Joudy
“We are in perfect danger” — a song about wanting what will undo you, from a band that knows something about that.
Joudy formed in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, fled a collapsing country, spent time scattered across South America, and eventually landed in New York City — where they discovered, in a dark-comedy twist, that Nicolás Maduro had followed them there as a UN visitor. They make heavy music. The biography earns it.
“Three Dollar Bill,” the latest single from their forthcoming album Permanent Maintenance, arrives July 24 on Trash Casual. It is a riff-driven, drop-tuned cycle of contradiction — a song about craving what destroys you, delivered with the kind of conviction that can only come from people who have actually reckoned with that question.
“‘You could never leave, I would never stay’ — a spiraling exchange that feels both confrontational and resigned, capturing the push-pull of connection at its most volatile and inevitable phase.”
— Joudy on “Three Dollar Bill”San Cristóbal to Brooklyn
Joudy — frontman Diego Ramirez, drummer Hurlich Navas, and bassist Carlos Rey — formed in the mid-2010s in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, before the political situation made staying impossible. The road from Los Andes to New York took years and passed through multiple countries. They arrived in NYC carrying that entire journey inside the music, and the weight of it shows.
Their previous albums, Obertura and Destroy All Monsters, built a reputation for wide-angle psychedelic rock that blended urgency with atmosphere. With Permanent Maintenance, they’ve stripped back the lens. The record — produced by Marco Buccelli, mixed by Benny Grotto, mastered by Alan Douches — is shorter, louder, and more direct than anything they’ve released before.
Frontman Diego Ramirez recognized he had existed in survival mode for so long, this album was the first time he stopped to process. Mirrored by a political climate that banks on our constant burnout, Permanent Maintenance is a record of personal stories that reach across an entire society.
— From the press materialsThree Dollar Bill and the New Record
“Three Dollar Bill” hits from the first bar — distorted drop-tuned guitars, a heavy bassline, powerful drums, and Diego Ramirez’s clean-but-raspy vocal holding the center of something that keeps threatening to collapse. The track joins previously released singles “Nail” and “(I Love You) Dummy” as the clearest preview yet of where Joudy has arrived: aggressive energy in service of something genuinely felt, not performed.
An official video directed by Santiago Franco is out now, shot live at Medusa Bar in Brooklyn. It leans into a surreal karaoke-comedy format — lyrics on screen, viewer as participant — somewhere between public access TV and a 3am dive bar night. It’s the right container for a song this self-aware about its own contradictions.
Permanent Maintenance takes its title from a mechanic shop. Machine-made elements run throughout the record — maintenance as metaphor, survival as repetitive labor, burnout as the cost of simply continuing. It’s a heavy-rock record with real literary architecture underneath it.
“Full of dissonant grunge guitar, heavy drums and meditative lyrics highlighting the band’s heroic struggle toward freedom.”
— BKMAGOn the Road This Summer
After appearances at SXSW and a run through Florida, Joudy’s East Coast headline tour begins in earnest in July around the album release. The hometown show goes down July 22 at TV Eye in Brooklyn with Dead Tooth, Desert Sharks, and Drager — two days before the album officially drops. Catch them while the rooms are still this size.
| May 22 | Brooklyn, NY — Alphaville (w/ Bummer Camp) |
| Jun 4 | Brooklyn, NY — The Sultan Room (w/ The Sheila Divine, Endearments) |
| Jul 22 | Brooklyn, NY — TV Eye (album release show w/ Dead Tooth, Desert Sharks, Drager) |
| Jul 24 | Pawtucket, RI — News Cafe (w/ Ghosts in the Snow, People Eating Plastic) |
| Jul 25 | Medford, MA — Deep Cuts (w/ Baabes, Capo Regime, Parachute Club) |
| Jul 26 | New Haven, CT — Cafe Nine (w/ Qweek Kong, Death Valley Sun Troopers, Egg) |
| Jul 30 | Asbury Park, NJ — Bond St Basement (w/ Sunshine Spazz, 37 Houses, Child Eater) |
| Jul 31 | Washington, DC — Simple Underground (w/ Knave, Toro) |
| Aug 1 | Philadelphia, PA — Nikki Lopez (w/ The Stone Eye, Rope Trick, Hot Manana) |
Permanent Maintenance is out July 24 on Trash Casual. Pre-save now at the links below. For a band that has been in survival mode since San Cristóbal, this record sounds like the first time they’ve actually had a chance to say what happened.
