by Morgan Y. Evans
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy recently told Interview Magazine
that “There is…a true weakness in American thought today:
their incapacity to be interested in the intelligence of evil.”
This could be applied to the public ignoring corrupt politicians or turning
a blind eye to military industrial lobbyists helping perpetuate arms escalation,
but negligence on a smaller, community level is evil also.
What makes the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus interesting is that their previous
disc, Don't You Fake It, had very slick production yet also touched
on serious issues like domestic violence and suicide. Goofy name aside,
smash hit “Face Down” dug deep into the link between domestic
violence and psychological impotence with vocalist Ronnie Winter asking
an abusive person “Do you feel like a man?”
All jokes about a band most people consider mainly an emo band caring about suicide aside, the fact is they have raised thousands of dollars and awareness for causes like suicide prevention and even high school band programs, aiding empowerment on basic community social issues. Thursday may have penned the decade’s best socio-economic-political near masterpiece with War All The Time a few years ago, a benchmark for emo and rock music in general, and One Day As A Lion with Zack de la Rocha and drummer Jon Theodore (ex-Mars Volta) are snappin’ necks on political “red button” topic frontiers, but The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, with the close exception of the band Thrice, have done far more than most of their successful rock peers to address community issues. Sometimes songs with “bummer” themes are considered less marketable and even frowned upon by record labels, but “Face Down” had to be retired as a single off the charts after being on the TOP 20 for the full 52 week limit!
It’s funny, I’ve never heard a band with such a commercial radio mix that was still rooted to good causes. Not to say the songs were all crap on their last record. “Waiting” had a great chorus and “Cat and Mouse” showed the band capable of elaborate balladry, among other things. I am pleased the group has worked with Howard Benson (Motorhead, P.O.D., Saosin, Seether) as producer this time around, as I think the guitars could’ve been handled better by David Bendeth on Don't You Fake It. “Damn Regret” had some punch but the guitars were too thin in places.
I’ve also never liked silly band names in general, likening them
all to that band The String Cheese Incident or Hootie and The Blowfish,
relatively meaningless and mentally obtrusive, unless it’s a psychedelic
name like The Flaming Lips and is plainly great. Also, unless it is a
grind metal band with a funny name like Exhumed or a ridiculously bad
taste name like Full Blown Aids or Anal Cunt or something so bad it is
almost good, I prefer names with depth like Boy Sets Fire, Today Is The
Day or Dead Kennedys. In the world of emo, it is often a rule that you
can tack any month of the year onto the words my, bleeding heart or whatever
and kids will line up and say how it “means everything” to
them and clutch their t-shirts tightly to their chests, starry eyed. The
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are amusing in that their name was chosen from
randomly picking words on a wall while blindfolded. While this irks me
on some levels as trite, it is also pretty amusing and funny, and I can’t
really say anything as I was briefly in a band called The Abortions (questionable
taste, certainly) before we changed our name to G.I. Jesus (a good name!)
and then settled on Big Fuck (at which point I quit). I guess we all have
some bad name skeletons. The Red Jumpsuit boys’ approach, name and
general catchiness doesn’t offend for the most part and probably
opens minds to what they are saying better than people who would automatically
tune out something more abrasive or crudely or shockingly titled, though
that method is totally important and part of America’s tradition
of freedom of speech also.
The fact is The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are more than another “emo”
band. Image-wise they certainly look just like a lot of their contemporaries
and have songs that could fall into that genre like puzzle pieces, but
Ronnie’s vocal register is more human and compelling, less ten-year-old
sounding than some bands, and the cohesive and to-the-point nature of
their songs is pretty cool. There is more range to their music, and more
on the horizon, though Don't You Fake It did indulge in some
scratchy screamed backup vocals ala the type Hawthorne Heights uses (for
example) that I generally find unconvincingly bratty and don’t enjoy.
(Listen to Brutal Truth or Glassjaw or again, or Thursday’s call
and response execution and it just hits home way more than this style,
though a lot is just timbre and fullness of screaming style.) Red Jumpsuit
sounded very convincing on “Face Down” however, and on the
rousing lead-off track from Don't You Fake It, “In Fate’s
Hands”, where Ronnie sang of the transition from being in the crowd
to realizing dreams with his friends and bandmates. This is a band that
cares about each other and their fans, even releasing acoustic material
right to fans on a recent acoustic tour without green lighting it first
with their major label!
