Frontman Pat McCurdy, center, is on the road with Yipes! after a long hiatus.
It’s a Saturday night in early January at the Club Tavern in Middleton, and Milwaukee-based singer/songwriter Pat McCurdy is preparing to take the stage for a solo set punctuated with novelty songs and often hilarious improvised interaction with audience members — just as he’s done all over the Midwest since the late 1980s.
Right now, though, McCurdy has settled into a corner booth to talk about Yipes!, the power pop/rock band that started it all for him 40 years ago. The band recently self-released its third
album, Yipes!!!, and will play a reunion show with the original lineup at Club Tavern on Feb. 15.
Yipes! launched in Madison in 1977, found a larger audience in Milwaukee, gigged hard all over the Midwest, won a battle of the bands contest, and snagged a record deal with RCA/Millennium Records. The band’s 1979 self-titled debut charted, but when 1980’s A Bit Irrational didn’t produce a major single, the label dropped Yipes!
Yikes!
“We never really came back and played Madison after the record deal,” McCurdy says. “We had a national agent who was pushing us to open on big tours, and a lot of times they weren’t in our neighborhood.”
The list of bands Yipes! toured with reads like an early-’80s FM radio station playlist: B-52s, Triumph, Foreigner, Cheap Trick, Kansas, Jefferson Starship. “We were pretty adaptable,” McCurdy says.
Despite its short lifespan, Yipes! left a legacy. In 2013, the Wisconsin Area Music Industry inducted Yipes! into its hall of fame, prompting the band’s first live performance in 32 years. A year later, the band played Summerfest, and now — after just three shows in 36 years — Yipes! is embarking on a six-date tour of Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota.
McCurdy is the most musically famous member of Yipes!, but guitarist Mike Hoffman enjoyed major-label success with roots rockers Semi-Twang and produced Yipes!!! with guitarist Andy Bartel. Drummer Teddy Freese lives in the Veneto region of Italy and plays in three bands, and bassist Peter Strand is an entertainment lawyer in Chicago.
“We played hundreds of shows together, and it’s amazing how the connection made then remains,” Strand says.
“We have nothing at stake,” adds McCurdy, who wrote all the new songs. “The CD turned out beyond my wildest dreams, and the sound is so powerful. It’s just like we were, but the songs are grown up. They’re lyrical and they’re tuneful, and they have that wistfulness that you get from experience. It’s exactly what our band is now.”
Yipes!!! sounds retro yet fresh. The album opens with the manic “Pure Insanity,” which is followed by the melancholic “Argyle Avenue.” “Going to London” is a playful romp, while “Started Out With a Bang” swings with an unexpected Latin feel. “Miss Doom and Gloom” and “Blink of an Eye” are wall-of-sound rockers, and “Are You Coming” is a holdover from the original Yipes! days; it could have been a radio hit then, but sounds dated compared to the other tracks here.
“It’s like a TV movie, isn’t it? Dad’s got the band back together,” McCurdy laughs, before turning serious. “For me, to have a third act — a taste of rock stardom, solo success and now this — that’s pretty appealing. That doesn’t happen to everybody.”
