Hometown: Quad-Cities

Musicians: Joe Robertson, the band’s upright bass player and singer who goes by Papa Darkness on stage Jake Cowan, known as Dr. Nasty on stage, on guitar and vocals Tony Johnson, or Smokehaus on stage, on drums

Status: active

Copy: The Afterdarks try to capture the sound of rock ‘n’ roll before The Beatles brought the British Invasion to the United States. “We call ourselves Rat Rod rock ‘n’ roll. The idea is the Rat Rod is a 1950s automobile that the kids put together and it’s kind of like a jalopy. It’s got a little bit from this car, a little bit from that car and a little bit from this car,” Robertson said. “And the idea is that we incorporate blues, country, rockabilly, rock ‘n’ roll and we call it American roots or Americana, just Rat Rod rock ‘n’ roll.” The Afterdarks still write songs about dark topics and keep the tongue-in-cheek humor from their first tunes about the undead. The song “Memphis Is to Blame” is about a man telling his significant other that he can’t come home because he’s in Memphis. But it’s also about Memphis’ role in making rock ‘n’ roll what it is today, as opposed to the original form The Afterdarks seek to reproduce, Robertson explained. “The ’50s were such a growing experience. But it was the innocence in the fact that it was the genesis of all rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s what we try to capture is that dirtiness, the grittiness, the greasiness, the stuff that you don’t see nowadays,” he added.

History: When the band formed in 2003, The Afterdarks were a joke. But not in a bad way. Joe Robertson, the band’s upright bass player and singer who goes by Papa Darkness on stage, explained that the band was originally a parody of The Misfits, an ’80s punk rock group that wrote songs about B horror movies. The joke went on for two years while The Afterdarks wrote lyrics about vampires, killing zombies and bodies floating in the Mississippi River. Finding success in the Quad-Cities and making some lineup changes inspired the band to branch out in an effort to avoid being pigeonholed as a horror punk band.

Influences: “We knew we liked ’50s rock ‘n’ roll, we knew we liked ’50s country and ’50s blues, and we knew what our influences are, and this is how we’re going to write now,” Robertson said.

Genres: Rat Rod rock