I talked to vocalist Ronnie Winter via telephone and his enthusiasm was very contagious. We talked about adjusting to stardom and being hometown heroes, among other things. He was very interesting to talk to, mellow and yet matter of fact and substantive in a way that I found refreshing and cool. I definitely grew in respect for this band big time from the little I had paid attention to them before the assignment, having lumped them in with bands like The Spill Canvas and, again, Hawthorne, that I find generally aesthetically aggravating, but I really hadn’t given Jumpsuit a fair shake at all, mostly for their name. I guess we all do things like that sometimes, and it is important to remember that there’s often more than meets the eye in all sides of life.
MORGAN Y. EVANS: What are you doing today?
RONNIE WINTER: Just cruisin’ around the neighborhood, actually got a little bit of time off. Finished the record a couple of weeks ago. Just hangin’ out with family and my animals. Enjoying being home for once.
MYE: You’re in Florida right now?
RW: Yeah, Middleburg. It’s pretty much where we came from. The outskirts of Jacksonville.
MYE: It’s cool you still keep some roots there to a degree.
RW: Yeah, well, y’know, our families are here. Me and Duke (Kitchens-guitar) started this in high school together. We bought a house together even though we’re already in a band together. So, we’re weird like that. A small, tight knit family.
MYE: If you can have that and not get sick of each other, it’s cool. Helps the dynamic to have people you trust that much, especially getting big.
RW: Yeah. We think it’s awesome. We actually enjoy each other’s company. Every band has their own situation but I will tell you that the friendship in our band is rare.
MYE: It’s good ‘cuz you have had such a rapid ascent in some ways. You had the band together a while but from knowing each other in school to your first “proper” record hitting so big…It must be insane dealing with the success you got on the first record.
RW: Yeah. It’s one of those things where you wake up and you’re still in the same awesome scenario you were in the day before. How can you help feeling anything but humble and grateful? Which is what we are, of course. We make rock‘n’roll for a living. That’s incredible. We play music and live off it, and don’t work a 9-to-5 so we’re still completely stoked about that. On top of that you get to share your music with people and over a million people physically bought our record. I can’t say we planned on it but it’s been quite a ride, for sure. We’ve been hanging on as hard as we can like, “Ahhh! Hope it doesn’t end tomorrow!” You know what I mean?
MYE: Even if you’d planned on it, that doesn’t mean it automatically happens!
RW: Exactly. Lots of things you can’t account for like the state of the industry. The state of the economy in our country. Everyone talks about gas prices going up but what’s funny is I think rock’n’roll bands got affected by it most. They’re all touring in vans and buses. Gas, gas, gas. A 100% guzzling business, a traveling band. It hits the touring industry hard and a lot of bands were hurt because of it. A lot of labels will have to suck it up and spend more on tour support because of the economy. Things change as everyone knows. You have to find ways to adapt and roll with the punches and make what you do profitable enough so you can do it continually and not sink into debt. That’s a problem. There are great bands out there with amazing records and they have to spend all their money just to get from point A to B and then the band breaks up because they are broke. It happens a lot.
MYE: Definitely. That’s why I always try and even do extra press for bands I wanna cover where I’ll seek them out if I really like them.
RW: That’s awesome. That’s what you should do ‘cuz bands can use the help.
MYE: It’s amazing about the success of Don't You Fake It. In a post-download culture you’re not supposed to have hit records like that right now. “Face Down” was 52 weeks on the Top 20 Modern Rock charts until a mandatory retirement was enforced. I wonder if they always had that rule?
RW: I’m glad you brought that up ‘cuz we didn’t know anything about that until it happened. We were like, “What exactly does that mean?” And they said, “Well, basically, in layman’s terms, your song kicked ass and we had to take it off the radio because people never wanted to stop hearing it.”
MYE: [laughing]
RW: It was us and 30 Seconds to Mars, also.
MYE: It’s like limiting Presidential terms, except that is fair. I don’t know if this is.
RW: I was like, “Holy crap!” We toured with 30 Seconds on that last tour cycle. We opened for them. It was kind of cool to get to do that with them. Me and Jared joke around about it sometimes when I see him. “Number One!”
