The Lancaster, Pennsylvania, quartet classifies their music as folk-punk, with mostly acoustic instruments played with a fundamentally punkish approach to songcraft and delivery.
Their sound is built around the voice of April Hartman, aka Apes, the singer/guitarist who founded the band in 2016. The group also includes co-founder Dan Ebersole on mandolin, Mollie Swartz on violin and Colin Grandstaff on harmonica.
It’s been almost a decade since Hartman left her native New Jersey and entered a rehab facility in Lancaster, a decision that not only saved her life, but ultimately produced a lot of excellent music. Her first album, All I Did This Summer Was Go to Rehab, was released the following year.
All I Did was the first of at least four studio albums, in addition to several EPs and split singles, all of which were released independently. This suits their DIY ethos just fine. You can see those values reflected in every aspect of their game, from aesthetics to logistics.
The band’s current tour of Florida is their fourth, and it makes perfect sense that their sound resonates strongly in places like Gainesville and Orlando, where the artists have very similar influences and attitudes.
“We toured Florida in 2019 twice,” says Hartman, “once with Local News Legend and then again with the full acoustic Apes band in December right after we released Pipe Dream. We have always had a great time playing down in Florida! It’s definitely a commitment when it comes to touring. Because of the shape, it’s hard to just hit one Florida show and then leave. You gotta drive all the way down the peninsula and then out, so it makes much more sense to hang a few days and do a couple of shows, which is what we have always done.”
All of the band’s songs ring through with an unmistakable sincerity — no put-on, no artifice. They probably couldn’t do it that way even if they wanted to, and they don’t want to. Our favorite number is “Internet Song”, which finds Apes singing from the rare position of an elder, talking about a world that no longer exists.
“I actually kind of sat down to write a sad, nostalgic song about growing up before the internet and cellphones and how we would walk around the neighborhood and knock on our friends’ doors to ask them to come play,” she says. “It ended up turning into a more goofy song that probably has some heavy Blink-182 inspiration since they were who I was listening to back when I was a kid roaming the neighborhood setting things on fire.”
Apes notes also that “the inspiration to add that ridiculous electric guitar solo in an otherwise completely acoustic song came from the song ‘That One Limp Bizkit Song’ by Sledding With Tigers.”
Apes of the State play Stardust Video and Coffee with Doom Scroll, Danny Attack and Myles Bullen on Saturday, March 2, at 7 p.m. Tickets are currently $20 online.
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This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 5, 2024.