THE BACK-TO-SCHOOL ISSUE
For nearly five decades, PortmanteauZone frontman Joseph Lapsley has been part of the punk scene.
Through the DIY punk rock band he formed after the death of his partner in 2018, Lapsley, an adjunct faculty member in Columbia’s School of Communication and Culture, channels his experiences into politically charged songs that blend activism, humor and personal storytelling.
At a recent open mic in suburban Palatine, the band performed two original songs: “Revulsion,” which comments on purity culture and religion, and crowd-pleaser “Mr. Potato Head Gender Reveal Party,” which pokes fun at transphobic rhetoric.
The audience responded with enthusiastic applause, with several attendees approaching the band afterward to say how much they enjoyed the performance.
“I really liked rock music and all that kind of stuff, and being on stage and doing that seemed like the thing to do,” said Lapsley, who started teaching at Columbia in 2008. “But it was also something to give me something to do that was a real project.”
This isn’t Lapsley’s first time in a punk band. In 1984, he created the punk/hard rock band Neighborhood Texture Jam, which emerged from another turbulent time in Lapsley’s life. He had just dropped out of college and started hitchhiking around the U.S., eventually living in Taiwan for a couple years.
In a way, Lapsley found some semblance of order from the band. After returning to the U.S., the band managed to find some success when their song “Funeral Mountain” got reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine. Neighborhood Texture Jam would later be signed to two labels but was eventually dropped.
“I was in my 40s where I was like, ‘I want to do this the most. I want to learn how to write songs. I want to play guitar as well as I can.’ And that keeps you going,” Lapsley said.
Like Neighborhood Texture Jam, PortmanteauZone’s sound is rooted in hard rock and punk rock, similar to artists like Frank Zappa and Iggy Pop. For Lapsley, song inspirations come from anywhere ranging from his own life experiences to movie soundtracks from spaghetti Westerns like “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“The Allen Ginsberg Dream” is based on his experiences from hitchhiking, combining “Howl” author Allen Ginsberg and Lapsley’s ideas on whether U.S. society will continue to progress.
Another song, “Force Gestation Nutjob,” comes from Lapsley’s experiences of being an abortion clinic escort and having to deal with anti-abortion protesters firsthand.
Lapsley’s history education also blends in with his music for PortmanteauZone. This fall, he is scheduled to teach the “LGBTQ+ History” course.
Lapsley said he tries to talk about his band whenever possible during his classes. Occasionally, students will show up to his performances.
Tabitha Hollowed, a student at Loyola University Chicago where Lapsley also teaches, went to one of his shows in April in Evanston.
“I really like Professor Lapsley. I think he’s just a really funny guy, and he has a lot to say,” Hollowed said. “He would always talk about his band and their songs. They just sounded really interesting and really funny. You get to learn something while listening to music, and I think that’s really cool.”
The name of the band is a bit of a pun in itself, according to Lapsley. “Portmanteau” derives from French, meaning blending two words together to create a new word, and the word itself is blended with the word “Zone.”
Lapsley would find the original bass player for the band, Julian Ross, at his local coffee shop and the drummer, David Conklin, off an app called BandMix. Conklin was the only one who auditioned for the band, and the two became close friends over the years through their shared opinions on music.
Conklin had been playing drums since he was young, but he said that being in the band allowed him to work on his drumming skills and also build a strong friendship with Lapsley.
“My drumming is about the best it’s been ever, there’s one piece of it. The other piece is the camaraderie that I have with Joe,” Conklin said. “Joe is like a brother to me.”
Ross eventually left the band and was replaced by Jake Kearley, who was recommended to Conklin by a co-worker. Kearley was a part of his school’s band throughout elementary and middle school, and for him, being in PortmanteauZone reminded him of when he’d perform live.
“What I realized is how much I missed playing live music with other people,” Kearley said. “It’s just crazy how much more natural it feels when you’re playing with other musicians and being able to communicate with them on the spot.”
For Lapsley, PortmanteauZone has allowed him the opportunity to continue to fan the flames of songwriting he’s always had since he was a teenager in the ‘70s.
“I’ve been writing songs for a long time,” Lapsley said. “Having a band, knowing that anything I write, I can take and teach to these guys, and they’ll play it — that helps too.”
PortmanteauZone mainly plays at open mics in the Chicago area, but has recorded the EP “Teaued At Owners Expense” and the album “Part of the New Sensitivity.” All music and performance dates are available on the band’s website.
Copy edited by Antonio Chaves
This story also appears in the Chronicle’s back-to-school issue, available Sept. 1.
