An Encounter with Jack Terricloth and The World/Inferno Friendship Society

Mr. Jack Terricloth of The World/Inferno Friendship Society - Photo courtesy of Nick Nonesuch

One of the best things about following a band as magnetic as The World/Inferno Friendship Society is that whenever they have something eventful happening, such as a new album being released, a tour coming up, or their annual Hallowmas celebration approaching, they tend to stir up a good deal of attention. Tales of intrigue start to come out through major publications and blogs while other stories start to spread through word of mouth. Somehow, this outpour of information only makes the band more enigmatic and alluring as it divulges certain truths at times while adding to their mythos at others. Take their last tour for example, when word spread that the band’s singer, Jack Terricloth, was stabbed by their accordion player during a knife fight on electric scooters; a story too crazy to be true but just bizarre enough believe.

This is The World/Inferno Friendship Society, an anarchist music collective based out of Brooklyn, New York that blends a variety of musical genres such as klezmer, swing and soul with driving punk rock to create a sound and act that owes as much to vaudeville as it does The Damned. I’ve been following Inferno for the past decade… or however long it’s been since they opened for Against Me! in Chicago. After years of observation, I found myself personally sucked into their chaotic lives when they came to town for two nights this past August. My band, Nude Model, whose singer is an alumnus of Inferno’s former label, Gern Blandsten, by way of The Watchers, was opening for their show at The Beat Kitchen on Thursday, August 8th. They had a secret show planned for The Burlington the following night. I arranged an interview with Jack thanks to the help of Inferno violinist Jeffrey Young, who invited me to cover their two nights in Chicago after having had worked with Change the Rotation on [setting up and diligently transcribing] an interview with Jack back in 2016.

I was told to be at The Burlington by 6pm and like a true professional, I showed up at 6:30. The door was locked, the bar was closed. Their van was parked outside so I wandered through the back alley. I ran into a man named Pedro who told me Jack was at The Double, a local favorite down the street, and was expecting me. I walked in and was pleasantly greeted by Jack and Gina, the band’s bassist. “You must be Danny,” Jack said with a grin. Expecting to buy the first round, Gina ordered me a beer. I was caught off guard already.

We found a cozy corner in the back of the bar and I set up my recorder. A familiar tune came on and we sat uncomfortably for a minute until realizing it was Straight to Hell by The Clash. Nothing against MIA but something about hearing The Clash puts a punk rocker’s heart at ease. We relaxed into our drinks and started the interview. “Jack, you’ve been doing World/Inferno for so long, at this point, what does it mean to you,” I ask. “It’s a reason to wake up at any point, a reason to be alive, a reason to breathe... a reason to not become a full time drug addict,” he says partially in jest. “Everything. It means everything to me.” I pry a little deeper, “what motivates you to keep it going?” “I never learned how to do anything else,” he says. “Before I left to go on tour I used to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was very nice to me and it was a wonderful job, just going there every day was absolutely brilliant. But they gave me a choice between going on tour and getting a promotion,” he pauses, “so I don’t have a job.” Although he does concede that singing to a crowd for two hours a night could in fact be considered a job.

The previous evening at The Beat Kitchen, Bill Cashman, the band’s manager, approached me about rereleasing the very first World/Inferno demo tape A Collection of Works in Progress on my label, Don’t Panic Records & Distro, in time for Hallowmas. Of course I said “sure” not thinking he was serious and then there he was at my house two days later playing me the tracks. The tape that resulted in A Recollection of Works in Progress contains the band’s earliest recorded material dating back to 1993. “It started out with just the two of us recording on an 8-track at midnight at Scott’s [Hollingsworth] apartment in Jersey City. The vocals are so quiet because he had roommates,” Jack explains. The songs on the demo are quite different from the songs that later came to define Inferno. See, Jack wanted to write songs that were darker and moodier than the more straightforward songs his band Sticks and Stones was playing at the time and as legend has it, when Jack brought the demo of Tattoos Fade to the band, he was shot down as they thought it was too gothy for them.

The original demo reels - picture courtesy of Bill Cashman

It was at this point that Jack decided to leave Sticks and Stones and start fresh but without an outlet for his love of punk and hardcore music, he decided to recruit a full band to give an edge to the songs he and Scott demoed out. “We pretty much just walked into The Sweetwater Tavern in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and said ‘hey anyone play any instruments here?’ and got ‘I used to play trumpet in high school…’ ‘I play trombone…’ and we took them all back to the recording studio,” Jack cuts himself off, “oh we also built a recording studio, that’s probably important to mention,” he elaborates. “On nights off Mr. Hollingsworth and I would record our own stuff then go to the bar, get drunk and bring people back after the bar closed and record their parts over our songs. It was a drunken rampage.” And that rampage hasn’t stopped.

