A Conversation With Chad Schrader

Whether it’s performing live, working behind the scenes to promote other artists, or organizing send-off shows for venue closures, Chad Schrader definitely prefers the DIY approach. Chad is one of the founding members of the Traverse City cover band, The Timebombs, and also runs Sandbox Alliance, a creative collective that offers artists services such as marketing, merch, studio space, music production, and a plethora of other resources with the purpose of elevating and increasing reach for fellow musicians in the scene. With a background in marketing and a passion for music making, Chad intersects these two worlds in ways that are constantly evolving, and because he has a mind that’s always on the go, he’s forever toying around with ideas for new ventures and he loves every minute of it.

You run into Chad anywhere Downtown and he’ll always give you a huge line-up of all he’s doing or going to be doing and it’s awesome to see those ideas bloom. Attending a Timebombs show is a guaranteed good time and he says, “We are unapologetically a cover band!” Playing exasperatingly long 3-4 hour long sets is a feat in itself but Chad and the rest of the band’s energy is unmatched. Somehow they don’t lose steam for an entire show and the catalogue of songs they cover is expansive enough to keep people rocking with them all night long.

I had a great chat with Chad and he was cool enough to answer some questions about his background, what he’s up to, some Timebombs history, and future plans for the Sandbox Alliance. With his open and charismatic personality and a rock star vibe that gets everyone in his vicinity excited about things, this was one of the most enjoyably energetic interviews I’ve ever done. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s The Jam Files spotlight on the one and only…Chad Schrader.

(NOTE: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

The Jam Files: So tell me about your musical background. What instruments do you play and when did you start playing?

Chad Schrader: My love affair with a guitar started around ‘88, ‘89 with MTV and the Poison era with the bright neon colors. I was around 8 or 9 years old. My parents got me a basic harmony guitar with a little amp that didn’t sound very great. They took me to guitar lessons with this woman who seemed like she was in her 80s at the time and she taught me chords in alphabetical order. I immediately got discouraged when I couldn’t play like C.C. Deville, so I put it under my bed and didn’t pick it back up for awhile.

And then when Green Day’s Dookie came out around ‘94 I got super inspired because of the “Basket Case” video, which again had a bunch of bright, shiny colors in it that caught my attention. I started guitar lessons again at age 14, brought Dookie with me, and was like ‘teach me side A’ then ‘teach me side B’. So I learned guitar from the School of Dookie.

My parents brought me into music at a really young age too. Around ‘85 or ‘86 I saw the Victory Tour in Detroit with The Jacksons. I had this sequined glove my mom made me. They took me to see Poison in ‘89 with Britny Fox and Lita Ford. Then again with Trickster and Slaughter in 1991. At 14 I saw Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, and Danzig with my Uncle and so by the time I’m 16 and getting dropped off at Warped Tour attending concerts was no big deal to me. That music was the pocket I found was my own. Green Day, Operation Ivy, Lagwagon…which evolved into Fat Records and NOFX. I’ve always been a melody guy, right? Melody and lyrics. Joey Cape was the artist who spoke to me the most personally.. His lyrics seemed to float at a level above a lot of the punk at the time and it just spoke to me so I chased him around, saw him play acoustic shows a bunch. Then as I aged my tastes morphed into bands like Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, and some of the indie stuff, but always very guitar driven music. To me it’s always been about guitar, bass, and drums, ya know?

JF: When did you first start playing professionally?

CS: Seven years ago with The Timebombs. I was in a couple bands in high school. A punk band called Section 8, and we even cut a tape and did it all ourselves. I was also in a ska band with a four-piece horn section called The Skeptics. We would do all original music and we’d play all the punk rock shows, coffee houses, preppy girl parties. That was kind of where I cut my teeth and found what it is that feels right for me when I’m up there. I went through a period where I was just the singer, and I never considered myself a singer, just that I was trying to convey something, but as far as my education and training, it’s all been learning by ear and going for a visceral kind of gut reaction than technicality. I feel like it’s one of the few mysteries that I haven’t wanted to unravel, kind of like technology. I can get into the why of how it works, but then it’s less romantic. I like music to be a little mysterious, so I don’t know if I subconsciously avoid letting myself soak some of this in, but yeah.

The Timebombs

JF: How did The Timebombs start?

