If you’ve ever heard or seen Deady live, you’re a fan. How could you not be? Their songs are quirky, punchy, in-your-face, and catchy-as-fuck. And their live sets are frantic, extremely energetic, and completely unforgettable. You never know exactly what’s going to happen next at a Deady show . I don’t think the band themselves know most of the time; it’s just spur-of-the-moment insanity that you just have to witness. But above all else, it’s ridiculously fun! Deady is one of those very few bands that you could put on any bill regardless of the genres the other bands are playing, and not only would they fit in, but they’ll also steal the goddamn show! Woe to the band that has to follow a Deady set. The band, consisting of Chyppe Crosby (guitar), Mandy Keathley (vocals), Sam Woodring (guitar), Clayton Ray (bass), and KJ Bechtloff (drums), just released their first full-length album, Hunka Junk, so LEO Weekly fired off some questions to Chyppe Crosby and told him we were going to sit outside his place blasting the Labubu Theme Song on repeat at full volume 24/7 until he answered them. He got back to us immediately. Deady live at The Whirling Tiger – Photo by: Mat Schladen LEO Weekly: Let’s start with a little background. How did Deady get together? Chyppe Crosby: Deady started during the pandemic when Sam moved to Bloomington and posted in a Facebook group looking for people to jam with. I was already familiar with his old band, Two Inch Astronaut, so I drove up from Louisville to meet him. The first time we played together, it was literally just two guitar players sitting in a garage wearing masks and figuring out what we sounded like together. We drank a few too many Miller Lites that night, and I’m honestly still a little surprised Sam decided to contact me again after that. Around the same time, my old bandmate KJ, who I hadn’t seen in over a year since our previous band had called it quits, randomly texted me in the middle of the night: “I just want to rock Chyppe.” I took that as a sign and had the bright idea of bringing Sam down to Louisville to jam with KJ and me at a DIY studio I helped run that had previously been a daycare. That day, the three of us wrote the earliest version of “Knock” and recorded the basic tracks. At the time, I was also mixing an EP for Mandy’s solo project, Bummer Club Kid. She was living in Palm Desert, California, working for Gucci, and she was constantly writing songs and sending them to me. Since Sam, KJ, and I didn’t have a vocalist, I thought it would be interesting to see what she could do with one of our songs. I sent her the track, and she had vocals back to us two days later. For about a year, the band existed in this strange long-distance way. Sam was in Bloomington, Mandy was in California, and KJ and I were in Louisville. Sam, KJ, and I would get together and write and record instrumental tracks, then send them to Mandy to add vocals. It didn’t really feel like a traditional band yet, but we kept doing it and ended up writing and recording our first several songs that way. About a year into that, we got our first show offer: opening for Dogleg at Portal. That forced us to actually figure out a live lineup, so we brought in Clayton on bass. KJ and I already knew him from playing shows with his former band, Parlour, and it felt like a natural fit. Mandy was still living in California at that point, so I handled the vocals for that show. Then, about another year later, Mandy moved back to Louisville. That changed everything because suddenly we could actually get together, rehearse, write, and operate like a band instead of sending recordings back and forth across the country. About three weeks after she got back, we played our first show with the lineup we have now at Flamingo Lounge. That was really when Deady started to feel like an actual band. Hunka Junk album cover – Art by: Ryan Dunn Tell us about the new album, Hunka Junk. What can people expect? After about a year of playing shows and putting out our 2023 self-titled EP on cassette through the local label Never Nervous, we started taking stock of what we liked about Deady and what we wanted to push further. We realized we wanted the live experience to be more physical and energetic—faster parts, heavier riffs, more movement, and more of that feeling where things can get a little out of control. Those ideas really shaped the songs that became Hunka Junk. The album was written between 2023 and 2025, so it covers a pretty significant period of the band’s development. I think you can hear us getting more comfortable with what Deady is and what we want it to sound like. It’s heavier and more aggressive than the EP, but there’s still a lot of humor and weirdness in it. We didn’t set out with some big concept or mission other than making an album we were genuinely excited about. I think people can expect a pretty good representation of where the band is now, while still hearing the progression from that first record. How did the deal with Romanus Records come about? Our friend Abby Hart from Indianapolis, who plays in Grimey and Mr. Clit and the Pink Cigarettes, recommended Romanus Records to us. We