EPK
The name of the band is: Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends.
High res Promo Photos available here.
Spangle, and sass, small scale arena rock for smart alecks and malcontents. Big riffs, critical thinking, and big smart rock for freaks, nerds and weirdos.
They’ve shared the stage with the likes of: Mclusky, Tropical Fuck Storm, Chat Pile, Big Business, Part Chimp, Torche, Poster Children, Fatso Jetson, The Weirdos and many more. They’ve toured internationally and they have a live show that must be seen to be believed.
The live shows are generally a four piece lineup with a revolving cast of live players. Not always the same lineup, but still the same band. Always Neutron and Ash, always awesome. With a bench deeper than a baseball team Neutron, a rock ‘n roll lifer has spent the last 23 years making records and touring in such bands as Replicator, Victory and Associates and Mount Vicious, making uncompromising, sometimes challenging and daring rock music to anybody that is interested. The latest record is a split LP with the incredible LUNG called Adult Prom on Learning Curve Records, This follows up Dangerous Nomenclature. A 3 song concept ep and Dark Passengers: the 3rd full length album and 4th full length release by the band on Learning Curve Records. After a relentless and creative 9 year run so far, with love from college radio, press and crowds alike. Neutron Friends show no sign of slowing down at all. Some people may be more familiar with the podcast, Conan Neutron’s Protonic Reversal, or the 4 Day Caterwaul music festival in Minneapolis but make no mistake about it. Neutron is a born rocker and very good at what he does and the Secret Friends in all iterations are a world class rock band.
The band’s live lineups has a revolving cast of players. Spangle, and sass, small scale arena rock for smart alecks and malcontents. Big riffs, critical thinking, and big smart rock for freaks, nerds and weirdos. Conan Neutron is a guy, Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends is a band. It is a band whose recordings featuring Dale Crover of the mighty Melvins on drums, Tony Ash of Trophy Wives, Dead Halos and Coliseum on bass and the production skills of the iconoclastic and enigmatic Toshi Kasai. The Secret Friends bring forth a wiry and adventurous rock ‘n roll that is equal parts Cheap Trick, fugazi, Queens of the Stone Age, the Cars, and DEVO with perhaps Mean Streets era Van Halen mixed in. Big rock, big riffs, heavy, hooky, a little strange. You get it. This is big rock music that has all the bombast and energy of the classic arena rock bands, but with punk rock attitude.
“It’s good! Swampy, dirty riffs.” -Gerald V. Casale, DEVO
“It’s heavy maaaaaan.” -Bob Weston, Shellac
As a band leader, Neutron wields the same creative fire and the same knack for putting exceptional people under one roof. His rhythm section, The Secret Friends, consists of none other than Melvins drum-slayer Dale Crover and bassist Tony Ash, formerly of Coliseum. (When Neutron takes the show on the road, he and Ash are joined by a revolving cast of live players – “a bench deeper than a baseball team,” in Neutron’s words.)
Contrary to what one might expect from these guys, the sound hits like a burlier version of power pop – more Cheap Trick than AmRep. Honed over four full-length albums and shows with Big Business, Torche, and more, the songwriting and execution are world-class. Crover’s iconic drumming lays the foundation for rich tones, sweet hooks, and Neutron’s croon.
Given the underground cred of Neutron and his gang, their choice to rock unabashedly might come across like a subversive act. Neutron puts it like this: “What we do is BIG WEIRD ROCK MUSIC. I have to throw the WEIRD in, because when people think of rock music they tend to think of slavish imitators of bygone eras or a specific kind of very safe consonant guitar music for middle managers and wraparound shade dads.”
“small scale arena rock for smart alecks and malcontents.”
A Selection of Reviews:
Former East Bay resident and noted purveyor of noise rock Conan Neutron brings his current tour backed by his band of Secret Friends to the Starline Social Club, sharing the stage with Welsh post-punk band Mclusky on their first U.S. tour in almost two decades. –CBS News
The music has muscle, with tough guitars and solid drumming, courtesy of Dale Crover of the Melvins. There are hooks aplenty on most of the songs, the kind that will have you repeating the refrain in your head the rest of the day, even if you don’t know what the hell they mean. – Razorcake
A human wrecking ball comprised of sequined jackets, sweat, and song, Neutron has an enthusiasm on stage that is more than infectious, it’s downright plague-inducing — incurable, unstoppable. He’s the Mad Cow of frontmen. You can’t be satisfied with lukewarm rock after seeing Neutron play. He gets right in your head. Partly it’s his showmanship. He has a great presence on stage, but mostly it’s just he writes some damn good songs.-The BayBridged
“One of the most relentlessly catchy Milwaukee songs of 2022 has got to be “The Commuter,” a three-minute ditty by post-rock/power-pop outfit Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends.”–Milwaukee Record
“It is not a veiled insult to say Milwaukee, Wisconsin based trio Conan Neutron and The Secret Friends have been successful and ambitious in a similarly crafted dimension of their own…” “Wit, grinning darkness, hummable jigs, and all matter of divergent focus slosh about within these personalized and inventive rock songs that’re surely the sort of mess we’d have a gaudy corporate rock umbrella term for back in the mid-90’s. The big point here is that each of these Neutronian tracks are singular events, tirades of sharply cut and intentionally faceted perspective each attempting to see light by way of precarious manipulated shadows, the full listen is inspired and ‘lost’ in its own head to great effect. I’d expect no less from the lyricist who’d brought you an alt rock record themed after the Hannibal Lecter series of novels but I suppose I wouldn’t expect as much. ” -Grizzly Butts
Live Videos:
Music Videos
Contact & Social Media
Conan at neutronfriends dot com (proudly self-managed and self-booked by *CHOICE* not necessity)
Telegram App: @conanneutron
Facebook: http://facebook.com/neutronfriends
Instagram: instagram/conanneutron
Twitter: twitter.com/conanneutron
Tour Dates: Songkick.com
hashbrown: #neutronfriends
A FEW IMPORTANT NOTES!
NAME: The name of the band is Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends. Conan Neutron is a guy, Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends is the band. We understand that is a lot of characters to type, write or say but that is indeed the name of the band. If abbreviation of it must happen, we prefer Neutron Friends over Conan Neutron, but it is what it is. If you would like to include “featuring members of” in any advertisements and promo material, we are happy to help, but as the live lineups change and shift all the time, please contact us first. You can always say: Replicator, Trophy Wives and Coliseum if necessary. There are many other bands, of course… but which ones would be of interest depends on the audience and lineup.
PROMO: If for some reason the promo pictures that are provided do not work for your needs, please contact us as well rather than just grabbing one off the internet. The band is very lucky to be very well photographed and the inscrutable logic of how the live show should be presented at any given moment in time is not something we would wish on an enemy to have to keep track of.
LOCATION: The band is more or less based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin but is from Oakland, California. With membership spread out over multiple states and countries and people in need of a simple answer in a world of too much information: Milwaukee, Wisconsin is fine.
LABEL: Learning Curve Records
Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends tour dates