Activate our songs on TouchTunes

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Some of you emailed stating that our songs are available on TouchTunes but can't play them. They need to be activated!

Unfortunately, this is true for machines that are behind the times and not updated by the bar.

Here is what you can do to activate them.

Search for us using “Artist Search”

Search AMERICAN SPEEDWAY

When you find our songs, you’ll be able to play them right away, OR, you might see “Request This Song” above or below the song Title.

If you see “Request This Song” above or below the song title, use your finger and touch the screen to request the song. Once requested, the song will be active within 24 hours and available to play (with your cock or clam out) next time you visit your local watering hole.

Activate our songs on TouchTunes

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Some of you emailed stating that our songs are available on TouchTunes but can't play them. They need to be activated!

Unfortunately, this is true for machines that are behind the times and not updated by the bar.

Here is what you can do to activate them.

Search for us using “Artist Search”

Search AMERICAN SPEEDWAY

When you find our songs, you’ll be able to play them right away, OR, you might see “Request This Song” above or below the song Title.

"A Bigger Boat" Review in PUNKNEWS.ORG

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:43:00 +0000

Punknews.org review of "A Bigger Boat": http://www.punknews.org/review/10183

American Speedway knows what they want to do and what they want to do is rock and they do it. Keeping one foot in classic hard rock and the other in classic punk, American Speedway shoots straight for a Motörhead vibe on A Bigger Boat, and to their credit, they nail the speed and energy that is essential in this type of music.

Wasting no time with overblown intros, the group kicks off their album with a simple, punkified riff and then immediately tears into the song proper. Michael Speedway, who handles vocals and guitar, sings in a whiskey-soaked style, giving him a sound similar to a younger Lemmy. Because they sing about cars, and women, and booze, the style fits.

But, while a lot of bar punk/hard rock bands go for the grizzled, scratchy voice, American Speedway pulls the entire package together with their energy. While their riffs are based in blues territory, instead of slowing down or trying to "feel the groove," the band kicks up the energy to an almost, but not quite, east coast hardcore level, and keeps the tunes rocking along. Although the music is fast, it swings and bends, making it just sloppy enough to feel raw but not under-rehearsed.

At under a half-hour, the band knows that brevity is their asset. Instead of repeating the same concept over and over, they take the fundamental design of early bar punk and play variations on it with each track. Still, while they nail the aggressive biker punk sound, they seem to tap dance around the same issues that Motörhead has had for some 30 years. Their songs are awesome, but could some branching out flesh out their sound and break new ground?

Since the advent of hardcore, many punk bands shift towards the extreme, winding up as either being blustering, screaming messes or just a guy and acoustic guitar. On A Bigger Boat , American Speedway deftly navigate that sweet spot between intensity and rhythm, and cut an album that just rocks, man.

AMP MAGAZINE Interview with Mike Kerchner and Lorraine "Dirty" McGurty

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Check it out below or click here: http://www.ampmagazine.com/12006/american-speedway-interview-with-vocalistguitarist-mike-kerchner-and-guitarist-lorraine-%e2%80%9cdirty%e2%80%9d-mcgurty/

AMERICAN SPEEDWAY

Interview with vocalist/guitarist Mike Kerchner and guitarist Lorraine “Dirty” McGurty

By Janelle Jones

About a month before the release of their sophomore LP, A Bigger Boat and a few days before leaving for a two-week tour, two of AMERICAN SPEEDWAY’s members (Mike and Lorraine) rang me up to discuss their blistering, wild, rock ‘n’ roll-heavy, punk album, how the band has become what it is today, and those yellow things needed to play old-school 45′s.

So Lorraine, you just joined the band last year.

Lorraine: Yeah, their previous guitarist, Johnny, decided it wasn’t for him and they put an ad out and I answered it. I tried out and had a couple auditions and I guess they just stuck with me.

Mike, what do you think Lorraine’s brought to the sound of the band with the new record and everything?

Mike: She’s brought a lot better solos than any of us would ever be capable of doing, so we have that in our pocket now. She brings a lot of shred in and a lot of flash and pizzazz. And the feminine touch that apparently we needed.

Has how you go about writing the music changed with a new member?

Mike: Not really. The new album – John did write some of the songs on there, so the new album is kind of a transition between the old band and the band with the new line-up. We’ve been doing some writing as far as stuff for a third album and it seems like it’s been going pretty much the same. Usually you just throw out a riff and try to figure out something along the line and see if it’ll be a good song or not. So there’s a lot of test period and whatnot like that. It’s going all right.

So you do all the lyrics?

Mike: Yeah, I write all the lyrics.

