Drew Robinson / Bad Vacation
July 22, 2025

Drew Robinson
from Bad Vacation

Through Drew Robinson I get to know Bad Vacation from the guitarist’s perspective. Bad Vacation — a heavy punk NYC based band that got together by total chance — is stripped down to what Drew might consider to be the very essence and foundation of the group. As I chat with Drew in his partner Melody Methakul’s Brooklyn tattoo studio, Drew sits on the velvet couch with a laid back, yet engaged demeanor, and a suave look on his face as if he is reassuring me, without knowing it, there is so much more to his world I’ll never know.

There was never really any intention for Axl Valentine (vocals), Dave Sarnes (drums), Lud Federo (bass), Drew Robinson (guitar), and Justin Imperatrice (guitar) to form the killer group they did. In 2020, Drew spontaneously bumped into Axl who mentioned he was playing with a bassist and drummer. When Drew told him he played guitar, it wasn’t long before Axl sent iPhone voice memos of songs that they eventually recorded together on Drew’s four track cassette player.

Although they replaced their original drummer and bassist with Dave and Lud, the band’s ethos has always been to keep their intentions pure. Due to the pandemic, Bad Vacation played together for a year before moving onto any live shows. It was in that time of forced isolation that the band’s creative process naturally progressed with no real pressure or expectation.

At the time, Axl Valentine, Long Island born lead singer of Bad Vacation was working at I Need More, a punk clothing store on Orchard Street that notorious legend Jimmy Webb (rest in peace) owned, and has since been shut down. Drew describes Jimmy to be “a real rocker” and “the patron saint of the band.” As Jimmy is an influence on both Axl and himself, Drew is keen to develop his own individuality despite being drawn to those who have come before him.

There is no ego — it has always been for the purity and love of the music. Drew emphasizes, “I think a lot of people have problems because you do something and the ego is like, this is what I want, this is what I deserve, this is what I should be getting, and a lot of people end up getting really upset. A lot of bands fall apart because people are in their egos. The ego is like weeds. It crops up over time.” Within the first few moments of conversing with Drew, he unabashedly admits he prefers performing for younger crowds, as opposed to the older, set-in-stone mindset of a 35+ crowd: those who might approach modern-day punk rock music with less interest in the evolution of the community. But, he reassures us that at the end of the day, he can get down with any type of audience.

Even with the change of pace and lifestyle since coming out of COVID, Drew highlights Bad Vacation’s consistent collaborative process, where there’s never been one bandmate putting in all the creative energy and work. To Drew, the band naturally evolves as they develop a better, more concrete sense of themselves as both a unit and individually. Their individual lives and pursuits bring in new ideas and creative flow.

“I’d say Davey, the drummer, has a heavy influence. He plays in another band called Combust which is not the same genre as Bad Vacation. They’re kind of like classic New York hardcore. He’s been bringing in a lot of that influence.”

“I think that as time goes on, you’re not just making music based on other things you’ve heard; you’re making it in relation to yourself. I think that it’s a little more focused, a little bit darker, a little bit harder, a little bit more dynamic. Besides that, you can just see how it grooves you.”

As Drew goes on to discuss the history of punk rock and rock n’ roll, it becomes apparent that both Drew and Melody (Methakul) bring genuine dedication and originality to their crafts, and perhaps it’s that mutual practice that draws them together. Drew finds freedom in looking up to the people he works and collaborates with, stressing his dynamic with Axl — “I want to be a part of that bowl that holds the soup. I think when you start something in a mindset of, how can I be of service to this thing, you’re free in a way.”

“I just have my perspective of the band. If you ask any of the other guys, they’d say something different. For me ultimately — and I don’t know if I have too much to say besides this — I think punk rock is musical dadaism.”

Drew continues, “After World War I, there was the Dada art movement in Berlin and Europe which basically was this reaction; if human logic brings us to massive war, mass extinction, to genocide, then art should not be based on logic. And a lot of the work at the time, like Marcel Duchamp’s, was like, fuck this, here’s a urinal. That was, in a sense, an early visual form of punk rock. And as rock n’ roll emerged after World War II in the 1950s, it just didn’t have the vocabulary, the same manifestos per se. Then you have Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry putting this stuff out where they’re basically saying, ‘roll over Beethoven,’ meaning fuck what already existed! We try not to do a ton of solos, but for me, if I’m doing a lead, then I want to do something that sounds like it doesn’t make sense. Because as far as the punk mentality goes, if human logic brings you to war, to mass extinction, not to mention farm animals getting killed every year, art should not be based in human logic. It should just be a reaction to that. Fuck that.”

I ask Drew if he had to define the word “underground” in relation to music, where would he begin.
“In the 20th century, we had the radio, then television and on and on from there. After World War II, there was an influx, a boom in the American economy, so rock n’ roll started around the first time you had the teenager as a consumer market. Before then, it was like you were an adult or you were a child, so we’re either selling the thing to an adult or we’re selling it to a child. Basically it really began in the 50s: you can sell things to teenagers. You can record music by teenagers and sell it to other teenagers. And then you had the Buddy Holly’s and the Elvis’ and rock n’ roll became this huge massive thing in the 60s and 70s. You had the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then down the line in the 70s, you had this reaction to that — punk, and it was like fuck that.

“The reason why Iggy Pop is associated as the Godfather of Punk is because he was like, ‘I don’t give a shit how I sound because I’m gonna record my own fucking band playing my own fucking songs.’ That being said, he spent a lot of that time in relative obscurity. In a sense, I think a lot of the ideas we take for granted are kind of punk ideas. It’s like, I’m gonna record myself doing my own thing and I don’t really care if it sounds like this executive wants it to sound. The funny thing now is that we go down the line where we don’t really exist in this monoculture. Underground or alternative or whatever you want to call it has to exist in relation to the big thing it’s going against. But we live in this time now where it’s hard to even say what that thing is.

“I think in a way the general umbrella of rock has fallen to the side because not enough people are thinking, what is it that I’m trying to say here, what is it that I’m actually doing because we get so caught up in the managerial details. It’s really hard to say. This idea of “underground” — it’s something similar to rock n’ roll, or the idea of jazz, where it’ll exist in some way. People will have some idea of it, but it’s hard to pin down.”