Lawrence musicians will dive into all sorts of genres, from punk to garage to hip-hop. But if you’re in the mood for doo-wop, there’s only one band that will give it to you.

Dean Monkey and the Dropouts is one of the larger bands in Lawrence, with guitarists, a keyboard player, a horn section, and two to four vocalists at a time. On Friday, you can watch them all try to cram onto the Replay Lounge stage during Forever Fest, an event celebrating the Whatever Forever record label featuring performances by eight bands.

Dirty doo-wop

The label has become a perfect home for unusual bands like Dean Monkey and the Dropouts. The band’s doo-wop isn’t of the classic variety, and may as well come with an advisory label. Their doo-wop is dirty, crass and naughty. We wouldn’t expect anything less from a band that played one of their first shows in their underwear in a sewage ditch dubbed “The Church of Malt Liquor.” After a video of the show (NSFW, obviously) started spreading around Lawrence, locals grew curious about this bizarre and vulgar group.

Danny Barkofske is one of the many crooners in the group, and remembers the sewage ditch performance fondly.

“We wanted to do something with one of our very first shows that would garner some attention or make us stand out a little bit,” he says. “That was one of our main goals when we first started, was throwing people off and kind of surprising people with what they were going to see.”

That wasn’t a bad strategy at the time Dean Monkey and the Dropouts started appearing. There were mostly indie-rock bands that stuck to the same style of music and playing to the same group of people. So when a group of young musicians showed up with a new style, local music fans took to it quickly. Now that they had everyone’s attention, they had to map out a game plan.

Barkofske said it was time to figure out what direction they wanted to take the band.

“When we first started, we were keeping to the doo-wop formula of the sound, and it just kind of happened that we started to evolve,” he says. The band’s music did evolve to take on more hints of soul and funk, and they ditched the undies for matching colorful costumes at every show. So instead of being the band of oddballs that fans came to gawk at, Dean Monkey and the Dropouts became the band you came to get down and boogie with. Guitarist Max Yoder started noticing a pattern.

“I find that with bands, the more you play, the more different directions you go. You have to figure out how all those different directions connect,” he says. “All our songs are danceable and fun. I think, generally, we want everything to be catchy and fun.”

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Celebrating camaraderie

While Dean Monkey and the Dropouts were solidifying their identity, a host of other bands were in the same predicament. Bands that were a little bit odd but wanted to make fun music and play serious shows in Lawrence were now finding a home on the Whatever Forever music label. Bands like Oils and CS Luxem helped shape the sound of this collective, and were later joined by The Ovaries-eez, Invisible Public Library and Arc Flash.

To celebrate this musical commune, the label started hosting Forever Fest. Now in its third year, the label will also jointly be releasing a compilation of the bands’ music to commemorate the occasion.

Rolf Petermann is the invisible force behind the label, the head honcho who has worked tirelessly to pull bands out of sewage ditches and put them on some of the most popular stages in Lawrence, including the indoor and outdoor stages at the Replay for Forever Fest.

“It’s mainly to celebrate local music. It’s almost like a party for the artists, because so many of the artists are friends with each other,” he says. “This is one of those events where they can all be a part of it and see each other’s music.”

That type of camaraderie has been essential in shaping the label. If you saw one Whatever Forever band play a show, you likely saw several of the label’s other musicians happily cheering them on in the audience. While the musicians were supporting one another and rubbing styles off of each other, the label intentionally kept business small. Right now, Whatever Forever releases music digitally and on cassette.

“We look at ourselves as a platform and a stepping stone to a bigger label for our bands that want that. For some bands, that’s not their goal,” Petermann says. “We’re kind of at a level that can put out bands that are doing this as a career and are at their early stages, and also bands that are serious and love what they’re doing, but also want to have a family life and a career that necessarily isn’t the nightlife as a professional musician.”

Barkofske says Dean Monkey and the Dropouts is one of those bands that is serious about what they’re doing, but keeping it local for now.

“It’s never been a goal of ours to be associated with a well-known label, we just enjoy the camaraderie that we have,” he says, noting that some bands on the label even began covering each other’s songs at live performances.

“It’s super nice to have a collective of like-minded artists where you can bump ideas. There’s no other feeling of having people know your stuff, dig your music. That’s what the other bands in Whatever Forever do a lot. We just make each other feel good about our music, because we enjoy each other’s music so much.”

— Fally Afani is a freelance writer and editor of iheartlocalmusic.com.