Chris Gethard, Mikey Erg, mems of Folly, Catch 22, Midtown & more tapped for NJ punk covers project

Lis Sinatra

Jersey Interchange is a quarantine project created by NJ's Christian Lesperance that features over 50 musicians from NJ's long-running punk scene covering NJ punk songs. There's a new song released every Monday and the seventh installment was released today: a cover of Mohawk Barbie's "Pink" by Jon Tummillo (Folly), Patrick Tummillo (Right Turn Eddie), and Agim Colaku (Folly), and the cover also incorporates a little of Fear’s “New York’s Alright (If You Like Saxophones)."

Jon Tummillo tells No Echo:

Christian Lesperance gets the credit for this song choice. Although I’m mildly familiar with some of Mohawk Barbie’s songs, from comps and playing some shows with them during Folly’s early days, I never heard 'Pink' until Christian recommended it. When he contacted me about this project I was so excited generally about the sentimental nature of it.

Having grown up in the New Jersey scene, having gone to so many shows, and developed lasting friendships, my immediate impulse was to agree to whatever song he had in mind. I’m glad in hindsight that I didn’t pick one of my personal favorite bands or songs to work with. Christian implied, and I agreed, that a band like Mohawk Barbie deserved the tribute.

[...] I love Fear. That band was/is so rough around the edges and Lee Ving doesn’t give a shit about what people think, same as Mohawk Barbie. The original version of 'Pink' is only about 50 seconds long, and I wanted to give whoever was going to sing it a lot more time than that. I also really wanted to cover a song by Fear, but there was a glaring problem.

Fear were from LA and this project is all about Jersey. So, I changed the geographic location of one of their most tongue-in-cheek songs and bam! We had a Jersey anthem.

And Christian added:

Mohawk Barbie was one of the staple punk bands of the New Jersey scene in the late '90s, early '00s. They played shows every weekend, and had a loyal following of gritty kids who just wanted to scream with the band and in turn, be heard by someone who cared. Stein, their original songwriter, also ran Umbilical Records, and put out some great releases that definitely grew the scene.

Previous installments include Heath Saraceno (Midtown, Senses Fail) covering Bigwig, Alf Bartone (Ex Number Five) & Justin Carter (The Holy Terror) covering Lifetime, and more. Upcoming guests include Chris Gethard, Mikey Erg, Nate Gluck (Ensign), Jared Hart (Mercy Union, The Scandals), Jeff Davidson (Catch 22), Evan Ivkovich (Wisdom In Chains), Ryan Dominguez (Tokyo Rose), Logan Laflotte (Paulson), Alex Burton (Paulson), Derek Weber (Bedlight for Blue Eyes), Josh Farrell (Bigwig), Tom Keiger (Houston Calls), and many more, plus even more TBA.

Stream the seven currently released songs and see the current list of announced artists below...