CS: There was a woman in town that wanted to have a band back her up. I had been playing with Ryan Dunckley, just kind of like a dad weekend jam thing, and I knew Otto Jensen casually from around town and knew he played bass. So she wanted to play at the Rotary Club with a band so we kind of assembled The Timebombs to back her up. We ran like that as a four-piece for 4 or 5 years and that started in 2019. In 2023 we shifted. She went to law school and the rest of us got offered a downstate gig that was a pretty lucrative offer. So we’re like ‘Heck, why not?’ and took it. I knew Jesse Jefferson from around and I always loved him. I liked watching him perform, he was always a nice, humble guy, and he was always willing to help out in a pinch. I knew he could take on some of the burden too because at the time I was only singing like 30% of the content. All of our songs were in weird keys because we had a female lead so I had to get with him and explain how we do things. So we had to relearn songs and work with what was there and some of those renditions still remain like “Hey Jealousy” from the old days and “Semi-Charmed Life”. Some of those songs were in the original format but not in the same key structure.

We put together the show and it was fun and it felt invigorating again to perform instead of feeling like we had to. We were just four aging punks leaning into it, punching up covers, playing them a little faster than we should, and we’d cram 30 songs into a two hour show. We still want to play as many as we can. At the heart, we were always a power trio—bass, drums, guitar, featured singer—but then Jesse came on and it shifted again. We bring an auxiliary guitar player and also with the late four hour shows, I definitely need the vocal help, and Jesse helps carry some of that weight. So it’s been an evolution. I would say the most growth has been in the last 2-3 years with Jesse on the team. He just elevates everything and talks to me in a way I can understand. There’s no pretense. He’s just authentic and supportive, which is awesome.

JF: I’ve heard you refer to him as your brother in music before and when I saw him play solo at Kingsley Inn recently he said the same thing about you.

CS: Yeah, it’s awesome.

JF: I remember at Porchfest a couple years ago, you played one of your original songs with The Timebombs.

CS: Yeah, “Delta 88”, which was still technically a cover because it’s from my ska band, The Skeptics. I wrote it in 1997 about cruising the Strip in Grand Haven in my Delta 88. Ironically, my drummer and I both had Delta 88s. They were both our grandpa’s cars. We always considered ourselves old souls, looking forward to the days of getting to wear grandpa sweaters and having Werthers in our pockets. We’d throw covers in sometimes. Covers were something you did to try to be clever, interesting, or different, ya know? You try to show off your flex or prowess. ‘Look at how deep a cut I know.’ With The Timebombs it’s totally different. Otto and I had to listen to all the music we didn’t play, especially early on. We’re doing 10,000 Maniacs and Belly and stuff so we had to learn a ton. I grew a lot in that period just playing songs I had never played before.

With this band things have come full circle like when I was with The Skeptics. We’d buy packs of Hanes white tee shirts and do iron-on transfers and sell those just to get them out there so people were wearing our shirts. I was 17, so I was using PowerPoint. It was the whole band thing and then self-advertising. The marketing side was something I had a knack for that got me into this career. That was the foothold into marketing, just doing what seemed like made sense for self-promotion. The Timebombs were outsiders in the Traverse City scene so when we first cut a promo video during a practice, that got us gigs pretty much sight unseen. We would wear different outfits every set and take photos so it looked like we were playing more shows than we were. I’d already spun into a very satisfying marketing career, traditional newspaper media all the way to enterprise websites, so I’d ridden this whole wave and seen all the shifts and digital transformation. I thought ‘wow, the band is something that I can now use this marketing stuff to leverage because we’re not that good, we don’t know the songs that well yet, we haven’t played much, but we look sharp, right?’ Like we presented ourselves in a way that was a level on par with other bands gigging on the regular. I used what I could from that to really create and establish who we are. I was like ‘Okay, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna be unapologetically a cover band. This is the goal. The mission. We’re not trying to prove anything to anybody in town and we don’t really care what other musicians think.’ We’re here for a good time.

JF: And it's always a good time at a Timebombs show. You play for the audience, get people out of their seats, dancing.

CS: I appreciate that. That’s the only goal. If we’re not having fun, what’s the point? If it’s fun, I’ll keep doing it but as soon as it’s not, I’m done because I can’t fake that. I put a lot out there when I’m doing it. It’s still the same show I did when I was 17. That’s the only training I have. I’m just turning on a switch and using a body that isn't 17 anymore and can’t do the things I did back then. It’s a marathon and I don’t want to oversaturate. I don’t want to become boring. We’re ‘Midwest Moms Danceable’.

One thing I wanted to mention was the ‘aha moment’ when I thought The Timebombs would work. In high school, like I said, we were all in bands and we prided ourselves on our original songs and how clever we thought we were. So, we played Battle of the Bands at Reeths- Puffer High School, a 15 minute set of three original songs and in between those sets, there’s a band called Pleezher, like Weezer, but Pleezher…like, real clever. And they’re just playing a bunch of Weezer and Green Day covers. And I remember being so like s***ting on it. Like, ‘f**k’, you know what I mean? Because we were jealous. People were loving their cover songs and when we played our originals people would just shoegaze or whatever. I hated them because they were adored, but I also respected it.

