"Gabe Zander and the Mountainpunk All-Stars" is the official name of my band, but an important thing to know is that this name doesn't just encompass whoever is on whichever current Gabe Zander album it is that just came out, nor for whoever, at the time of you reading this, is playing with me onstage.
"Mountainpunks" is a term given, in a poking-fun kind of manner, a few years back, to the small-town Punks and Skinheads of rural North Jersey (particularly Sussex, Warren, Hunterdon, and parts of Passaic and Morris Counties) by those in the more urbanised, Eastern portion of the state (Paterson, Newark, Jersey City, Union, etc) and New York City, as our bands often play together, our crews mingle at just about every party, show, or other function, and just about everybody knows everybody in the New Jersey Punk Scene; the landscape of our tiny slice of America's Eastern Seaboard is EXTREMELY diverse (the Northwest and far North, where we're from, is a very Pennsylvania-ish Mountain set-up complete with a big stretch of the Appalacian Trail, we have the densely rural Pine Barrens in the South, a beautiful Coastline to the Southeast, and, of course, the part of us that the world knows: that smoggy stretch of the Turnpike from Camden in the Southwest to Newark, Elizabeth, and the Oranges in the Northeast, and some of the roughest Inner-City Ghettoes in the world; Newark was once the international murder capitol). Supposedly, the term "Mountainpunks" is in use in other parts of the country, given to small-town Punks who go to shows in the cities.
Now we adopted the term proudly, almost immediately upon hearing it. We're not like other Punks. We never have been, although we've been around just as long. We have other survival skills besides squatting in old buildings and shoplifting at department stores. Most of us know how to hunt, fish, and gather. Just as a sixteen-year-old in Brooklyn knows where the alleys are to drink with friends and not get caught, we know where in the woods to build a campfire that nobody will see from the road, and still find our way back to our cars when totally plastered at 2 AM. Oh, and I gurantee you that ONE of said group knows how to start said fire without matches, if need be. Yet at shows at CBGB's in New York, we slam just as hard, and by just looking at us, nobody can tell that we're not from just down the street. Whereas they have to fight off Hoodies from their Squats, we have to fight off bears when they break into our kitchens, no joke. Yeah, Mountainpunks. We like it. Thanks.
Now I've met various groups of Punks, since first hearing that term, all over Pennsylvania, in rural parts of California, in Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and many other places. These, as well, are the Mountainpunks. Knoxville kids are bored rednecks. I've yet to meet a Punk in Nashville who can play Exploited on guitar but can't play Hank Williams. Alabama kids are some of the wildest, and let's not forget that rural Georgians put up with all the same ballbusting from Atlanta folks we get from New York. What can I say; we're everywhere.
Thus, what better term for a Punk/ Country music hybrid that goes beyond the realms of Psychobilly or Hellbilly, and what better name for a people who are so Punk and so Redneck that we don't give two shits what the Punks OR the Rednecks think about us (though any of us would still do just about anything for any of them), so therefore, what better name for a band. I'm proud of our people. We're fuckin' Mountainpunks, and these are the Mountainpunk All-Stars. Through good and bad, we have always been there for each other; they have always been there for me. I fucking love my crew more than anything on Earth.
GABE.