Typhoid Mary does not wanna be sedated with their music.
The Providence-based group is looking to carry the torch of punk rock into a new era. The group’s fast-paced, frenetic sound is reminiscent of the late 1970s punk acts like the Ramones. The band’s self-released second album, “Second Breakfast,” made its debut in January 2024.
The group consists of guitarist/vocalist Izzy De Simone, bassist Marc Coutu, drummer Eddie Emerson and guitarist Jim Moorehead.
In this episode of Ocean State Sessions, De Simone talks about how important authenticity is in today’s world. He says that Typhoid Mary’s sound is “fast, loud, out of tune sometimes, fun” and unexpected.
You can watch the full episode here.
Izzy De Simone’s advice to musicians is not to be afraid to get an instrument “and stink at it.”
“I never really, like, learned to play, but I never put the guitar down because somebody was better than me or ‘cause they said, like, ‘Oh, dude, you suck.’” he says. “I remember, like, one time, me and my friend Billy, we recorded like a three-track demo, and I gave it to my friends and they were like, ‘You can have this back.’”
De Simone said the songs are short but catchy. He added that the Ramones were a big influence.
“With the Ramones, I could just easily just grab my guitar, learn that song in a few minutes,” he says. “It also inspired me to write my own music, ‘cause I realized it doesn’t have to be that deep to write good music.”
His mother had given him a “crappy Yamaha” guitar and the instrument had been idle for some time. But when De Simone began listening to the Ramones, “I just picked that thing back up, learned some power chords, and started writing my own music.”
“The first real band I had was (my) senior year of high school,” De Simone says. “We called it a band, you know? We never played shows, but the joy that we had back then, I think, going back on it, it was just like, ‘Wow.’
“Like, you know, those were so much fun. We didn’t know how to play our instruments. We felt like we were a band and we bonded. Be authentic. Write your own music.”
The guitarist said that when something is fake, people are going to see through the facade.
“I actually had a conversation with my mom about this. When you open up an old photo album, every single photo in that album is 100% authentic,” he says. “You know, when you look at a picture of your grandparents or your old cousins and everything, you see that moment. It’s like that’s exactly what they were feeling because they weren’t trying to post it on social media for likes, and they weren’t trying to look a certain way for the camera.
“Just be yourself and people will like that more, because they feel like, you know, you’re a real person. You have real stories to tell.”
De Simone says that having fun is the most important thing about playing music. Age does not matter.
“If you’re having fun with it, keep it going,” he says. “If something’s wrong, fix it, and with that, it was just really, ‘Let’s have fun with it,’ until my mom was just like, ‘Hey, you know, get out of the basement,’ and that day did come.
“That’s why it’s important for me to like the Ramones ... ‘cause it got me the music, it got me the band, it got me my friend, it got me my guitar, it got me these moments in time that you can’t really, you know, really recreate or even expect.”
