Big D and the Kids Table's David McWane and "The Good Ole American Saturday Night"
When two Radio Garden State shows team up, you get something a little unhinged and a lot of fun.
Rich Temple of Temple of Sound and Kelly Branco of the Sound Show joined forces for one episode, dubbed it the "Temple of the Sound Show," and sat down with David McWane, frontman of Boston ska-punk lifers Big D and the Kids Table. What followed was a conversation about a band that has somehow stayed loose and joyful for three decades, the genre they invented, the road that carried them around the world, and a brand new record that throws everything they love into one pot.
Listen to the full interview on Radio Garden State’s Patreon page for free.
A Band Born Out of Boredom (in the Best Way)
The origin story is gloriously low-stakes. The name came from a friend, Conor Donnelly, who had spotted "Big D and the Kids Table" in an old AT&T commercial and asked McWane to use it if he ever started a band on his way to Berklee. McWane, by his own admission a loyalist, kept the promise.
But there was never a grand plan. "The number one thing you always want to do is just play music," he said. He and his friends Mark and Steve started jamming Operation Ivy covers, McWane on drums, with no ambition beyond the next session. One by one, friends asked to join. The horns arrived almost by accident, because, as McWane put it, the guys were "lonely, dorky musicians" with not much else going on.
A dropped gig at the Middle East in Cambridge became their first real show, and they took it the way they took everything else, with a shrug and a grin. Thirty-one years later, that nonchalance is still the secret. "I personally don't take being in a band too seriously," McWane said. "I like that a band I've been in and in love with started very nonchalantly, and we've kind of kept that throughout."
Inventing a Genre Called Stroll
Plenty of bands chase trends. Big D built their own lane and named it. McWane lit up talking about seeing "stroll" listed as a genre for the first time. "I think seeing that made me feel the best out of anything that's ever happened in music," he said.
Stroll is a stew of everything McWane grew up loving. His dad raised him on doo wop, and he has a deep affection for the playground cadence of double Dutch and hopscotch rhymes, the Miss Mary Mack kind of stuff. Add northern soul, ska, reggae, and the influence of the film "The Commitments," and you get the sound behind albums like "Fluent in Stroll."
It also gave rise to the Doped Up Dollies, the group's backing singers who eventually became their own act. McWane loves that the first Dolly, Siri Richardson, found the band the old-fashioned way, by ripping a phone number off a flyer that was looking for a doo wop singer. The band kept promising to back the Dollies as their live group, kept forgetting, and finally made good on it. That is partly why there were longer gaps between Big D records. They were busy. They just forgot to do it under their own name.
The Road, Remission, and "More Scars"
McWane spoke openly about a recent health battle, and shared good news. He is in remission and planning to be back on the road this fall. "I'm the same guy, just with more scars," he said. The hosts wished him well on behalf of everyone at the station, and McWane sounded ready to make somewhere other than a hospital his second home again.
Touring has given the band a life few of them expected. McWane talks about it with real gratitude, aware that growing up where he did, jet-setting around the globe was never a given. "We feel very lucky," he said. "Not every American can just go around. We very much look at it as the biggest gift to our life, to be able to have culture."
He remembers a touring world of payphones and paper maps, before MapQuest, before there was a Target in every town, when every state still felt distinct and every meal came from a mom-and-pop shop. His favorite memories stretch across continents: the Terracotta Warriors in China, each one its own face; getting mobbed by fans in Indonesia who somehow knew exactly who they were; a trip to the Isle of Skye to trace his family roots, where a far-flung bartender recognized him on sight. And then there is the Warped Tour cafeteria moment when Tim Armstrong walked up out of nowhere to introduce him to Lars, the whole room watching while McWane tried to keep his cool. "Being in a band is hard sometimes," he laughed.
"The Good Ole American Saturday Night"
The new album is out now, and it might be the most genre-hopping record the band has made. There is hardcore-tinged punk, ska punk, reggae, and plenty of stroll. That variety is by design. Big D is not a one-songwriter band, and McWane actively pushes everyone to contribute, the weirder the demo the better. "We can fix it up, like remaking a car or fixing a house," he said of the band's approach to wild song ideas.
He credits the Beastie Boys for permission to roam between styles, and he has a reframe for the restless creativity that drives it. Rather than call it a disorder, he calls it ATC, Attention to Creativity. "What if we had the audacity to label people who like spreadsheets and call it a disorder?" he joked.
Pencils, Napkins, and a Trip Through the Tubs
One of the warmest stretches of the interview came when McWane described his new Patreon, where he digs through old tubs of demos, posters, and handwritten lyrics from the band's early days. He is often surprised by what he finds, because he writes in pencil, on napkins and scraps, then copies it all out on Sundays, switching pen colors line by line so his eyes do not glaze over.
He loves looking back at the crossed-out lines and abandoned words, the visible evidence of a song finding its shape. "I really like that old paper and pencil stuff," he said. The Patreon, he promises, is full of that behind-the-scenes treasure, including early recordings and original lyric sheets walked through track by track.
Catch Them Live
Big D and the Kids Table are hitting the road this fall, with shows mentioned including TV Eye in Ridgewood, Queens, and MilkBoy in Philadelphia. "The Good Ole American Saturday Night" is out now wherever you get your music, and the video for "Scatterbrain" is up too.
Follow Radio Garden State on Instagram @RadioGardenState, and catch more conversations like this one on Temple of Sound and the Sound Show. Keep it loud, and keep it rockin.
Listen to the full interview on Radio Garden State’s Patreon page for free.