The Bronx: First Ever UK Interview

Skiddle caught up with The Bronx's guitarist Joby Ford backstage at the band's first ever UK gig in Glasgow.

Los Angeles…

We come from a pretty well populated city, in Hollywood, but not the nice part of Hollywood. Not the Hollywood that people think of. It’s a ghetto. The West Side’s okay but the East’s pretty bad.

The name…

In America, presumably, the toughest place is The Bronx. The hardest place to live, the roughest people…I beg to differ. But it’s ironic because we live in California and the Bronx is in New York on the other side of America and it has absolutely nothing to do with our band, but that’s why it makes the most sense.

Gilby…

Gilby is a Rock’n’Roller. When I was growing up, Gilby wasn’t an original member of Guns’n’Roses but he was about the closest thing there was. It was awesome; we sat in the studio in his house. On the EP, La Viva Meurte, there’s only one track that Gilby did, but on our full-length album, he did most of that. It was cool, just sitting listening to him talk about Guns’n’Roses. There were just so many things. And it’s interesting just to hear it first-hand. Axl doesn’t talk to those guys anymore, they haven’t spoken in years, and the only one he talks to is Izzy. It’s funny because Axl was the nicest guy until you did something wrong to him and he wouldn’t speak to you for the rest of your life. Gilby said he was the baddest motherfucker to ever walk the face of the planet. When Gilby was in Guns when they were the biggest band in the world, playing to some shit like 7 million people in Brazil, that’s just ridiculous.

Recording…

We just recorded it in his house on an old 16-track board. We like those so we did our record live. I really hate super-produced perfect albums. There isn’t a fucking band that can play like that so we kinda have a weird stance on music. The way it should be and the way it shouldn’t be. The biggest thing for us is if you can bring it live, but it's another thing to bring it live in the studio. It’s a whole other ballgame. That’s something we really wanted to get. The whole energy. The whole live feeling. So what better way to do it than to do it live. That’s the way records used to be made. Technology has just become so good and so ridiculous. ‘Drums are here, guitars are there’, to me that’s just pieced together. Albums are perfect when they sound great, but a band can’t live up to that live. I remember hearing bands, getting jacked on albums and then going to see the band live and they sound nothing like their record. To me, that never made sense, why should you want to make a record that doesn’t sound like your band? It’s like, aren’t you guys happy with who you are and how you play? If you’re in the studio and you suck, practice! Don’t get me wrong, the producers and engineers that do those types of records are talented, but to me that’s not music, that’s not the real deal.

Black Flag…

Black Flag were a great band. I saw them once towards the end. The greatest thing about Black Flag is that their albums have that energy. They don’t sound great at all, they sound like shit, but that’s why I like them. I don’t think today that there’s a band that brings that much intensity to a recording than Black Flag did. If you listen to their records and you feel regardless of how it’s recorded like this or that, it’s there, that pureness. They’re still a very popular band. They played LA a little while back and they were terrible.

Backgrounds…

I went to college on a baseball scholarship so I’m the jock of the band. I majored in art, graphic design, and went to work for some advertising firms in LA. I’ve been playing in bands for 9 years, the first band actually was with James (Tweedy) our bass player and it was called Jack Ruby. I got into designing albums for LA labels, did some freelance work, started working for Vagrant Records, home of the mighty Dashboard Confessional. Nice guy, terrible music, haha… I still do graphic design and a lot of bands I used to be with still hire me. I did our artwork for the album cover, with the blood coming out of the mouth. That was fun to put together. We did the photoshoot at my house, went down to a Hollywood costumer, bought some fangs and fake blood. I collect records for artwork. If I see a record with cool artwork, I’d buy it regardless of who the band is. There’s a bunch of amazing artists out there. I don’t think the quality for covers is what it used to be as far as fine art goes. But then there’s graphic artists like Shepherd Berry. I like the stuff she does with black markers. I really like bad B-movie stuff. We just finished off a video. I hate music videos and if I ever see another fucking band doing a performance cut in with a story about a heartbreak... The money we had to spend on a video, we bought the rights to horror movies and we shot the footage on a green-screen, so it actually cuts in and we’re in the movie scene. It doesn’t look like a music video, which was exactly what we wanted. There’s nothing worse than those sweet shots of guys rocking. Fuck! Once again, it’s back to bands trying to make themselves look better than they are.

The Distillers…

They asked us to go tour in America for 3 weeks. I knew who they were and I have their last record, but I don’t really care for that generic punk, which that album wasn’t but it touched on it. Brody, whether or not you like the Distillers, is a poet. They’re some of the most amazing lyrics I’ve ever heard. They’re new albums amazing and they’re amazing people. We got into a pretty bad accident in Detroit where a drunk driver smashed our van. James, our bass player, was in the van at the time. We called their drummer and said ‘hey man, tour’s over’ so we explained the story and they said ‘we’re coming back to get you.’ They were an hour and half down the road, they turned around and picked us up so then we could finish the tour with them. They’re good people, they totally helped us out and didn’t need to, they let us share their gear... I will always hold that band in very high regard.

Audience...

The tour was so good because we got to play in front of kids. I don’t particularly care for kids too much because the majority of kids are idiots that can’t think for themselves. In LA we’ve catered to the 21 and above crowd. Partly because the liquor laws are so strict because the drinking age is 21 and that’s kinda how we started out, to the majority who were a little bit older. I don’t hate kids, I just hate people who can’t think for themselves and before they like a band they have to check if their friend likes them first. In America, a lot of young people have been conditioned to like a band for reasons other than their talent or ability, such as this band looks good or this band's great because they have sweet looking clothes. Which to me is the biggest pile of fucking shit. Bands have become bands nowadays just so they can dress cool, or whatever they think music’s all about, and that’s why music is so shitty because so many bands and players are sitting watching MTV and they say ‘oh, these guys are in a Rock band, they’ve got sweet cars and hot babes’ and then they get out there and realise…

Have fun…

We play music because we like to do it. If we hadn’t have got a record deal we’d still be doing it. Everybody in this band has fucking slugged it out on the LA club circuit for 9 years with nothing. Begging people to come to our show. That’s the great thing about LA bands. You can’t be an LA band unless you want to and if you don’t, you’re not gonna last for 3 months. That’s why we started this band. We’ve given our lives to out professions and our professions have given us the big fuck-you back. So now, touring is the easiest thing to do. Dude, you drive, your unload, you play, and you party. It’s the funkiest thing there is. I’m sure we appreciate it more than other bands. The sole purpose why we play in The Bronx is to tour and make records that we like. Now we get to come to another country. Guys like us don’t get to come to other another country!

The future…

We go back to America, tour the East Coast with Poison The Well and Everytime I Die. Few scattered shows, off for Christmas then over to Australia. There’s talk of doing the Big Day Out and then we’re back here in February. We’ll just tour… forever!

www.thebronxxx.com

www.wichita-recordings.com

Many thanks to JD, Mark, Jamie, Joby & the band.

Interview: Chay Woodman