Lemon Boy Levels Up: Skate, Play, and Punk Juice
Photo credit: Marcus Ogden
Seattle’s self-proclaimed sour punks Lemon Boy are riding a new wave of momentum on stage and now on Steam. Known for their skate-friendly blend of riot grrrl, pop-punk, and politics, the trio has been gigging hard since 2021, but their latest project brings their world to life in an unexpected way: a DIY video game called Punk Juice. Out this month, Punk Juice lets players navigate Seattle’s DIY scene, form a band, and skate their way through rhythm games scored by Lemon Boy’s own tracks.
Formed by Yaz McCarter (vocals, guitar) and Nicole Smellie (bass), Lemon Boy gained a third member when drummer Emily Rose—originally a fan—joined the fold last year, completing their high-energy lineup. Together, the band’s playful, irreverent spirit has earned them nods from punk peers like Otoboke Beaver, who personally invited them to play this year’s Sled Island in Calgary, marking Lemon Boy’s first international show.
We caught up with Lemon Boy during the festival to talk about skate punk influences, their Seattle roots, and the serendipity of manifesting new bandmates—whether by game controller or real life.
REVERIE: How would you introduce or describe Lemon Boy as a project?
Lemon Boy: Let me start by saying Emily has canonically always been with us. She's the newest member. We met over a shared love of music and I think that shared love stems from a lot of skate culture. So I think we described it as music you can skate to is probably the way we would describe it.
Well, officially we're Sour Punk, and we've been called Riot Girl. But I like sour punk and just music to skate to is a good descriptor of Lemon Boy. Emily always calls herself a fan before she joined the band.
Emily [Lemon Boy]:I think Riot Girl and pop punk mixed with just a genre bend of like - we're gonna sing what we're gonna sing and it's gonna get a little political and a little funny, but really fun at the same time. So that's what I really like to belt Lemon Boy, just like, they're subtle to you, you know? So that's why I describe myself as a fan, because yeah, I totally am. This is my Patreon t-shirt that I paid for to support the band
Lemon Boy: Yeah, she is not featured on it.
Emily: I identify as the Lemon.
REVERIE: What are some sort of inspirations you're bringing to it? You mentioned skate culture, what else?
Lemon Boy: Hair dye. Yes, hair dye is very influential in our music. Tamagotchi. I think just like a lot of ⁓ shared influences we had were punk music and skate punk music. We had a lot of like bands that we both really loved. There's a ton of Seattle bands that we both had in common when we both moved there, like going to see Mommy Long Legs and Taco Cat. And also, I remember we really love Otoboke Beaver, and they're actually the ones who invited us here to Calgary to play Sled Island. And I feel like they're a huge influence. Even just the way they dress and perform, their stage presence has been a huge influence on us, because they're just so cool.
Sunshine punk. Like Blink-182 and like the 2000s punk. Sum 41, We blasted Sum 41 on our way here because they're Canadian and we thought it was appropriate.
REVERIE: That’s so funny. I was at your show on Wednesday with a friend and they said to me, “ I wish they would do like a Blink-182 or some 41 cover”. They would do it perfectly.
Lemon Boy: We should. I mean, we have a reference to a Blink-182 song. Yeah, we would nail that.
REVERIE: As someone that was a fan of the band, Emily, what made you like the band before you joined it?
Emily [Lemon Boy]: I guess to clarify, I promise I'm not a stalker. We actually met through mutual friends. I do like a weekly pop-up mutual aid in the Seattle area and I've been doing that for a couple of years since I moved to Seattle.
I learned about Lemon Boy through our mutual friends and us all going to the show. It was kind of like a hiatus for a while because I had torn my ACL on the kick drum leg. So I was nodding the drumming game, while Ethan was really holding it down with Lemon Boy. And then there was kind of a transition at the end of last year. I was able to be fully recovered and audition for a more permanent spot as the drummer. It was really happenstance. I can't even believe that we're so perfect for each other. I love this genre of music. I grew up listening to like a lot of 80s like first wave alternative and like also like the pop punk of like the 2000s era-Paramore.
I'm from middle Tennessee and the sound just made sense with what I was already listening. I could see myself as being a part of this.
Lemon Boy opened for Otoboke Beaver last year in Seattle. They did Two Nights in Seattle. We played their sold out show. Emily was at that show as an audience member and I'm thinking if you told Emily then now that she would be here in Calgary, Canada - handpicked by Otoboke Beaver themselves - that's kind of surreal.
Photo credit: Marcus Ogden
REVERIE: Have you been to Calgary before?
Lemon Boy: None of us. No, this is all our first time in Calgary, but we really love it here. We love Canada. We've been shocked at how nice everyone is. People come up and talk to you. Seattle? No one makes eye contact. Thrifting was good.