were already familiar with the label because we’d played Romanus Fest the summer before, but we didn’t really know the person behind it very well. This was back in May, while we were still finishing the album, so it wasn’t like we had this perfectly packaged record sitting around waiting for a label. I reached out about potentially doing the vinyl release, they listened to what we had, and pretty quickly said they were interested. We also met them at a show we were playing in Indianapolis around that time, so suddenly this person we’d barely met was going to put out our record. From there it was basically, “Okay, I guess this guy is putting out our record. Let’s fucking do it.” The deadline was getting physical copies in our hands before we played Muddy Roots on September 4, so we had to get the album finished, finalized, and off to the pressing plant pretty quickly. It turned into a bit of a mad dash, especially since the album wasn’t even finished when we first contacted them. We went from having an unfinished record in May to needing finished vinyl by September, which definitely gave us some motivation to get our shit together. Deady live at The Whirling Tiger – Photo by: Mat Schladen Tell us about the recording process for this album, and any good stories that may go along with it. Most of the album was recorded over three days in July 2024 at my studio, Makeout Mountain, which is on the top floor of a furniture storage warehouse with absolutely terrible climate control. It was blisteringly hot. We basically stocked up on snacks and locked ourselves in there for three days and tried to get through as much as possible. Most of the instruments were recorded live because it was the quickest way to get through such a big batch of songs. We didn’t want to spend forever overdubbing an entire album, although some songs ended up being built that way. The timeline for each song was also completely different. “R.I.P.,” “Hot Damn,” and “Hunka Junk,” for example, were recorded at different points, and some songs had already been mastered and released as singles before other songs on the album had even been written. The acoustic songs were recorded in a single afternoon on Valentine’s Day in February 2025, and Mandy did her vocals at her house over three or four days that winter. I recorded and mixed the whole thing, and there are three different mastering engineers across the album. I’d grown quite a bit as a recording engineer and mixer since we made the first EP, so I think the biggest difference sonically is that this record sounds a lot punchier, deeper, wider, and heavier. There were plenty of moments where the process got sidetracked. The guitar solo on “Gutter Kid” took about 80 takes. At one point, Sam and I were supposed to be spending the day overdubbing guitars when I got a text offering us free Louder Than Life passes in exchange for putting some friends on the guest list for our upcoming show with Lightning Bolt. So naturally, the recording session got abandoned and we went to watch POD, Filter, The Armed, Dropkick Murphys, and Chevelle.   The acoustic songs were probably the funniest vocal situation. Mandy is used to screaming, and she felt shy singing softly, so she kicked Sam and me out of the room. I set the recording software to loop the entire song continuously, and we’d sit downstairs until she texted us that she’d gotten a take. And then there was “The Weight.” We’d already done what felt like a million takes when something went wrong with one of them, and I said, “Fuck, we’re gonna have to do one more.” Clayton was obviously not thrilled. I told him, “Yo, chill, it’s fine,” and he started mocking me in this exaggerated nasal voice: “Oh yeah? It’s fine? It’s fiiiine?” At that point I’d had enough, so I tackled him and dumped an entire bottle of water on his face. So yeah, there were some challenges. Ignore the date listed above. The vinyl release date was pushed back to 9/26 at 3:00 p.m. So there are a few versions of limited edition vinyl for Hunka Junk, including a slime-filled variant. Tell us a little about those, and especially how the slime-filled one came about. Romanus has a pretty extensive history of making completely insane vinyl, so we knew going in that there were going to be some interesting variants. The standard limited versions are different colored splatter designs, and then Romanus came to us with the idea for the slime-filled version. That was entirely their idea. We were obviously into it immediately. They’ve done a lot of these really strange, over-the-top custom records before, so it felt pretty appropriate for Hunka Junk. We didn’t really have to think too hard about whether we wanted a record filled with slime.  