While still quite young and headstrong, Sammy Kay dove headfirst into the ska scene, doing touring work for The Skatalites, King Django, The Slackers and Westbound Train. He later played in trad ska/rocksteady group The Forthrights and then fronted his own group (featuring future members of Catbite): Sammy Kay and The Fast Four. In that time, he accumulated a lot of stories! 

Today we bring on Sammy to hear his tales. And he has quite the tales. He tells us about living with Vic Ruggiero, how he juggled working for so many bands at once, and how he helped to build a ska/rocksteady revival scene in Brooklyn in the late 2000s/early 2010s. 

Sammy gets deep and personal and talks about how he dealt with his addiction and how difficult that was. You don't want to miss this episode! 

If you’d like to support us and listen to early access, ad-free episodes with bonus content, check out our Patreon! 

If you like our theme song, go download the EP Lives by Slow Gherkin. They wrote the opening and closing songs for our podcast. You can get both tunes from their Lives EP. Also, check out Dan P and the Bricks two LPs. They provided the mid-roll ad transition music. 

Support the In Defense host Aaron Carnes by purchasing a copy of his book, In Defense of Ska. The 2nd, expanded edition of In Defense of Ska will release in May 2024. 

Co-host Adam Davis has a band called Omnigone. Their latest record, Against The Rest released on March 31, 2023. 

The In Defense of Ska editor Chris Reeves runs a record label called Ska Punk International. They have new releases coming out all the time.

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