Alan Snodgrass
Nick Woods (second from left) and his bandmates visit Majestic on June 24.
Following a recently completed tour with the notoriously debauched punk legends NOFX, it would make sense for Milwaukee four-piece Direct Hit! to return home with tales of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
But there are no stories, says bandleader Nick Woods. After all, he had no relief from his day job.
“I was working the entire time we were with them,” says Woods, who is a copywriter for an Indiana-based software company. For the West Coast leg of the 14-date spring tour, he would wake at the crack of dawn for that job and take an afternoon nap before soundcheck.
Though Direct Hit! didn’t get what Woods refers to as “the full NOFX experience,” Woods says he made wise decisions. “As a 31-year-old guy with a wife and kid and mortgage, it’s probably best that I’m not going out and blowing cocaine up my nose every night.”
Woods may still have a day job, but music has become more than just a hobby for the singer and guitarist. Earlier this year, Direct Hit! signed to legendary punk label Fat Wreck Chords (founded by NOFX’s “Fat Mike” Burkett), which will release the band’s third full-length, Wasted Mind, on June 24, the same day Direct Hit! visits Madison’s Majestic Theatre. As Woods tells it, the signing wasn’t really expected.
“I’d been watching Fat since I was a teenager, but it was always kind of a pipe dream that we’d be able to put out a record with that label,” he says. “Our band has never existed with sort of a plan or an idea of what we were going to do next. We just put our heads down and work.”
Fans, however, may have seen the writing on the wall. In 2013, Direct Hit! released Brainless God, a concept album about the apocalypse that features songs from the perspective of religious zealots and serial killers. It received nearly unanimous praise and marked Direct Hit! as a band on the rise.
“The story that we heard on tour with NOFX was that Fat Mike had bought a copy of Brainless God because it showed up on so many [year-end] top-10 lists on punk blogs around the internet,” says Woods.
Wasted Mind, like Brainless God, is a 12-track concept album. And though it features the type of gonzo lyrics that powered Brainless God — Wasted Mind was influenced in equal part by Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs — it sees the band pivoting in a more polished direction.
Woods says the band spent more time listening to music for this album and incorporating such influences as the Who, Cock Sparrer and Billy Bragg. For example, “Promised Land,” one of the standout tracks on Wasted Mind, marries the band’s unhinged pop punk to piano, saxophone and tom-heavy drums that are straight out of E Street.
The upcoming performance at Majestic is the first of three album-release shows; it’s followed by dates in Milwaukee and Chicago. Woods says this is a way for Direct Hit! to accommodate its growing fan base.
“We’ve never been the kind of band that asks a whole lot from our audience,” says Woods. “We don’t want you to spend all your time trying to figure out how to see us. We want to come see you.”