Words by Jim Testa
Unless you were part of NYC’s pop-punk underground during the mid-2000’s, you probably won’t remember the Shy Guys or the band’s frontman, Chadd Derkins. But to anyone involved in that scene – which stretched far beyond NY, online via the Pop Punk Message Board, and in real life at the Insubordination Festivals that united this community for a remarkable eight-year run from 2006–2013 – Chadd rivals Ian MacKaye or Henry Rollins in iconic stature.
Chadd Derkins loves amusement parks, theme parks, and rollercoasters, a passion which manifested itself in Whimsyland. Released in the summer of 2022, this 15-track album creates for the listener, ride by ride, an ideal imaginary amusement park. Utilizing the many contacts and friends he’s made in the pop-punk scene over the last two decades, Whimsyland the album made Whimsyland the place feel as real as Oz or Hogwart’s.
Now Chadd’s treated us to another visit to this magical kingdom with “Bounty Bay,” a 5-track EP that takes us on a guided tour of a corner of Whimsyland we missed the first time out. That this music even exists is amazing; that it brings so much joy simply enthralls.
Off Shelf: People who know you understand, but for those who don’t, can you explain your relationship with amusement parks and rollercoasters?
Chadd Derkins: I think I went on a couple of childhood trips to Walt Disney World at just the right age that the magic of the experience left a permanent scar on my brain, and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. Although I do love roller coasters and thrill rides, what I’m really looking for is to hang out in beautiful fantastical environments that have been curated by talented people to maximize enjoyment. In this way, I think my interests in video games and theme parks sort of come from the same impulse: Let’s explore this wonderful fake place and discover all its secrets!
OS: Where did the idea for Whimsyland begin? Did the whole concept come to you at once, or was it just an idea for a song about a ride at first? I’m fascinated by how something like this would ever gestate. And then once you had the idea for an album about an imaginary amusement park, how did you proceed?
CD: I think two midlife crises collided during the pandemic: my obsession with theme parks went into overdrive since I was unable to visit any, and at the same time I sort of rediscovered an interest in making music that had gone dormant over the preceding decade.
I think the true origin of Whimsyland was listening to an episode of my favorite theme park podcast, Podcast the Ride which featured a bracket of fictional theme parks. This led to me rewatching the classic “Whalers on the Moon” sequence from Futurama, and thinking to myself, “It sure must be fun to write a song for a fake ride.” And then I thought, “Wait a minute – I am, ostensibly, a songwriter. Why can’t I do that?”
Almost immediately I wrote and demoed Happy Horse Hoedown and Suwannee Swamp Adventure. I really liked them, and I told myself that if I could get to 7 songs, I’d gussy up the Garageband demos to the best of my ability and throw an EP up on Bandcamp. Before I knew it, I had 14 songs written, and by that point I’d grown so fond of them that I figured they should exist as more than just crappy demos on Bandcamp – and I knew I needed to get people involved who could play instruments and sing way better than I could. Luckily, I am friends with a lot of extremely talented people, so I began recruiting folks – first the core band – Andy Conway, Chris Grivet, Grath Madden, Mikey Erg, Charles Vorkas – and then singers for each individual song. Everyone was really game, and the rest came together relatively smoothly.
The process by which Whimsyland was constructed is kind of a miracle, and something that would probably have been close to impossible ten years ago. Everyone recorded their own parts in their own homes, using their own equipment of varying quality. They sent me files, and I plopped them together and spent a lot of time editing them, and then I sent them to Luke McNeill to mix and master, and he somehow made them sound like they were not recorded in twenty different places. It’s a weird way to make a record, but it sure is exciting and fun!
OS: Is Whimsyland a real place to you? Can you close your eyes and imagine being there? Or are all those songs based on your experiences in amusement and theme parks tweaked by your imagination?
CD: To answer this question seriously, I must say Whimsyland is modeled so heavily on Disneyland – specifically an amalgam of 50’s and 90’s Disneyland – that it’s a little bit difficult to pinpoint its identity outside of Disney’s shadow. Having said that, yes, it’s very real to me, and there are a lot of facts and lore about Whimsyland that so far exist only in my head.
OS: It’s almost impossible to conceive how something like this, with the amount of talent you were able to draw from, without understanding how the PPMB went from a virtual community to a real one, and then brought to life with Insubordination Fest. I don’t even want to try explaining that to people, but I would like to hear how you feel about living through that era and what it felt like being a part of it in its heyday, as well as how those friendships continue to today.
CD: I think I was lucky enough to get involved in a punk scene when one, the genre was exploding with creativity in every possible direction, and two, the advancement of the Internet as a social tool allowed the concept of a “scene” to expand to be more than just a local thing. Seeing my far-away friends once or twice a year at events like Insubordination Fest or when we traveled to each other’s towns was really nice, but we could also keep in touch every single day via the Internet and specifically the Pop Punk Message Bored. And in that way, we all sorta grew up together and in many cases friendships outgrew the boundaries of music stuff. It’s really cool to have that happen with people all around the USA and the world! The PPMB scene was probably not unique in these respects, but it was the one that was mine. And it was awesome.
