CN: So, how many more shows did you do after that?

JD: After that show, we did, probably about, 10 to 15 maybe…

CN: Really? Did you have a good time on that tour?

JD: I did. The whole thing was kinda cool. We ended up getting off their tour and doing our little one-off things, and we did the Jersey Skate and Surf festival that was really rad…

CN: I know. I wanted to go to that because I wanted to see Bouncing Souls, but ya know, ya can’t do everything. That show was kind of strange, though, because you guys have so much energy and then The Exies were so different, and the Everclear crowd was so much older.

JD: It really was. Man, it was really weird. I mean, basically we got off because, I mean, you don’t choose who you play in front of, or anything like that, but the crowd was kind of looking at us like we were kidding.

CN: Like you were kidding?

JD: Yeah.

CN: I though you guys were the best ones on the bill…

JD: Thank you.

CN: I mean, you had energy. You had fun.

JD: I appreciate that. Thank you.

CN: I mean, The Exies are okay, but they’re a little more sing-a-long pop, and I like the grittier stuff.

JD: That’s the thing. Everyone’s really cool on the tour. The bands are really cool. The techs are really cool. You know, we like fucking with the crowd and pretty much go down there and there’s quite a bit of playing.

CN: Yeah, I bet. So, you’re home now right?

JD: Only a couple of days.

CN: Only a couple of days?

JD: Just a couple of days.

CN: And where you going?

JD: We’re picking up the morning of the 14th I believe, we’re doing our headlining tour up in California.

CN: Through California?

JD: Yeah. It’s going to be called “The This Will Get Messy Tour”. It’ll get messy.

CN: You’re going to have to talk up a little bit. You’re on a regular phone, right?

JD: Yeah, I’m on a regular phone. I spoke to a lot of guys last night, so I lost my voice.

CN: Oh. Well that happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I went to the Metal Gods show.

JD: Sweet.

CN: Halford, you know. Trying to sing along with him, you’ll lose your voice everytime.
Hahaha. You were the last one to get in the band, right?

JD: No. No. No. I was actually [pause] wait. That was so long ago. It was kind of like, we all came together. We all formed the band at the exact same time.

CN: Right.

JD: We started out with Bill and Jerry just jamming out with us and Jim on the drums, just sort of messing around with us. We were sitting around in Jerry’s house one day. We were 14 years old. I was playing in a group back home called DEA and I couldn’t sing for shit. You know. I could play guitar. I couldn’t do anything really, but you can still build on that. You can build on that at least a little bit. They had a couple of tunes. They were kinda messing around and I sat down with them and just kind of sang along. He asked if I wanted to be a singer and start a band with him. I was like ‘sure’. I was like ‘sure, let’s start a band. I might have to move back to Wyoming for a bit, but when I come back a year later we’ll do it’.

CN: So, yeah. You were like 14, 15. What was the scene like in Wyoming that you were into.

JD: There was like, nothing at all. You’d think there would be like tumbleweeds and dust and that’s exactly where I was living. We were there maybe like, five or four of us. There were pretty much four of us that stayed in town.

CN: Right.

JD: The rest were a bunch of cowboys who got drunk all the time.

CN: That’s why I was just wondering because I know there’s a lot of cowboys up there.

JD: It was crazy. I don’t know. It was literally four of us. We were about an hour away from Salt Lake City and Utah as well.

CN: Right.

JD: That was pretty much where we’d go if we wanted to do a show.

CN: Okay. Well being like 14, 15. I mean hell, your voice had just changed, so it really wasn’t quite mature to sing like you do now, I guess.

JD: Oh yeah and I had no idea how to use…

CN: Hang on. There’s a jet plane going over. I’m in New York City, so we get all kinds of noise…Yeah, um, so like I said your voice probably hadn’t matured yet totally.

JD: Yeah yeah, like I said I really didn’t use it at all. You know, I had no idea that I could even sing. You know, especially back then. it was like the less serious sounding for me

CN: Right. Well, usually when you form something it’s for fun. And then once you find out you can really do it. You’re like, ‘well maybe I can turn this fun into a job. That way I really don’t have to work.

JD: Yeah.

CN: That’s why I do what I do.

