A Nashville lineup playing a Kingston sound through a New York punk filter.
Ska Punk titans The Scrub Ups are a unified dream team of New York’s legendary punk, ska and roots scenes, a collective of musicians and friends passionate about their decidedly counter-culture craft. This is the multi-faceted sound of a band honoring their iconic heroes like The Pogues, The Clash, The Slackers and Operation Ivy, while embracing their own underground fusion of sounds with reckless abandon and wry smiles. Their frienzied sound comes from their collective passion, born of the deepest of punk roots.
The debut full-length album from The Scrub Ups, the mischevious and hyper-catchy “Thought Bubbles”, features members with histories in Mephiskapheles, Barbicide, Murphy’s Law, Cracker Snatch, Beowulf, Vince Welnick’s orbit, and the broader NYC punk/ska/roots underground. “Thought Bubbles” is musically in service of the almighty ska punk groove, overflowing with bright melodies, thematically cheeky and feisty, and overflowing with unfettered enthusiasm.
The band’s sound intentionally resists easy genre classification: ska-punk roots, acoustic and Americana instrumentation, punk energy, dark humor, social bite, and multi-voice arrangements. The lineup is mixed-sex and vocally democratic, with multiple singers contributing different characters and perspectives rather than a single conventional frontperson. The instrumentation is unusual for ska-adjacent music: banjo, pedal steel, melodica, mandolin, baritone guitar, trombone, acoustic textures, punk rhythm, and roots/country color.
“Thought Bubbles came out of loss, history, and the need to keep moving. After Barbicide and after losing Mikal, we didn’t want to make a museum piece or a nostalgia record. We wanted to take the spirit of what we had been building and let it mutate into something stranger, warmer, and more human — ska rhythm, punk humor, folk instruments, country textures, and a band where everybody’s voice actually matters.”
The Scrub Ups are not trying to fit neatly into a ska, punk, Americana, or indie box. The whole point is the collision: banjo and pedal steel over a Kingston heartbeat, New York sarcasm, male and female voices trading the lead, and songs that can be funny, angry, sentimental, and ridiculous at the same time.
Some bands are built around genre. The Scrub Ups are built around people, history, and chemistry. Everybody in this band brings a different musical past and a different point of view, and the record works because we didn’t try to sand that down.
The album has already received positive coverage and praise from Kenneth Partridge, author of Hell of a Hat: The Rise of ’90s Ska and Swing, as well as Start-Track / Gimpleg and Bearded Gentlemen Music.
Brendog Tween and Mikal Reich’s earlier work with Mephiskapheles has been covered in ska-history media including In Defense of Ska, Ska Boom, and Hell of a Hat.
Thought Bubbles was mixed and produced by Agent Jay Nugent of The Slackers and The Scrub Ups, and mastered by Paul Ayriss of The Specialized Project.
Thought Bubbles is dedicated to Mikal “The Virgin” Reich.
Listen to “Thought Bubbles” at Bandcamp.
Stream on Spotify.
Musician Names/Instruments:
On Album:
Brendog Tween — guitar, vocals
Beth O’Donnell — guitar, vocals
David Friedlander — pedal steel, dobro, vocals
Greg Insero — drums, vocals
Irena Jaroszewski — bass, vocals
Ian Meredith — banjo, melodica, vocals
Additional Musicians:
Adam Kotok (now in band) — mandolin and baritone guitar on “Enemies” and “Jezebel”
Buford O’Sullivan — trombone and melodica on “Barbicide-Chinex Apparel”
Producer Name(s):
Recorded by Matt Ryan at HomeFront Studios in Caldwell, NJ
Mix-duced by Agent Jay Nugent and The Scrub Ups
Mastered by Paul Ayriss of The Specialized Project
Similar/RIYL:
The Clash, The Pogues, The Slackers, The Dreadnoughts, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, Violent Femmes, X-Ray Spex, Camper Van Beethoven, Gogol Bordello, Plasmatics, Operation Ivy, The Specials, Waco Brothers, The Dead Milkmen, early Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Genre(s):
Ska-punk, roots-punk, Americana, folk-punk, folk-ska, indie rock, alternative, country-ska, punk-informed acoustic music
Tracklist:
Unlove You — Agent Jay Mix
Enemies — Agent Jay Mix
The Scrub Up — Agent Jay Mix
Barbicide-Chinex Apparel — Agent Jay Mix
Jezebel — Agent Jay Mix
Bloodfall
Rubberneck
I Get Mad
I Don’t Remember
See You All In Mexico
Ceci N’est Pas Une Song
Websites:
Official Website: https://www.thescrubups.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thescrubups/
Twitter / X: https://x.com/thescrubups
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thescrubups.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thescrubups/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/13V8RxXdVE0vWxYlbCFSnf
Bandcamp: https://thescrubups.bandcamp.com/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/the-scrub-ups
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheScrubUps/videos
Artist Biography:
The Scrub Ups are a New York band built from unlikely combinations: ska rhythm, punk attitude, folk instrumentation, Americana color, dark humor, and a deep history in the city’s underground music lineage. Formed by Brendog Tween, cofounder of Mephiskapheles and Barbicide, the group began as a way to carry forward the creative spirit he shared with longtime collaborator Mikal Reich, while allowing the music to become something looser, stranger, and more expansive.
Rather than return to familiar genre territory, The Scrub Ups push outward. Thought Bubbles, the band’s debut full-length, brings together banjo, pedal steel, melodica, mandolin, baritone guitar, trombone, guitars, bass, drums, and a rotating cast of voices. The result is not traditional ska-punk, not Americana, not folk-punk, and not indie rock in any strict sense, but something that borrows from all of them: a Nashville lineup playing a Kingston sound through a New York punk filter.
That collision has already drawn notice from ska writer and historian Kenneth Partridge, author of Hell of a Hat: The Rise of ’90s Ska and Swing, who called The Scrub Ups “true originals” and praised Thought Bubbles for its “wildly entertaining ska with a twangy Americana twist.” For a band with roots in the ’90s NYC ska underground, that praise matters — but The Scrub Ups are not a nostalgia project. They are a new band made by people with long memories, sharp instincts, and no interest in staying inside one lane.
The band features Brendog Tween on guitar and vocals, David Friedlander on pedal steel and vocals, Greg Insero on drums and vocals, Ian Meredith on banjo, melodica and vocals, and Irena Jaroszewski on bass and vocals, Beth O’Donnell on guitar and vocals, and Adam Kotok on mandolin, with contributions on Though Bubbles from Buford O’Sullivan. Members bring histories connected to Mephiskapheles, Barbicide, Murphy’s Law, Cracker Snatch, Beowulf, Vince Welnick’s musical orbit, and the wider NYC punk/ska/roots world.
Recorded by Matt Ryan at HomeFront Studios, mix-duced by Agent Jay Nugent and The Scrub Ups, and mastered by Paul Ayriss of The Specialized Project, Thought Bubbles is dedicated to Mikal “The Virgin” Reich. It is a record about survival, absurdity, friendship, grief, jokes that turn serious, and serious things that can only be approached sideways. The Scrub Ups honor the past, but they do it by refusing to embalm it.
