In Defense of Ska Ep 146: Flying Raccoon Suit (Jessica Jeansonne, Andrew Heaton)

Hard Times recently declared Flying Raccoon Suit to be the best ska band out of Mississippi. But, as good as they are, they don’t have a lot of competition—they don’t live in an area filled with ska or punk bands. But part of their charm is this very thing—they bring different influences and life experiences to ska.

This is especially apparent in their new highly diverse album, Moonflower, which was released on Bad Times Records on November 3rd. This week, we bring on FRS members Andrew Heaton and Jessica Jeansonne to discuss the band’s history, life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and their excellent new record. 

But we also talk about Garfield, Jessica’s cartoon character voices, how Andrew plays guest horn in every band, growing up steeped in jazz, and how they searched high and low for the weirdest pizza on tour. 

We also talk about NOFX’s “Darby Crashing Your Party” music video, which took its premise from Flying Raccoon Suit’s “Swan Song” video. We talk about guest horn player Eric Molina getting stuck in Canada. And we talk about Duck’s upcoming horror movie, Amityvillenado. 

Plus, we learn the truth about Flying Raccoon Suit: They’re just a bunch of anxious goobers. 

If you’d like to support us and listen to early access, ad-free episodes with bonus content, check out our Patreon! 

If you like our theme song, go download the EP Lives by Slow Gherkin. They wrote the opening and closing songs for our podcast. You can get both tunes from their Lives EP. Also, check out Dan P and the Bricks two LPs. They provided the mid-roll ad transition music. 

Support the In Defense host Aaron Carnes by purchasing a copy of his book, In Defense of Ska. The 2nd, expanded edition of In Defense of Ska will release in Oct 2024. 

Co-host Adam Davis has a band called Omnigone. Their latest record, Against The Rest released on March 31, 2023. 

The In Defense of Ska editor Chris Reeves runs a record label called Ska Punk International. They have new releases coming out all the time.