Danko Jones – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Russ P
Sunday, 27 September 2015 03:00
For the more discerning Uber Rocker out there Canadian rockers Danko Jones will surely need no introduction. The power trio are currently out on the road in Europe (completing a series of 9 UK dates in Bristol tonight) in support their all new ‘Fire Music’ LP, originally released back in February of this year on New Damage. Here Russ P catches up with the Mango Kid himself, and finds out exactly what it is that still keeps the band firing on all cylinders after all these years, as they talk about; discovering new music, doing karaoke for ex Celtic Frost members, and searching for that perfect guitar tone. All you have to do to enjoy all if this, and more, is read on
Hi Danko thanks for taking the time to talk with Uber Rock today. You’re out on the road promoting your latest album ‘Fire Music’ – what’s the feeling like in the Danko camp about the new album?
Oh. We finished and mastered in August of 2014 but it didn’t get released until February of this year so there was six months of us just waiting for people to hear it – very anxiously waiting. Now that it’s been out for seven months the reviews are pretty much 90, 95, 98 per cent positive which is unusual for us. We were not used to those kind of reviews for records we’ve been putting out for the last…almost 19 years…so this is new. We’re happy.
What about the songs? Are these really the most pissed off songs you’ve ever written?
Well, that’s a theme that’s happened. On all of our records there’s at least two or three of those kinds of songs – always has been. So the theme isn’t new. I guess there’s a lot of them on one album and aggressively so. So yeah it could be viewed as our angriest record although I’ve been in angrier states on past records.
Like when?
‘Born A Lion’ was one that yielded a lot of anger and ‘We Sweat Blood’… [laughs] …all of them almost. There’s always something you can find to channel that kind of feeling.
When are your angry moments? Because I’ve listened to your podcasts and you’re obviously not angry 24/7.
Well, one of the reasons I started to do the podcasts was…well there’re several reasons…the first one being that I really like the medium. But another reason apart from that was to show a different side of me. I’ve been singing aggressively in front of people and screaming in their faces whether it was accompanied by music or not. When I meet people off-stage I constantly get this: “oh – you’re like two different people” – well no I’m not. I mean I get on stage and I’m in front of a bunch of people staring at me and that’s a kind of an aggressive act to begin with. So you react in that way…that’s how I react. But if I was like that off-stage 24 hours a day to my friends then I would have no friends. Doing the podcast has allowed, as much as I would allow, to show a different side of me. One that’s very subdued and relaxed at home – because I do them at home for the most part unless I’m on tour and I happen to have a microphone with me. So that’s really how I am at home. People have trouble matching that with what they see on stage and what they hear on record but I am not one person. I am not in one mood all the time. I don’t wake up in one mood [laughs].
And talking of your podcasts which has been your favourite so far?
There’s been 107 uploaded so far so it’s hard to choose but if I had to choose one…I would probably choose two [laughs]. One would be Henry Rollins. Doing one with Henry was really, really scary for a couple of reasons, mainly because I’ve been listening to the guy since I was 15, plus he didn’t really want to do it in the beginning. So couple that together and you’ve got a scary podcast. But in the end he turned out to be great. And then Scott Thompson from The Kids In The Hall came over to my place and I had to cut it down cause it was like a two and half hour podcast and then we ended up hanging out for another two hours after the podcast so it was a whole day spent with Scott. I enjoyed that a lot.
I loved the Martin Ain podcast by the way…
[laughing] Oh yeah that was great too!
The Karaoke From Hell thing he does looks quite surreal….
Actually later on that day – someone posted it online – I did end up singing a few songs. We did the podcast at the Greenfield festival where he had a tent where he was doing the Karaoke From Hell in another part of the festival grounds. And so later that day I ended up doing a couple of songs with the band. And it’s on YouTube.
So how did that feel, performing in a different environment to your band?
Ah it’s fun. I have a blast. It’s fun doing our songs but you do them every night and it’s also very well rehearsed because we play them over and over again. But it’s fun to just knock out these songs with these guys at the drop of a dime [laughs]. So I did ‘Rebel Yell’ and I think that they wanted me to do a Stones song…I don’t know if it was ‘Brown Sugar’ or ‘Jumping Jack Flash’…they said: “Why don’t you do ‘Jumping Jack Flash’”? It wouldn’t have been my first pick but then I looked on the list…I think the crowd wanted another one…so I just said: “Let’s do ‘Rebel Yell’”. So that was my choice and that went over great too.
