The Ducky Boys

by | Sep 6, 2012 | Interviews and Features

On Fan Funding & New Business Models

GENRE: Loud (is that a genre?)
HOMETOWN: Boston, MA
ARTISTIC APPROACH: Three chords and the truth
URL: www.duckyboys.com

Nearly twenty years ago, if you were at the Rat on any given Sunday, the Ducky Boys were playing. Maybe you saw Ducky’s singer Mark Lind stage diving during the Pinkerton Thugs or Dropkick Murphy’s Ken Casey jumping on stage to sing along. From then till now, a lot has changed for Lind and the boys (drummer Jason Messina and guitarist Douglas Sullivan), but their songs remain, in many ways, the same.

Following the success of 2012’s Chasing the Ghost, Lind set his sights on another album, this time opting to go the Kickstarter route.

“In short, this is the future of the music business. File sharing has killed the former business model and no one has figured out how to salvage it. Simply put, this is the solution. Who cares if an album gets pirated if it’s already paid for in full?”

In addition, it offers something else that Lind values: interaction with the audience. The way Lind sees it, they are offering a pre-sale of the album, with some extra added incentives. He says, “Whenever a band sells a CD, t-shirt, LP or what have you, they turn a profit. We’re just gathering that profit in advance to help fund the recording, manufacturing and distribution of the album.”

For Lind, the whole process has been a learning one, from what his role means to how he’ll record, to what he has to say. And it’s clearly a learning process that he’s willing to admit is nowhere near done.

“I have a working title of a song that I’ve been working on and unable to finish for years. It’s called ‘I Was a Stupid Kid Back Then (And Now I’m a Stupid Man).’ That about sums it up. I started this band when I was 18. The band is in its 17th year now. That’s just short of half my life. I’ve changed in all of the same ways that everyone else does between the ages of 18 and 35. The only difference is that some of my points of view are documented on albums. There aren’t a ton of songs that I look back at and think, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ At least not from a lyrical perspective. At least I can look back and understand what I was thinking as a younger man. But there are a few where I’d just like to go back in time and slap myself.”

photo by Lauren Mangini