JD: Totally.

CN: Let me not lie.
.
JD: No, right. Nothing wrong with loving what you do.

CN: So, what kind of stuff have you been listening to lately?

JD: Actually, I’ve been listening to lately a lot of Bouncing Souls. They’re good. One of my favorite records is “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”.

CN: Yeah, it’s a really good one. Actually, I’m waiting for their new one to come out.

JD: Actually there’s a local band I listen to a lot. They’re called Jack Move. They gave me a demo and I’m really diggin it.

CN: Oh, that’s really cool. So, you have so many different influences between you and the other guys in the band. When it comes to writing. You know, seeing other writers file off quite a few names. You know, Alternative Press was not exactly nice in the way they reviewed your record, saying it was totally derivative.

JD: [Laughs] Okay.

CN: Huh?

JD: [Laughs]

CN: But, you know. I don’t feel it’s anything bad that you’re doing. I actually like your record. You do it better than a lot of other people. So, how do all your different influences between you guys, I mean, how does that affect the song writing. Who writes first?

JD: Actually, it all depends. When you say like between you guys, I used to do the first part of the writing and then I’d take it to the guys and just show them what I’d come up with. It all depends. I mean, a lot of times I’ll sit down on the guitar and start writing a riff and find a vocal pattern that will go really well with it and then I’ll show Bill and Bill will write on the guitar riff to make it a little trickier or more simplistic. Whatever the case may be.

CN: Right

JD: And, ah, we’ll do that back and forth. He’ll think of a lick and then record it and I’ll take it home and I’ll listen to it and come up with some ideas and then bring it back to him and we all shoot it back and forth. Lately, actually, during our song-writing Jim’s been putting in a little more for writing as well. A lot of the new songs are going to be more technical. It’s gonna be a little tighter, the various writing from the drum parts to the guitar.

CN: Well. What you do already is pretty tight, but you’ve had some of these songs for a while, so they should be tight. If they aren’t somebody needs to shoot ya, right?

JD: [Laughs]

CN: But I know you used a lot of them from your EP on this first record. How many did you have out of all you wrote, left over that you’re going to have for the second one?

JD: You mean new songs?

CN: Yeah, or are you going to have to write it on the road, which sometimes can be the kiss of death for the second record.

JD: Yeah, that’s actually what we’ve been doing. We’ve been writing a lot on the road. We have…we’ve got enough songs, we just want to try to avoid writing anything we’ve written in the past. We want to write all brand new stuff.

CN: So, um, you obviously have a tour bus now, right?

JD: No. We have an RV.

CN: Well, at least it’s not a van. [Laughs].

JD: Oh yeah.

CN: [Laughs] We’re I’m going with that is do you actually have like an 8-track in the back that you put things down on while you’re traveling or do you just jam back and forth while you’re sitting around.

JD: Yeah, mostly jam back and forth while we’re sitting around

CN: I know a lot of metal bands used to put 8-tracks in the back lounge of the bus.

JD: Yeah.

CN: They do it that way cause they found the same thing. You’re on the road. You’re going from place to place. You’ve got to do your press. You’ve got to be on onstage. You’ve got to do your meet and greets and you forget shit.

JD: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.

CN: [Laughs] And then the next morning, you’re like ‘what was it? What was it?’.

JD: Yeah, seriously. You’re like ‘doh’ (imitating Homer Simpson). At least we try and carry around a little tape-recorder. One of those little hand-held ones, you know?

CN: Right.

JD: To get the basic idea.

CN: Right.

JD: Vocal patterns.

CN: So, did you ever take any vocal lessons or did you like sing in choir when you were in school or church or whatever?

JD: No, I mean a little bit. In 8th grade I tried the choir…it sucked so I dropped out of it. When we were out in L.A. when we were recording the album out there and I took one vocal lesson and the guy told me pretty much exactly what I already knew, and I was like ‘okay that was a waste of time.’ Cause you know, everything that I kept on doing that he was telling me to do or whatever it sounded like shit to me.

CN: Right. So, how did the deal come with Lava

JD: We met up with Gregg Nadel, actually. He came out to see us play in Phoenix, a home show.

CN: Right.