MYE: I’ve gotta ask this guy Cousin Brucie Morrow. He was a famous radio personality and I’ve met him a bunch recently and he probably knows if that rule was always on the books regarding the record charts.
RW: Lemme know! That’s strange. We never knew anything about that. It was still positive news but I didn’t know they could retire songs.
MYE: Yeah, it seems unfair.
RW: Kinda lame. Let that thing run!
MYE: I remember Metallica’s self-titled Black album being on the charts forever, though I don’t know the numbers.
RW: Dude, that’s because it was, y’know, one of the greatest albums ever made, but also, on top of that I remember I bought that album when I was 16 and it had been out over a decade at that point. I still went to the store and bought it brand new and before that I bought it on cassette tape. I remember buying that album two times in my lifetime.
MYE: Now you can get the MP3s.
RW: You’ve gotta have the new hotness, dude. You can’t fuck with the old sound when the girl gets in your car. You can’t have the tape.
MYE: Fuck that! Take it back to the 8-track! [laughing]
RW: [laughing] That’s funny.
MYE: Growing up in Florida what was the hardest part? What put you on the path as musicians? Did you ever want to be from somewhere else and were you satisfied as a teenager by your surroundings? Would you ever want to do anything musically elsewhere mainly?
RW: Honestly, growing up in Florida was kick ass, man. Totally love it. Totally dig the vibe out here. I understand it. I think that’s the way it is for lots of bands and their hometowns, unless they had a weird situation. Dude, when we came home from touring with a platinum record from a town with a population of 10,000 people we were like heroes. Why would I ever wanna leave here? Everybody loves my band ‘cuz they know we are real and not contrived and know the trailer that we started jamming in when we were 15. The cops had to come shut us down. I still talk to those cops when I see them on the streets. It’s one whole long story that has taken 8 or 9 years so our community has been with us the whole time.
MYE: They were like, “I guess we shouldn’t have stopped you guys.”
RW: Exactly. We joke about that kind of stuff. Most of the time they’re pretty cool about it. The town I come from is a small town so there’s not a lot of income and business. We just got a Wal-Mart a little over a year and a half ago. That was a big deal in town, you know what I mean? “Oh God, we’ve got a Wal-mart now! Now people will think we’re real.” But, I liked growing up in Florida. I would do it again. It was cool. I like it here.
MYE: Right on.
RW: Anything musically I’d like to do in another part of the U.S….well, we made our last record in New Jersey. That was cool but we ran into problems right away. One of the reasons we didn’t go back to New Jersey to make this record is I’m a warm weather guy. So’s the rest of my band. We’re from Florida. When we did the record it was November. Freezing cold. Snow. We’ve never had to deal with any of that stuff.
MYE: I’m from New York. It makes you strong but it sure sucks sometimes. I like snow but I hate the freezing and the wind chill.
RW: I got full on bronchitis in the studio while I was tracking vocals.
MYE: Uggh. Man, I feel for you. I had that shit last year.
RW: Yeah. So then I had to take a week off and get antibiotics and get a shot of B Vitamins. It was a big deal and sucked. This time we wanted to be by the ocean and be warm so we went to California and worked with Howard Benson and had a blast. We partied the whole time. Hung out. Surfed. Skated. Whatever, and then made music every day.
MYE: How was working with Howard?
RW: Amazing. I don’t know how I could sum it up more. I wouldn’t say I under-estimated him but I didn’t think he’d make such a difference. He did, ‘cuz quite honestly, a lot of musician’s will probably agree with me, but I didn’t put a lot of thought into producers. I was always more, “The power is in the writing.” After working with Howard I see now what it’s like to work with someone who is a professional. On his game no matter what. A whole ‘nother level I’ve never dealt with in any studio. Once we got to work his people, his whole crew were amazing. It was smooth. Seamless. There was no problem and it was enjoyable.
MYE: It’s great you’re on a large label but you’ve been able to use that corporate backed platform to address, rewardingly, issues like domestic violence or suicide. You touch on social themes at times. Even the suicide hotline issues you’ve championed, the people that do these things work so hard and awareness for programs helps. I dated a psychiatric nurse and they deal with a lot everyday and my Mom is a social worker and any bit guy’s like you can do to help in this direction as artists is admirable. Any plans like that for this record?
