The Mighty Mighty BossToneS Launch ‘The Cranking & Skanking Fest’

The Mighty Mighty BossToneS will be launching their annual end of summer all ages music festival this year. The inaugural Cranking & Skanking Fest will take place at Worcester Palladium Outdoors on Saturday, August 25th. The lineup includes Toots & The Maytals, The Bouncing Souls, Fishbone, The Pietasters, and The Planet Smashers among others. There will be plenty of craft beer, food, and vendors as well.

The Mighty Mighty BossToneS became the ambassadors of the 90s ska explosion by forging new territory and being one of the first, if not the first to cross high-energy ska with hardcore punk. Over a 30-year career Boston’s best dressed band has built and continue to build a devoted following with their unique brass-infused brand of punk rock.

The band started to make a lot of noise which garnered major label attention and in 1993, the BossToneS signed a major-label deal with Mercury Records and released Don’t Know How to Party, and 1994 saw the band paying homage to their hardcore roots with a mini-album titled, Ska-Core, the Devil and More, as well as the full-length Question the Answers. A year later, the Boston boys were coerced into appearing in the film Clueless, which has since become a cult classic, performing Where’d You Go, and Someday I Suppose, two of their most popular songs to date; they also landed a main-stage slot on that summer’s Lollapalooza tour.

In 1997, Let’s Face It become the band’s biggest-selling album to date; certified platinum, buoyed by the success of the anthemic The Impression That I Get.

In 2003, with individual members already involved in other projects and the band essentially having toured non-stop since 1991, they announced they were going on hiatus. During this time, frontman Dicky Barrett became a staple as the announcer on ABC’s late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The band returned in 2007 by performing several live shows and released Medium Rare. The new material marked the end of The Mighty Mighty BossToneS hiatus, and in 2008 they released, Pin Points and Gin Joints, they continued to tour and in 2011 they brought us The Magic of Youth, on their very own Big Rig Records.

The Mighty Mighty BossToneS have stuck more pins in the map and racked up more tour miles than they can probably remember. Over the years they’ve earned the reputation as one of the hardest touring bands in rock. 2017 saw the band headline Riot Fest and play the 20th Anniversary of their highly successful and long-standing holiday party, The HomeTown ThrowDown and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh presented the BossToneS with a proclamation declaring December 28th Mighty Mighty BossToneS Day in the city of Boston.

The unstoppable and tried and true The Mighty Mighty BossToneS are: Dicky Barrett (vocals), Joe Gittleman (bass), Chris Rhodes (trombone), Tim Burton (saxophone), Joe Sirois (drums), Leon Silva (saxophone), Ben Carr (dancer), Lawrence Katz (guitar), and John Goetchius (keyboard).

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