Big D and the Kids Table are a third-wave ska band hailing from outside of Boston in Allston, Mass., and the band isn't ashamed of being one of the industry's swear words du jour (ska!); one of their T-shirts proclaims "No trends, no fads, no gimmicks. We play ska." They stop in Milwaukee tonight to rock your faces off at the Turner Ballroom.

As far as its roots go, to classify Big D strictly as a ska band would be wrong. The music ranges from the catchy, dancy, horn-infused third wave ska you've come to expect down to the aggressive punk tracks lik "LA X," a bitter tirade against the social ladder. Pushed even further, you could feel the dub leanings on their "Salem Girls" EP and, even further still, the undeniably raw all gangsta-rap album, "Porch Life." The band's newest album, "Strictly Rude," leads back into familiar ska territory, but the band promises subsequent releases of "Strictly Dub" and "Strictly Thrash."

Big D has earned respect through a largly DIY attitude and tireless self promotion, even going as far as to engineer and produce its own music and film its own videos and, in the case of its cover of second-wave ska band The Specials' "Little Bitch," more than twenty video variations! It also helps that the group plays an average of 200 shows a year.

While the band still maintains a hands-on approach to almost everything, it has since risen through the punk labels from Asian Man Records to Springman and now Side One Dummy, home of Flogging Molly, Gogol Bordello and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (by the way, did you hear they reunited? Niiice).

In 1999 Big D and the Kids Table won the distinction of "Outstanding Ska Band" in Boston and recently was nominated for three more Boston Music Awards: Album of the Year (Indie), Best Punk Band, and, astoundingly, Best DJ/Dance Album for a CD that isn't even officially released. The latter honor was made possible with their friend, DJBC, who took the band's raw files and remixed them into 17 new tracks for yet another new album, notching yet another musical genre in its belt.

I spoke with bass player Steve Foote on the way to Lincoln, Neb., about the ups and downs of the band's amazing decade and, of course, its connection to Milwaukee.

OnMilwaukee.com: You've done ska, ska-core, dub, rap, and punk music, as well as any combination in between. What drives you to experiment with and blend the lines of different genres?

Steve Foote: Well, I think that everybody in the band is interested in so many different kids of music. We like to take the elements of all sorts of styles -- like punk rock, ska, reggae, whatever, experimental rock -- anything that we can get our hands on and figure out ways that it makes sense to what we're doing. We're always down for it. We're a band of musicians who like to experiment and continually challenge ourselves which is the reason why we work outside the genre, looking for passion, more inspiration and more interesting things.

OMC: Your 2004 album "How It Goes" was a whopping 80 minutes long. What made you want to do an album packed to the brim with music?

SF: We just started writing songs and writing songs and writing songs and we were just like "We're gonna put as much music on this CD as we can," all while trying to make sure everybody in the band was down with the songs; we worked really hard to get everything together. And we just wanted to put out this kick ass record with as many tracks as we can and, hopefully, make it all the way through from beginning to end. We also looked at bands like Rancid who put out albums with 23 songs on them and we just thought "that's so bad ass that you're giving people so much music." Granted their songs are definitely a lot shorter some of our songs are, but that was definitely one of the many inspirations we had just to write all sorts of songs. We didn't want to cut anything for the record; we just kept adding and adding.

OMC: That album had a real effect on me.
[Author's Note: When I was fired for the first time (fortunately from a truly horrendous job) I hopped into my car and turned up the stereo. The first song that happened to be playing was "If We Want To," off that album. It's opening lyrics belted out "I could not ever see myself packing up and taking off just to fall asleep and work again," a lyric which has stuck with me indelibly.]

SF: Awesome. The only thing is, with that record we though that it was a little too jumpy. So with (our following album,) "Strictly Rude," we tried to hone in on ... more of an album that, from start to finish, sounds like one whole record as opposed to jumping from a punk song to a fast ska song to an experimental rock part. We tried to focus our energies and concentrate on putting the best album ideally for the songs, where sometimes before we'd go a little more haywire with what we were doing.

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