ill. “He became ill from a kidney condition and stepped away from the band,” McClelland said. “I was invited to come and join, Bob was instrumental in building the studio and writing some of the best songs the band has. He was a friend of mine and a one-of-a-kind awesome dude.”
I suggested that the hardcore punk of Public Nuisance is not that far off from rock and roll. McClelland backs up his protestations with music theory. “I would say that punk is not just rock and roll,” he said. “Rock ‘n’ roll draws clear roots from southern blues music, but even though punk and metal have evolved from blues and rock, not many of those elements are still used except for pentatonic scales (more in punk than metal). The earliest metal bands like Black Sabbath and Motörhead had blues elements in the same way that Led Zeppelin (not metal) did but because of their darker image and heavier sound they went on to establish a new genre, ultimately leading to punk and metal.”
McClelland continued: “I think there are two types of punk rock, the type that is written in a chaotic form and disregards music theory, and there is also a type of punk written by people with composition backgrounds that has the goal of being a little friendlier to the ear. The second type is difficult because if it is too friendly to the ear then it is not punk anymore. This may sound kind of weird, punk rock that is more on the poppy side uses 1 4 5 progressions a lot but not in the way that blues and traditional rock do, in blues those chords are all dominant but in classical music those chords are all diatonic, the one chord is Ionian, four chord is Lydian, the 5 chord is Dominant … this is also the way they are used in pop-based punk rock.”
“Either way,” he added, “I find it unfortunate that there is not much of a market for good rock ‘n’ roll or punk rock right now in the mainstream media. I’d be thrilled s@#tless if that changed!!
O.G. Punk From Southern California
McClelland, who is identified by his tall spiky hair, knows a lot about the history of Public Nuisance. “Most of the songs are like twenty, thirty year old songs that they’ve been playing for all these years, and there have been a lot of members in the band. And so the previous singer, Dennis Pilkington wrote a lot of the songs. Jon Vang is the guitar player, he’s the founding member and songwriter. The singer and bass player are brothers, Richie and Joey (Jacks), they’re really hardcore guys. They’re really ballsy, badass dudes. And so they kind of click off each other and they bring ideas that they write. Garth (Post) the drummer is also.”
As McClelland tells it, Public Nuisance is one of the original hardcore punk bands to come out of the Southern California scene from as early as 1981. McClelland recalls the stories told to him by Vang. “He talks about how frustrating is was, because he came up in the same scene with like The Circle Jerks, and D.I., and playing shows alongside those guys, even T.S.O.L., but then Public Nuisance had little hiccups. They didn’t have a drummer for a period of time. They didn’t have bass player for a period of time. So, just not being able to function, they didn’t end up going into history the same way a lot of their partners did.”
It sounds like Public Nuisance is making up for lost time by playing out and recording. McClelland told me that guitarist Vang owns the studio where the band records, “He does metalworking,” McClelland said, “so he converted a portion of his metal garage into a professional studio and you can see that in our music videos. It’s got its own isolation booths for vocals, guitars, and a raised platform for the drums and a mixing room as well. He took a garage and he built in all out like that with professional-grade sound baffles and good equipment to match.” McClelland wrote “Bread Line” and “The Big One” for Public Nuisance.
The Gear Of Ryan McClelland
I asked McClelland about his guitar and amp. “So I built my own Gibson style Explorer. It’s got a neck from a Les Paul, it’s by Warmoth. It’s a bolt on neck, but it’s an Explorer body with a Les Paul neck and it’s got some custom pickups that I bought, Seymour Duncan Humbuckers. I love humbuckers. And then my backup is a Strat style –A Jackson neck on an Epiphone Strat body that’s got the humbuckers as well. Who’s that guy—Jason Becker. It’s got the Humbucker that he approved Seymour Duncan to design.”
As for amps, McClelland uses vintage Peavey tube amps. “Those are the 5150s from the 80s. Those are great. The Peavey, I’ve heard it called the Ninja throwing star logo like that—really sharp looking.”
About pedals: “You can quote me as saying, ‘the most important pedal is a tuner.’ With that said, I have Goldtone Wah. I have a Flashback x4 delay. I don’t think you need much more than a Wah, a Delay, and a good boost.”
About punk’s obligatory volume: “I got to crank on through. Jon, he plays out of a Mesa Triple Rectifier and he will boost his sh#t so loud and I have to be able to compete with him, and I don’t know if it’s a good habit or bad habit. But by the end of the show, we’re both pretty damn loud. And we can kind of tell that the audience was headed gets louder.”
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