Tell us a little about the three acoustic songs on Hunka Junk, “Louisville,” “Goodnight Bitch,” and “Lie to the Police,” and why you all chose to record them acoustically. Those three songs came about pretty differently from the rest of the album. Mandy is a deeply creative person and always seems to need some kind of project going. She’ll be painting portraits, working on her house, designing and printing T-shirts, or, at one point, actually building a ball pit in her house. She was craving something new to work on, so she asked the group chat if anybody had an instrumental she could write to. Sam sent her three guitar pieces, and she came back with “Louisville,” “Goodnight Bitch,” and “Lie to the Police” pretty much immediately. I’m always impressed by how much energy she has and how quickly she can turn an idea into something that feels completely like her. Her lyrics come together really naturally, and Sam is a really fucking good guitarist, so those three songs really became their own little thing. I added some synth to one of them, but otherwise my main role was recording and mixing them. We didn’t really sit down and decide, “Let’s make three acoustic songs for the album.” They just happened, and when I heard them for the first time, I knew there was something really special there. Having those songs show up alongside the heavier material gives the album a pretty big shift in texture, which I think makes them hit harder. Are you worried about how fans may react when they hear those three acoustic songs? KJ has been unable to sleep.  Is it really a Deady song if there’s no fucking KJ?  What if people like them so much more?  Will we go on tour with Vanessa Carlton?  Blow up in the wrong way?  Would one of these songs be like our “Torn”? Mandy would be so blown.  “I just don’t understand why it had to be THAT one!” Deady live at Sweaterfest. Photo by: Mat Schladen Take us through the typical songwriting process for Deady. There really isn’t a typical songwriting process for Deady. Sometimes a song starts with a guitar riff that somebody has already written, sometimes it’s a demo, and sometimes we just write the whole thing together in a room. Sam will send little drum and guitar demos, Mandy will do the same with synth and drums, and we’ll build things from there. Once we have the drums, bass, and guitar figured out, we’ll usually make a bunch of phone voice memos of us running through the song and send those to Mandy. She’ll take those and write the lyrics over them. She does all of the lyrics, and that’s usually when the song really starts becoming what it is. Some songs have come together in twenty minutes, and others have taken months. Four of the songs on Hunka Junk actually came together over a single weekend. We’re also not particularly precious about things. There’s a song we’re working on right now that started as a completely finished song with verses, choruses, and bridges. We kept fucking with it until none of the original parts were left, and now it’s a completely different song. Usually if something takes us months, we’re more likely to scrap it than anything else. Deady – photo by: Jerry McIlvoy Although Deady is generally labeled as punk, there is a lot more going on with your music. You’re pretty much your own genre. I hear elements of post-hardcore, indie rock, thrash, shoegaze, jazz, and now folk with the acoustic numbers on the new album, and more. Do you feel like it’s a hindrance being lumped into the punk genre at this point? Sometimes it feels a little weird. If somebody asks what kind of music we play, I’ll usually just say punk because it’s easier than trying to explain everything that’s going on, but then they might hear “punk” and think I’m saying we sound like the Ramones or something. I’m sure there are plenty of punks who would strongly disagree that we’re a punk band, although I’m not really sure what they’d call us instead. We all listen to a lot of different stuff and don’t really have one genre that we’re all devoted to, so I think that naturally ends up in the music. Sam once told me that if he shows me a song, he has no idea whether I’m going to like it or hate it. We’re all kind of like that. We don’t intentionally try to throw a bunch of genres into a song—we’re just always throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I don’t really care what people call it. After shows, people will sometimes come up and say we’re a little bit of this genre, a little bit of that genre, and a little bit of something else, and that’s probably more accurate than anything I could come up with. I’m terrible at describing us in a few words. Some people are more comfortable when they can immediately put music into a category, but if people are enjoying it, that’s really all I care about. Deady is known for doing some rather crazy stuff live on stage. What would you say is the craziest thing you all have done live? It’s hard to pick one because the shows tend to be a little different every time. Guitars might become airborne, somebody in the audience might suddenly be covered in chocolate syrup, the entire crowd might end up onstage with us, there might be an infant crowdsurfing, or we might fire off ten confetti guns at once. I’m usually just encouraging people to get involved however they want. I like being in the crowd and trying to play guitar while people are shoving me around, and if it were entirely up to me, there’d probably be a lot more strobes and fog machines. Recently I kicked my amp off the stage like I was punting a kickball, which was probably a mistake because I think I fucked