Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Quest to Defend Pop Punk

Everyone finds their way to the scene in their own time. Maybe an older sibling passes you down a record, or a group of friends invites you to a show, and there’s no looking back. Maybe you’re a two-time Daytona 500 winner, one of the most famous and richest drivers in the country, and you stumble across a defunct Hopeless Records band on your Pandora station, and a switch flips. Here’s the music you’ve been waiting for your whole life.

That’s what happened for Dale Earnhardt Jr., son of the legendary driver, the late Dale Earnhardt, champion in his own right, and now Certified Defender of Pop Punk. A few years ago Earnhardt was putting together a station on his streaming app, based off the Stone Temple Pilots, the type of alternative rock he had long favored since he grew up in the 90s, and he heard a track from Maryland’s The Dangerous Summer. It was a revelation. Sadly, by the time he’d been turned onto them, the band had broken up. Nonetheless, he reached out to the band’s AJ Perdomo, and a friendship developed that ultimately led in part to the band reforming this year. Earnhardt, who recently retired from driving, worked with the band on their video, “Ghosts,” produced by his film production company Hammerhead.

I talked to Jr. about his scene epiphany, being a fan of music, meeting Jay-Z and Beyoncé, and asked him to come to Emo Night.