The Carter Family Meets The Ramones

The key to the Brooklyn-born, alt-country punk band The Defibulators will always be in Nashville—in a literal sense. Just before the group released their critically acclaimed, 2009 debut, Corn Money, they drove their 1977 Dodge “van-bulance” around Music City at the Americana Music Fest. “We were going to see our friend Abby Washburn play at the Station Inn, when we dropped the key to the ambulance down the storm drain,” says chief songwriter and frontman Bug Jennings. “Everyone saw it happen. We looked ridiculous trying to get it out. There will forever be a key part of us in Nashville!” Jennings may be joking but the seven-member group’s sound—which critics rightly call The Carter Family meets The Ramones—underscores that the band is this close to breaking through. Their new 10-track album Debt’ll Get’Em, which is full of rowdy, banjo-fueled, Texas-stomping anthems that offer rebel yells to spur on those breaking out of dead-end jobs to pursue their passions, may very well put The Defibulators on the national radar. “I feel like we still have room to grow,” he said, “but we’re really coming into our own.”