REVERIE: Where did you go thrifting?
Lemon Boy: Value Village. They shut down most of the value villages, actually all of them in Seattle. We spent all day in Value Village, so we've been stimulating the Canadian economy, been spending lots of money, we're really enjoying our time here.
REVERIE: So, your fans of Otoboke Beaver, you've opened for them before, what's it like sort of being selected by them for Sled Island? That's really cool.
Lemon Boy: I mean it's a huge honour. I think we screamed. We both texted each other that we got a weird email and I was like, what's this email? All caps. It's not a scam! This is our first time playing outside of Washington state, let alone the United States. So like playing our first international show with our idols, and having them invite us. It feels really surreal. Literally, we had a moment at the end of our show on Wednesday, where we were just on stage and we just did a group hug and we were like, I can't believe this is happening.
We're also so inspired by Peelander Z. We were like, we need to start pulling high jinks on stage. We'll never be as cool that. We'll never be as cool, but you know, we'll keep trying.
REVERIE: Do you perform a lot?
Lemon Boy: We started in 2021 and we've been gigging a lot since then, but mostly in Seattle. This is our very first tour, very first time outside of away from home. And I think in the beginning we played a lot of shows and then it was like, this is not sustainable. So now we kind of like, we'll hop on these really exciting opportunities so we don't wear ourselves out as quickly. And also to keep the draw high. We still play a lot. We have a lot of stuff coming up. Summer is when we kick it into high gear and then we kind of hibernate.
REVERIE: How do you prepare to play live? What's your routine?
Lemon Boy: We just started a new routine of vocal exercises. That's something we didn't do in the beginning. Now we do these really ridiculous sounding vocal exercises that I'm sure sound really stupid.
Yaz just started taking opera singing lessons, so she's been passing along this knowledge to us. So we'll be in the green room going, “me, me, me, me, me,” - like really ridiculous stuff. Pitch harmonica. We'll be practicing like our vocal harmonies backstage and stuff. I feel like that's definitely how we prep pre-show. We will stretch. Yazda said we go to the bathroom a lot, that's actually accurate.
REVERIE: What's your favourite part of playing live?
Lemon Boy: Guitar solo, but I might be biased. I do love Yaz's solos. We get to engage with everyone else a lot more. Good energy on stage, good energy in the crowd. Playing music with buddies I think is really great.
Everyone always comments on how much Emily smiles when she plays. Like she's the first drummer we've ever played with that looks like she's having fun. And people comment on it.
REVERIE: So I believe you released your album last year. What's that been like? Do you want to go into talking about that album at all?
Lemon Boy: Emily was not born yet, but again, canonically, she played drums on that album. I give all credit to Ethan, who's an amazing percussionist and multi-instrumentalist. That was our first album, and it took us three years to solidify it. There's only nine songs.
It took us two days to record it. We really blasted through the recording. We finished writing one of the songs like the night before because we were like, no, we booked this studio time. Let's not waste this. And the album's called Eat, Skate, Die. It's very influenced by the skate culture that we were talking about. And that was really cool to release our fully formed debut album. That's been surreal, having that come out.
There's a couple Easter eggs in there that we think is funny. We sampled our transit train. Our transit train is called the light rail in Seattle. So we spent weeks trying to record. We were like, okay, does this exist in a public domain?
Seattle. Our love for Seattle in it, our love for Blink-182. Yeah, there's a lot of joke stuff we added last minute in the recording studio. We had some friends scream on the album with us.
REVERIE: Is there anything else that you wanted to sort of mention or put any attention on in your own?
Lemon Boy: We made a video game. The demo just came out while we were on our way here and Nicole was on her laptop checking constantly to see if people were wishlisting it. It's on Steam. The video game is called Punk Juice and it's about joining a punk band in Seattle.
It is like playing a tiny game of joining Lemon Boy. Essentially you wake up and it's kind of like a dress-up / rhythm / mini-story game. It's very cozy. There's lemon boy tracks in the background. The rhythm games are the Lemon Boy songs we play in our sets. You can skate around.
We were actually looking for a drummer while we made this game. So we were like, what if we made a game about joining a band? This is really kind of low key joining our band. So it's full of a bunch of silly jokes about being in the music scene, especially in Seattle. And so yeah, we just kind of did it because we were unemployed, having a hard time looking for jobs. And we were like, let's just work on a stupid little video game. And yeah, now we're really proud of it. It's coming out in July.
I think the real lesson here, if we want to reflect truly, is that at the end of the day, if you manifest by making a video game, it'll happen. You just have to make a freaking video game. Yeah, we manifested.