STIFF MIDDLE FINGERS

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photo by Fally Afani, iheartlocalmusic.com

Stiff Middle Fingers formed in 2010 with the intention of covering a few of their favorite punk songs for fun - "In My Eyes", "California Uber Alles", "Bikeage", the entire Nervous Breakdown EP - you get the idea. One day, they decided it might be fun to start writing some of their own. Flash forward to six years later - after sharing the stage with revered acts such as Bomb the Music Industry!, Pears the Band, Joyce Manor, Agent Orange, Guitar Wolf, The Adicts, The Seven Degrees of Stephen Egerton (Descendents), Peelander-Z, Radkey, Michale Graves (Misfits), and more - and SMF has completely Hulked-out into one of the Midwest's foremost must-see/must-hear punk bands.

Lead vocalist TurdKing (Travis Arey) is an irresistible punk mascot, a frontman whose passion for achieving unity through the common self-loathing and anxiety of all people is only matched by his need to continuously search for new things to climb on during shows, new faces to scream into, and new areas his 75 ft. mic cord will allow him to go. Also featuring guitarist Aaron "Barry" Swenson (Podstar, Many Moods of Dad), drummer George Valyer (The Primetime Heroes), and bassist Doug Griffin (The Dead Sevens, Chris Aytes & the Good Ambition), SMF as a live band is bristling and precise, while still maintaining an off-the-cuff quality, often marathoning through 15-song sets in under 30 minutes. As Brian Clifton of the Mills Record Company Blog said recently,

"Stiff Middle Fingers harness the angst and energy of early punk and the irreverent intelligence of early aughts Saddle Creek. The combination of these two elements makes their songs part-snarl and part-snark. Perfect for summertime skanking in the daytime or shaking the walls of any dive bar at night, Stiff Middle Fingers take all the frenetic energy of being dissatisfied with life after a few pots of coffee and directs at a single goal: making music that burns through the veins of their listeners."