So after I moved back up here with my wife Kim, we were at Union Street watching this band called Electric Red out of Grand Rapids and the singer, Rick Behm, is this tall dude with black hair who plays left-handed. And I’m like ‘holy s**t! that’s Rick from Pleezher, from f***ing high school!’ They’re playing all the songs I would have been made fun of for playing in high school. Like, you can play “When I Come Around?” unironically? No way! That’s f***ing cool! So I’m like, if these guys can come to Traverse City, to my town, and play the songs that we all played growing up, then I can do that. Like, it’s fair game. All of a sudden you can play Green Day in front of a crowd and not get made fun of because back in my day if you’re a punk band covering “Basket Case”, they’d throw f***ing shoes at you. With enough time and distance, the songs had time to blossom.

The Sandbox Alliance

JF: Let's talk about Sandbox Alliance, because you mentioned making and selling merch for your bands when you were younger. Now you're making merch for other bands in the area, and you also have a recording studio?

CS: So yeah, the Sandbox is a physical space that exists because I needed to get my basement finished. I’m moving everything out, all this jam stuff for the finishing. I’m thinking I could either rent a space or store it. It’s not an ideal space, but it’s a lot of space. It’s got rehearsal space. Ryan Younce has his studio, office, and mixing room for Second Circle Productions in there. There’s a large room where we can film or do recording in too. If I were to say I was gonna try to start a recording studio in 2026, I’d say that’s a horrible idea, but we can record if we need to, right? We can track everything we need and we can be that if we need to be that. The nature of the whole thing and the concept is like, when we were kids we’re playing in the sandbox and today we’re playing Monster Trucks and GI Joe. Nothing is permanent over there. Everything is meant to be boiler room. One day we can pull everything out and it’s just white offices again.

Sandbox Alliance has been the paradigm shift that’s merged my two worlds. Music is my hobby passion. It brings me the most selfish joy because it’s just mine and for me. I’ve got a solid marketing career, a wife, kids, and a dog. I freed up some time, which is my most valuable asset, to help with these other projects that are important to me. I don’t want to profit off of my friends. I want to help them in the ways that I can, but I can’t sustain that without earning income. So there’s practice space for rent. We dabble in helping out with bookings. I took The Timebombs website and rebranded it for Sandbox Alliance so that I could do all these things like sell merch and all I was already doing for my band. I made it more like a timeshare. The artists pay for a one-time fee for an electronic press kit and it just lives there. Everything about the Sandbox is meant to feed its own ecosystem.

Everything I’ve built on my career, I’ve done solely on what I’m able to do myself first, and then have a network of people that I trust that I can lean on when it’s outside of my world of expertise. I’m not an expert on anything, I’m a student of everything. I’m always trying to be better.

An artist comes in, we film a couple songs and they also get a landing page to present their content and have merch items listed to sell. It helps legitimize that artist in the zeitgeist of the marketplace and social media sphere, allowing them to promote themselves. It’s a validating third party endorsement in a way. ‘I’m a featured artist here’ instead of just ‘hey, here’s my stuff’. There’s the front-facing commercial side of it for public consumption and then me trying to provide the artists with a wholesale option for inexpensive merch that they can afford.

You can capture audio and record. We can pop up a studio when we need to. If your home base is in this office, then whatever. The fact of the matter is, more and more artists are tracking as much as they can at home anyway, so it’s kind of like if someone needs to come to the studio to capture a part, or they want an upright bass or whatever, we can meet them where they are and make it for that time without them having the expense of whatever a studio day rate might be.

JF: So would you say you want to be more on the promotion side of the music scene rather than playing in it, or…?

CS: I don’t know that I’ll ever stop playing. Like I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do “Ice, Ice Baby” in a neon jacket unironically. I know there’s a timestamp to that. But I’ve got some projects I’d love to do and it’s not that The Timebombs detracts from that because it’s a very satisfying and rewarding experience. I just want to curate those shows that when they happen they can be really impactful and awesome. It can sit there just as it is and I can pull it back out and treat it like a time capsule product.

The Timebombs live at Union Street Station

JF: What are you listening to right now?

CS: The most inspired new thing, and now it’s like a decade old, that I’ve been riding is 21 Pilots. It was 2010 or whenever and I’m at my buddy’s house in Kingsley and this dude jumps out doing heavy duty soul and rapping and I was so dismissive, like, ‘what is this crap?’ I’m like ‘this is stupid’. Then it gets to “Tear In My Heart” and I’m like ‘holy s***t, there’s some layers, like, there’s some stuff going on. My son at the time was just a little guy and we could both enjoy that music. It has an edge and all these different sounds. My daughter came up with 21 Pilots too and it has assumed her identity. She’s all about the band. So, we’ve really bonded over that. That dude, man, Tyler [Joseph], is like…I can see so much of myself in him. He just focused on that thing, right? He has the same energy as me, like, ‘how can I succeed and feed a family?’ and he just put it all into 21 Pilots. To see it pay off the way it has for them, I’m just so proud and happy that I got to see it from the beginning. And the songs are good!

