News
Downstate New York punk rock favorites The Jukebox Romantics are debuting the new single and music video “Packing Up My Knives," a song from the original film “Meat Lovers," a micro horror film which is in festival showings now. The collaboration between the band and the film's creators came about through a network of friendships within the tight-knit punk scene.
Mike Terry (vocals/guitar) explains, "You know the music industry, and specifically the punk scene is very small, and over the years you get to meet some pretty rad people. These people start out as fans, then friends, and now collaborators.
In Summer 2023 we were approached by Allen Martindale, who is the director and writer of 'Meat Lovers,' the short film our new song is in. We know Allen originally through his partner Jess, whom we met being interviewed at our very first day of Warped Tour in 2010 in Salt Lake City. We kept in touch over the years and around 2017 Jess and her partner Allen had a great podcast called Talk Music To Me. Jukebox was a guest on the show and that’s where we discovered our shared love for horror movies.
Fast forward to 2023 and Allen has a horror comedy film (Jess is also a producer on it) and he wants us to write an original song for it. This is definitely a different way to approach song writing for a band like us. We were up for the challenge. I was given the script and told to “make it sound like The Jukebox Romantics were hanging out with The Misfits and Alkaline Trio.” So I wrote the intro and chorus riff at home. AJ came up with verse riffs, guitar hook and James and I wrote these bad ass lyrics in his dining room on a Friday morning. We laid it down at a couple studios and finished it at Nada Recording and we have sat on it for almost a year waiting for the movie to be shot, edited, and sent to festivals.
For a year we had the song titled HORROR MOVIE SONG (fucken real original) while we waited for the movie to wrap. It now has a name “Packing Up My Knives.”
On August 1st, 2024 the MEAT LOVERS was officially done and being sent to festivals which meant it was time for the Jukebox boys to shoot a video. We wanted it to be in a basement setting to fit the movie but also have some themes from the film in the music video. There’s lots of Pizza and creepy sweaty goodness along with B-Roll and scenes form the movie. It’s funny, this is our 2nd horror themed music video, but we aren’t a horror band. I guess our lyrics are pretty fucked though. I think we just love the genre. The process was a lot of fun, and even though we had to wait awhile to release it to coincide with the movie, we are beyond stoked. It’s probably collectively our favorite song that the 4 of us have written together and one of the best Jukebox Romantics songs ever. Boom.”
The Jukebox Romantics are currently recording their 5th studio LP with long time producer John Naclerio (My Chemical Romance, The Ataris, CJ. Ramone).
