Album Notes

Ol' Cheeky Bastards started with a dobro and some bagpipes... Seminal San Francisco punk-rocker Dave Dalton (Screaming Bloody Marys, Cell Block 5) got bored, pissed off, and tired with the whole punk scene, and started busking Celtic folk songs and “bastardized” Pogues tunes with bagpiper, whistle player, and bohdran drummer Sean Cummings.

Then, it all got weird really fast.

Dalton got signed to Vagrant Records of Seattle; cut Bag O’ Tricks in 2008 with producer, guitarist, and Guitar Player editor in chief Michael Molenda (who then joined the group); added bassist Patrick Wong and vocalist/percussionist Cheryl Doll; recorded the acoustic-oriented Working Class Heroes & Truths for Rotten Eggs Records in 2009; performed with everyone
from the Vibrators to Ian McLagan; and ended up with a rowdy-ass band that comes on like the Faces and Pogues in a cage match with T. Rex and the Sweet. If you’re partial to categorizing music, you could call Ol’ Cheeky Bastards a busker-punk group with drunken Celtic overtones awash in the blood and sweat of pub riots, but that probably won’t fit on your iPod screen. It’s just good noise, really. And as Dave himself would say, “A good time.”