JD: You know, cause we were gettin’ some spins here on the Edge 106.3, and he had actually, I guess, they have a track that shows what is getting played and how many spins they have and on that it said our name and next to it said ‘unsigned’. So, I think that caught their attention and they wondered who the band was that was getting all these spins. So, he came out to a couple of our shows and he met up with us and it kind of went from there.

CN: That’s a good thing. I think this year, it’s gonna be punk and hardcore. It’s gonna be bigger. There’s a lot of old metal stuff coming out that’s going to be very big this summer too, but you’ve hit on the edge that’s a little, a lot more underground than, like, All American Rejects and all that pop stuff that’s going on. I think it’s more the meat of what people really want, but still commercial.

JD: Yep.

CN: So, I think you’ve hit the right direction.

JD: Yeah, thanks a lot.

CN: They say that Pennywise is one of your influences. Who in the band listens to them?

JD: I do actually. Actually all of us do. I mean, the reason I started off is cuz I showed them to Bill, and Bill wasn’t really into ‘em at first—this was back in the day—Bill was more into like, Black Flag punk, ya know?

CN: Right.

JD: So, uh, he wasn’t really into melodic punk, and stuff like that, so, uh, he was more about…

CN: What’s the one type of music that you listen to that is your guilty pleasure.

JD: Guilty pleasure?

CN: Yeah.

JD: Well, I don’t know. Punk rock stuff, probably.

CN: Oh, you listen to only punk rock stuff?

JD: Pretty much. I go on stage and I like stuff that really gets me going.

CN: Right.

JD: That gets me fired up, so definitely punk is the choice.

CN: Was it Jim that was saying he liked hiphop?

JD: Yeah, Jim does. Jim’s really into hip-hop. I like hip-hop as well, but he’s REALLY into hip-hop. He’s got turntables and he’s got records.

CN: Right. Well, the beat, you know, DJ-ing, drumming. It’s all counting. So, how long did it take you before you really began singing well, because you said you weren’t so good when you started.

JD: I don’t know. Looking back at the tapes and stuff back when I thought I was decent, I really wasn’t that good. I think I really started learning my voice a little better, it was probably last two years. I wouldn’t think twice about it, just about having a great show and having fun and now I enjoy sounding a little better. I actually want kids to hear the songs too. Whereas back then, I really didn’t care if they heard anything. It was all about being emaciated. Being stoned.

CN: Exactly. It’s hard to do the same thing every night and do it to the same level of perfection every night.

JD: Yeah.

CN: Yeah. It’s difficult. A guitar player can just pick up his guitar and go out there. You gotta not only sing, you have to do your meet and greets and do interviews, so you’re actually wearing out your instrument sometimes.

JD: Partying never helps.

CN: [Laughs] Partying never helps? Is that what you said?

JD: Yep.

CN: I had a friend who realized that the best thing to do, especially now in the warmer weather is to not be anywhere near around air-conditioning.

JD: Oh, that’s right.

CN: And so, he would sleep in the back lounge of the bus with the windows open and the rest of the bus would be air-conditioned.

JD: Oh man.

CN: Yeah, but he sounded great every night. I mean even the goddess Aretha Franklin will not play in a venue with the air-conditioning on. When she did the Divas at the Beacon Theatre a few years back. You know, it’s like May or June whenever they do that thing she made them turn off the air-conditioning in the entire venue for sound-check. And the when she was checking she started breaking from the stage, because she’s like ‘this air-conditioning is on.’ She was not playing about it, I’m tellin’ ya. But look how good her voice is even at her age.

JD: Good point.

CN: When you moved from Wyoming to Arizona you had been doing what? Summer-ing there with your Dad or something?

JD: Yeah, exactly.

CN: So, you kind of knew some people in the scene, but what was the biggest change when you moved there full-time.

JD: That there was a scene.

CN: Are you older or younger than the other guys in the band?

JD: I’m the youngest in the band.

CN: That’s what I thought. They’re what, a year or two older than you?

JD: Actually, Jim is right around my age. He just turned 24. I turn 24 in September. The other guys, they’re 24, 25.

CN: I see. Now, on your album you have that song called “Mesa Town”. Ah, tell me about “Mesa Town”. What’s it like in the town that you’re from? What’s the scene like and how are you guys a part of it for the past few years?

