"Our name is really just a bad inside joke," said Johnathan Coody, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for the Georgia punk-rock band Ninja Gun, which will perform Saturday at The Atlantic, located at 15 N. Main St.
Coody said the name Ninja Gun came to him one night when he was wasted. His roommate, then a cartoonist, drew two mysterious pictures on the window. One of them looked like a stylized ninja wielding a gun. The other one looked like a frog, kind of - or maybe a vagina. Coody was struck by inspiration.
"I knew that a band called Pussy Frog wouldn't sell many records," he said. "But the ninja seemed to look really cool."
The show starts at 9 p.m., and the band will play songs from its newest album, "Restless Rubes," combined with new material no one has heard before.
"A rube is an untraveled, unworldly country boy," Coody said. "Restless Rubes is about us being a bunch of dirt road kids from southern Georgia. We wanted to get out and see stuff."
Ninja Gun's music is an eclectic mix of styles, Coody said. It was influenced by "old country stuff," like Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Bobby Gentry and Led Pierce, as well as old-school punk - The Damned, The Clash, the Buzzcocks, Black Flag and others.
When the band performs live, he said, it sounds more stripped down but still melodic - "more like a loud punk band."
"Popular music today is corporate bullshit," Coody said. "Everything sounds exactly the same."
The members of Ninja Gun all grew up in the South, which Coody described as oppressive. They wanted to distance themselves from the "close-minded, racist, white-Republican, Christian conformity" while still holding on to the cool stuff.
"There's a lot of willful ignorance there," Coody said. "You just work the right job, go to the right church, and you're fine. If you state your opinion and it doesn't fit the mold, you're ostracized."
Their frustration shows in some of their songs, such as "Red State Blues."
"In this pleasant state of bright red, I'm legendarily alone," the band sings, "Here on the narrow path that we tread, we can tell when right is wrong."
After moving around and playing music in unfamiliar towns, Coody experienced a culture shock whenever he returned home. He would find himself in a peanut field, picking out weeds all by himself. His state of mind led him to write the song "Eight Miles Out."
"That song's about sitting around and waiting for something to happen," he said. "Trying to further whatever you do - whatever it is that you love."
Coody began writing songs when he was 16. A year later, he joined the Bleeding Gum Drops, a Ramones-style punk band. He wrote his first song, "Midnight at Magee's," about a waitress he liked at Waffle House.
Jeffrey Haineault, drummer for the Bleeding Gum Drops, would later join Coody and play for Ninja Gun. They met Thad Megow and Jacob Sparks, who were then part of an instrumental band called Caspian, at a local punk show.
"We invited them out to jam," Coody said. "It sounded good. So here we are."
Sparks and Megow now play bass and guitar, respectively, with Coody and Haineault. Together, they formed what is now Ninja Gun.
The Ninja Gun image stayed in his head for years until it was time to name his band. Its first album, "Smooth Transitions," was released in 2004.
"It (the album) is about that time in your mid-20s when you're clueless," Coody said. "You're lost, and you don't know what to do with your life."
At about that time, Coody said his brother was hitting 30 with a stable life and a respectable job. Coody, meanwhile, was "driving around in the van, eating shit and starving." He gave up a sense of security embodied by dental insurance and 401(k)s so he could travel and make music.
"It's not practical to write songs for a living," Coody said. "I went to college and had a respectable job until about a year ago."
Coody's job was to represent a restoration company. He spoke to insurance companies about the effects of fire, mold and water damage on houses. It was, as he put it, "the most soul-crushing thing you could ever do."
"How much can you really say about mold?" he said.
In Ninja Gun's travels, the members witnessed a fight in North Carolina. It started at a local Waffle House after they waited an hour without getting food. A member of one of the bands they toured with began to complain about something. Another member of the same band slapped him in the face with a plastic dolphin named Dante.
"It started this massive fistfight," Coody said. "We had to get the hell out of there without our food, just because someone got slapped with a dolphin."
The members also recalled camping out in California under the shade of redwood trees. They often camped out and had bonfires in between shows.
"That was the first time we ever camped out on tour," Coody said. "We were surrounded by 3,000-year-old trees. It was magical, you know?"
Ninja Gun spent five days on their first album, "Smooth Transitions," and "Restless Rubes" took over a year. The album art, a distorted peach in the shape of a heart, was originally hand-drawn by Uri Garcia, the guitar technician for Against Me!, a band from Gainesville.
"It's a symbol," Coody said. "We still love the South. It's a pretty place with a lot of room for kids to run and explore. We want to make sure it doesn't get completely taken over by, well, dumb people, you know?"
Besides Ninja Gun, bands Watson and The Tim Version will play Saturday at The Atlantic.
"There will always be punk rock," Coody said, "even if it's not in a form that sells. There's been a good, underground, independent punk scene ever since the '70s."
