Bremen Cafe was powered by rock and roll Friday night as solo punk act Gorilla Knifefight, alternative rockers Secondhand Souls and grunge-stoner rockers Toadskin took the stage.

Secondhand Souls is Jared Flannick on guitar and vocals, Jamie Jackson on bass and backing vocals, and OJ Berg on drums. Formed in 2015, the band’s grunge-adjacent sound contains hints of emo, pop punk and blues. “We’ve known each other for a long time,” Jackson said about the band’s origins. “Me and Jared go back to like 7th grade and we’re all from Milwaukee, born and raised.”

Flannick adds, “I’ve been best friends with OJ since I was about thirteen. I’m married to his sister actually (laughs). We’ve all been playing music together since we were teenagers but this band is going on eight years now. We tried on a bunch of different names before we settled on Secondhand Souls.”

The trio released their debut full-length album “I Think You Know Why We’re Here” in April, which they recorded at Kneeverland. On what they wanted to do with this record, Flannick shared, “Those songs are a mixture of ones we wrote years back and ones we wrote more recently. We wanted to put a bow on the whole last decade of our lives and just encompass everything.”

“We had already been playing these songs for a while but had never gotten them professionally recorded, so we wanted to lay that all down before we looked to the future,” Jackson notes.

Flannick shares a bit about his lyrics. “It’s mostly introspective stuff, like my thoughts on the world around me and how I see it. “Defeater” focuses on being an introverted extrovert and we chose that as the lead single for the album because we feel it speaks to a lot of people. There’s also songs about wicked exes and songs about the love of your life and stuff like that.”

The band is focusing on playing as many shows as possible this summer – including doing a prospective weekend run in August – to support the new album. “We’ve played a lot of the local haunts but really want to do more outside of Milwaukee,” Jackson said. “We did a mini-tour where we played Detroit, Indianapolis, and Nashville and we want to do more of that. After this summer of shows, then it’s on to the new shit.”

Secondhand Souls play DIY venue The Peeb Cave on July 22nd. Ask a punk for directions!