Celtic Frost were true mavericks though weren’t they? Who would you say are the real mavericks in the here and now?
Oh there are a lot bands that are still pushing envelopes if it can be believed. And I find that it’s not in rock and roll. Rock and roll is a genre that’s very well laid out by now in 2015 and I don’t see too many bands pushing envelopes because I don’t think there are too many envelopes to push anymore but in metal there’s just so much open space. Bands like Liturgy – they’re putting out records that are wild. I think their new album ‘The Ark Work’ is really, really cool. In terms of pushing boundaries out there I think that what they do is really weird and cool. Animals As Leaders are great, Scale The Summit in that same vein are great. Those are the first to come to mind. And there’s Mastodon and Torture.
I know you have a lot of time for new bands – you’ve got Giuda out with you and you have The Amorettes out with you on the upcoming UK dates. We are huge supporters of new music here at Uber Rock…who else does Danko Jones recommend we check out right now?
I love Royal Thunder I think their album that they put out this year on Relapse is going to be my favourite album of the year. They’re on their second album does that qualify? It’s called ‘Crooked Doors’. Mojave Lords they put out a record called ‘Unfuckwithable’ and it’s desert music so it’s very Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal – that’s a great album. Tad Doyle from the band Tad has a new outfit out. They’ve been around for a few years but they put out their first full length LP this year on Neurot Recordings – Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth. Moon Duo are a great band. I like Alabama Shakes. Zu from Italy put out a record called ‘Cortar Todo’ on Ipecac that’s a great album. The Night Flight Orchestra – which is Bjorn Strid from Soilwork’s AOR rock band – they’re great, it’s a throwback band but it’s great. I like The Ex from Holland a lot – anything they’ve done I pretty much like it – they just have so much stuff it’s hard to keep up. Algiers put out a record this year. Cherubs reunited strangely enough and put out a record. Yeah, so there are lots of bands out there.
Do you find yourself gravitating towards record shops when you’re out on tour?
I didn’t for a long time. I actually sold a lot of records for personal reasons and I was scaling stuff down. I sold 400 records back in 2006/2007 and I just kept the stuff that meant a lot to me for sentimental value. But in the last three years I’ve started to buy vinyl again. Feverishly almost. And it’s not because I’ve been caught up in the vinyl resurgence. It’s just because I got back into an old habit. But in answer to your question “yes and no”. They weigh your luggage down and they’re so awkward to carry. And sometimes, if it’s a valuable record, you want to carry it by hand through security, through the airport and you can’t put it in the overhead locker. These are all small little things that I’ve had to sit there and think about to the point where I try not to go deliberately looking for record stores. If there’s a record store across from the club where we’re playing at perhaps then I’ll go. But you have to really convince me that I need this album. Usually it doesn’t take that much convincing but yeah it’s a tough, tough thing [laughs].
Back to you guys now and you and JC have been joined by Rich Knox for this record, you seem to have a knack of attracting great drummers…
Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing. Standards are high but we’ve been lucky to get some good ones.
Eric Ratz worked with you on ‘Fire Music’, he was involved in the formative days of Danko too. Why did you choose Eric for this record and what did he bring to the party?
Like you know we’ve known Eric since ’99 when he engineered some of the songs that ended up on our compilation ‘I’m Alive And On Fire’. So we’ve known Eric for a while and we started working with other people and we didn’t really keep in touch. And then I had Scott Middleton from Cancer Bats come over to my place and he brought over, not this new record cause he did it with Ross Robinson, but the previous record and we listened to it and we talked about Eric who produced that and I go: “I know Eric from back in the day”. And I really, really dug Scott’s guitar tones on that Cancer Bats record he did. I just said: “These tones are what I’ve been wanting to get”. And I’ve always felt that we’re 95 per cent there but that extra 5 per cent really bugs me that I’m not getting the guitar tones that are in my head. So I heard Scott’s tones and I’m like: “This is it, this is matching what’s in my head”. And we haven’t really reached out to Ratz ever. JC had met up with Ratz like a year or two before and had a good reunion. So we kind of reconnected in an off-handed way. We were looking to change things up. ‘Rock And Roll Is Black And Blue’ was a tough album to make. And so we asked about Eric and he wanted to work with us and it’s been great. We laughed our asses off which is something that we didn’t do for ‘Rock And Roll Is Black And Blue’. Metaphorically we were black and blue by the end of that record. With Eric it was 180º opposite. It was like laughing and relaxing and that cultivated some really good takes.