RW: People ask if that’s something we just did in the beginning and the truth is we’ve always done it, right out of the gate. Before we were even signed, our first non-profit gig was with a band Shinedown, in Jacksonville for Hurricane Katrina. Before a lot of people other than the South Eastern United States knew about us, we were already doing it. It’s how we’ve always been. We’ve honestly always felt blessed and the best way to give back is to…give back! Don’t talk about it. Just do it. So our motto of, “Doing good for no good reason” will always apply to this specific band, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. It’s a decision we made a long time ago, before we were successful. No matter what we were gonna do good things. Somebody should and no one was. At least, at that point, we didn’t think anyone else was. Not on the level we wanted to. We wanted to be more personal with it and we’re still working on that. I started my own non-profit organization The Guardian Angel Foundation and so far we’ve helped out a lot of different people in a lot of different ways, but I don’t really tell a lot of people about it. We actually avoid the media when it comes to certain things. I don’t wanna name names but we did this certain event where we were contacted by National television. They wanted to come and film the whole thing and do an hour long episode on it. The label and management were all about it. I said no. Everybody freaked out on me. They couldn’t believe it ‘cuz this was National television, a primetime slot on a huge show, a big deal. I said no ‘cuz it wasn’t about that. It would distract everybody from what we were trying to do. We wound up having a great night and raising over $100,000 for the cause. In one night, all 100% of the proceeds went where it was supposed to go. So yeah, we’re gonna keep doing it. We make rock n’ roll. We have a good time and we like to do random acts of goodness because we feel this fell out of the sky for us so we like things to fall out’ve the sky for other people.
MYE: You guys have worked with helping High School band programs. It’s important to foster that and make a difference in kids’ lives.
RW: Actually, here’s another example of how we don’t really talk about it…
MYE: I won’t tell anybody.
RW: It’s alright. I’ll just tell you. Two days ago there was a marching band festival here in Middleburg. I marched in High School band. I actually met my wife in marching band. We’ve donated through the foundation to the band already to help get a trailer. They are raising funds right now for uniforms and I’m trying to do that, but I gave out awards at the marching band festival two days ago. You come out, you march, ten bands make the finals and whoever wins, it’s a big deal. You get respect and trophies. It’s an honor. So they had me handing out all the trophies for all the bands from Florida and I was kind of like, “I don’t know if this is cool or not.” I wasn’t sure I should be there but immediately knew it was cool because as soon as it was done all these kids from Florida from all these different bands came running over to me. “Dude, it’s so awesome that you’re here.” Stoked that I was there and even supporting it.
MYE: Nice.
RW: Kids, they realize, “Wow, he was in orchestra.” Dude, I played tuba for six years before I switched to drums in orchestra and so I know how it is. To me, it was always cool. I never thought it was uncool. We try to help under-funded music programs because nobody else is helping them.
MYE: Any of that stuff can give someone the extra skills learned, even to take charge of your own music later and not have somebody else dictate it.
RW: Exactly and that’s what it is all about. Musical freedom.
MYE: Is there any music lately or art you’ve been in to?
RW: I’ve been reading Stephen King’s Gunslinger series. My wife got me into that. I consider it art. I’m big on video games so I’m stoked about Gears Of War 2 coming out. Other than that I’ve been super, super consumed with the new record. Writing lyrics is pretty taxing. You’ve gotta make sure you’ve got it down, that what you’re saying is the best possible thing, in your opinion. Know what I mean?
MYE: I sure do.
RW: Everybody is gonna judge you on it and look for weak spots in your music and poke at it with a stick, so you’ve gotta build it up and take time. It can’t be impenetrable, obviously, but make sure you’re happy with it first of all and second, that it’s able to withstand a lot of snide attacks.
MYE: You also have to tour it a long time and be satisfied. It’s almost a compression of what you’ve been through for a certain time in your life and what you’ll be representing. Do you wait for the music first or have lots of notebooks or topics you know you wanna address picked ahead of time or just get inspired by the sound and then write lyrics?
