The name Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops comes partly from an inside joke. In Kansas City, frontman Wheeler and bassist Jill McLain-Meister came across a group of three people living together who always wore security guard outfits and jokingly named them the “poly mall cops.” But the name also reflects the multiple drummers they went through and the difficulty of forming a band that’s the right fit.
The Mall Cops formed in 2016 after lead singer and guitarist Greg Wheeler’s previous project, the Wheelers, disbanded. Wheeler was looking to start a new band, and his partner, McLain-Meister, wanted to support him (the pair has been together 17 years now). So she learned bass with Wheeler’s help. (Fun fact: Barb Schilf of House of Large Sizes, arguably Iowa’s most famous punk rock band of the ’90s, also learned bass to play in HOLS with her partner, Dave Deibler.)
“When [the Wheelers] was coming to an end, I didn’t want to get back to the same spot where you invest time and energy into a project, things start winding down, and you feel obligated to call it a day because those identities make the band,” Wheeler said. “So that was part of the idea of calling it Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops. Poly [means] multiple partners, but you could also have it be a revolving door of musicians.”
Mall Cops’ current drummer Hutch joined the band in 2018. A professional barber, Hutch was once cutting Wheeler’s hair when it came up in conversation that he was a drummer. The band had been cycling through drummers, and luckily Hutch stuck — although he doesn’t cut Wheeler’s hair anymore since Wheeler grew it out.
They signed with Kansas City record label High Dive in 2022, and in March of last year, the Mall Cops put out their first full-length LP, Manic Fever — 12 songs and 24 minutes of high-energy punk rock grooves. The album flies by in a rush of headbanging and arm flailing so intense you won’t know what happened by the time it ends. And that’s the same vibe you can expect from their live show.
“We put a lot of energy into those songs and into our performances,” McLain-Meister said. “We want to leave the audience winded when we play live.”
This March, the Iowa punk rock trio will play a show at Wooly’s in Des Moines with San Francisco’s Deerhoof, a seminal indie/punk rock band Pitchfork writer Nick Sylvester once referred to as “the best band in the world.”
“I saw Deerhoof for the first time last year at 80/35, and it was just so mind blowing,” Hutch said. “I’m really excited to see [their drummer] again. Their bass player and lead singer; she’s insane. Their guitar players are insane. All night it’s gonna be this wall of music.”
Last year, Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops played 35 shows across the country in support of Manic Fever, and this year is looking just as jam-packed. They have some concerts lined up for the summer they can’t announce yet and a new LP coming late summer or early fall. A live tape of their 80/35 afterparty set at the Lift from last summer drops sometime in the spring.
At the Deerhoof show, the band plans to play through Manic Fever and preview some tracks from their upcoming LP (recorded live, punk-rock style, in their basement). Manic Fever, which was recorded just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, holds a special kind of mania. But the release that comes from dancing until you’re out of breath in a room full of strangers doing the same is universal to any time period or any hardship — and that’s what Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops want you to get from their music.
“When you drop a needle on it, it’s this wave of emotion you can connect with. You’re like, ‘Holy shit, yeah,’” said Hutch. “I’m just trying to keep my head above water right now. I’m just trying to not let this manic world drag me down with it.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s March 2024 issue.
