Behind the Band: Dock Street Fight Club

The No. 1 rule about Dock Street Fight Club: Talk about Dock Street Fight Club. While you’re at it, dance and sing along.

For Dock Street Fight Club, a group of young Islanders who play rock ’n’ roll covers and original songs, music is as much about their creative bonds as the community that they found while chasing it. Their band name references both their start in music performance on the Vineyard and the dynamic energy of the crowds, who were known to get into a ruckus or two among themselves. It’s also reminiscent of a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk called “Fight Club,” which features the iconic catchphrase “The first rule of Fight Club is: You don’t talk about Fight Club.”

Now, the young group is following their musical thread across the country, playing at colleges and venues far past Island shores. On April 25, the group released a new single, “Hazy Love.” 

The four band members, ages 21 to 24, all have their own Island ties and history. Their story started in 2017, when guitarist Emmett Athearn and then-bassist Sam Benjamin played together at the West Tisbury School as eighth-graders. The pair were big fans of Nirvana, and covered a few of their songs. They knew they needed a vocalist, so they reached out to their friend and classmate, Atlas Zack. 

“We thought that Atlas looked like Kurt Cobain, so maybe he’d sound like Kurt Cobain … and it kind of worked,” Athearn said with a laugh. 

The group of three honed their sound, and Zack became interested in songwriting. It wasn’t until later that Zack started learning the guitar, which he now plays in their band along with singing lead vocals. 

When the young group attended Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, they played at a few Chilmark potluck jams. The up-Island open mic event is spearheaded by Alex Karalekas. Karalekas is a member of the Dock Dance Band, another band of Islanders, who gave Dock Street Fight Club their spot performing at the Chappy Ferry dock in the summers a few years ago. 

Zack said the Island community “does a great job with supporting young artists and new artists who want to share their music. And everyone’s very, very supportive of everything musical here.”

For young locals, the Dock Dance at Memorial Wharf in Edgartown is one of the few places to dance and see live music before they’re 21, old enough to attend shows at bars like the Ritz Café in Oak Bluffs and the Port Hunter in Edgartown. The Dock Dance dates back to the 1960s, according to Pope, the band’s manager. 

“The [event was] started by a group known as the Bodes, who played on the dock to draw tourists toward live music outside of the bar scene. Over the decades, stewardship of the event passed to the Dock Dance Band, a group that would later play a key mentorship role for Dock Street,” Pope told The Times. 

It was kismet for the group that their first residency gig, taking the stage at Dock Dance and incorporating it into their band name as a result of the connection, was in the shoes of the Dock Dance Band, and an homage to the “occasional scuffles” that broke out among the crowd during their shows, Pope said. 

Dock Street Fight Club continues to draw huge crowds, especially from younger locals who are able to see them perform at Dock Dance. The shows on their current tour have inspired even larger audiences. Performing is a balancing act for the band, as each member has their own career outside of music. 

Zack leads the band. He’s also about to graduate as a premed student at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, and works as an EMT on the Vineyard. Athearn is the lead guitarist, and owns an HVAC company. James Murray plays the drums and works at Mo’s Lunch in Oak Bluffs. Jack Holmes is the group’s bassist, after Benjamin moved on to other projects. Holmes works in a neuroscience lab in Providence, R.I., researching Alzheimer’s when he’s not touring or performing with the band. 

The band was recently noticed by a management company, Beatline Productions, which propelled their music career forward. The owner of Beatline, Hunter Pope, is now the group’s manager, and the tour they’re on now is a result of that partnership. 

“It’s great for the exposure,” Zack said of the tour. “We think that the music that we write can be pretty successful, if it’s done the right way. So I think it’s starting to get serious within the past year or so.”

Their new single, “Hazy Love,” was written by Zack. “I tend to write things that I find pretty catchy and repetitive — and hooks that get stuck in my head easily. I have a big influence from bands like the Strokes, Nirvana, and Her’s,” Zack said of his songwriting process. 

The first stop on their tour was New Orleans in February. Last week, they hit Myrtle Beach in North Carolina. Then they’ll be back on the Island in May to perform at local venues. Getting off the Island and driving to shows across the country is the first step of a long road ahead. 

The group said their chemistry as a band and their evolving sound has improved from the close quarters in their travels. Driving cross-country, sleeping in hotels, getting kicked out of a Waffle House at 5 am, and performing for strangers have brought the four of them closer together. Having the Island as a home base has helped them, too. 

“Having that shared background and spending that time on Martha’s Vineyard and in the Martha’s Vineyard music scene, the place where we grew up and where our love for music developed, I think that has actually really improved our cohesiveness and just made us a lot more of a unit,” Holmes said. 

There are two sides to the Vineyard coin for musicians. The Island is a touchpoint for creativity of all types, where artists have lived for generations and uplifted one another along the way. The Dock Street Fight Club band named Mike Benjamin, Jeremy Berlin, Rose Guerin, Phil DaRosa, Brad Tucker, and, of course, the Dock Dance Band as just a few of the musicians who have paved the way and supported them. But the other side of that support is that the Island is separated from a lot of the mainland action. 

“Being surrounded by water kind of limits that exposure to the outside world. And although the community here is fantastic and very supportive, you need to break away from the Island if you want to be successful at a bigger stage,” Zack said. 

But he added that playing on the Vineyard means a lot to the group. The dock where they started instilled some small traditions for the band as well, such as Murray’s habit of drumming barefoot. 

“Whenever we have a home gig, it’s really nice to see 50-plus faces that we’ve known for years and who are very comfortable with our music. It makes us more comfortable,” Zack said.

Dock Street Fight Club will be performing weekly this summer at the Wharf Pub, the Ritz Café, the Port Hunter, and the Town Bar and Grill. Upcoming May shows: Friday, May 22, at the Ritz Cafe; Saturday, May 23, at the Wharf Pub; Sunday, May 24, at the Port Hunter. Updates at dockstreetfightclub.com.