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SEan Griffin

People Are Mad

OUT APRIL 17

CONTACT: 

ROSIE BOYD // PUBLICIST

AVA KELLY // PUBLICIST

Sean Griffin’s People Are Mad is, in a sense, decades in the making. The first solo record from the frontman of long-running New York punk band the Ruffians is a rollicking and deeply felt collection of songs both ripped from the Kingston-hailing singer-songwriter’s present day and drawn from his considerable past. People Are Mad extends the legend of the burly, rambunctious sound established under the Ruffians while bringing Griffin’s multi-faceted songwriting to the foreground, resulting in another considerable achievement in his storied career. 

People Are Mad arrives after 25 years of the Ruffians establishing themselves as a formidable voice in Irish punk rock, a reputation that’s led to them sharing the stage with Irish punk icon Shane McGowan and earned them the distinction of being called the “Y-Generation Pogues” by legendary rock critic Jim DeRogatis. The album also comes after the unfortunate passing of several band members—specifically, multi-instrumentalist Scott Mettey and world-renowned banjoist Darren Maloney—that contributed to Griffin mulling over what his next artistic gesture would be. “I wanted to do a record with the band, but everyone's scheduling was getting pushed around—so I just went ahead and did this.”  

He dove into a backlog of over 50 songs—some of which, including the barnburning “Space Girls,” date back to pre-Ruffians days—while compiling what would eventually become People Are Mad. “It was really nice, getting to hear some of these older songs with fresh paint on them,” Griffin says about digging through his own personal archives. “I realized that if I didn't do the record, it wasn’t just going to materialize someday. I had to get these songs out for my own mental sanity. Songs are like children—you want to see them out in the world.”  

As the bones of People Are Mad started to come together, Griffin reached out to Grammy-winning producer Kenny Siegal (Langhorne Slim, Chris Whitley) in 2023, and the pair got to work and recorded the entire album within the year while capturing the same in-the-room sound that the Ruffians built their name on. “Kenny's definitely about the songs, and he really wanted to do best by them. We wanted to get a good, big sound, and he brought in a high production level to capture that. He was very much part of the band.” That live feel—brought to a perfect finish courtesy of Grammy-winning engineer Mathew Cullen, as well as respective mixing and mastering jobs by Paul Kolderie and Greg Calbi—will be further showcased in a series of performance videos that will be rolled out throughout the lead-up to People Are Mad’s release.  

“We had loads of instruments. It was a lot of getting people together,” Griffin says about the sessions, which featured contributions from Lee Falco on drums, Brandon Morrison on bass, Will Bryant on keyboards, Siegal throwing in pedal steel and guitar contributions, fiddle player Eugene Bender, and harpist Michaela Davis. Jolynda “Kiki” Phillips added a gospel-infused, soulful balance to some of Sean’s grittier performances in “Wrong Child” and “That’s all She Wrote.” On the track “Youth is Wasted on the Young,” Sean had the honor of having the legendary Wreckless Eric back him up on vocals. In addition, Kaia Dedek and Jules Olsen provided backup vocals. “It was a big leap of faith, working with all new people—especially when you've been in a band for 28 years. It takes a long time to build up that kind of rapport, and we did that really well.”  

Across the record, Griffin brings in a wide variety of his own instruments as well—including a Gibson ES-135 that he bought from former bandmate Charles Butler. “I’ve played hundreds of shows with it,” he says about the guitar that he plays across People Are Mad. “There’s something magical about picking it up with a fresh set of strings. Gibson guitars just speak to a part of my soul, and they’ve been on so many records that formed me as a musician.” Griffin also wields a Remo Bodhran, the traditional Irish drum that he frequently brings out for live performances. “I love its stability and durability,” he says. “When I dig into it, it always gives back what I put in. It’s always a special moment when I bring it out. It makes people ask, 'What is that?'" 

Lyrically, People Are Mad finds Griffin drawing from his natural storytelling abilities as a songwriter—constructing characters and embodying them in a way that communicates true universality to the listener. “I try to be a very visual writer when it comes to storytelling,” he says. “I focus on characters, and a lot of times I'm singing in the first person asthese characters. I'm trying to take people on a journey through different types of experiences.”  

As Griffin explains, the catchy-as-hell and whip-smart first single and title track was inspired by a text exchange with Maloney shortly before his passing: “I wrote a song that day, and I was texting him, and in the context of the text, I just wrote, ‘People are mad,’ which was something I was prone to muttering to myself. He said, ‘Oh, that's a great title.’ I was just trying to speak about all of the different ways that people are crazy and silly, while driving home the idea that we're still all in this together.”  

He describes the romantic sway of “Be My Girl” as “a love song about someone finding their purpose and looking for someone. Every pot has a lid. You have another person, and they help make you whole.” Penultimate track “Nothing” slows things down to showcase Griffin’s lovely and passionate vocals, adorned by swells of backup singing; elsewhere, “That's All She Wrote” lays on fat riffs of rockabilly guitar figures by Swedish guitarist and internet-phenom Erik Holmbom, as Griffin ruminates on lost love and what happens after one’s handed the proverbial slip. “It’s about a breakup—waking up in the morning hungover, walking into your kitchen, and seeing a note on a table that says ‘I'm leaving,’” he says while talking about the song’s thematic bent. “There's a lot of funny one-liners in there, and it's got a good groove too.”  

And at the end of the day, People Are Mad is a natural extension of what Griffin’s been known for since the Ruffians took the stage for the very first time more than 25 years ago—as well as a full realization of what drives him as a songwriter and musician. “What stays the same for me is the urgency to want to have songs that I've written see the light of day,” he ruminates while talking about how this album represents the latest phase of his career.