“Civil Rebellion” doesn’t exactly conjure up ideas of Bainbridge Island, but the band’s working on it.

Singer Noah Wossene and lead guitarist Rowan Gano of rising pop-punk band Civil Rebellion are on a mission to make rock shows fun again.

“Pop-punk is all about energy and fun and being careless, which is something I really like as an artist and performer. I get bored if I’m playing music that doesn’t energize me.” Wossene said. “You’ve gotta make something they’ll remember.”

Gano added, “The whole thing is about making people feel something.”

The two have been close friends since kindergarten, when they met in the nurse’s office. Gano, a Type 1 diabetic, needed help taking insulin, while Wossene would fake illness to get out of school. They hit it off, and independently started to develop an interest in music. Both are lifelong guitarists, and Wossene has been writing songs since he was a kid.

“My mom is in the music industry, so the demon has always been inside me,” he joked.”I was always listening to music, and I wanted to use the only instrument that you can make — your voice. My favorite is freewriting. You can make the argument that it is just poetry at the end of the day.”

Gano describes his style as a “papier-mache collage” of all the bits and pieces of other music and guitarists that he’s ever been inspired by, “all Frankenstein-ed together.” His mentor, Bradley Tatum, helped him identify certain chords and harmonies from songs he was interested in, which helped him build his ideal sound.

After a brief spell at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Gano returned to BI to throw his weight behind Civil Rebellion. The band has a steady calendar of gigs, mostly in Seattle, which has its pros and cons, the bandmates said.

Seattle’s musical impact on the world is strongly rooted in the grunge and punk scene of the 1980s and ‘90s. The coarse, edgy sounds of DIY punk swept the world for about a decade before tipping out of the zeitgeist. Legendary Seattle venues—like the Central Saloon, Linda’s Tavern and Moore Theater— have pictures all over the walls of the big grunge acts that got their start on the local stages: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and more. The scene has fundamentally changed, but there’s still elements of its presence, Wossene and Gano said.

For example, production studios in Seattle that specialize in pop-punk are harder to come by, which means bands still have to record everything themselves, adding an “open, garage rock sound” to the music, Wossene said.

“There are remnants of that era, but the grunge heart is not as much there. There’s some bands who still write that kind of stuff, but it comes off as a bit posey,” Wossene said. “The scene has gotta provide something new.”

Gano agreed. “There’s never been a genre that has come back from the dead, exactly how it was. You can’t make the same dish with different ingredients.”

Riffing on Gano’s analogy, Wossene said: “I’d go so far as to say Seattle needs a clean pot. It’s rusty.”

But it’s not just the type of music that’s popular — it’s the fans, too. Seattle audiences are notoriously stiff and cold — which means that Civil Rebellion has to work harder to catch people’s attention, the bandmates said.

“It only takes forty seconds to make a show memorable, and to show the band that you’re having a good time,” Gano said. “We’ve found that it helps break the ice to lead as an example.”

Once, when Civil Rebellion was watching another rock band play to a stone-faced audience, they decided to start a miniature mosh pit in front of the stage—just the four of them pushing each other around for one song. It made the band’s night, Gano said. Another time, Civil Rebellion was playing a venue in Pioneer Square when a Mariners fan, fresh from a game, stumbled into the show.

“We were playing a slow number, and he was swaying and kept going, ‘Bro, so true!’ every other line,” Wossene recalled, laughing. “That’s what creative ecosystem in Seattle needs — more lively people! More people who are young and dumb.”

Civil Rebellion will play at 8 p.m. Sept. 4 at the Sunset Tavern in Seattle, 5433 Ballard Ave. NW. Cost is $15.