Long Beach punky pop-rock band Chase Petra celebrates their second year of existence with a hometown show at Alex’s Bar with Potty Mouth, so we chatted…

L.A. WEEKLY: When did the band form, and what was the mission?

The band formed in January of 2018 so it’s actually our second birthday this month. Terrible Twos, watch out!

In starting this band our mission was and is to write and create honestly and purposefully. We, along with every other human of a certain age, recognize that life can be an absolute trash fire sometimes and this music is our reaction. This is is how we put out the trash fire so to speak. Music offers catharsis and joy in a way that not many things do and so, here we are, making our own joy.

Describe the sound…

We like to describe our sound as quarter-life crisis pop rock. Genres are hard to pinpoint so we decided to define our own little niche, not because we think we’re so special but because we didn’t wanna categorize ourselves untruthfully.
How do you rate the Long Beach music scene at present?
Two of us are Long Beach-born and -raised and all three of us consider the city our home base now so it goes without saying that we love this place. That said, we would be ecstatic to see some more community organizing within the music scene! Long Beach is a massive area with a small town feel and I think to have more of that communal support in the scene would be peach. Also, as a person who grew up here, I ache for the youngins because of our painful lack of underage venues. Overall though, this town has always been an incredible place to make music so we’re very thankful to be a part of the city.
What can we expect from this set at Alex’s Bar?
You can expect three absolute goofballs to get up on stage to play an original set composed of songs that we put our whole hearts in. Our goal with live shows is just to have as much fun as possible and to do our music justice in the process. This often includes screaming, jumping, terrible stick tricks, and a head bang or five.
What’s next for the band in 2020?
As for the future we’re currently in the process of writing new material but we’re keeping it on lock down for now! All we can say is that we’re ready to work our butts off to create music that we can be proud of and to make connections between people that benefit our community as a whole. We love what we do and all we can hope for is the opportunity to continue doing it in 2020 and beyond.
Chase Petra plays with Potty Mouth, Broken Baby and Tummyache at 8 p.m. on Thursday, January 16 at Alex’s Bar.

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