OS: I am going to put you on the spot. What’s your favorite amusement park and your favorite ride of all time? What’s been the most unlikely experience you’ve had, the park you had little to no expectations for that turned out to be fantastic.
CD: I think Disneyland in Anaheim remains the absolute gold standard, and its version of Pirates of the Caribbean is my favorite ride of all time. And the parks at Walt Disney World will always have a special place in my heart, even as Disney gradually destroys them through greed, misguided corporate synergy, and creative bankruptcy.
Visiting theme parks in Europe was very eye-opening. Places like Phantasialand or Efteling are built with just as much love and attention to detail as Disney parks, but without constantly bombarding guests with out-of-place IP or merch opportunities. I wish more places like that existed in the United States.
The US park that has surprised me the most was Knoebels in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, which I visited for the first time last year. It’s just an amusement park, not a theme park, but it’s the best one I’ve ever experienced. Great food, great rides, great vibes – and most importantly a reverence for its own history that just doesn’t exist in very many places.
OS: Did the reception for Whimsyland inspire you to keep going and put together the “Bounty Bay” EP? Or were those songs part of the original project that either didn’t fit or didn’t get finished in time?
CD: I don’t remember why I didn’t write a Pirates song for the first Whimsyland album, but I regretted it almost immediately from the point when it was too late to do anything about it. So I wrote “Rough ‘n’ Tumble Buccaneers,” and there it sat for a while, a single song with no home. Eventually the idea of Bounty Bay began to form in my mind – a sort of tropical version of Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland, which expanded out from the park’s existing Jungle Land and was only accessible by a weird boat ride. At that point, the other songs pretty much wrote themselves, and I had a 7-inch worth of material. Releasing a 7-inch about a small section of a fictional theme park seems like an insane thing to do, but I’m so grateful that folks like Bloated Kat Records and Stardumb Records were willing to take a chance on putting it out.
OS: As a critic, I struggle with labels. The word “punk” can mean almost anything today; the same with “emo.” And it’s much the same with “pop-punk.” Are you comfortable with that label?
CD: Labels are both useful and limiting, of course. The thing about pop punk is that it never had a completely uniform sound – the classic Lookout! bands didn’t sound anything like each other, and neither did the bands from the NY/NJ scene I was a part of. But there was something ineffable that connected it all, and it was more than leather jackets and downstrokes. I personally think we’re currently at an all-time low-point for the genre, but there are still plenty of bands to get excited about and I will always wave the banner for pop punk.
OS: I want to just touch on something else you’ve done, which is be a part of Short Attention, a supergroup of sorts who released two albums of songs that ran for 30 seconds or less. Whose idea was that, and was it fun taking songs and whittling them down to just a few seconds?
CD: Short Attention is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of. Like most beautiful things. It was born out of idle chatter on the Pop Punk Message Bored – if memory serves, the idea was originally proposed by Christian of the Tattle Tales, and then the rest of us hopped on board. Then, Christian didn’t show up for the first two practices for some reason, and by that point we had really clicked as a band.
Historically, very short songs have always been a part of punk rock, but they usually exist as a sort of quick joke – SET-UP, PUNCHLINE, END OF SONG. And that’s great, and in fact those sorts of songs were my main contribution to Short Attention’s repertoire. But I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that some of my bandmates’ stuff really elevated what a short song could be, and I’ve been constantly blown away by what they come up with. I’m very lucky to be a part of it. Sorry, Christian!
OS: Are there plans for another Whimsyland release? Can you ever see trying to get some of these people together and do a Whimsyland concert?
CD: In the liner notes of Bounty Bay, there is a little hint of what’s next for Whimsyland, which should be instantly decipherable for my fellow theme-park-heads. It might be a while, because this is a slow process, but there’s definitely more Whimsyland to come.
I think that during the era of the annual Insubordination Fest, there could easily have been a Whimsyland live performance every year or two. The one time the band has performed live – at Bloated Saturday 5 in 2023 – it was because the planets lined up just right to allow for it. By which I mean, the necessary people travelled to New York from all across the country to play with their own bands. It was an insanely fun spectacle and I sincerely hope it can happen again someday, but it’s definitely not something that can happen regularly.
OS: Feel free to plug anything, thank anyone, or say something I didn’t ask!
CD: I really wanna thank everyone at every step in the process – starting with the Whimsyland band, who are there from the very beginning taking my god-awful Bandcamp demos and turning them into something magical. And from there all the guest musicians and vocalists who plus things up even more and make each song sound distinct, Luke who takes a mess of files and turns them into a cohesive album, the record labels who take a chance on the most ridiculous music imaginable, and the people who get excited enough about it to keep it going. It’s a huge, sprawling collaboration, and it fills me with so much gratitude for the friendships and connections I’ve made.
The world is awful and it’s getting worse and worse every day. I’m so happy that I found a little bit of magic that keeps me sane. I hope everyone can be that lucky, or at least try.