As a musical group that takes the form of a collective rather than that of a traditional band, World/Inferno has seen upwards of 50 members pass through. “People come and go,” as Jack puts it. Sometimes the band has a stable lineup for a few years, other times they’re in a state of flux. Seeing new promo pictures for the band reveals quite a few new faces. I was let down to see longtime bassist, Sandra Malak, out of the group. Sandra breathed so much passion and life into her work and was kind enough to write up a recap of the band’s Hallowmas antics for Change the Rotation in 2017 and came back for an interview the following year. She even guest listed me for Hallowmas after! But that’s collective life I suppose. Personalities will clash, life will get in the way and people will come and go.

I ask Jack for a rundown of the current lineup. He exhales deeply, “I’m gonna need a pen and paper for this.” He thinks for a moment and continues, “Ms. Gina Rodriguez, who is on bass, is an old time associate, we’ve known each other since we were 22 or 23. Felipe Torres was a recommendation of Scott. Oddly enough he’s a professional, unlike the rest of us, and played drums for The Monkees.” Gina chimes in to explain, “He started playing with The Monkees when he was 18 and he barely knew a damn thing. Davy Jones himself plucked him out of his school band because Felipe Torres’s teacher was Davy Jones’s drummer and recommended him.” So there you have it, World/Inferno is one degree of separation from The Monkees and if this were ten years earlier, that could’ve been a tour.

Jack continues, “Matt Dallow plays piano and accordion, he’s a neighbor of mine and actually wanted to be in the band. Aaron Hammes, our saxophone player, I know from the old punk rock days. I used to sleep on his couch back when I was in Sticks and Stones and he finally moved to New York.” Gina inquires, “How was Brendan recruited?” Jack retorts, “he just kinda showed up one day and I had no idea who he was… I think Francis recruited him?” He turns to me, “jazz musicians have a good habit of just replacing themselves which I suppose is polite but also kind of not. He’s a wonderful guy and at least he’s from Jersey.” He pauses to think for a moment, “Poor Old Jeffrey Young… I cannot remember… perhaps he was recruited by Rebecca… perhaps he just found us.”

World/Inferno at The Burlington - August 9, 2019

This past May, Jack recruited a handful of his former castmates [the “heritage lineup” as Jack calls it] to reunite and perform their seminal album, Just the Best Party, for one night and one night only at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, a venue Infernites may be more familiar with by its former name, Northsix. “It pissed off the current lineup a lot but it was very nice to see everybody,” Jack says. “It was a bit fraught and it was extremely strange being on stage with the heritage lineup and seeing the current lineup on the side of the stage and it was like ‘I’m gonna be in trouble with somebody at some point.’”

In an added celebration of the reunion, the band repressed their back catalogue. “I’m glad we’re rereleasing all the records cause the label we put the first couple out on don’t exist anymore,” Jack says of the reissues. “Charles Maggio who runs Gern Blandsten, was like ‘I… don’t do that anymore’ but he of course gave us his permission to rerelease them,” he explains. Interested, I ask Jack “what became of the label?” “Charles would have been a wonderful A&R guy, he found the best bands. It’s a thankless business so I’m not surprised he gave it up.” [The author sets down their pen, removes their glasses and looks up knowingly at the audience.]

World/Inferno’s latest album, All Borders are Porous to Cats, was released on Dead Kennedys frontman’s label, Alternative Tentacles, this past January. “It’s just always so alarming to speak to Jello Biafra that I never say anything I mean to say. I’m constantly star struck working with Mr. Biafra and it’s very hard to get a word in edgewise.” Jack explains to me that the very reason they got on the label was by talking shit in jest on stage. “I knew he was there so I said something about him endorsing Jerry Brown for president.” Jello apparently ran on stage to dispute the claim and it’s been love ever since.

Judging by our drinks, I gather our time is coming to a close. I ask one more question… a question that I almost got in a fight over with some local punks just a few years back. “Jack,” I say calmly, “Crass or The Clash?” He looks at me sharply and responds, “The Clash. Nothing against Crass at all but who do I listen to more? The Clash.” Oh well, to each their own I suppose.

You can listen to World/Inferno’s new album, All Borders are Porous to Cats, here and their demo compilation A Recollection of Works in Progress here.