Jonny Davey At The Blue Moon
Posted on November 28, 2007 at 8:00 am by admin

Job For A Cowboy

I usually pride myself on coming up with different interview questions to ask bands, but I had an extremely hard time coming up with some for Job For A Cowboy. In my circle of friends, “Genesis” had become our official summer album, the album that always had to be spun at least once during those long drives, or the album everyone could agree on to love that we just wanted to throw on for those short trips too. I had also read a lot about job For A Cowboy, and it seemed like almost all the important questions had been asked, which is rough on me, because where do I go from there without being redundant? Jonny is also pretty adept at expressing his point, so you know exactly what he’s talking about, but his answers tend to be very short. However, I did talk to him outside the interview about a couple of other subjects that came up, and we also had a great conversation at the bar after the show. There’s actually a huge personal story that goes with the bar as well that’s pretty entertaining, so I figured why not stick the two together?

I arrived at the venue extremely early, as I was figuring on such things as bad Toronto traffic, which I did encounter, but didn’t seem to slow down my early arrival. Even though people try to schedule interviews, so many things come up that it’s always best to do them as soon as possible if there’s any time at all. When I saw Jonny walking between the venue, I approached him and told him we were scheduled, and he was easily able to make some time, and we found a good spot do to do interviews with no noise. In this case, it was my car since it was close to the venue, and apparently there’s a lot of people going in and out on the tour bus.

The first, and one of the best questions I asked was the possibility of a new album in 2008. Normally I wouldn’t ask that to a band who released an album so recently, but with Job For A Cowboy beginning to do direct support and headlining tours, I thought it might make sense for them to want another album.

“We really want to get another album out as soon as possible. We already have a lot of material written. The politics of being in a band, who knows when we’ll be able to [though]?”

Ah! Just as I suspected! It makes even more sense when he tells the story behind the making of “Genesis”.

“The last album, we were really rushed with the whole drummer situation. Elliot quit, which put writing on hold, then we searched for a drummer, which was a pretty bad idea. We couldn’t find a drummer in time, so at the last minute we asked Elliot to come back and do the album, for the most part we’re really happy with it, then we found Charn while we were in the studio, we flew him out, and everything worked from there.”

“We play the whole Genesis album live with a few oldies. It comes up to around 45 to 50 minutes.”

I tried digging deeper into the past of the band, he explained the differences between releases.

“We wrote the ‘Doom’ EP when we were 16, and went towards different ways. We matured musically.”

But when I told him I heard some songs from their demo…

“No!!!”

Another subject delving into the history of the band is of course the band name. People who frequent Way Too Loud! know that I NEVER ask a band what their band name means. Actually, I have to ask them not to explain what their band name means, but instead present a lie, or in the case of The Black Dahlia Murder making up a name. It’s much funnier and more entertaining for everyone. Unfortunately, before I started this website, I saw Job For A Cowboy play before Despised Icon in London, and I was dumb enough to ask him that question… For all of you at home though, guitarist Ravi explained that originally the band name was going to be “This Is A Job For A Cowboy”, but they had difficulty putting it on a shirt. Is that a good enough explanation for you people? Jonny does understand that he’s doomed to be asked that question for the rest of his life though. He quickly answered -

“Yup! We were dumb and young, and thought of a horrible band name. We went through every generic band name in the world, and as a joke that one popped up, and now we’re stuck, so fuck it!”

Of course we had to go onto the subject of death metal, such as favorite bands.

“Right now we’re really influenced by a Canadian band called Matyr. They’re one of my favorite bands right now. One of my favorite death metal bands of all time has always been Decapitated, which is a bummer now, because I was really exited to hear the new album. We wanted to eventually tour with them, but I guess that’s not going to happen now.”

“One of the first albums I ever bought was Nile’s ‘Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka’, so to tour with Nile we just be great for me. I’d love to tour with Obituary too.”

I then asked about tours, whether they get a lot of freedom, or if tours get pushed on them.

“It’s weird, because as a band we get a lot of freedom. We have a tour that’s a bunch of our friends coming up. We get a lot of say, which is really nice.”

The subject turned towards the Radio Rebellion tour, and how great he felt to be on it.

