Interview: Jonas Skybakmoen (Johndoe)
It used to be that bands singing in their own native languages (ie, not English) were doomed to obscurity. Of course there's been a few exceptions here and there over the years, but they're almost all nothing but novelty acts. But the times are a-changing and there seems to be growing acceptance of that fact that we live in an increasingly international world full of wonderful multilingual music. If freak-folk from Finland can catch a break in the States, why not a Norwegian rock'n'roll band? It could happen! And why not?
I had seen the name Johndoe here and there for awhile and had even started reporting on them as early as March 2003, but I must confess that it wasn't until Fredrik from Randy cited them as his new favorite band that I really started paying attention and actually gave them a listen. The music of Randy is a good reference point, too - both bands play similarly energetic rock'n'roll, very much rooted in punk-rock, but way more than just mohawks and safety-pins. Grounded in tradition, but not bound by it. It makes perfect sense for them to be fans of eachother and, subsequently, to tour together as well.
When I saw the news that Johndoe was coming out with a new record I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to catch up with the band and hopefully (re)introduce them to a new audience that appears to be more receptive than ever. Singer/guitarist Jonas Skybakmoen was more than happy to oblige.
- Avi Roig
Tell me about the new album - how is it different from what you've done before? What's that title mean?
I guess the title "Dødvinkel" could be translated into "blind spot". Word-by-word it would be "dead angle" - so in Norwegian the title has another bleak twist to it. We wanted that. This is by far our most depressing record yet. It wasn't really intentional, it just happened. And somehow it's a very Norwegian record. It's about living up here in Trondheim, about things we know. Roots, love, agony, and longing, maybe. And musically... This isn't exactly the rock'n'roll capitol of the world, you know? We admire musicians that are able to tell people where they're coming from. Björn Olsson got this incredible Swedish thing going on. Same with Nicolai Dunger and his latest album "...sjunger Edith Södergran". We wanted to make something honest, simple and believable. Something from Trondheim. It's probably old fashioned, I don't know - songs about heartache and running away is pretty classic stuff. But we wanted this to be a manifold record as well - we wanted a bit of everything in there. There's a lot of piano and background vocals going on, and only one guitar solo. That's pretty bold by our standards. We spent almost two years writing songs for this record - and then we recorded 11 of them live in the studio and that's "Dødvinkel".
I know it's the standard dumb question, but why sing in Norwegian?
When we first started back in 1994, Swedish punk was the big thing in Trondheim. BirdNest-bands like Charta 77, Dia Psalma and DLK. They used to come here and play UFFA or Veita and there would be total madness. I even remember a riot in the street after a Charta 77 show. One of our mates had "Ebba - the movie" on VHS. It was the best thing we had ever seen. We played some Ebba Grön songs and then we started to write ourselves. In Norwegian, of course. I mean, we didn't even think it over. We have seriously never considered singing in English. I guess it's about wanting to communicate. It's hard to write in Norwegian, though. We gotta be ten times better than all the English-singing groups in Norway 'cause they can get away with any dumb lyric. We can't and that's a big challenge. Personally, I enjoy Norwegian and Swedish lyrics the most. It just feels closer to what I know and what my life is like.
Do you consider yourselves to be punk anymore? What does it mean to be a punk band in 2006 anyway?
I don't really know if we are a punk band. I know that punk rock has shaped us in many ways - and that it probably shows in all from stage presence to song writing. But we have a kind of laid-back relationship to the whole punk thing. Yeah, we love the Misfits, but we also love Bruce Springsteen. Talking New Jersey, Ralphie from "The Sopranos" is the worst punk ever! And "Dødvinkel" isn't a punk album. We are breaking way too many punk rock rules. What's up with all those rules, really? I mean, you can't still consider 999 to be the best band on earth. They visited Trondheim recently, they're extremely old. Maybe the punkest thing a band can do nowadays is to have complete control over their own music - a thing which even The Clash struggled to achieve. But it's probably easier now, with the Internet and all. You don't really need major labels, do you? You need Clear Channel and MySpace, though. I like the old-school punk thing, releasing 7"s and LPs and sounding like 1983. But that's not us, really. People should check out the Ny Våg-label in Umeå, Sweden.
What's up with the new label? What happened with Sony? How much of the work are you taking up yourselves?
We decided to release the new album ourselves - and Sony was happy to let us go. Our last album "Pyromantikk" didn't sell enough copies the first two weeks to make us a priority within the Sony system. We toured a lot and practically pushed the album all on our own. At the same time, Sony and BMG decided to join forces in Europe and a lot of the people we had been working with were simply afraid of losing their jobs. And suddenly they had all these Norwegian Idol artists on their roster. They sold far more than us, of course. We didn't want to whine about it. We wanted to do our thing and make it fun to release records again. So we started JHND. We got in touch with Sonet, which is a branch of Universal Music. They are gonna sell our record. We have always been doing almost everything ourselves - from day one we've been managing Johndoe together with our best friend. Another friend helps us with album covers and web design. My old schoolmate is making our new video. I guess we are pretty demanding people to work with. We want things to be done right away - and that's why we often end up doing it ourselves.
How important is DIY to you?
