X-Ray Arcade celebrated their 5-year anniversary on Friday evening with performances from Milwaukee acts Breakup Tour, Chi-Chi’s Restaurant and Bad Crime as well as Chicago acts Coronary and The End of Music. The house got packed with community and cacophony. Happy birthday X-Ray Arcade!
Breakup Tour consists of vocalist-bassist Amy Upthagrove, vocalist-guitarist-omnichordist D.H. Thomas, vocalist-guitarist Sam Schrader and drummer-vocalist Nat Otto. Formed during COVID times, the band describes their style as “bubble grunge” with notes of emo and power pop.
Thomas shares some background on how Breakup Tour formed. “Amy is like the first person I met in the music scene here, before I was even in bands and playing music. They were the person who told me and Joey from The Unitaskers that we could start our own band, so I’ve always thought of Amy as a powerhouse and underappreciated person in the scene. I’m also a huge fan of Nat; the first time I saw them do drums in Man Random I was like “holy shit!”, and then Sam is one of my favorite songwriters in Milwaukee, so there was always this running meme about forming a project that was the four of us. I meme’d it super hard on Twitter…and then the pandemic happened…and each person started echoing the meme so we decided we might as well just do it. And then we did, and it’s been really gratifying and cool because I get to write music and play shows with people I’ve looked up to the whole time I’ve been doing it.”
Breakup Tour’s first show was at Cactus Club with Gully Boys and Scarlet Demore in April 2023. “Scarlet Demore brought us flowers,” Thomas mentions.
“Someone bringing you flowers for your first show is like the best good omen that anyone could ask for,” Otto reckons.
Schrader touches on the band’s name. “We had a running list of ideas, and then we sat down at Rochambo one day to pick a name, and Breakup Tour was the one that won. I think we made the right choice.”
Thomas recalls, “When we opened for Skating Polly, some guy said he wasn’t even from this town but he saw Breakup Tour on the flyer and was like “oh my God, I love Skating Polly, but if they’re breaking up we gotta see it!” (laughs).”
The band’s debut single “(At Least We Still Hate) The Same Shit” dropped in September. “I wrote the guitar riff and was trying to rip off Weezer and Rozwell Kid,” Schrader said. “It’s basically just “The Sweater Song” by Weezer but with us jamming on it, and then D.H. wrote the lyrics.”
Thomas finds writing lyrics for Breakup Tour to be easy. “We all draw from a lot of the same influences and I feel like we have a good sense for each other’s sensibilities and personalities. I never worry about if something’s going to be dumb or too in one direction or the other.”
Upthagrove adds, “The thing that I really admire about how everyone in the band puts the arrangement of the song together is how it’s almost like the thesis statement for how we make music where we’re swapping vocals with a collective approach, like we all get to be the frontperson.”
That said, the members share a Google Drive full of song ideas and riffs, and all of them contribute lyrics. “We go through track by track to decide what we’re most excited about and then build off from it,” Thomas explains. “Sam is really good at writing one-liners.”
“I really like writing stuff for this project because I normally have a very hard time writing lyrics,” Schrader jumps in. “Especially for my other projects, it’s usually very confessional and sad sack stuff, so it’s nice to be able to try to step out of that a little bit.”
Breakup Tour have a single coming out in early April and hope to have a record out later this year; everything is mixed and engineered by Otto. The band plays Company Brewing on February 23rd, Promises on March 8th, and Falcon Bowl on April 27th for the inaugural Punk Rock Sock Hop.
Chi-Chi’s Restaurant comprises vocalist-guitarist Amber Rae, vocalist-guitarist Carlyle Nowak, vocalist-bassist Anthony Schwader and drummer Mary Joy. Their style incorporates elements of hardcore punk, indie rock and power pop.
Formed in 2022, Chi-Chi’s Restaurant started when Joy wanted to get back into drumming with a new project. “Carlyle and I were having practices, and it was also on the tail of Fox Face breaking up,” she explains. “It was just the two of us building it out at first and it took a while, but I went out to a show at Bremen one night and Amber was there, and I asked her if she wanted to be in a band. She was like “yeah!” so then it was the three of us – but we needed a bass player.”
