Beehive & The Barracudas

Garage punk outfit from San Diego, California, formed in 1998. The members use pseudonyms and switch roles and instruments, both live and on recordings. The core founding members were Gar "Dner" Wood, Dustin "Dirty" Milsap, and Kerry Davis; Davis left after their second album and was replaced by Traci "Haze" Woolley. They are joined live and on record by various collaborators, most frequently guitarist Andy "Flame" Stamets and drummer Jason "Commotion" Crane. The band maintains a fictional backstory in which they claim to be from the (fictitious) city of Blight in Michigan's upper peninsula, calling their sound "Blight Blues" and "Plastic Soul". Some of their releases "feature" The Insects and The White Apes, which are alter egos of Beehive & The Barracudas in which they use different pseudonyms. Most of the band's material was recorded by Wood at his Strange Sounds studio. After the breakup of her band Red Aunts, Davis moved to San Diego and befriended Wood (ex-Fishwife and Tanner (2)) and Milsap (ex-Stacatto Reads and Rice (4)). The three formed Beehive & The Barracudas in Wood's studio. Their first album, Featuring The Insects, was released in 1998 on local label Flapping Jet Records. It includes contributions from Stamets (of Rocket From The Crypt), drummers Lesley Ishino (ex-Red Aunts) and Johnny Cabazon, and others. 'Plastic Soul' With The White Apes followed in 2001 on Swami Records; Stamets and Crane (also of Rocket From The Crypt) performed on most of the album and became regular fixtures in the group moving forward, both live and on recordings. Davis left the band, moving back to New York where she started The Two Tears. She was replaced by Woolley (ex-Tourettes Lautrec; Woolley and Wood later married). With Woolley, the band released In Dark Love (2003) on Swami. Cock Ready followed in 2004 on Dollar Record Records, purporting to be a reissue of their earliest recordings. They self-released the live album Freaky Hardness in 2007, recorded in 2004 by the lineup of Wood, Milsap, Woolley, and Stamets. Pure Commotion followed in 2008 on Swami, and did not include Stamets, though he remained part of the performing lineup. The band's only subsequent released recording was a track on the 2016 Swami compilation Hardcore Matinée. Woolley died in February 2020.