Exclusive track premiere of ‘Hold On’ by The Shitdels, taken from their upcoming album, ‘Where’s Your Head?,’ slated for release on September 13, 2024 via Big Neck Records.

So here we are, back in 2015, when Jordan Wayne and his wife, Katelyn, found themselves in Nashville, fresh off the bus from Memphis. Out of the clutter of their new life, The Shitdels emerged, first as a makeshift bedroom experiment that somehow, against all odds, mutated into a band. “I was discovering a way to just write about stuff around me. Spiders, people dressed up funny, dogs, etc.,” Wayne explains, a touch of bemusement in his voice. Without a band, it was just him, armed with leftover scraps from his Memphis days with The Blackberries (or Whoa, Blackberries, or just Blackberries, depending on which dive bar you’re in), trying to piece together something that made sense.

Enter Mike Bibbs, a transplant from Memphis with his own band, Modern Convenience. Katelyn had known him for years, and before long, Mike was plugged in, thumping out basslines. Wayne, in his relentless scrounging, dusted off an old Farfisa organ he’d found buried in his Toledo attic, teaching Katelyn the parts like some mad professor in a rock ‘n’ roll laboratory. Then came Carlos Ortiz on drums, courtesy of Mike, and the Frankenstein’s monster that was The Shitdels started to take shape. But there was a hitch: scheduling. It was chaos trying to get everyone in the same room at the same time.

In comes the deus ex machina: Ryan Sweeney, spotted by Katelyn while she was shopping for groceries. She recognized him from Cheap Time, a band that used to crash at their place in Memphis. Wayne reached out, sent over some tracks, and just like that, Sweeney was on board, hammering out beats in their ragtag jams. They started playing shows, eventually releasing their self-titled cassette in 2017 under What’s for Breakfast Records. Wayne, ever the one-man army, was already neck-deep in writing and recording what would become the ‘Shape-Shift Faces’ LP and the ‘Baghwan Bop’ EP.

‘Baghwan’ dropped first in February 2019, followed by ‘Shape-Shift Faces’ in December. The momentum was real, an LP and tour in the pipeline, the band firing on all cylinders with shows across the Midwest and Midsouth. Then, the inevitable plot twist—Covid struck, pulling the emergency brake on everything.

“I kept writing songs and reflected on our previous releases. The psych part just wasn’t happening and my wife would only play with us part-time due to her anxiety,” Wayne reflects, capturing the disarray. The lineup was fluid—sometimes a quartet, sometimes a trio—with Kiley Wells stepping in more and more on bass. Kiley, who they knew from The Mumzies and his gig at Fond Object Records, eventually became a full-time fixture, solidifying the current lineup: Wayne, Sweeney, and Kiley.

And then, from the ashes of the pandemic, ‘Where’s Your Head?’ was born. As Wayne puts it, “It’s more true to our live sound, with live tracking for the instruments and vocals recorded on top. So that’s where we’re at now. We’re just gonna keep doing it because it’s fun.” And that, my friends, is the heart of The Shitdels—pure, unadulterated fun, born from chaos, and always on the verge of unraveling, yet somehow, always managing to stay together.

They’ve given us a sonic blast of wild reverb and garage punk, a throwback to the golden age of Estrus-style rock while blazing a trail of their own. And where does their head go from here? Wherever the hell they want. Because for The Shitdels, the only rule is to keep it loud, keep it raw, and above all, keep it fun.

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