Extra punk, please

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is final story in a six-part series that takes a look at the local music scene.

NEWPORT BEACH — If you’re a fan of classic rock, imagine this scenario: You get off work on your lunch hour and head down to the local Subway. Then, with $5 in your pocket and parents and strollers surrounding you, you stand patiently at the counter while Mick Jagger makes you a sandwich.

It may sound far-fetched, but that’s the reality for local fans of Casey Royer, who is one of the icons of Orange County punk and, five days a week, just another chef at the Subway on the Balboa Peninsula.

Royer, 49, has built an impressive résumé over the years — his bands have included Social Distortion, the Adolescents and D.I. — but to those who know him around his home in Balboa, he’s hardly an untouchable celebrity. To supplement his income between gigs, Royer slaps sandwiches together while his son attends Newport Elementary School, and the job occasionally feeds his creative side — he recently wrote a song called “Subway Scientist,” a humorous ditty about customers who make finicky orders.

“You know, those people who say, ‘I want three pickles, two onions...,’” Royer said recently during a bustling lunch hour, talking at his usual fast clip while his hands sorted lettuce and chipotle dressing.

As he worked, Vincent Munn, the owner of nearby Pier Records, stopped in for a bite. Royer spends much of his later afternoons hanging out at Munn’s store, talking rock ’n’ roll and dispensing advice to the young musicians who come by to see him. Of course, some people know to look for Royer behind the Subway counter, too.

“I’ve been in here before when people actually cruised by and asked Casey to sign things,” Munn said. “These guys came in one time and said, ‘Aren’t you the guy from the Adolescents?’ Casey sent them over to the record store to get some CDs.”

When Royer started his music career three decades ago, working a regular job didn’t sound that bad to him. In fact, punk purist that he was, he despised the idea of being a corporate rock star. Even as other bands brought their incendiary style into the mainstream, Royer viewed their success with a skeptical eye.

“Green Day, the Offspring used to listen to my music when they were growing up and passed us in the money game,” he said over breakfast at Alta Coffee before heading off to his shift at Subway. “They passed us in the corporate race, and we still stuck true to our beliefs. We thought what was said was more important than how it sounded, so our music was unfriendly to the mainstream ears of society.”

Royer and his many bandmates — D.I. has had 13 different lineups over the years — rarely set out to please mainstream ears, railing against the powers that were in songs like “Reagan Der Fuhrer,” “Imminent War” and “Hang Ten in East Berlin.” This year, though, D.I. got a special honor at the Warped Tour, an annual rock and extreme-sports festival; the band shared a bill at the Home Depot Center in Carson with the Dickies, T.S.O.L. and other pioneer punk bands.

As an opponent of corporate rock, Royer doesn’t make that much money off his music — hence the Subway job — but that’s rarely important to the young musicians who seek him out. Thaddeus Hudzinski, a recent graduate from Dana Hills High School in Dana Point and recent founder of the punk band obnoXious, got to see Royer up close when his father managed D.I. for 13 years, and he remembers Royer always attracting a crowd of disciples.

“All these people would come up to Casey all the time asking for a handshake, autograph, whatever,” Hudzinski said.

Royer thinks of himself as a musician more than a businessman, so he finds himself talking to up-and-comers more about artistic integrity than about how to navigate the major-label world. His main financial advice, he said, is to be skeptical about contracts, especially the first one the company offers.

“I say to them, basically, the philosophy I’ve had is to speak the truth through your music and believe in what you say,” Royer said. “In any career, whether it be underground or in society, perseverance is a virtue. I tell them all I did was just keep my band together.”

Royer’s loyalty to D.I., which he founded in 1982, is perhaps his ultimate show of perseverance: He has been the band’s only consistent member for 26 years, and except for a two-year hiatus in the mid-1990s, D.I. has never ceased operations.

In 1978, Royer founded Social Distortion with a group of high school friends, but departed soon after when he and two of his bandmates fell out with lead singer Mike Ness. The trio went on to join the Adolescents, which broke up in 1981 but reunited more than once in the coming decades, with Royer sometimes taking part.

As the Adolescents came and went, Royer devoted most of his energy to D.I. The current band may bear little resemblance to its early incarnation, but it does honor Royer’s roots in one way: The other three members, Clint Calton and brothers Eddie and Joey Tater, went to Royer’s high school and attended Adolescents shows in their student days.

Meanwhile, Royer is busy raising his own generation of punk-rockers. His 18-year-old son, Max Royer, has performed at Alta Coffee and joined his father onstage, while 9-year-old Casey Royer Jr. — known on his birth certificate as Casey Royer, Pt. II, the Sequel — has musical aspirations of his own after a life spent backstage at concerts.

“He’s met all the top headline punk acts through D.I. and he’s become quite a character,” Royer said. “I think he’s going to be a singer because he’s all obnoxious and babbling. A little ADD. Just like his dad.”

TIMELINE

1958: Casey Andrew Royer born Oct. 8 in Orange.

1978: Royer forms Social Distortion with lead singer Mike Ness and guitarists Rikk and Frank Agnew; Royer plays drums. When Ness brings in Dennis Dannell, a high school friend who doesn’t play an instrument, Royer and the Agnews leave the band.

1980: Royer joins the Adolescents, another fledgling Orange County punk band. Other original members of Social Distortion later play in the band as well.

1981: The Adolescents go on hiatus, and Royer forms D.I.

1982: Royer forms D.I. with drummer Derek O’Brien, guitarist Tim Maag and bassist Fredric Taccone. The other three members are gone by 1984, and D.I. will go through 12 more lineups through 2008.

1984: D.I.’s debut EP is released, containing politically charged tracks like “Reagan Der Fuhrer” and “Guns”; the EP, which is untitled, is later rereleased with extra tracks as the album “Team Goon.”

1985: “Ancient Artifacts,” D.I.’s first full-length album, is released.

1986: Royer rejoins the Adolescents briefly after their hiatus ends, but leaves to concentrate on D.I.

1995: D.I. temporarily breaks up.

1996: The metal band Slayer covers “Spiritual Law” and “Richard Hung Himself,” two D.I. songs co-written by Royer, on its “Undisputed Attitude” album.

1997: D.I. reunites.

2007: D.I. releases “On the Western Front,” its first album since the reunion.

2008: D.I. plays at the Warped Tour, an annual rock festival, along with other old-school punk bands at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].