Shelby Punks Y’ALL’RE Do It for the Love of Music

Riding a roaring Ramones-fueled guitar-and-bass riff and splashy, zipper-tight drums, Shelby foursome Y’ALL’RE kicks off its 2024 debut EP First Edition with Galaxy Lineberger’s high-spirited, smart-ass vocals.

“I’m tired of playing with the newbs/ Their games are dumber than gelatinous cubes/ We best the big, bad evil guy/ Because our guitars are plus five…”

The joyous tune entwines riot grrrl attitude, role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and a title/chorus that’s the cherry atop a punk-rock sundae: “I Really Wanna Play D&D with Your Dad.”

It’s also a slice of Galaxy’s life, insists the band’s lead singer, primary lyricist and rhythm guitarist.

“The song’s inspiration is my dad [Jason Lineberger], who is in the band and also a D&D dungeon master,” Galaxy says. “Our saxophone player [Zach Wheeler] said, ‘I really want to play D&D with your dad.’ I looked at him, and said, ‘That’s a chorus — that’s a song.’”

Wheeler has since left the band amicably and Jason Lineberger, when he’s not toiling as a consummate dungeon master, is Y’ALL’RE’s lead guitarist.

The sharp, smart and funny foursome played The Milestone on May 17 as part of Femme Fest, a benefit raising funds and awareness for women’s and femme-presenting artists’ rights in the music industry.

As for Y’ALL’RE’s name, it’s a contraction of “You all are” — as in “Y’all’re crazy to launch a punk rock band!”

Shelby native Galaxy, 27, couldn’t agree more. A theatre kid who performed in school plays, she shares a love for music with her father, who taught at Shelby High School and currently works as a senior digital learning specialist for the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

“[Our] shared love of consuming music turned into a shared love of creating it,” Galaxy says.

But Galaxy and Jason’s first band was far from a punk-rock project.

When she was 14, Galaxy and her father bought a pair of ukuleles on a whim and joined the Shelby Ukulele Club. Father and daughter started playing with the ukulele club at a local burger joint. Soon the Linebergers’ interests and ambitions outstripped the club, so they launched what would become the popular ukulele group The Dancing Fleas.

The seven-piece band, which takes its name from the Hawaiian translation of “ukulele,” performs a mix of originals and covers at venues including The Rooster in Gastonia. The Dancing Fleas’ conceit is that “every great song you ever heard was originally written on a ukulele by [the band] under a different moniker,” Galaxy notes.

Thus, Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite,” was originally “Uke and Roll All Nite,” written when the band called itself Hug (instead of Kiss).

“It’s goofy and silly, but people love it,” Galaxy offers. The Linebergers continue to gig with the Fleas as far afield as the Outer Banks and England. The father/daughter duo also perform as Spaceport Floozies, an outlet for Galaxy’s sweet, sad original songs that are too soft for punk and too risqué for the Fleas.

The Linebergers got their chance to launch a punk-rock band in 2022 when Marcos Encinias, the booker for Barley’s Taproom in Spindale, asked them if they had were in one.

Though no such group existed, Jason promptly said yes and agreed to play a New Year’s Eve show at Barley’s. Tasked with forming a band in a few months, Jason befriended and recruited Kim Ware, a singer-songwriter who’s made her name with indie-folk songs of heartbreak and hope but has a little-known past as a punk-rock drummer. Conveniently, Ware’s husband, Mark Nanna, plays bass.

“Mark comes up with some of the catchiest bass lines,” said Michael Carpenter, owner of The Rooster. An avowed fan of Y’ALL’RE, Carpenter continued, “I don’t know what pedals Mark is using, but he has such a unique sound.”

Baby Jesus, bad poetry and Cybertrucks

Launching with a set of primarily covers at Barley’s, Y’ALL’RE got to work on writing original material.

“Usually, Mark or my dad has a riff,” Galaxy says. “Then the other [player] adds something to that riff and Kim comes in with a drum part.”

Galaxy writes down the chords everyone is playing on a large mirror in the band’s rehearsal room with a dry-erase marker. Then she fits the pieces together, fleshes out a melody and jots down lyrics.

“We’ll record a … demo that day,” Galaxy notes. “Then I’ll go home and flesh out the lyrics.”

The approach yields engaging, surreal and inventive gems like “Thrift Store Nativity Jesus,” where hissing rain, tolling church bells and rolling gospel organ gives way to a machine-gun spray of drums, snake-charmer-on-speed saxophone, and Galaxy’s snarky, rapid-fire recitative:

“He’s got beady little eyes/ He’s a beady little guy/ That loincloth is just his size…”

The tune was spurred by a life-sized baby Jesus doll swaddled in a loincloth that Galaxy found at Value Village in Gastonia. The creepy doll with a piercing gaze currently mans Y’ALL’RE’s merch table at gigs.

Another song, “502 Bad Gateway,” starts out like rampaging Black Flag-style hardcore punk before plunging into a thicket of atonal free jazz. The song’s freestyle section serves as a backdrop for audience participation.

“Before the show, I walk up to people and I hand them my phone,” Galaxy says. “My Notes app says, ‘This is a bad poem. Write the next line.’”

When “502 Bad Gateway” hits its breakout section, Galaxy reads the haphazard audience-composed poem aloud.
“There have been some really bad poems, some almost good ones [and] many horribly inappropriate ones,” she says.

Once Galaxy collects enough bad poems, she self-publishes them in a zine.

Y’ALL’RE’s innovation and crowd rapport have made the band a favorite at The Rooster, Carpenter says.

“Over the last couple of years, they’ve captured a devoted audience,” he recalls. “Their energy and enthusiasm on stage is completely infectious.”

Despite the love the band receives from audiences, Galaxy admits she had reservations about the band’s latest, yet-to-be-released tune, “Malicious Compliance.” The song is openly political, explicitly calling for an end to Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s antidemocratic rampage.

When the tune debuted live at The Rooster, Galaxy wasn’t sure how it would play before a Gastonia crowd.

“I’ll smash into your Cybertruck/ I really do not give a fuck/ He posts his memes on X dot com/ Defund schools, build more bombs/ I hope you fucking DEI/ I hope you die…”

Galaxy notes with pride that the tune went down like gangbusters with the venue’s punk-rock audience.

“I want to be part of what punk is about — about trying to make the world see the problems within it,” she says.

Read more: Femme Fest Expands in Second Year at The Milestone

That said, Galaxy also wants Y’ALL’RE to provide people with a safe space within the punk-rock community.

“I love that people see us having a good time and that we genuinely like playing music with one another,” she says. “I want other musicians to know that they don’t have to take themselves so seriously, that it is about having fun.”

Y’ALL’RE inspires people seeking to focus the anger, defiance, hope and humor that animates punk rock to raise awareness and to effect change. It’s something w’all’re capable of doing, too.