Neo-psych lives on through the generations: A deep dive into the psych-punk antics of Grocery Bag

You know you’re in Austin’s West Campus when you see someone tear their entire car bumper on the curb. For Austin band Grocery Bag, it’s their sanctuary. In the Austin college co-op scene, it feels like anything is possible. From close-quarters live shows that push the fire code limits to parties that put surrounding college towns to shame, Grocery Bag is always right there in the mix. Hailing from the live music capital of the world, Grocery Bag wears their influences on their sleeves like badges of courage, and their tenure as an Austin local psych rock act has seen a meteoric rise that keeps on coming.

Taking pages out of the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Osees, and Frankie & The Witch Fingers guidebooks, each band member embraces their garage psych heroes with undeniable enthusiasm. After seeing Grocery Bag shred the backwoods at the annual Austin Wizard Rodeo with their psychedelic knowhow, we sat down with them at their co-op to wrap our heads around how four seemingly young yet enormously talented group of friends have started building a neo-psych empire.

Vocalist/guitarist Bella Martinez, guitarist/bassist Dillon Aitala, bassist/guitarist Logan Kerman, and drummer/guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Mercado round out Austin’s Grocery Bag. First things first: these guys can play. Martinez’s fierce, declarative vocal delivery accompanies the band’s abrasive, fuzz-infused, potent sonic presentation. With lyricism that picks apart the corruption and perils of the bureaucracy, Grocery Bag makes a statement for a new generation of artists and young people alike. The Austin indie band humbly began in the DIY Austin scene before eventually graduating to Austin staples like Hotel Vegas, The 13th Floor, and Empire Control Room. With the Austin scene capable of throwing shows anytime, anywhere, Grocery Bag has jumped at nearly every gig opportunity. 

“We started out doing more DIY stuff: co-ops, smaller shows where you don’t have to be 21 to get in,” Aitala says.

For up-and-coming bands in Austin, West Campus is a proving ground. Many artists have the opportunity to cut their teeth in student-dominated venues near the University of Texas, whether punk, metal, singer-songwriters or any genre. With staples like Hole In The Wall and The Ballroom also in the West Campus area, the music scene in town is open to more than just the downtown Austin neighborhoods. Grocery Bag shows started with small crowds and got bigger as the band progressed with a refined sound and a tight gauntlet of original tunes.

“It started as just our friends moshing with the lights on,” states Martinez .

Forming in 2022, the Grocery Bag folks have known each other since they started raging at student housing and playing local bars where they have only recently been allowed to order drinks. As Dillon Aitala cracks a Lone Star beer, he begins to recount the band’s beginnings, surrounded by all the posters and memorabilia in his college co-op room as our designated meeting spot to conduct this interview. As we sat down, we recalled memories of concerts past, and quickly realized that Grocery Bag had been bonding on a mutual love of music for some time.

“Jimmy and I have known each other since high school,” Aitala says. 

Jimmy’s drumming holds the Grocery Bag ensemble to a tee, allowing for thunderous drum beats accompanying the Austin psych band on fist-to-the-floor psych-punk tunes that feel like you’re in a pinball machine while tripping out of your mind. Jimmy and Logan grew up playing shows long before they were in a band together.

“Bella was taking pictures of a show I was playing with my other band, Favor,” Mercado explains of the band’s origins. “We all met at that show, and it sort of came together from there.”

Psychedelic rock is a staple in Austin , many bands adopt sounds of the 60s and 70s of the neo-psychedelia revival that continues to develop. When exploring the bands influencing the sound of the city’s music sphere, Osees usually comes to mind, fronted by revered guitar god John Dwyer. Dwyer is known to scope out the city’s music scene when he visits on tour and notably signed Austin local band Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band when in town for South by Southwest (SXSW) 2019. Grocery Bag considers themselves disciples of John Dwyer as a gateway into a world of music, and it’s been off to the races ever since.

“If that picture of John Dwyer with his tongue sticking out playing guitar was a sound, that’s what Grocery Bag is,” Aitala says.

“The music I wrote before Grocery Bag was way different than what we’re doing now in the band,” Martinez adds.