I have to say, I love “I Killed Laura Palmer.” The Twin Peaks tribute!

Mike: [Laughter] That’s one of the weird ones that only like five people at a show would know that reference at all, but they’re all really excited to hear a Twin Peaks reference.

I guess so many people are too young, like it’s before their time. I don’t know. What made you do that one?

Mike: I swear to god probably 80 percent of the lyrics are written about either movies or old TV shows. We have songs about Jaws, songs about Mad Max on there. I mean, there’s also songs about shitty local bars and stuff like that, you know, deep, interesting stuff. But I pretty much just watch movies and TV all day – the late 80′s and 70′s era TV and movies.

What about “Get Off The Cross”?

Mike: That’s about my favorite bar around us, it’s called the Prima Cocktail Lounge and it sounds classy when you say it like that, but it doesn’t sound classy when you describe it as a little crappy bar that’s attached to an hourly-rate motel. And it’s just full of the greatest people in the world. It also opens at seven in the morning.

Ohh, you know…! [Laughs]

Mike: Absolutely. It’s just full of like 80-year-old guys who don’t talk to anybody and just sit there and stare at their beers. They don’t give a shit about anyone else’s problems. That’s pretty much what that’s about. Kinda just like, shut up, no one cares, we’re all trying to figure out our own stuff.

So you started the band about 2007. Can you give a little background?

Mike: Before Lorraine, I wasn’t actually in the band to start with; it was Johnny, Bill, and Callahan just playing. And I hadn’t been in a band at that time for probably five years and I was getting the itch to play again, so I asked if I could just come over and jam and play rhythm guitar for whatever they were doing, just to fulfill that need in my life to play in a band. We started writing songs and we needed a singer, so we kicked around the idea of getting other people to sing, and then I eventually wrote lyrics to a song or two we were jamming around with and sang them. And then I guess I was just stuck with that part.

So did you guys know right away what you were going for or did it take a little time to get the sound?

Mike: They had about three or four songs before I even started. I’ve known John and Bill for a long time and it kinda sounded just like a progression of what they used to do in their old punk-rock band, really rock ‘n’ roll driven, SOCIAL DISTORTION driven. I listened to a lot of MURDER CITY DEVILS and LUCERO and stuff like that, so I brought that in to get a little more twanginess and story-telling. I guess when they collide it sounds like MOTORHEAD, apparently.

I haven’t heard Ship Of Fools in its entirety, but do you think there’s been a difference or progression from that album to this?

Mike: It’s definitely along the same lines, but I just think the songwriting and playing and all that is miles better than it was on Ship Of Fools. Ship Of Fools was a good, fun album, but it was kinda still a pretty raw punk-rock album, whereas this album has a lot of stuff going on if you pay attention to it. The band’s just gelling more than it did on the first album.

Lorraine you also were in bands before, like WENCH. That was from the ’90s…

Lorraine: Yup, 100 years ago.

Were you in other bands in between?

Lorraine: Yeah, I was in some other bands, nothing of note really, just jamming with friends. I also took a long break between playing and, like Mike, got the urge to play again. And here we are.

So for people who haven’t seen you guys live, what’s the live show like?

Lorraine: Chaos.

Mike: Yeah, it’s like a drunken circus. It’s really good. I’d have to say our live shows are one of the better points of the band. The album’s really good, but the live show is pretty energetic and very RAMONES-style set list of not really talking in between songs and just kinda firing them out.

I saw listed some of the bands you played with. MEATMEN, that must’ve been crazy.

Mike: Yeah, we did a week with the MEATMEN; that was a real blast. That was a complete grassroots punk-rock tour kinda thing where we were playing record stores, fire halls, small punk-rock clubs and those guys were great. We all got sick about three days into the tour which was fun. That was a really, really fun time, especially to be out with someone like Tesco Vee, who, from just myself, got about a million questions about the old Touch And Go era stuff. I talked his ear off, but he was always nice. I think at every show I cornered him and had a different question for him. He was always really nice about answering stuff and actually just a really nice dude.

Another thing I think is cool is that, like you did with the last album, you’re releasing this on vinyl [which contains the downloadable version]. Is that something you always wanna try to do?

Mike: That’s a lot of me. The last album, when we put it out, we put the CD’s in the vinyl packaging, so if you wanted a CD, you still had to buy the vinyl. Forcing kids to buy vinyl. I’m just happy that they still let me press the vinyl of the album, which is pretty awesome. That’s a pretty big thing for me.

Lorraine: The Ship Of Fools vinyl sold out, so people like vinyl.

