Mad Caddies

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Follow @mad_caddies Let It Go by Mad Caddies 2020 was going to be a big year for the Mad Caddies . The Santa Barbara, California, sextet had reached an impressive milestone: 25 years as a band. Had you asked any member of the Caddies a quarter-century ago if they thought their goofy high school ska band would be celebrating a silver anniversary, they probably would’ve laughed at you between bong hits. But the band managed to make it this far, selling a half-million albums and logging tens of thousands of road miles in the process. Before the band could really roll out their big anniversary plans, that pesky global pandemic happened — and the Caddies , like every other band, were grounded. But in a strange twist, having this unexpected downtime allowed the group to finally complete a batch of songs they had been tinkering with since 2017: Introducing House On Fire , Mad Caddies’ new five-song EP and their first original music in six years. “We started writing this collection of songs shortly after releasing Dirty Rice in 2014,” says Caddies bassist Graham Palmer. “It was put on hold a bit as we worked on and toured for Punk Rocksteady , so this downtime recently has allowed us to finish it up.” House On Fire ’s lead single, “Let It Go,” is a chilled-out number that feels sonically similar to much of Punk Rocksteady ’s classic punk songs-turned-ska, but the remaining four songs on the EP step away from ska and punk entirely, while still sounding distinctly like the Mad Caddies . “We've always tried to incorporate different genres within our punk/ska roots, and with multiple songwriters in the band, we have a lot of different influences,” Palmer says. “So we never really feel anything is a real departure, but more of ‘How can we make this genre Caddies ?’ It's a fun challenge for us.” The best example of this is “Waiting For The Real Thing,” a doo wop-inflected R&B number complete with snapping fingers and a big, brassy horn line that feels like it could’ve been pl