“I asked Tony,” Rae jumps in. “I didn’t think he was going to say yes but he was very enthusiastic.”
“I’ve been saying no to people for a long time,” Schwader laughs. “This is my first new band since Strange Matter.”
The band’s name derives from the defunct Mexican food franchise; Rae shares, “I was trying to think of what would be the stupidest thing a band could be called. Chi-Chi’s Restaurant came to mind. It just kind of stuck.”
“I didn’t like it at first but wow, did it grow on me very quickly,” Schwader said.
The first Chi-Chi’s Restaurant show had been last July at Bremen Cafe. On the band’s songwriting process, Schwader shares, “Each of us comes to practice with a song and then it kind of gets fleshed out from there; it’s a lot like how Holy Shit! writes too. As the last person to join the band, I don’t know how it went with the songs before I joined, but we don’t really do the organic jamming-into-a-song kind of thing.”
“We’re all songwriters, and that’s what’s cool about this band,” Joy notes. “I’ve never been in a band like this where we’re all bringing somewhat-finished songs to practice. Sometimes Amber will finish the lyrics or we’ll change who sings it. It makes our sound be all over the place in the best way.”
“Carlyle and I have been doing this thing where he writes lyrics and then I kind of rearrange them,” Rae adds. “But I do have the songs I write lyrics for myself. For this band, it was kind of cult rock for a minute (laughs). I wrote a song called “Heaven’s Gate” and then I wrote one about Art Bell and Coast to Coast, so I’m writing a lot about *things* whereas in Habitat for Insanity I write about more personal stuff.”
Chi-Chi’s Restaurant just wrapped up recording an 11-song album with Shane Hochstetler at Howl Street. “We’re going to be mixing that on Monday, and hopefully in spring we’ll have it out,” Nowak said.
“We haven’t played a ton of live shows yet, but it’s because we’ve really been in songwriting mode as we’ve gelled as a band,” Joy contends. “We’re excited to release the songs we’ve recorded and then start working on new ones.”
“We worked super hard on these,” Schwader affirms. “It’s the hardest I’ve worked on music in a long time and it felt super good.”
Rae puts it, “When there’s four songwriters, you really crank them out.”
Chi-Chi’s Restaurant play the Ladies Rock MKE benefit show at Cactus Club on February 29th.
Bad Crime consists of vocalist-guitarist Patrick Schwogler, guitarist Joe Samara, bassist Alex Stromski and drummer Logan Stang. The punk rockers are all current or former employees of X-Ray Arcade; in fact, Stang is a co-owner. The band’s name is a reference to East Coast indie punk act CENDE. Bad Crime formed from the ashes of Dislocation, as Schwogler explains.
“Alex and I were in that band for a few years, and then after it broke up I had some songs I was working on that were kind of different. Alex and I lived together at the time, and we cut a demo over winter 2022 and released it last May. We were trying to figure out who we should start this band with and we wanted Joe because we’ve known him forever, plus he and I currently live in the same duplex. It just so happened that he and Logan both wanted to be in the band when we asked them.”
Bad Crime’s first show had been last June at X-Ray Arcade. As far as what their songwriting process looks like, Schwogler expands, “When it started out, it was just me in my room writing songs about a lot of stupid, depressing crap. But I never wanted it to just be me writing, so Alex and Joe have both contributed some songs too. Usually, someone will come to practice with a song that’s pretty much ready to go and we’ll work it out and fine-tune it as a band. I’ve always found that to be a more streamlined way of getting songs done, plus any doubts you might have about the song at first just get washed away as it evolves.”
The guys originally planned to release a 7″ recorded and mixed by Samara while mastered by Justin Perkins, but it has since been converted to a split 12″ to be properly announced soon.
Bad Crime are at Cactus Club on March 8th and then at Promises on April 13th. They plan to do an East Coast run in late summer.