So the 7” you put out also is “Howl (Ya Doin?)”

Mike: And the B-side was our cover of T-REX’s “20th Century Boy.” There were only 500 pressed. What’s really cool about them is they’re 45′s and they have big holes…

Oh! You need the yellow thing.

Mike: Yup, you need the yellow thing and you can also jam it in your grandma’s old jukebox or someone’s jukebox which is pretty cool. [Laughter]

Lorraine: We should’ve put a yellow thing in there with it.

Mike: We should’ve.

No, make people work for it.

Mike: That’s what we should’ve done: we should’ve sold the yellow things in addition to it and then we could’ve made more money on it. [Laughter]

Lorraine: Marketing genius.

“Plus the yellow thing.” Yeah.

Mike: We could have “The Yellow Thing Tour.”

Eddie Spaghetti & American Speedway Shows!

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:33:00 +0000

American Speedway will team up with Eddie Spaghetti (of the Supersuckers) for six dates performing at the legendary Asbury Lanes (Asbury Park, NJ), The Fire (Philadelphia), 31st Street Pub (Pittsburgh), to name a few.

"We are REALLY excited about this opportunity!" says Michael Thursby Kerchner (Lead Vocals / Guitar). "We've been long time fans of Eddie and The Supersuckers, and very much look forward to sharing the stage with him again"

Show dates are:

Thursday, December 9 @ Asbury Lanes (Asbury Park, NJ)

Friday, December 10 @ 31st Street Pub (Pittsburgh, PA)

Saturday, December 11 @ The Spy Club (Harrisburgh, PA)

Wednesday, December 15 @ Maxwells (Hoboken, NJ)

Thursday, December 16 @ Court Tavern (New Brunswick, NJ)

Friday, December 17 @ The Fire (Philadelphia, PA)

American Speedway has just released a 7" Vinyl Single which will be available to purchase at the shows. The 7" was released to promote the bands newest upcoming studio album "A Bigger Boat" out in Winter 2011. You can purchase a copy of the 7" directly from the bands website at http://www.americanspeedway.net

7" Now Available

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 03:41:00 +0000

You can order our new 7" Vinyl Single here:

http://prophasemusic.com/amspeed.aspx

We have MP3's available for each song so if you don't already have them, email us at americanspeedwayrocks@yahoo.com

We'll email them to ya!

Write up in AMP Magazine

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:00:00 +0000

American Speedway Release New Song “Howl (Ya Doin?)” Featuring New Guitarist Lorraine “Dirty” McGurty

Philadelphia, PA – September 7, 2010 - American Speedway, the beer guzzlin’ punk rock n roll foursome from the Philadelphia-area, have nearly completed their sophomore album A Bigger Boat(due Winter 2010). A 7″ vinyl single will be released in Fall 2010 and the featured track entitled “Howl (Ya Doin?) is exclusively streaming on Stereokiller.com right now - http://www.stereokiller.com/AmericanSpeedway

In January 2010, Lorraine “Dirty” McGurty joined the band as the new lead guitarist. McGurty was lead axe for an all female metal band called WENCH, who (in the early 90s) had a good amount of success domestically and also toured throughout Europe and the UK several times.

American Speedway is most known for topping the charts on Sirius Satellite Radio, Punk Channel 29, with their hit single “One Foot In, One Foot Out” back in Summer of 2008. They also charted on CMJ’s Heavy Rock charts with their single “Ship of Fools” in November 2008. “Ship of Fools” was the title track to their debut album released in January 2007.

The band has engaged on tours with The Meatmen, as well as provided main support for The Supersuckers, Mike Watt, Valient Thorr, just to name a few.

The street date for A Bigger Boat has yet to be set, but it will be released by Prophase Music, and distributed nationally by MVD Entertainment Group. The bands sophomore release will be available on CD and vinyl. The vinyl will include a card with a unique number so fans can download the entire album on MP3.

http://www.ampmagazine.com/3518/american-speedway-release-new-song-howl-ya-doin-featuring-new-guitarist-lorraine-dirty-mcgurty/

7" Vinyl Coming Soon

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:00:00 +0000

That's right! Before we release the second record, we are putting out a 7" Vinyl single which will include two songs, thanks to our lovely label, Prophase Music. The 7" will have the track "Howl (Ya Doin?)" which will be the first song to push the album, go out to radio, press, blah, blah. And the B-Side, a live version of "20th Century Boy" (Marc Bolan) by yours truly. Both tracks will be available for download upon purchasing the 7". There will be a specific code in the package along with a website to go to so you can download the songs for free.

More info to come here shortly, including a spot where you can preorder!