So what was tough about the previous album?
Without getting in to it too much…I really hesitate to talk about people who aren’t really able to defend themselves…but there’s a reason why Rich Knox is in our band now and it’s a great reason. We’re very happy. Now when I hear certain songs played I go: “Oh, that’s the right way to play them”. And that’s a great feeling as well. By the time we went in to write and record ‘Fire Music’ he had already been in the band for about a year so we were all very comfortable with each other and it was great.
You were talking about the guitar tones on the new album. Do you find that you got to 100 per cent?
Oh yeah! There’s no part on the record where I cringe and go: “aaaarrrrrrggghhh” [laughs]
How did you get to this 100 per cent? What makes up this last 5 per cent? Guitars? Amps?
We’ll they’re very subtle things. It’s hard to describe. You just know it. You hear it. And it might not even be 100 per cent for ‘Fire Music’ maybe it’s more like 98 or 99. But it’s the closest sound that I’ve had on record to what’s in my head. And it was mainly because Eric is a rocker. We’re from the same area of the world. We know the same local bands. We’re kind of the same age give or take a few years so I felt very comfortable with Eric because I’ve grown up around rockers like him.
Given the obvious influences on the new album, do you wake up one day thinking I’m going to be James Hetfield and the next day Glenn Danzig?
No, not at all [laughs]. I’ve been listening to Glenn Danzig since I was 14 years old. His body of work is in my blood at this point. He’s always been an influence on our music we’ve just never worn it on our sleeves as much. Every record, every time we go into the studio, every time we write a song there’s some sort of inflection or something and me and JC are big fans. Whenever I do something that’s reminiscent of something that he’s done we laugh about it and we keep it. I came up with the melody line and the riff of ‘Body Bags’ which is very reminiscent of the Misfits and that really set the tone of the whole album and we just went for it.
One of our guys saw your first shows in the UK with Backyard Babies, he wanted me to ask how close did you really come to being the one eyed Mango Kid?
Oh yeah…was I slapping my face on that tour? Maybe I was. Yeah, real close because it’s painless when your retina detaches. That’s why they always tell you to see the eye doctor. Usually people go to the doctor when they feel pain. But this was a painless thing. It was only because a close friend started yelling at me, she said: “Go to the doctor”. I just said: “Nah…I’m just tired”. And then I was just shocked by her reaction so I just went [laughs]. “Alright, I’ll go just to please you.” By that night I was at the hospital. “Oh!…yeah…now I recognise the signs.”
So looking back at your seven studio records to date Danko which one do you feel proudest of…and why?
You know I’m really proud of this record. I know people say that about the newest effort. But I am! The reviews speak for themselves. We’ve never had as many positive reviews for anything that we’ve ever done. Then there’s ‘We Sweat Blood’ which is a record we wrote when everyone said that it sucked and we didn’t have the songs and these songs were bad. And now I look back and I go: “that was one of the albums filled with great songs” and the people who were telling us it wasn’t good pretty much don’t know shit all. And then ‘Born A Lion’ was our first full length and it was something that took six years for us to do amidst, again, labels telling us we didn’t know how to write a song, industry people telling us we didn’t know how to write a song. Signing bands – personally now I can say…sucked – over us and who are not a band anymore. Man…I could tell you so much about [laughs]…we pretty much had the demos for ‘Born A Lion’ done…maybe it’s a double chorus at the end on the demo rather than on the record, maybe there’s a little bit more of an intro on one song than another but the demos for ‘Born A Lion’ were pretty much done. And I remember giving it to this one woman who was the President of a major label at the time, she’s no more in the industry – go figure, and she knew who I was and I knew who she was enough to call her up personally which is what I did after about a week or two after giving the demos to her. So I asked her what she thought and she said: “I don’t think that you have the songs here” and those were the songs that we still play every night all over the world. We’re still playing them and she’s not in the industry anymore. That’s the wall that we were up against for like five or six years, so putting out ‘Born A Lion’ when we did was very satisfying as well. So there are different reasons why I’m proud of certain records.
You hit the UK on Sept 18th for a 9 date tour – your first in many years – what’s kept you away?