JF: So what does the future look like for you?

CS: I’d really like to do a project of like 10 to 12 original tunes. They’re all gonna be punk in DNA but…I’ve got a waltz I’ve written…

JF: A punk waltz?!

CS: Yeah, kind of. It’s more of a space odyssey. I’d love to do a power trio kind of project, like an album of stuff, but I don’t know if I’ll get around to it. I’ve tracked a couple tunes. Bass and drums. But it’s just gotta make sense.

JF: Songwriting is on a whole other level. That would require you to shut everything off and just like, ‘make an album’. That’s it.

CS: Yeah, yeah. Which I kind of thought, ‘oh, that’s what I’ll do, like in winter…’ I’d also love to put together and do a set as a two-tone ska band. Just laid back, deep grooves, ya know?

JF: That’d be cool. I’m so glad you’re not ashamed to love ska because I notice people nowadays are and I don’t understand why.

CS: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I always gotta be doing something. That’s always been important to me. Music has always been about jamming with anyone at any level, right? Like I’m rarely the most talented guy in the room. I’ll play with anybody, it doesn’t matter. That’s kind of where Jam Clubs came from. And I like being in a cover band. Playing songs that people think they remember. We don’t go and listen to a bunch and then we’ll pull chord charts up and play them like we thought they went. A few years later I’ll hear it and be like, ‘oh s**t! We’ve been playing that bridge completely wrong!’

So the future looks kind of scattered right now. But I do have kind of a focus. I want to refine the offerings a little bit for the Sandbox Alliance artists. The goal for the year is like a pop-up mobile merch store for special events. Then the whole idea of the Honor Cover Buckets like at the RIP Union Street show. I’m going to bring that into the Sandbox wheelhouse, brand them as Sandbox Alliance, then like any Sandbox artist that’s playing…like if Stone Travelbee is going out, take the buckets. Jesse’s got a gig? Go on, take the buckets. Like that might help offset the difference between what the venue is paying and what the artist is profiting and not just breaking it.

That’s what’s kind of fun about it too. Like, it’s a total punk rock approach and it’s all DIY. I’ve just gotten The Timebombs elevated to a point where it looks like we’re paying somebody to do it. Somebody recently asked me why I like playing and the most honest answer is that it’s the most singular, most focused, all-in, consuming, most present moment that I can be in. Like there’s no other direction. No phone, no work. Everyone and everything in my senses is being diverted and channeled to do this thing that nothing else can get in the way of. For like 4 hours, I’m just right there in that space doing this thing.

And, I don’t know, for being as scattered and ADHD as I am, out here daydreaming and living a life that’s always looking toward the next thing and never really looking back, those live show moments when I’m here in the universe, and other people are there with me…I don’t know, it’s just the only presence.

It’s funny, ya know, when I was in elementary school a doctor wanted to diagnose me with ADHD or whatever and back then my dad didn’t want that. And I wrestle with it too because I do feel a large part of why I’ve achieved what I have, which is modest, but it’s mine, is because of this brain, right? Like, it’s never idle. The musicians and people I try to identify with, and the ones that speak to me the most and who fall into the Sandbox family are the people that do it because they have to, not just because they want to. Like, they have to do this. It’s happening regardless. Scatterbrained is what I like to call it. And part of the driving motivator is this fear of rejection that comes with ADHD that I’ve only just learned about. It’s not just casual like ‘oh, they don’t like me’, ‘oh, I’ll move on’, it’s like super impactful and in a way debilitating at times.

JF: Right. Because it’s something that comes with being an artist in general, but if it’s heightened because of what’s going on in the brain…

CS: Yeah, and having to be aware of it. Knowing that puts it into perspective. Like, ‘okay, this is just my reaction, it’ll pass’. Some people might say it’s people-pleasing, but to me it’s that I genuinely want people to like the show. Not because ‘I’m so great, you’re welcome’, but like, I want you to enjoy it. At the heart of it, we’re all insecure creatures bearing some part of our innermost fears and anxiety. So most artists…we’re all sensitive and everything. Everyone does the thing that we do the wrong way. The soul exists interdependent of what your hopes and dreams are. It’s your spirit. It’s inside you. So sometimes you just gotta let that freak flag fly, ya know? You gotta like…let it burn.

Be sure to come out to the Hayloft Inn on March 14 to see The Timebombs perform with Special Guests! Show starts at 6:30 PM

Check out The Sandbox Alliance HERE

Jennifer Patino lives in Traverse City and loves music. Visit her blog at thistlethoughts.com