The Danko Jones frontman on not going to festivals, not going out, not getting any awards and putting in the air-guitar hours.
Since forming in 1996, Toronto’s Danko Jones have thrived on volume – and on the visceral energy of being in rooms together. So when the pandemic forced them to make their previous album Power Trio entirely remotely, it paved the way for a new creative mode. “When I heard Blue Jean, Denim Jumpsuit, which was the first song we wrote apart from each other, it blew me away,” the titular frontman says. “It’s one of our favourite songs we’ve ever written. It had a groove, a bounce, everything in my head that I wanted to hear.”
Accordingly, their new album Electric Sounds, a fiery fistful of Motörhead-meets-Misfits punk’n’roll, was made in the same way (save a few jam sessions last summer).
We caught up with Jones in Budapest as the band hit the European festival circuit.
Can you remember the first festival you went to as a punter?
I don’t really go to them. The only one I ever did was the first Lollapalooza in Toronto, with Jane’s Addiction and Siouxsie And The Banshees and Butthole Surfers and Body Count. I admire everyone at festivals and I’m happy that everyone attends, but I am not made for that. I’m really… ‘a tight-ass’ is a nice way of putting it.
Festivals are quite a specific environment, to be fair.
Well, my nickname at home is the Great Indoorsman, if that tells you anything. I think a lot of musicians are. The fact that I perform the way I do was due to a lot of hours spent at home in my room listening to music, wanting to be on stage and playing air guitar. I heard that to get good at something you have to spend ten thousand hours on it, and I’m like: “I got that doubled with the air guitar.”
Electric Sounds opens with the lyric: ‘Guess who’s back? Me, motherfucker.’ Who are you singing that to?
Good question. A lot of different groups. I mean, we live in an age of social media where anyone’s gonna lob over their uninformed opinion to anybody and everybody. Putting myself out there I’ve been subjected to a lot of comments, so that group. A lot of people who like our music already, that group. People who don’t like our music. I’m standing my ground when it comes to certain things, and I’m not leaving and no one’s scaring me away.
Good Time is a catchy, feelgood highlight. Besides rock’n’roll, what makes a good time for you these days?
Barbecuing. That really sounds like a shitty answer, but it’s a truthful answer. I’m pretty one-track-minded. My head is always into music and rock’n’roll and collecting records and trying to find new bands. Pretty much nothing outside of that really interests me.
In the accompanying video there’s a karaoke theme. Do you have a go-to karaoke number?
Candle