The influence of all that is fuzzy and fast was only sometimes the case for the members of Grocery Bag, as much of the music from the band wrote,  sounded different than the fuzzed-out thrill ride the band’s fantastic debut record, Break You (stream below), turned out to be. Each band member holds multi-instrumentalist talent, including Martinez’s skill as a drummer on top of her guitar and vocal duties with the band.

“I can’t remember if I started with guitar, drums, or bass. I picked them up at the same time and tried to learn what I could, as fast as I could,” Martinez declares.

Since the last few gigs, the closing number usually features Martinez and Mercado switching band duties, with one taking guitar and vocal duties while the other takes the reins on the drum kit. Spoiler alert, the switch-up always manages to kick ass.

“My parents bought me a drumset when I was 2 or 3,” Kerman says.

“We all try to play a bit of everything,” Mercado adds.

“Primarily, I play guitar, but then everyone told me I had to play bass in the band,” Kerman tells us.

As Aitala points to a poster in the room, the musician begins to relate stories of his musical journey and Grocery Bag’s bonding trip to Desert Daze 2022. The band told stories of reckless abandon across the nation, beyond the city limits of Austin.

“I snuck my camera into Desert Daze,” Martinez says.

Desert Daze is a West Coast psych music festival. Stylistically similar to Levitation, Desert Daze has stuck to the camping fest formula, allowing an array of bands like Ween, Tame Impala, Kikagaku Moyo, Fuzz, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard to perform at a large-scale festival. One of the band’s most extensive bonding experiences was witnessing the 10th anniversary of modern psych classic Lonerism by popular Australian act Tame Impala. Grocery Bag recalls being front and center for the anniversary set, calling it a significant event in their concert experiences.

“That was one of the best days of my life,” Kerman says.

Bella is a seen-everywhere photographer who always finds a way to get to the front of a crowd to get the shot, no matter how crazy the crowd might be. Since moving from San Antonio to Austin, the singer and sometimes drummer has been making the city of Austin her canvas, with Grocery Bag being a vehicle for endless creativity with her longtime friends. You can check out her work here.

“Before I moved here from San Antonio, I would shoot shows I normally couldn’t afford to go to. I would trade my art to see the shows I loved,” Martinez declares.

Beyond Grocery Bag, the outside-of-band activities continue; Aitala also hosts a weekly Austin radio show, “Just Another Day In Paradise” on KVRX, a University of Texas supported station. The guitarist and bassist has great musical taste and gets to spread his love of the Austin psych scene and its adjacent contemporaries on the air.

“I like to share music by Austin bands, but I play a lot of stuff I like too, like Frankie & The Witch Fingers, King Gizzard, and the other stuff you might expect from that area,” Aitala says.

For fans of the Austin indie scene, there is always an endless list of bands to see on any given night. With Grocery Bag starting to pop up on bills all over town, fans can begin to see that the psychedelic sound is more widespread than one would think. The Austin act followed their album release show in 2023 with a seminal appearance at the annual Wizard Rodeo in East Austin, with an offer to perform from festival founder, San Antonio-based, Americana artist Garrett T. Capps.

“He just directly messaged us on Instagram one day and gave us his spiel about his festival, and we told him we’re down,” Aitala says

Despite having an early 2 p.m. slot at the outdoor Winter music festival, Grocery Bag thrived amid the festival’s well-rounded lineup on the grounds’ main stage. The festival also hosted the likes of Deerhoof, Pussy Gillette, and Little Mazarn, an enormous batch of talent for a Central Texas homegrown music festival. The band was fresh off their album release show and didn’t take the mission lightly as one of the first bands to play in a packed, eclectic day of music.

“Psychologically, it was kind of hard. We had just played our album release show.” Mercado adds.

“We tried to do as much research as possible since we couldn’t find much online. We didn’t know what to expect. I was working with the Austin Chronicle on photography, and they hyped it up for us as this super awesome gathering,” Martinez says.

Despite being early in their tenure as a band, Grocery Bag has found themselves firing on all cylinders, booking gig after gig around the Austin area. Since Austin is home to SXSW, many local bands will try to maximize their time on stage by playing multiple shows in different venues every day of the music-centric portion of the festival. Navigating the Austin area during SXSW as an artist is always challenging, as some bands underestimate the commute time, and the logistics of getting in and out of venues between sets becomes increasingly difficult as the day progresses. 

