Lagwagon is a punk band based in the small town of Goleta, California. Forming in 1990, they have released seven albums, all through San Francisco label Fat Wreck Chords. Although they are mostly a melodic hardcore punk band with a lot of metal influences in the soloing department and also in the riffing department especially in their vastly popular first 3 albums, key band members such as Derrick Plourde's and Shawn Dewey's departure and their poppier songs ending up on several cheap compilations put out by Fat Wreck Chords and very popular video game they ended up widely viewed as catalysts for the pop-punk / skate-punk movement of the 1990's, opening the door for some of the subgenre's more mainstream bands.
The most recent members of Lagwagon include Vocalist Joey Cape, guitarists Chris Flippin and Chris Rest, bassist Joe Raposo, and drummer Dave Raun.
Vocalist Joey Cape also plays guitar in punk rock cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and sang in the recently disbanded experimental punk band Bad Astronaut. Recently, he started a new project called Afterburner, which was expected to be similar to Bad Astronaut but has already been disbanded and the Afterburner myspace page (with four tracks) has been deleted. Joey has since started an alt-pop-punk project with other SB rockers named The Playing Favorites.
After 9 years and 5 records, the band remained silent in 1999-2000. They reunited in 2002 and released a comeback album titled Blaze in the following year. Despite the brief hiatus, the group has never broken up. In 2004, Joey released a split acoustic album with No Use For A Name frontman Tony Sly, which features acoustic versions of songs by both bands. Lagwagon's latest album, entitled Resolve, was released in October 2005 and is a tribute to the life of longtime friend Derrick Plourde (original drummer for Lagwagon and Bad Astronaut), who commited suicide on March 30, 2005.
Their most recent studio recording is a return to form with a short EP entitled I Think My Older Brother Used to Listen to Lagwagon that was released in August 2008.
In late 2011/early 2012 LagWagon released a box set entitled "Putting Music In Its Place" featuring the first 5 records, each with extra tracks, various versions and extra material.
The band has also, as of very recently, gotten back together with original guitarist and bassist for a 2012 tour to back up the release of their aforementioned box set. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
