The future of pop punk is in great hands. There's a swarm of bands that are making noise on social media, and one of them is Nashville's Winona Fighter, who released their debut album, "My Apologies to the Chef" this past Valentine's Day. That subsequently led to the "Yes Chef" tour, which has been extended to run through the summer, including a July 18th stop at Vivarium. Ahead of the tour, and just a day before the band kicked off their European leg of shows, we talked with frontwoman Coco Kinnon about the album, touring, and what they're looking forward to most:

OMC: You guys are going to be at Vivarium on July 18 on the "Yes Chef" tour, which just had more dates added to it. Tell me about making this record, because I know it's your first full length. Exciting times. What was that feeling once the record was out in the world?

Kinnon: Yeah, I think it just felt like such a long time coming for us because we've just spent so many years touring and playing shows and grinding. The biggest thing we've always gotten was, "they're so great, but they have like no music out." So I think finally getting to release a body of work that was like, the best introduction we can give everyone to our band was big. It just felt very rewarding, but also a long time coming because we've been grinding for so long.

OMC: There's a lot of previous singles on the record. Does it feel like you had to compile some things that had already been out together, so that it was in one package that serves as a full intro to Winona Fighter?

Kinnon: Yeah, totally. It's funny, we went from like our very first EP, where we had no singles released to releasing an album that did have like quite a bit of singles out on it. But again, it's the debut record. We wanted to release something that completely 100% represented us, and so it did feel it felt good having those singles and then having a new couple of pieces of work all put into one package.

OMC: So when it comes to songwriting, how does it work for you guys? Who comes up with the majority of the writing for the band?

Kinnon: The writing is always different. Sometimes it's just me. A majority of the time it's myself and Austin (Luther), who produced the record and is our bass player. Sometimes Dan (Fuson) will come into the mix and write a riff, or we'll bring another collaborator we really like into the mix. There's no real method to the madness. It definitely wasn't like, "okay, we're going to sit down and write a record." It was like, "here are a bunch of songs." We took every song from like 2020 to 2024 that we had written and put each down on a little Post-it note, and we laid them all out on the table and we were like, "okay, pick your top five that you think really represent the band." Then we all took our top songs, put them in another pile, looked at that pile, and then picked what we felt were the top contenders. When it was all said and done, it felt like such a cohesive thing, which kind of felt impossible at the time because it was like we were picking all from songs from 2022, and then 2024, and things that were written before we were signed to anyone, and songs written after everything was said and done. So it was really surprising how just cohesive everything felt.

OMC: You also get to watch your band grow through those songs, right? So being able to fine tune some of that earlier stuff and put that into the album, I'm sure it felt like saying "here's everything, enjoy!"

Kinnon: Yeah, exactly.

OMC: I know you've been on the road a lot, but you are based in Nashville. I'm a big believer that where you are in the world influences how you write and maybe the kind of things that influence you. It's obviously a country music town, but there's a lot of pop singers and different influences there. Do you ever feel like that kind of seeps into writing a catchy hook or writing a chorus? Anything that particularly feels very Nashville?

Kinnon: I would say not. I would say Nashville inspires writing in the way that we're already so out of the box of what this city is, so let's lean into into the crazy or the weirdness of the writing process. I've always been like such a huge fan of of hooks and and catchy music. I think you can have a really amazing band with amazing songs that aren't catchy. I think that happens a lot. In the rock and alt and metal space it happens, where it's like, "wow, that's like a really fucking good song and I'm going to keep coming back to it," but it's not going to be stuck in my head.

I love catching myself singing something and saying "where is that from?" I love those earworms. Writing hooks and poppy melodies in some of our songs is more from, how I grew up. I grew up in the early 2000s. So I had Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys and when pop music was at its at its height. I think a little of that has gotten to seep in along with things like NOFX and Dead Kennedys and Gorilla Biscuits that I also listened to growing up.

OMC: Let's talk about playing live. With this record, are there certain songs that when you play it live, you just know the crowd's going to go off for it?

Kinnon: Yeah, like "Hamm's In A Glass." Everyone just loses it. We start really strong too. Our opener on this tour is "You Look Like a Drunk Phoebe Bridgers," which used to be our closer. I think that always takes everyone by surprise. I took note from when I saw the Foo Fighters one time, and they opened with "Everlong." You're like, "holy shit. That's crazy that they did that," but it totally set the tone for the rest of the show. So, yeah, "Phoebe," people go off. I think people were a little taken aback at first, but once they realize it's "Phoebe," they go off. "(Swear to God That) I'm Fine," everyone goes off. But yeah, it's fun. It's. It's cool to see, because when we write the songs, we're like, "what do we want people to be doing?" So like "Jumper Cables," we were like, in the writing room saying "what do we want the audience to be doing?" Well, jumping, and without us prompting them to do it. Like, that's what people do. People jump during "Jumper Cables" or like, "Hamm's" I was like, "I just want people to beat the shit out of each other." And that's what people do, unprompted. It's really cool to see how it starts from nothing, just this idea of how to get in the audience's head so they're doing what we had anticipated. They're doing what we set out to set out to do, and we sent out all of these subliminal messages for it.

OMC: You guys are about to literally go to Europe right before this leg of the tour that comes to Milwaukee. What is the rest of the year look like? What are you most excited for?

Kinnon: We actually leave for the UK tomorrow, which is going to be crazy. Then we're touring all all summer. It's the "Yes Chef" summer. We're really looking forward to that. If we could tour all year, we would, and that's what we've been doing. We've been on the road all year. I think we do have some shows after the "Chef" tour already lined up. Warped Tour in November is going to be great. We have a couple of other one-off bigger shows that we're really excited about and excited to announce. But yeah, just more shows and more playing and we'll probably get to writing some more stuff. In the month and a half we had off from touring this past March and April, we were in the studio the whole time, so people can expect a little something later this year in that realm as well.

OMC: I do have to ask one more thing, though. When you got the call that you were playing the Warped Tour, as somebody that grew up with the Warped Tour, what was that iinitial reaction?

Kinnon: Well, it was funny because we heard it was coming back way before they even started scouting bands. We got the intel. Our agent was like, "do you want us to chase that? Is that something you want to do?" and at the time we we knew that we were going to have a busy year. So it was like,"yes, we would want to do it. Are are we going to go chase it? Probably not, because we're so busy." But then the second it was actually confirmed that it was coming back, we were like, "you've got to get us on Warped Tour."

We were trying to act nonchalant, but as soon as we heard it was actually coming back, it was like, "we have to be on that tour." It was crazy. Again, I grew up in the time where that's what you did during the summer. You waited all year for Warped to come around. Your mom would drive you. She would be pissed and you would be sweaty and dehydrated. The last tour I went to was in Nashville, which was crazy, but you could tell it was kind of like dwindling down.

I think it's going to come back strong and I think it's going to come back to being really cool with this new generation of bands and artists who like, don't put up with the bullshit that maybe happened in the previous years.

OMC: Well, we're looking forward to seeing you here in Milwaukee. Thanks for sitting down with us and we'll see you in a little bit.

Kinnon: Thank you. We love Milwaukee. We're so excited.

You can catch Winona Fighter with Rat Bath on Friday, July 18th at Vivarium. Tickets are on sale now via the Pabst Theater Group website.