JD: It’s kinda, kinda like a ghetto.

CN: [LAUGHS] No way, I live in East Harlem.

JD: Oh, you’ve got the ghetto.

CN: [LAUGHS} I’ve got the ghetto. This is the only punk/metal/hardcore online magazine in the world done from East Harlem.

JD: Oh, hell yeah.

CN: [LAUGHS] Gotta be hardcore. Anyway, so it’s a ghetto. It’s a pseudo-ghetto, right?

JD: It’s an Arizona ghetto.

CN: It’s an Arizona ghetto.

JD: It’s just like a dirty, little area. It’s all where we grew up. It’s not even like a cool place. Just something we grew up in, and we have a lot of memories. On every corner of the streets we’d find a cowboy…We’d kind of all go to our school…then we’d go to the next school, like there are so many little schools all over the place. There was this place The Nile Theatre.

CN: Okay. You did all ages things right?

JD: Yeah. Did all ages things all the time.

CN: Did you ever get to play in a bar when you were underage?

JD: Yeah, we did, but we got kicked out, of course, like right when we were playing. If not, when we were done playing.

CN: Oh.

JD: There were times when we’d flick the lights on and tell us to get the hell out of there and there’d be like no one in the bar and we’d still be playing.

CN: [Laughs].

JD: The bartender was putting the chairs up on the bar when the lights were coming on.

CN: [Laughs].

JD: ‘We’re not done playing yet.’ We wanted to play. We didn’t want to go the school. We wanted to play there.

CN: Right. Who were some of the major bands you opened up for in those days?

JD: Back in the day we were actually really fortunate to open up for a lot of great bands, but the problem was we were big ourselves so I don’t think it made an impact on any of the people who came to the shows, but back in the day…we had a buddy who worked at the Nile, his name is Shane and he was doing the Boogiemen and he did the Vandals, Suicide Machines. This is all back in the day. Just cool for us to play with bands and just watch the show.

CN: Yeah, D.O.A. is comin’ around soon.

JD: That stuff I’m getting into now.

CN: You’re just getting into that stuff?

JD: Because I was so young, I wasn’t raised on like Bad Brains or anything like that, you know what I mean?

CN: You see its unfortunate you’re so young because the hardcore matinees on Sunday afternoons at CBGB’s here in the city were most excellent. You’d go see Minor Threat, and on the same bill you’d have Government Issue, Minor Threat, Prong, Token Entry, who else… Bad Brains would play, 24-7 Spyz, all these crazy different bands.

JD: I really did miss out then, by the time I seriously got into that older stuff…

CN: It doesn’t seem like that much time has gone by, and I’m like, wait, this is classic punk? Oh, scary thought! You know I put on the classic rock station, and I heard the Ramones on it, and I was like “Oh my god, I’m old.”

JD: Haha, that’s awesome.

CN: So, did you guys end up being the biggest band in your local scene, or were there other bands that were at your level?

JD: We were doing well for ourselves. See that’s the weird thing, we didn’t try to be the most popular band. We always tried to build up the scene as a whole. That was a big thing with us, still is. Supporting the local scene and really trying to help the other bands be heard… We’re talking a bunch of our local friends with us. Show as much support as possible.

CN: Yeah that’s what Hatebreed does too.

JD: That’s cool.

CN: Jamie Jasta is a really cool guy. It’s the same kind of thing, he’s got his own little label that he puts bands out on.

JD: That’s what we’re hoping to do these days, try to start Zero Crew Records.

CN: That might be a smart idea. You know Joe from the Vandals has Kung-Fu records, he had the Ataris originally, he had Blink-182 originally. You can always help people out, and then let them go to that next level. Are you planning to come back to New York anytime soon, do you know?

JD: No, probably not anytime soon cause we’ve been on the east coast for about six months now, and I think we’re gonna start hitting the west a little more too. California, stuff like that, the Warped Tour too, about ten dates. And after that…

CN: Only the west coast? Too bad.

JD: I’m just stoked that I get to go on the Warped Tour, that’s something I used to go to as a kid.

CN: You did? When did you start going to the Warped Tour?

