It’s not that Heavy Petal is swept along on some prevailing sense of urgency, but the four-piece punk band seems to be imbued with a tailwind of forward momentum. To wit: Though they’ve been a band only for three months, they’ve already released their first single, an effervescent blast of pop-punk called “Sweetheart.” Written by frontwoman Stephanie Benjamin and guitarist Kevin Wellendorf and recorded at Wellendorf’s home studio, “Sweetheart” is a sarcastic response to the waves of men who slide into a woman’s DMs the instant the word gets out that she’s single.
“I wrote the lyrics post-breakup [in 2023] after I’d been in a serious relationship for, like, five years,” Benjamin said, sitting with her bandmates — Wellendorf, drummer Matt Mabe, and bassist Jordan Tucker — on the patio of a Magnolia Avenue bar. “All of my bar friends that were mutual friends of that former relationship started popping up in messages at 2 a.m.: ‘Hey, how are you doing? Are you OK? I went through a breakup, too. Do you want to talk?’ Like, no, I don’t want to trauma-bond with you. Thank you. Leave me alone.”
At the time, Benjamin had been playing keyboards and singing backup for a couple of years in local power-pop band Big Heaven, but her “Sweetheart” lyrics never made it into any Big Heaven songs. Over Big Heaven’s seven-year history, founder and frontwoman Mandy Hand had written most of the band’s music, and though she did allow for input from the other members, Benjamin and Big Heaven guitarist Wellendorf both eventually parted ways with Big Heaven in October 2024 out of a shared desire for a more collaborative approach to songwriting.
Timing, it is said, is everything. Big Heaven dissolved, and Benjamin and Wellendorf were both without a band. As it happened, by the time spring 2025 rolled around, so were drummer Matt Mabe and bassist Jordan Tucker. Mabe’s main band at the time was Arenda Light. Tucker’s was Dead Vinyl, and both were on indefinite hiatus. As a rhythm team, their respective experiences playing hard rock fit well with Wellendorf’s love of punk, metal, and classic-rock riffage, and since the summer, the four-piece has been writing and rehearsing in Wellendorf’s garage.
“Sweetheart” was one of the first songs that came together. During the pandemic, Wellendorf wrote and tracked “Sweetheart” as a means of testing out the home studio he’d assembled during the lockdown. “I cut everything myself, and my idea was to write a song at the time that was, you know, just kind of how I was feeling about the fucking pandemic.”
Photo by Jake Hill
He and Benjamin had talked about writing together, and Big Heaven’s dissolution provided the nudge they needed.
“I sent her that song,” Wellendorf said. “I was just like, ‘Hey, this is something old, but I don’t know if you’ll like it.’ And then instantly she said she came up with a melody.”
In August, the band started meeting at Wellendorf’s house to jam. Each member brought song ideas. One night after a practice, Wellendorf replaced his own drums and bass on “Sweetheart” with Mabe’s and Tucker’s parts, respectively.
“I think it was, like, three takes,” Wellendorf said. “I was just happy. It’s like, ‘Oh, cool, we can use this.’ And it became a thing, but that was like the first kind of clue to me. I was like, ‘OK, that was really easy,’ like [being in a band] is supposed to be easy. And because it was, that was my first kind of, like, light bulb about this band.”
Another song came from Mabe, who recalled that Wellendorf “was like, ‘When are you coming over? We gotta do more!’ ”
Mabe, who teaches drums at Music Junkie Studios, had used the school’s gear to record his own demo. “I just did guitar, bass, drums — just an idea I had — and I showed it to the Arenda Light guys, like, a year or two ago, and they were like, ‘Dude, that’s really cool,’ but then they never brought it up again, so I was like, ‘Alright, I guess hang onto it.’ ”
Mabe eventually sent it to Benjamin. “A couple hours later, she sent it back with lyrics and a melody.”
Tucker had her own demo that Benjamin was also able to help flesh out in flash.
“Same thing with my demo,” Tucker said. “She’s really good at putting melodies together.”
With each member bringing their own inspiration and songwriting input to practices, the band’s sound doesn’t neatly fit into a box. “Sweetheart” sounds like a pop-punk song in the vein of bands like the Groovie Ghoulies and Screeching Weasel, but given the combined time that Wellendorf, Mabe, and Tucker have spent in hard rock bands — the Sex Rhinos for Wellendorf; Stella Rose, Quaker City Night Hawks, and Arenda Light for Mabe; Panic Volcanic and Dead Vinyl for Tucker — Heavy Petal’s other material winds its way through harder, faster, and sludgier sounds.
“We have one that’s our take on a straight-up hardcore song,” Benjamin said. “And then there’s some stuff that’s — at least to my ear — like a grunge song. The band is definitely a lot heavier than we thought it would be.”
Wellendorf said, “When you have [Mabe] playing drums, [Tucker] on the bass, and I’m on guitar, it’s like shit’s gonna get heavy just because it’s us three, like that’s going to happen. But, you know, it’s the straight, fun, lighthearted kind of vibe of this that’s always going to sound like us but still be loud, still be heavy. I don’t foresee us, you know, writing a fucking reggae song.”
Anything’s possible, though, especially with such a democratic songwriting process.
“Everybody will try everybody else’s ideas,” Mabe said. “If it doesn’t work, we’re like, ‘Aright, well, at least we tried it.’ ”
Benjamin added, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where everyone in the band was just sitting around on an instrument throwing out ideas like, What if we did this?’ We wrote this one song together. All I gave them was how I wanted to sing it and three chords, and those three chords are based on the sound my car makes when it’s overheated.”
With Heavy Petal, inspiration can come from anyone and anything, so unforeseen reggae jams are not out of the question. Heavy Petal makes its live debut at the Chat Room Pub on Wed., Nov. 12, as part of singer-songwriter Wayne Floyd’s monthly Waynesday residency, along with sets from Floyd and up-and-coming singer-songwriter Kelvin Thomas. When you consider the rate at which they’re going, Heavy Petal might write an album’s worth of material about the experience next month. Hopefully, the post-show 2 a.m. DMs will at least be congratulatory.
Heavy Petal
Wed, Nov 12, w/Wayne Floyd, Kelvin Thomas at the Chat Room Pub, 1263 W Magnolia Av, Fort Worth.
