The Punk Rock Capital of Wyoming

The origins of punk rock date back to the late '70s when the Sex Pistols arrived on the club scene in London.

The music, fashion and attitude later spread to the bowels of New York City, when The Ramones called CBGB home.

In the '80s, the movement took hold in California, where bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys pioneered the west coast punk sound.

Believe it or not, there's also a tiny town in eastern Wyoming that still influences thousands of punk rockers to this day.

Newcastle, Wyoming, is located on the state's eastern border between Gillette and Rapid City, South Dakota. With a population of just over 3,000, there were only a handful of punk rock kids back in the early '90s.

Three of them, Kody Templeman, Cory Laurence, and Zachary Rawhouser, banded together in high school to form a group named The Lillingtons.

They quickly got the attention of Joe King, the frontman for The Queers. With King's help, The Lillingtons recorded a song for the compilation More Bounce to the Ounce. Two EP's would soon follow, I Lost My Marbles and Lilllington High.

In 1996, they were signed to Clearview Records and released their full length debut S--- Out of Luck.

After the 1997 follow up Idiot Word Search, The Lillingtons signed with Lookout Records, at that time, one of the biggest punk-ska labels in the country. In 1999, they released the biggest album of their career, Death By Television.

Another album, 2001's The Backchannel Broadcast, would follow before the group disbanded.

Singer and guitarist KodyTempleton then formed Teenage Bottlerocket. The Laramie-based band has since released six full length albums, signing with Fat Wreck Chords in 2009.

The Lillingtons briefly reunited for the 2006 album The Too Late Show. Due to Templeton's commitments with Teenage Bottlerocket, the reunion was short lived.

Their latest release, 2015's Tales From Wyoming, would be Teenage Bottlerocket's final album with drummer Brandon Carlisle, who died unexpectedly in November of 2015.

Hopefully, Teenage Bottlerocket will come back bigger and better than ever. They recently announced their first shows with new drummer Darren Chewka, including a big gig in Laramie on March 11th.

In the meantime, if you ever pass through the town of Newcastle, stop and pay your respects to the punk rock capital of Wyoming. Oi! Oi!