“I think we did five shows in a single day for South By 2023,” Kerman says.

“Sharing gear and traveling as a band in one vehicle is always helpful,” Mercado adds.

Austin is known for a plethora of things, but live music is one of the first things that comes to mind when the city is mentioned. Local bands Being Dead, Daiistar, Gus Baldwin & The Sketch, and Grocery Bag are assembling to be a new generation of great Austin psych bands. Austin crowds take music very seriously, and it’s common for mosh pits and crowd surfing sessions to break out when the vibe is right.

Grocery Bag also spoke of their Austin Free Week 2024 set, a performance that was played to a packed indoor stage at Red River Cultural District staple, Empire Garage & Control Room.

“It makes you think, wow, five years ago, I would have never thought something like that would happen for us. Of course, we want to get to the next level and become something of a touring act, but we live in the moment, and that’s what works for us.” Kerman states.

“All the homies were there, and my parents were too. People said we should have played in the bigger room at Empire.” Martinez says

Empire Control Room is ideal for close-quarters gigs that can lead to wall-to-wall mayhem. Bands like Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band can fill that room to the brim, and Grocery Bag instigated a crowd reaction akin to the frantic moshing antics of Austin bands like Die Spitz and A Giant Dog side project, Tear Dungeon.

“It felt cool because that felt like a sold-out show in the back room. We saw people standing up on stools and stacked up all over the place so they could see the show. It definitely felt like a dream,” Kerman says.

In all cities, venues come and go. Kerman, who was born and raised in Austin, recounts venues coming and going throughout the years. Spots like Sidewinder, Barracuda, and, most recently, Electric Church have closed, forcing the existing venues to pick up the slack and cater to the vast number of fan bases and styles that exist in the city.

“I’m from North Austin. My mom dragged me out of the house to go to street festivals  like the Pecan Street Festival and Poppy Seed Festival and other stuff I could go to as a kid.” Kerman recounts.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed many issues for the Austin music scene. Venues were closed, no one was touring, and the early reopening stages had many roadblocks. Kerman details that most of his projects dissolved when the pandemic hit. The traction was readily apparent when Grocery Bag crashed onto the scene after the pandemic closures, resulting in a cohesive full-length effort just a year after forming. Mercado has also released solo material under his own name separate from Grocery Bag and Favor, touching on ambient and electronic music on his own accord.

While the members have various influences, the guitar-peddled onslaughts of bands like Osees and King Gizzard remain roadmaps for bands cutting their teeth in neo-psychedelia. Despite the Osees and Gizz vibe showing up everywhere these days, running with this type of sound will always draw a crowd for people who enjoy the frantic, psych-punk vibe.

“Everyone tries to put their own spin on the genre,” Kerman asserts.

“I’ll never get sick of it,” Aitala adds.

For a band that formed in 2022, Grocery Bag is moving fast. With an array of shows and a record already in their arsenal, Grocery Bag will be full speed ahead in 2024. With appearances at SXSW and tours being planned for the year, the rising Austin psych punks are up to great things, and if you don’t know them now, you will soon enough. When asked about what this year holds for them, their ambitions are high.

“We’re hoping to do a Summer tour, start work on a new album, and hopefully some live studio sessions,” the band tells us.

The group also discussed their friendship and their creative chemistry and how everything just “Works.” The band is able to gig and stay organized with consistency. This effort led to Grocery Bag coming out of the gate sounding like a seasoned indie act, and they keep getting better with every live appearance.

“There’s really nothing to get upset about when we work together, we’re really happy with the way we work as a band.” Aitala says.

For Grocery Bag, nothing is off the table. For a band just getting into their groove, they seem like they really “Get it.” As simple as it sounds, Grocery Bag has accepted the mission, and they’re not stopping for anything. Bonding over the music that influences Grocery Bag as a band has made them a cohesive unit, and the raucous spectacles will only keep coming.

Listen to Grocery Bag’s latest album below

All photos by Brooke Ellisor except where noted