The Ducky Boys
“Stand Tall, Stand Proud”

Wonka Vision: Brief history on the band?

Mark: Okay, well, I’m Mark Lind. I play bass and sing half the vocals. My friend Mike here, he and I grew up since seventh grade. He plays guitar and sings the other half of the vocals. Our friend James “the professor of Stonewall Jennings” Lynch, is the new lead guitarist who just joined the band. And Jason Messina is the drummer.

Wonka Vision: Where’d you get your name?

Mark: Well, funny you asked, our name comes from The Wanderers, a 1979 cult classic film. It starred the short girl from Animal House. We took their name they were the evil motherfuckers.

Mike: They were the bad guys?

Mark: Yes they were the bad guys, the boys from the wrong side of the track. They were the white Irish, Catholic kids, and coincidentally we live in a town in Boston, which is known as being a white Irish, Catholic neighborhood. So hence the Ducky Boys. And it has nothing to do with a fucking duck.

Wonka Vision: How far back do we go with the Dropkick Murphy’s?

Mark: Well, I met Ken at an Ignite and Unwritten Law show, in the summer of 1996 in the Harvard Square. From their came the split 7”, and we started off at the same time and did a lot of shows together. Hmmm, what’s the next question we usually get? Influences you’re right.

Wonka Vision: Okay how about this, the fourth track off the new record; it’s about your father…

Mark: Yeah that was just some stuff I wrote to get it off my chest.

Wonka Vision: Do you have jobs besides the band?

Mark: Yeah, well the thing is we have to get jobs that will allow us to play with the band and allow us to tour. So we all work contemporary jobs. My job with G.M.M. actually I have a lot of time to go on the road. Not quite as working class as people think we are stuffing envelopes but any band that can actually get out on the road is not exactly working in a factory.

Mike: We’ve done it though.

Mark: I use to bust my ass. I used to bag groceries at a food market for four years.

Mike: I sold flowers at a train station.

Wonka Vision: Your lyrics are very positive and inspirational. Do fans of the band ever talk to you about this?

Mark: Not really kids don’t say shit to you like, “Oh I really thought that was kind of cool” that doesn’t happen but we’ll get a letter or a email so they’re not embarrassed. We gear ourselves to people who were like us, people who were the dorks in high school that got pushed around.

Wonka Vision:You guys are so positive now how did you change? How did you take that being pushed around in high school and put out a positive message to it?

Mike: The anger goes into making the music.

Mark: I think if you can’t make it positive then you might as well pack it in cause everything is shit. It’s not really all that way for us though. The lyrics to All Rise Up are really not positive until it hits the chorus. It’s just like a twist of a word that can change the meaning of everything. My brother is in Blood For Blood and they are really fucking angry. One of the lyrics to their songs is “Destroy everything in your power” and we’re the opposite way. I guess it’s just a matter of how you see everything.