JD: 97. One of the raddest Warped Tours ever.

CN: Who was on that one?

JD: Rancid was on that, Bad Religion was on that…

CN: You like Bad Religion huh?

JD: I like Bad Religion a lot.

CN: What else was I gonna ask you… what’s your favorite song on your new CD?

JD: My favorite song is probably... “Passage in Time”.

CN: Really, I’m still stuck on that one I commented on.

JD: Was it “Everyday”?

CN: No, no… “One More Minute”. I am so stuck on that song.

JD: Awesome!

CN: And it just kills me because you sound so much like Hetfield when you do that “One more min-ute-ah!”

JD: That’s cool, thanks.

CN: I love that! It’s like, what if Hetfield sang for Sublime? That’s what it would sound like! I’m surprised nobody else has hit it, you know?

JD: I’ve heard a couple people say that about that Hetfield thing.

CN: It’s cool though!

JD: Thank you.

CN: You do a very good impersonation of him on that. I’m sure you didn’t try though.

JD: Yeah, it kinda threw me off when someone told me that, but I was like yeah, I guess it kinda does sound like that.

CN: Just when you go “hay-yah!” thing at the end, you know? (Laughing)

JD: HEY-YEAH! (Laughs)

CN: Who’s the surf nut? Who likes doing the surf stuff?

JD: Bill is really into surf guitar. He actually had a friend back in 96-95 who played a lot of surf guitar, and Bill told him that he hated surf guitar because he couldn’t play it. So he resented the guy.

CN: A push to try to learn it, right?

JD: Yeah, then when he started playing it, he loved it. All the fast tremelo picking

CN: Yeah, I love that stuff. I just got two really good surf CDs. One is by a band here in New York called the Coffin Daggers, and it’s the kind of surf that sounds like the theme from the Munsters TV show from the 60s.

JD: Oh, cool.

CN: And then I just got another one, Speedball Baby Jr.

JD: Are they from New York as well?

CN: I don’t know where they’re from… The label that sent them to me is from Belgium, but that doesn’t mean anything. They could be from anywhere. But um…do they have, besides Nile theater, there’s one, like, underground place, I mean, Nile theater is what, the biggest one?

JD: I mean it was actually, but it was closed down.

CN: Oh, really? So where is there to play around there now?

JD: Um…there’s shit um, um…around Mesa there’s actually nowhere to play. Um…so everyone just go just go to South Beach to play.

CN: Oh, wow.

JD: And that’s where the clubs are, where we would play every Thursday night and then every Sunday nights.

CNN: Mmm Hmm.

JD: So, uh…like, we’re actually playing tonight.

CN: Oh, you are! Gonna be a big homecoming show then, huh?

JD: In a sense. We’re actually playing under an alias.

CN: Really, what’s the alias?

JD: Bumpkin.

CN: Pumpkin?

JD: Bumpkin.

CN: Why?

JD: Really, cuz like, every tour we’ve been on, we’ve rolled up to, this, you know, this beat up gig oh, like barely made it there.

CN: Right.

JD: Really, like, you know, like Arbys.

CN: Uh huh.

JD: So, we always rolled up and like, we’re like, “dun de dun dun dun de de dun dun dun”.

CN: Haha. The Beverly Hilbillies.

JD: Totally. Like, we always rolled out and everybody got their nice buses and shit like that, and you know, we’re like, we always rolled up in um, I think cars and stuff like that.

CN: Yeah, but you’re saving cash, cuz you know how much those buses cost?

JD: Oh, it’s ridiculous man.

CN: Prevost and Eagle 15 costs a pretty penny.

JD: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. We’re um, we’re talking about not ever getting one because it’s freakin expensive.

CN: Yeah well, they lease them all, but the thing is, in every city because the Driver’s Union you gotta have a hotel room for him.

JD: Yeah.

CN: But even when you don’t have your own hotel room.

JD: Yeah that’s pretty…we can drive ourselves cuz we can do it. It’s not that big a deal, you know?

CN: Oh yeah, you have road crew that helps you drive, right?

JD: Yeah, we have a buddy of ours um…the road manager. He does most of the driving, but we have like, 20 uh, 30 hour drives, he does like, 8 hour shifts.