RW: Good question. I’ve met lots of musicians who do all those ways. Some, like you mentioned, do the notebook thing. I never did. A lot of singers do classic composition notebooks and write down thoughts and stuff. With me, I’ve gotta have a guitar in my hands. That’s the way I’ve always done it and have to do it. Grab an acoustic. I’ll play a progression or Elias (Reidy) or Duke will play one and I’ll hum along to it and either immediately in three or four seconds I’ll have a part ready to go that I’ll just hear or I’ll sit down with paper and pen. There’s actually a new song called “pen and paper” on the next record! The first line is (sing/speaking) “This whole routine is getting old. So Am I, So are you.” I’m talking about writing lyrics. I’ve done it so many times now it’s starting to be routine and I’ve physically gotten older since the last time I’ve done it. So have the people listening to my music. See what I’m saying?
MYE: Yeah, so you wanna keep it fresh.
RW: It’s weird like that, but it’s funny. One acoustic guitar, one piece of paper and a pen and then we go from there ‘cuz the drums you can always hear in your head anyway. The bass usually follows the guitar and the only way to really hear the vocals without straining is to sing over acoustic so you don’t have to be drowned out by electric. Then, once we know that the melody and progression is tight I fine tune the lyrics and the rest of it and the band jams it out, figures our transitions and stuff. We do it together as a team.
MYE: Do you have a name for the new record yet?
RW: We’re the master procrastinators. That’s what it should be called. We’re gonna wait, probably until the last possible minute and then choose it. We’re kinda weird like that, man. We did it last time and it worked out, so we’re probably gonna do it again. We have a lot of the artwork and we get to have a couple different versions off the bat this time because now we’ve sold a lot of records. When they signed us our label took a huge risk because we were only big in the South East United States and everyone else had never even heard of us. When you are a local band, you can only really physically tour so far because you have to be back to work on Monday. That’s why hometown heroes can usually only tour in a localized, central area.
MYE: It’s a pain in the balls.
RW: We were used to doing small mini-van tours. That’s not a touring vehicle. That’s not a good idea, typically. I think that now, lots have changed. We have a whole new department starting at the top and this guy named Rob Stevenson, who’s our A&R guy now, has just been super cool about everything. Understanding. We’re actually working together with them and everything’s positive. Can’t complain. That’s why things have changed and so yeah, we’re gonna have the deluxe and regular edition come out at the same time. Last time we just had the one album. So it’ll be cool to roll out.
MYE: This is stupid of me to say, but the rapper Nelly had those two records Sweat and Suit and could combine them. Too bad he did that already or you could do Jump and Suit and make it a double record magnum opus!
RW: [laughing] That’s funny. You know, what’s funny also is we actually talked about doing a double album. We waited a long time to make this record, literally. Some of the reasons I talked about earlier, the economy and the industry. Some of the reasons were we wanted to chill for a minute and enjoy what we had. Be thankful. We had a lot of songs. We had more than we needed. We had to trim it down but we almost went in to record a double album. We decided there’s always time for that later and if we do it now we’ve already done it. This is only our second major release.
MYE: It’s better to wait. Is there any radical direction shift or surprises?
RW: Yeah. [laughing] Totally. It’s hard to explain, but it’s kind of what we’re known for. Even if you only heard our last single from our last record. “Guardian Angel” sounds nothing like “Face Down”, not even close. Not same time signature. Not same key. One’s punk and one is a power ballad, like Journey. Honestly, a lot of our fans say, “You know, I like you guys ‘cuz you don’t really have or fall into a certain category. It’s just rock n’ roll.” If anything, it’s a rock album, I will tell you that, but our first single is gonna make some people confused. It’s gonna make everybody else super stoked ‘cuz it’s bad ass but it’s not “punk” rock. That is gonna be the main thing. When we first came out with “Face Down” some people thought every song was gonna be like it. People who like The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and know that every song on our last album was good, ‘cuz they were, will love this record. It’s the same band, same people. None of our members have changed. It’s gonna be bad ass.
MYE: Look at classic rock bands. They never stayed with one sound their whole career.
RW: Exactly, or look at Weezer. Their new record, it has that overall Weezer vibe but so awesome, so different and probably, in my opinion, the best CD released in the last six months.
MYE: Later, man. Very good talking to you.
RW: You too, dude. Good questions.