We've always been doing a lot of stuff ourselves. Not everything - we've got a booking agency in Oslo and Sonet is helping out with promotion and sale. We pay them and call them every day. And the rest is pretty much up to us. I think every band has been through a DIY-phase at some point. You know, putting up posters, calling the local newspaper, spreading the word through the Internet. Our DIY-phase seems everlasting. We want things to be done our way. It's fun - you can design a poster one day, and then go on to make a song the next. I personally like the creative work the most. And we're all about the music, really - the songs are our main focus. But there's still more to be done, you gotta be pretty structured and focused. I guess you need a plan from square one, and stick to it. There's always people calling, wanting to do something with Johndoe - be it a gig at some mall or an interview on summer fashion - and then you gotta ask yourself; Is this a part of the plan? And if not, well, you won't do it. We started our own label this January. It may sound like a big step, coming from Sony and all. But it really wasn't. We don't longer have to call up some A&R, try and convince him that we need to do another video, and then sit back and wait for an answer for four weeks. We've been in the game for a while now, we know people, we can make this happen on our own.
How does the Trondheim compare to the hyped Bergen scene? Is there the same sort of cross-genre camaraderie among bands? How does it compare to cities like Oslo?
Trondheim is different from Bergen and Oslo in many ways. First of all, we don't have the same amount of high quality studios and producers up here. The "bigger" bands in Trondheim often record their albums elsewhere - we actually went to Bergen to record our first album. Trondheim don't have a single functioning booking agency for rock artists. We've got a few people doing management and a couple of indie labels. Bands from up here need connections in Oslo, really. And yes, the Bergen scene has been the centre of attention for a while now. It seems to me that they're very focused on melody down there - while Trondheim has always been rock-country. We're catching up, though. We've got some great bands, like the Lionheart Brothers, Desperado and New Violators, to mention a few. Thomas from Desperado released one of our EPs on his Dead Letter label a couple of years ago. Marcus from Lionheart produced a single for us last year. Everybody drinks beer at Blæst on fridays. So yeah, we're connected in many ways.
How does the Norwegian scene compare to Sweden?
I tend to fall in love with almost anything coming from Sweden. It seems to me that the Swedish artists have got this amazing sense of melody - be it The Knife or Mattias Alkberg BD or Dungen, you know? Something that in a way connects them to the same place. A northern twist, or whatever. The Swedes seem so open-minded when it comes to music - the audience kinda embraces extremeties and strangeness, especially when it comes to artists singing in Swedish. And they like new music as well as old. The media in Norway keep talking about the four big bands in Norwegian-language rock - Jokke, DumDum Boys, Raga Rockers and DeLillos. They all started out in the 80s, and they are doing huge comeback tours now (except for Jokke, who sadly died in 2000 and who probably is the greatest of them all, some kind of Alf Prøysen for his generation). We need some young folks too, we need something new.
Ever have any international aspirations? Do you think there's a potential market for Norwegian-language rock outside or Scandinavia? What's your take on the success that Kaizers Orchestra has achieved?
Maybe we got some international aspirations in the back of our heads. We've been focusing on Norway all the way, but we went to Sweden last year together with Randy. Only four gigs, but it was great, and we got some nice feedback as well. We need someone to put out our record over there! What Kaizers Orchestra has done is simply amazing. I think it's about their massive live shows - that kind of showmanship is universal. Our friends in Nullskattesnylterne have toured Germany a couple of times, singing in Norwegian dialect Trøndersk and all. So it's definitely possible, although I think Great Britain would be a hard nut to crack.
In the first question you talked about pain of growing up in Trondheim and how it's reflected in your music. What was growing up there really like? Any stories from your childhood that exemplify the experience? What do you get out of it when you capture these emotions in song? Do you think it can resonate with people who have never been to Trondheim or do you consciously try to make things more universally applicable?
I don't necessarily mean that Trondheim is a shitty place to live, Trondheim can be nice. Personally, I grew up some place between the suburb and the city. A lot of people - I suppose both working, middle and upper-middle class - came to live in these brand new, but cheap terraced houses in the early 80s. My childhood wasn't painful or anything. Some kids started doing drugs, and some didn't. I often bump into people I grew up with downtown and it's pretty clear to me who made it and who didn't. Sometimes it's totally surprising and that's kinda depressing. We've tried to capture that feeling of chance in a couple of our songs. There's a bit of dreading the future, you know. Anything can happen. That disturbes me.
I guess Trondheim functions as a backdrop to our songs - Trondheim is what we know. There's portraits of nature and landscapes, there's actual street names and landmarks and such. I don't think it's excluding, it's rather the opposite - I can read a Richard Ford short story from Great Falls, Montana and still relate to it, right? Not despite of, but rather because of all the depictions of farms, motels, mountains, cars. It makes the story come alive, I guess it wouldn't be so good without it. And I think our stories are understandable, they're pretty universal. We've got this one song that mentions an old German bunker situated just outside my childhood home, but it's really a song about fearing the unknown to the point of mindless patriotism. It's kinda gloomy. At the same time - this is probably our most poppy record. We've fallen in love with simple melodies, straight-forward arrangements - you know, songs, rather than just riffs and poses.
What do you do when you're not playing music? Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
We play a lot of soccer, usually indoors. Then we watch soccer on TV. We also play FIFA 2006 and Pro Evolution Soccer 5. Some of us even play the flash-game "Play for your club" on the Internet. Ten years from now? I don't really wanna think about it.
Okay, so you don't want to think about 10 years down the road. What's Johndoe up to for the next couple of months then?
The album will hit the stores on September the 18th. We will start our national tour in early October and probably keep going until Christmas. The whole thing is being planned right now. We're designing the cover, making a video - basically getting the Johndoe machinery ready for the fall. I'm really looking forward to playing these tunes live, I can't wait! We're hoping to go to Sweden again in early 2007. Time will tell.