A Petty Party Premiere

The Mound City Messenger is a big supporter of the arts in St. Louis, so when we received an AI-generated notification that a team of five local writers had gotten together to produce Petty Party, a new album of petty grievances, we had to find out more about how the book came together. It’s an uncommon amount of authors to do an interview with all at once, but Mark Eberhardt, Brian Martin, Jerry Green, Scott Randall, and Shauna Sublette graciously all gave us time during their press junket for a conversation about their coffee table collection of minor gripes.

Your team must have done a lot of research; what makes a grievance petty instead of major?

Scott Randall: “When it’s trivial or only annoys you. Major grievances are what most refer to as politics.”

Mark Eberhardt: “I’ve given this a lot of thought. It’s not the grievance itself that’s petty, it’s the person who’s holding onto it. At the end of the day if you’re lucky enough to be able to shrug it off and say, ‘oh well,’ you probably should. If you don’t, congratulations, you’re petty.”

Shauna Sublette: “Not too terribly long ago, a petty grievance was just a recognizably annoying thing. Now everyone and everything is petty, so people’s grievances have raised in rank to major. Like, seriously hurting people. Hence the need to reach out and remind everyone of what petty grievances really ought to be. Y’all are doing it wrong.”

Sounds like you’ve all spent some time with the subject; what aggravates you the most?

Brian Martin: “Right now, it’s all the AI slop that is being forced upon us.”

Sublette: “Flathead screws.”

Randall: “Heartburn.”

Eberhardt: “I mean that is a hell of a question, isn’t it?  Here’s the thing, we live in petty times. If you don’t think so just watch the news for like 5 seconds. You just can’t get away from how small and mean everyone is. It’s everywhere, all the time, and it seems like the people with the least reason to be dicks are the biggest culprits. So fuck those people, that’s my aggravation.”

Five people seems like a lot of authors for one album. How was your work flow when you were assembling this anthology?

A few minutes of whispers in the room as the co-writers discuss among themselves

Randall: “The album was done at Blue Rose Studios, Shauna’s own studio in STL, over a 2-year period with Jeff Fields at the helm engineering. The process went really real. Jeff has seen us too many times plus having Shauna assisting made it less stressful and tedious.”

Martin: “We had half already recorded but couldn’t decide if we’d do a seven-inch or full length; we recorded again and decided to do a full length.”

Eberhardt: “We’re disorganized as hell and can’t ever agree on anything to get our shit together. I mean it took us forever to make this thing. It’s like a world record or something, no pun intended. I always like recording, but like I said, we’re really disorganized and it takes us forever to all get on the same page. I wish we would have finished this thing like a year ago, but it’s done now, and we’re really happy with it. Maybe it’s happening at a good time because if you look around at all the great punk music coming out of St. Louis right now, maybe we just have a chance to be a small part of that cool thing that’s happening now.”

Sublette: “We write faster than we record. There’s much more written since this record, but for now you can catch those live.”

That’s fantastic. Writers and journalists are notorious loners who are not always great at picking up on social cues. How did all of you manage to get together for this project?

Randall: “Court-mandated community service.”

Martin: “I was between stuff and looking to start something again. A friend of mine knew Mark, who was also looking to start a punk band with Jerry and Scott.”

Eberhardt: “I think I’m a founding member, whatever that means. I just thought because everything seems to suck so much nowadays this would be a good way to blow off some steam and relieve stress. It really wasn’t like a ‘hey let’s make a big production’ or anything. It was more like ‘we like to hang out with these people, let’s see if they want to play some music in Jerry’s basement once or twice a week’, but honestly that was all the further thought that was given to it.”

Sublette: “I was lucky to catch one of their first shows together. While chatting with Jerry after the show, he mentioned they were thinking about adding another guitar to the lineup. Ended up catching COVID at the show. After all that passed, I joined them for some jamming and they didn’t kick me out right away. Huge oversight for them, huge win for me.”

Seems like music is important to your writing group; you should consider teaming up with a band to promote the glossy hardcover when it gets printed. Do you have a favorite petty grievance the reader should look for?

A pensive, almost stunned silence descends on the room as the group looks at each other.

Randall: “Truck Nutz.”

Sublette: “I love all my hates equally, but we need to have a serious conversation about phones getting bigger while ladies’ pockets are getting smaller. Also, everyone needs to stop reinventing pizza. Pizza is one of the only things that’s not broken, so stop fixing pizza.”

Eberhardt: “Why are you asking so many questions about petty grievances? I thought you would want to know more about the band and stuff about like, how we wrote the songs. Maybe some other projects we’ve done and stuff? What’s up with that, man?”

Martin: “I’m not sure about favorite, but the one that comes up right now is when people either don’t listen, or just hear what they want to.”

Great, thanks! So when does the book come out?

All five look at their clocks and prepare to leave. 

Randall: “Thanks for doing an article. Our album is coming out June 5^th at The Heavy Anchor, and you can buy it at the show, online, or at your favorite record store.”

Eberhardt: “We’re so grateful for all the support we’ve gotten from other musicians, bands, venues, and everyone who comes and sees the shows and buys our stuff. No petty people there at all.”

Editor’s note- This is why we don’t use AI around the Mound City Messenger office. We’re not even sure what AI tool Erik is using for alerts, or if he is at all. He’s been sober for years, but he’s a bit strange and maybe needs glasses. The press release we got is for the debut of Petty Party, the new album by Petty Grievances. The band’s album release party is 8PM this Friday. June 5^th at The Heavy Anchor (5226 Gravois), where they’ll be playing with Bruiser Queen and Breakmouth Annie. $10 cover charge at the door.