For this punk band, there’s just one rule: Work hard

Let’s be clear: Lazy, the band, is not lazy. The name is an intentional irony kept up since the punk act’s founders, guitarists and co-lead singers Brock Potucek and Sarica Douglas, first joined forces, in 2009. (They started as Lazy K before dropping the lonely letter.) The truth is — and Potucek and Douglas will admit to this, very quietly — that Lazy might be one of the hardest-working bands in town.

The group, which includes bassist Christian O’Reilly and drummer Alec Nicholas, has issued a near-steady stream of releases on cassette, CD and vinyl since it formed, and the catalog keeps growing. Three releases are already set for 2015: a full-length called TXT, to be released on Chicago’s Moniker Records this summer; a 7-inch on Italian label Goodbye Boozy in April; and another single, called “Soft Sheets/Don’t Die,” on San Diego’s Volar Records, which can be had at Lazy’s Friday show at the Replay Lounge.

So, yeah, for Potucek and Douglas, Lazy is a good deal more than a hobby. It’s art, an experiment in communicating ideas, a sonic delivery system for their thoughts. And it’s just plain practice. As Potucek admits, skill wasn’t a day-one priority.

“I didn’t know how to play music really well, and Sarica was the only person that I knew who was really willing to go for it with me,” he tells me. “Because to us, it didn’t matter that you couldn’t play it well — it just mattered that you could play. That was more important. So Sarica was the first person I wanted to play with because there was a similar understanding of aesthetics and format that made it different. It didn’t matter if you messed up or if you were great. It just mattered if you did it.”

As for those aesthetics, the appeal isn’t hard to figure out. A turn through 2013’s Obsession finds Potucek and Douglas dueling with riffs as well as with voices. Working together and clashing as foils, they build a fearsome, frenzied storm that calls you to dance and thrash even as the tornado sweeps you up.

“For me, when we started, it was like there was a lot of music around that time period — especially in the Lawrence area — that sounded the same, and we wanted to do something different,” Potucek says. He was a University of Kansas student, working on an art degree and, he says, “going to house shows and punk shows around here.” The idea of making music, however he could, suddenly seemed as vital as what he’d set out to study. “I thought, ‘What if we were on-point and doing it really smartly, with limitations? What if we were being really cognizant about our limitations and working within them?'”

Potucek is seated on a lumpy couch inside O’Reilly’s midtown bedroom, talking between cigarettes. He emits an intensity that can be almost unnerving; he’s not the kind to break his gaze even when he’s not speaking, and his answers to questions are often abrupt and sometimes guarded.

O’Reilly, bleary-eyed, faces us from his bed, where he controls a laptop blasting energetic hip-hop. Douglas has folded herself into a chair nearby, her pretty, heart-shaped face calmly observing the conversation. The season’s unscrupulous cold has forced its way into the room. Coats have been left on.

We are speaking while the memory of Lazy’s most recent tour is still fresh. Last fall, the band booked an extensive five-week run — its grandest yet — across the Midwest, into Canada, along the East Coast, and to Texas. Like Lazy’s music and recordings, the gigs were arranged DIY-style.

“Booking that five-week tour, that was like a year of research, writing and e-mails,” Potucek tells me on another bitterly cold day, this time over drinks at Harling’s. “Almost five years of work, if you think about it, because all the other tours build up, and you make new contacts and new avenues and opportunities. Figuring it all out, what kind of gear you’re taking, what route, what time you show up, being the booking agent and the merch guy — that’s a lot, and it’s not creative. But the more you put in, the more you get back.”

It’s not that Lazy is opposed to bringing in outside help. It’s that, for Potucek and Douglas, even the parts of Lazy that are not creative are rewarding when that aesthetic of limitations — of self-determination — is applied.

“We tried working with a booking agent last year, and I don’t think we’ll do that again,” Potucek says. “It didn’t work out too well. And it’s kind of nice to have a hands-on approach anyway. It’s cool to feel like you know someone for seven months, e-mailing them, and then you shake hands with them finally, and it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s you!'”

“I love seeing what other people are doing,” Douglas adds, referring to musicians met and friends made along the way. “I’m kind of a research bug, and it inspires me to keep going. Seeing the motivation that other people have, feeling what they’re feeling — it’s a feeling of togetherness.”