No offers. The thing is, people in the UK – and people in other places too – who want to see us play, they think that we are in charge of inviting ourselves to everyone’s party. We don’t really book any shows unless there’s an offer on the table to come. I mean, I’d love to tour Australia but until someone goes: “Come to Australia” we can’t just book the plane tickets, book the club and expect the non-promoter who’s not bringing us over there to help promote the show. So now that there’s interest again in our band we’re coming back with a vengeance. Now that we’re getting attention in the press and things are aligning in a certain way for us on this record – we’re there! We’re not going to pass it up! We’ve never been like that. Any offer from the UK, since the beginning of this band, we’ve jumped on like a dog on ALPO. The Backyard Babies tour – one of the reasons that we took that tour immediately was because there was a UK leg in there. Earlier this year we had a tour booked in mainland Europe and then there was an offer to play London so we tagged it at the beginning of the tour. So that’s how it goes.
Well I’m personally happy to see you back.
We get it online, now that there’s social media these days – you hear people, I read people going: “Why aren’t you coming to the UK? Do you hate us?”. We’re sitting at home going: “Well do you hate us?” [laughs] I mean we can ask the question back but it’s not that and it’s not us hating and it’s not you guys hating…whether it’s someone overlooking us…sometimes you forget you know? Like it’s the same with me listening to records…”Oh my God I forgot about this band – they’re so great – let’s throw it on the record player.” That’s how it goes there’s just so many bands out there. So I’m not faulting the lack of offers – we’re always busy – but sometimes you kind of have to sit people down and say this is how the industry works. Tell me how your job works [laughs]. I don’t know how you walk into an office…what do you do? I’m lost in that world. So that’s fine…it’s all fair. That’s one thing that I knew, doing UK press, I would have to answer and I just want to make sure that everybody knows that we have not avoided the UK deliberately. Why would we not want to play a place that has yielded some of our favourite bands?
That’s true. Can you give us any idea of what musical delights await us Danko?
It’s hard for me to describe because the show, aside from the songs, is very spontaneous. The songs are really rehearsed but whoever shows up to the gig and whatever is said, whatever’s done or whatever foot I put in my mouth that night…is going to happen. We’ll play the songs that people know. Whether or not we play their favourite songs from ten albums…I don’t know…it’s really hard to pick a set list. It’ll be rock. We won’t whip out a symphony, we won’t bring out a rapper. I won’t have an acoustic guitar with me for the slow ballad sensitive part of the show. It’s just going to be all rockers from beginning to end.
Finally, as you’ve already alluded to, you have a reputation as being an avid collector of vinyl, from what you have left of your collection, what’s the most prized LP in your collection?
Having said that I’ve re-bought all the records…well I didn’t re-buy the records I sold…I’ve re-bought the number of records that I got rid of. So it’s back to normal. My most prized record…that’s really hard. It might be a Don Knotts comedy record or it might be The Beastie Boys ‘Cookie Puss’ that I found in a local shopping mall when I was 16…no…I must have been 20. They basically did not know what they had. I bought it for 5 bucks. I’m sure that I have a record that really means a lot to me that isn’t necessarily signed or rare but holds sentimental value for me.
Like you mentioned, back in the day you’d be buying records from weird shops. We had Boots Chemist here in the UK, and I used to buy lots of Cheap Trick from there.
Yeah, they didn’t really care or know what they were carrying. This one was a…I don’t know what they wanted to be…but there was a music element to the store and I just put it on the table and I was half-nervous they’d just tell me it was priced wrong. This was a pretty hard record to find. I believe it was on Rat Cage Records – on their original label – so I don’t know why they were selling it for 5 bucks. And it wasn’t as if it was at a time when The Beastie Boys were out of vogue – that weird time between ‘Paul’s Boutique’ and ‘Check Your Head’…no it was after ‘Check Your Head’. So it was just weird, weird times.
Do you remember what you did? Did you run out of the shop and straight home to play it?
Absolutely but I think I’ve only played that record – since I got it all those years ago – like 5 times – maybe not even 5 times. One time, I remember years ago…and it’s probably the last time it was played…I walked into my bedroom – cause I used to have my record player there – and my girlfriend at the time had picked out the ‘Cookie Puss’ record and was playing it and I just go: “What are you doing? You can’t play this record. This record does not get played” [laughs]. And I just took it off the needle, put it back in the jacket and I don’t think I’ve ever played it since. And she looked at me like: you are a FREEAAK! [laughs].
On that note, thanks for your time, it’s been a real pleasure to talk with you.
Same here.
Good luck with the UK tour and the European tour.
Thanks Russell.
Band photography courtesy of Dustin Rabin.
http://www.dankojones.com/fire-music/
https://twitter.com/dankojones
