Hey, ho, let’s go … to the library for Lawrence, KS Punk Rock Vol. 3

In 2015, Tony Mendez was looking to get his band, the Havok on Polaris, back onto local punk’s radar screen.

At the time, the pop-punk act had just recorded Fan Dance, which the guitarist and singer describes as a bunch of songs he and his bandmates had written in high school. In an effort to spread that music and to transcend it, Mendez contacted similar local artists about throwing some of their songs together with Havok on Polaris’ material.

“I was just trying to get back into the music scene,” Mendez tells me. We’re drinking tallboys in front of Frank’s North Star Tavern in Lawrence, with engineers Chris Maddox and Tyler Truesdell. He flashes a wry grin and shrugs his shoulders. “Kind of selfish reasons, I guess, but just to kinda get in contact with other people,” he says.

It worked. The resulting compilation — Lawrence, KS Punk Rock — made the rounds on social media, and beyond. People as far away as Brazil have pulled tracks from it to soundtrack YouTube videos. And the connections made then have remained in place and been further augmented.

Which means now there is Lawrence, KS Punk Rock Vol. 3, slated to feature a who’s-who of every loud, fast, angry band in town: perennials such as Four Arm Shiver, Stiff Middle Fingers, the Rackatees and the Hemorrhoids (now known as Hatchet Game). But this year’s installment also sees the likes of the Vedettes and Folklore Suburbia making their first compilation appearances.

“We got a bunch of new bands,” Mendez says. “We don’t want anyone to feel left out.”

That’s something of understatement: Engineer Maddox is in three bands himself (Nancy Boys, Sunday Heroine and Bloom), all of which turn up on the album. He’s proof that Lawrence is riding a wave of loud, fast, heavy music — a wave that breaks against such regular events as the LKxRR showcases, organized by Treet Ward of Young Bull, and the Replay’s Three Headed Thursdays.

The two previous Lawrence, KS Punk Rock compilations have helped build this wave, though none of the tracks was tailor-made for the project. This time, though, Mendez wanted to send a new current through the connections he’d made: For the 2017 iteration of LKPR, Mendez called on every act to record a new track. And he had the studio space picked out: the Lawrence Public Library’s Sound + Vision Studio, where the musicians wouldn’t have to pay.

“It’s always been newer stuff, but this year the idea was really to use the library, because it’s a tool there for bands to use,” Mendez says.

The Sound + Vision Studio is — per its Facebook page — “a professional recording studio … free of charge to use for all of your creative needs.” It has three editing bays, in addition to a full studio setup. 

“I love it,” says Maddox, who has worked as an on-call engineer for Sound + Vision, as well as at Lawrence’s Daybreak Studios. “It’s a great space, and they’ve got great mics. I’ve rented it out for practice space before.”

“It’s such a great facility with great people, and it’s such a cool deal,” says Jim Barnes, who manages the studio. “It’s kind of about maintaining relevance, which this library does a really good job of.”

Barnes took over Sound + Vision from Ed Rose in February, after an eight-year stint as a freelance recording engineer and musician, touring with and recording artists, as well as mixing various projects for television. He was attracted to the position at the library because it would keep him involved in the community.

“When you’re self-employed in a job, sitting in front of a computer, it’s pretty solitary sometimes,” Barnes says of leaving the freelance world. “Just meeting the wide variety of people that we have come into the library and use our facilities is one of the coolest parts, because there’s something different every day.”

In addition to full-band recordings, such as the annual Girls Rock Lawrence sessions, Sound + Vision has been booked for poetry readings, oral histories and even crystal singing bowls for meditation. It’s an impressive setup that doesn’t require tremendous expertise to use; anyone with a smattering of knowledge can get something recorded, and even that thumbnail skill set can be acquired for free, thanks to occasional how-to sessions.

“We call them ‘Sound + Vision Basics,’” Barnes says of the introductory sessions to the studio, but he sees them more as open houses. “You can walk into the library and know what’s up, but here [for the studio] you have to wait until there’s an opening to kind of pop your head in. It’s a little mysterious, for sure.”

“There’s always a learning curve,” Barnes adds. “But learning is part of it here. Even if that first session is just a learning opportunity, by the time they come in again they’re a lot more comfortable.”

The use of Sound + Vision by all the bands for Lawrence, KS Punk Rock Vol. 3 dovetails neatly with Barnes’ concept for the studio, and how its mission fits in with that of the library as a whole. “As far as music goes, that’s the perfect use for it,” he says. “Everyone’s using their own library card – all of these people from the community using it one session at a time.”

Like Barnes, Mendez has set out to reach beyond those already in the know. And just as Barnes has thrown open the door to Sound + Vision, Mendez hopes to make the new LKPR a little more public than past volumes when it comes out at the end of the summer. He plans to put on a show with as many artists from the compilation as possible; Kurt Mangold (Extra Ordinary) and Maddox are organizing an all-day showcase that would share a backline and put each band onstage for a few songs.

And if you’re a band in Lawrence that hasn’t been contacted? Well, Mendez wants to hear from you, even with 20 bands already confirmed. (Seriously, he says: call up lawrencekansaspunkrock.bandcamp.com — where the first two compilations can be found as free downloads — and hit him up.)

“I want to build lasting friendships between all the bands and people in our music scene,” he says, “something that this community of Lawrence musicians could be proud to be a part of.”