CN: Did you ever listen to anything outside of like punk/metal when you were younger?

JD: Metallica, Bon Jovi, Megadeth…

CN: Like stuff you heard about from older kids?

JD: Exactly yeah, like all the kids were like sixteen year-olds… Like my friends older brothers, they got us into that stuff. After that, I got into punk stuff, that’s important.

CN: Yeah, Wyoming seems like it would be a more metal place than a punk place.

JD: I had a buddy and he was in a band ?????, I didn’t really know anything, like, I skated with him and I got introduced to him cause he was in a band. He played bass. He was moving in with me, so I got his records and stuff like that, they had sort of a scene there. Like I was living with him

CN: So have you guys tried to get your songs on any video games or movies or anything yet?

JD: I don’t know, we’re kinda back and forth with stuff like that, its kinda sketchy. We’re working to try to stay underground as well as doing our thing, it’s a really hard thing to do, especially with the situation we’re in, like, there are a lot of opportunities out there, but like we don’t want to take every single one of them.

CN: What was the worst question you’ve ever been asked in an interview?

JD: The worst one, just because its so repetitive is about the initials of the band…

CN: Because its in your presskit four different times! Like it says, Authority Zero, their initials don’t only stand for the name of their band, but also where they’re from, Arizona.

JD: It’s like the college???? Gotta get that changed????

CN: I didn’t even equate it with Arizona actually, cause I’m an idiot, AZ, Authority Zero, OK. AZ… oh yeah, it DOES mean Arizona doesn’t it, DUH.

JD: (laughs)

CN: I saw the other weird questions the guy asked you, some crazy thing in the presskit where the guy said “Have you ever gotten so drunk that you dipped your nuts in milk and squatted over a box of kittens?” Who was that guy?

JD: I don’t remember.

CN: Yeah, he must be going for Stuttering John territory.

JD: Yeah, I was like, “what?”

CN: Like excuse me, backspace, delete?

JD: Yeah exactly, he had a couple like that…

CN: Here’s a good one, do you guys ever play pranks on each other on the road?

JD: When we played the Warped Tour we played with No Use for a Name. When we played our set, they came in our dressing room and rearranged all the furniture.
So when they went on stage, we took all their furniture, all of it, and hung on the ceiling during their set.
We got some really strong rips of rope and we took this couch, like a 160 lb couch that we tied to the ceiling, chairs… They were like “holy shit! That is the coolest thing I ever seen!”

CN: You bet, that would definitely take a while too. Do you ever play pranks on each other in the RV?

JD: Yeah, all of it has to do with farting.

CN: End of tour pranks, you ever do those? Like the last night of tour, metal bands will prank each other on stage.

JD: Yeah, we know that plenty of bands do it, but the tours we’ve been on, we always end up the band on the tour that actually does it. We were out on the PunkORama tour with Guttermouth and Gob. It was Gob’s last night on tour, so we fucked with their sound. We told their soundguy to destroy their sound, and turned the lights off on them. I guess they knew what was coming cause as we started doing our shit they started assing people, putting their asses right by people’s noses.

CN: You gotta do stuff on tour to have fun, because it gets so repetitive and you end up forgetting where you are sometimes.

JD: Oh bigtime. Like who the hells playing, what day is it?

CN: Tuesday? It must be Cleveland.

JD: Exactly.

CN: Being a punk band, I guess you don’t get as much groupies as the metal bands do I guess?

JD: Uhh, something like that.

CN: So Mason is a small suburban area from outside of Phoenix, if I’m correct, right? Do you notice that people that come from places that we do, we have to invent our own fun?

JD: Yeah that’s true, I guess because there was so few of us or whatever, there were punk rock bars in the city but we couldn’t get into them, so you have to do a lot more shit, be more creative.

CN: Its true cause when I came to New York, I was shocked that people were so jaded and had no energy. Like we’re at a show, lets dance, lets have fun, and they just stand there. They’d tell me, ‘you need to calm down, you’re gonna get arrested’, I’m like, ‘Fuck that! Its New York man, you’re supposed to be like, wide open!’ I used to get in a lot of trouble, lets put it that way…..