After spending much of the year mourning founding member and guitarist Dennis Danell, who died of a brain aneurysm in February, Social Distortion are picking up the pieces. The longtime SoCal punk band plans to head back into the studio to record with new member, guitarist Jonny "Two Bags" Wickersham, a former member of SoCal bands the Cadillac Tramps, Youth Brigade and U.S. Bombs .

Wickersham made his debut with Social D in May at a benefit concert for Danell's family in Irvine, Calif., but wasn't announced as the band's new guitarist at the time. "We didn't want to rush out and tell people Jonny was in the band until we had moved along in the recording process," a spokesperson for Time Bomb says.

Though sessions with producer James Saez (who worked on frontman Mike Ness's two solo albums and Social D's live album) won't get underway at Ocean Studios in Burbank until November, Ness is currently writing new material for the band's eighth album and first album of new material since 1996's White Light, White Heat, White Trash. It's slated to come out on Time Bomb in spring of next year.

"I want every record to be different from the last one, but I also want to keep continuity with our sound," Ness writes on the band's Web site, www.socialdistortion.com. "So this record will be a departure from the others without losing our signature style. It has a real Seventies feel and a real 2000 feel. It's definitely a balance of the two."

JENNIFER VINEYARD
(September 8, 2000)