Mark your calendars for July 23, when the ninth album from California punks Descendents will release on Epitaph Records. The new record is titled 9th & Walnat and features some of the band's early songs, written between 1977-1980 and recorded in 2002 with all four original members: bassist Tony Lombardo, drummer Bill Stevenson, guitarist Frank Navetta (1962-2008), and vocalist Milo Aukerman.
The record is named for their Long Beach practice space in their early days and features 18 songs in total, including the first time the band has released “Ride the Wild” and ”It’s a Hectic World” with Aukerman on vocals, and a cover of the Dave Clark Five’s “Glad All Over.”
“’Baby Doncha Know’ was maybe the 5th song we learned,” Stevenson says in a press release, looking back roughly 40 years. “We would go out to 9th & Walnut every weekend and practice all day. I mainly just remember being in awe of how ‘a kid my age, who goes to my high school’ could have written all these cool songs. Frank seemed to have a maturity beyond his years. I never asked him who or what it was about. I was just happy to be there with him and Tony.”
Check out "Baby Doncha Know" after the bump.