something up in my foot. So that’s currently pretty high on the list. One of the more memorable ones was a show where, at the end of the set, we moved the drums out into the audience and invited people to play them. That part was intentional. What we didn’t anticipate was everyone immediately abandoning the concept of playing the drums and starting to attack them with the sticks. The drum heads ended up getting pretty badly torn. The funny part was that it wasn’t even our drum kit—it was the opening band’s backline. Thankfully they were good sports about it. Nobody’s ever gotten seriously hurt or anything. Usually the worst consequences are a broken piece of gear or something we didn’t quite anticipate happening. Chyppe goes surfing during LRS Fest. Photo by: Mat Schladen You all tend to do some short tours a few times a year, so I know you all have some great tour stories. Good or bad, what are some of your most memorable times on the road? Touring is actually pretty easy for us to pull off because all of our day jobs are somewhat flexible. Once a year we’ll usually do a two-week run, but Louisville is close to a ton of other cities, so if we get asked to play somewhere cool, we’ll often just take off for a weekend. We try to do some dumb field-trip shit when we’re somewhere interesting. We went to MoMA [Museum of Modern Art] once, we’ve ended up at Cedar Point, and we had a really good day at Kings Island with Shitfire. Those days are honestly some of my favorite parts of touring. We’ve also reached the point where we’re not really interested in staying at just anybody’s house anymore. We’ve spent enough years in gross, weird apartments, completely exhausted from playing every night, while it’s somebody else’s big Friday night and they’re trying to get fucked up. If we’re not going somewhere that’s clean and chill, we’ll get a hotel. There’s nothing worse than waking up at 7 a.m. on a stranger’s couch completely hungover when you’ve got another show that night. One of the more insane trips was New York. We were driving straight there when we got some pressing news about a family emergency and had to take an eight-hour detour. Then we had to get back on the road and still make the show. We pulled up to the venue in the Lower East Side five minutes before we were supposed to play, in the pouring rain. Afterward, while we were loading out, Clayton accidentally left his bass amp on the sidewalk. We came back and it was gone and immediately thought, holy shit, his amp just got stolen. Fortunately, somebody working at an art gallery across the street saw it sitting there and brought it inside to keep it out of the rain. So we got it back. Then there was the time we left Louisville around midnight to make a 5 a.m. flight out of Nashville, flew to Vegas, had an eight-hour layover, walked around the Strip in 110-degree weather, and then flew to Boise for Treefort. It was something like twenty hours before we finally got to the hotel. We were pretty much zombies by the time we got there. Deady live at No Comply 3 – photo by: Mat Schladen What are the favorite shows you all have played, and why? No Comply 3 was one of my favorites. Sweaterfest at Headliners was another. I love being part of the Louisville scene, and getting to play those festivals alongside our friends is always a good time. Then there was a house show in Tallahassee called the Rats Nest that has stuck with me. It was run by a bunch of eighteen-year-olds in their first apartment, with a First Act-type drumset. The first band had already destroyed the kick drum, so we just played without one. There were around 30 kids packed into this tiny living room, Sam fell backwards onto his amp at one point, and the whole place was coming apart around us. Everyone was losing their minds. Long live the Rats Nest. Now that the album is out, what kind of plans do you all have for the future? We’re taking a little time off this fall. Clayton has a baby on the way around the end of September or beginning of October, so we’re going to let him have a minute. There’s already a new EP in the works, and we’re recording it at Electrical Audio in Chicago in early December. I’ve always wanted to record there, so I’m pretty hyped about that. We won the studio time in a raffle at PRF BBQ in Chicago after spending about $115 on raffle tickets. We were pretty stoked when our name got pulled. The plan is to get that EP out as quickly as we can after recording it, so there’s a chance we could have another release out pretty soon. Then next spring we’re hitting the road again for another East Coast and Midwest tour. We’re already writing, recording, and planning what’s next, so there’s plenty more Deady on the way. Deady’s latest album, Hunka Junk, is available now on all streaming platforms, and will be available on limited edition vinyl from Romanus Records beginning Saturday, September 26th at 3:00 p.m. EST. For more info on Deady, visit: linktr.ee/deady183. Deady – photo by: Jerry McIlvoy The post QA: Deady’s Chyppe Crosby Takes Us Behind The Scenes Of Their New Album, Hunka Junk appeared first on LEO Weekly | Louisville Eccentric Observer. ...read more read less