“I’ve been a huge fan of Gojira for a long time, and of course Behemoth, and if anything it was intimidating jumping in this tour co-headlining. We originally thought we were just going to be main support, and at the last minute we realized it was a co-headlining tour. It was a little bit of a panic there because Behemoth have been doing it for over 10 years, and have so much credibility behind their name. They’re one of the best live metal bands I’ve ever seen. If anything we’re excited, and we appreciate that we’re able to do what we’re doing.”

The most important subject I felt that I needed to speak to Jonny about was the internet negativity that Job For A Cowboy has been facing. Later on when I was speaking to Jonny, I brought up a specific incident involving his band and my website. When I had found out about it myself, I was initially very mad, but when I told Jonny he laughed it off. Hearing him laugh at it certainly made me feel a lot better about that situation. He not only deals with the negativity very well, but actually has a degree of understanding as to exactly why Job For A Cowboy gets picked on.

“Every band gets it. I guess we’re an easy on to pick out just for being so young, and I guess how fast everything has happened to us as a band. As far as the negativity goes, whatever, it’s going to happen anyway. If we get any more popular than we are now, we’ll just see more and more of it. The more popular you are, the more you see it. It’s no biggie.”

That may have been the end of the interview, but that’s not the end of the story. Towards the end of the show, I realized that I didn’t have my car keys on me. Not long after, I found out they were locked in my car, right after I had done my interview with Jonny. It was a scary moment considering the fact that the parking lot I was in was just across the street from a strip club! Walking back to the venue, trying to think of a way to get my keys out, such as calling a tow truck, I finally settled on trying to find a number in Toronto. As I was walking back to the venue, I noticed a woman who I met at the Suffocation concert only 2 weeks prior outside a bar known as Blue Moon. As soon as I mentioned that, she asked m to come inside, and I quickly became familiar with her friends, as it seems the Blue Moon is the Toronto version of Cheers (I know, nice people in Toronto is such an oxymoron!)

However, a strange occurrence of events began to unravel. I had come back from the washroom to speak with my newfound friend to arrive at the end of a conversation she was having with another female friend who had just hung up her cell phone and stated “I’m going to get some cock tonight!” Somehow I felt as though I had stumbled into a conversation in the world of women which I don’t think I’m supposed to be privy too… I got to watch the same hunter of… uh… have a heated exchange with a bar patron who had walked in before storming off. My guess was that it was probably a relationship matter that didn’t go over too well, it did however look like a scene out of a sitcom.

Later on, while still searching for some help, a very cute, very smiley, but very inebriated woman introduced herself to me. She was quite friendly, especially with the small hints of physical attention. Not long after we started talking, a tall man joined in, who she introduced as her boyfriend. I’m not sure he liked me, as he had a stare that I could almost feel burning a hole through me. I told her when he stepped away for a moment that perhaps her boyfriend didn’t like me. She simply blew it off.

“Oh you men are so jealous!” she said, and then giggled afterwards.

“Yup, we’re definitely like that…” I told her.

My new-found friends introduced me to the bartender after hearing about my problem, and he promptly called CAA, and was kind enough to get me a discount on the service! I could’ve ended my night there, but seeing as the drama unfolding was like that of a TV show, I decided to go back and probably face some more danger. This time, the bands and some people who had attended the Radio Rebellion tour had taken to the bar themselves. Seeing Jonny, I thought it might be nice to talk to him again. During our conversation, my newest female friend stopped by to talk to me yet again, with quite a large smile, and asked me with her heavily slurred speech “What’s your name again?” Jonny couldn’t quite hlp but to laugh at the situation. My attempts to convince her that he was a rock star with a cute smile didn’t work at all (sorry for trying to pawn her off on you Jonny!) Damn my good looks… The third time we saw her, she couldn’t even talk, and she was having trouble standing. I pointed to her boyfriend after looking around, and she stumbled off. Jonny however was being feed a constant stream of drinks, and began to let certain secrets loose, such as the real reason why tour managers hate me. The reason actually was simple, they have to be jerks and tough guys because of promoters and other people who attempt to rip them off. Fair enough, although I still try to avoid calling them as much as possible. He also revealed a deep dark secret kept firmly hidden by Behemoth, namely their worship of 80’s rock, and the fact that death metal bands both new and old constantly push Bjork on him.

I’ll need to test my luck at the Blue Moon again…

The Official Job For A Cowboy Website
Job For A Cowboy at MySpace
Job For A Cowboy at Metal Blade

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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