A Piece of Jon Mess' Interview About DGD
Jonny set tongues wagging earlier this month when he tweeted he was taking a break from music, then said later he’d only tour. Is he even still in the band right now?
He is. When we heard about that, we thought it was hilarious, just because he knew he was being overdramatic. He got into some argument with that rapper Mod Sun [aka Derek Smith, formerly drummer of Four Letter Lie] which basically means Jonny’s whole solo album is on hold, mainly because Jonny was using Derek’s studio, and then they got into some argument and stopped recording. Jonny, just being himself, decided that since he’d been doing so much work and touring and whatever, that he needed to quit music. A day later he calmed down and realized he wasn’tquitting music.
Once during recording [DBM II], when he was fucked up, he told me he was quitting music and moving to Russia. You can’t take anything he says that seriously. That’s why we thought it was so funny, because all these kids were freaking out. He wrote, “All my CDs are cancelled,” but Craig [Ericson, label head] at Rise informed him that he in fact does not own his music, and you can’t just cancel a CD right before it comes out. So that was pretty funny, and he’d already finished all his vocals anyway. He’s still doing the tours as far as we know, and he says he’s gonna announce something after that, but I don’t really know what that means.
You tweeted in response: “Jonny has quit music to pursue the filming of his documentary I’m still here 2 bitch.” Were you legitimately pissed?
I was just making fun of him, because I’d seen that documentary with Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here, and I just thought if he had made his own documentary based off that, Johnny would quit music to become a rapper, and it’d be like, I’m Still Here Too, Bitch! It was just me saying, “You’re full of shit, stop being a dramatic little baby.” Then he hit me up a day later and said, “That wasn’t cool man. That’s not funny,” but I said, “I thought it was hilarious.”
It sounds like you’ve found a way to cope.
People are like, “[Jonny’s] such an asshole,” but they need to look at him as entertainment, because that’s what he is: an entertainer, a singer. You can also be entertained by his crazy antics by not letting them affect you. He was really funny during the recording, just loud and silly.
That said, you admitted DGD’s future pretty much hinges on whether or not this lineup implodes again. Isn’t that kind of unsettling?
I think that it depends; you’d have to ask each member in the band. We started that whole Secret Band thing—me, Eric [Lodge], Will and Matt, who’ve all been friends since we were 15—so obviously if Dance Gavin Dance didn’t work out, we could continue that band. I know that Will’s gonna continue to make music; he’s probably going to release a rap album. Matt might either go into the industry as a tour manager or go and do session drum work for other bands. Everyone has girlfriends, Eric has an economics degree, Will’s a professional video editor, which earns him a lotmore money than the band does, so everyone has fallback, but that’s just in the event of a disaster.
I don’t think anyone wants to see the band end, but it definitely would be a very strange to replace Johnny again. It’s too hard to speculate, so we’ll go with the flow. People are expecting us to break up at some point, and we have five albums, so that’s a pretty decent body of work, I guess. It wouldn’t be an absolute tragedy.
He is. When we heard about that, we thought it was hilarious, just because he knew he was being overdramatic. He got into some argument with that rapper Mod Sun [aka Derek Smith, formerly drummer of Four Letter Lie] which basically means Jonny’s whole solo album is on hold, mainly because Jonny was using Derek’s studio, and then they got into some argument and stopped recording. Jonny, just being himself, decided that since he’d been doing so much work and touring and whatever, that he needed to quit music. A day later he calmed down and realized he wasn’tquitting music.
Once during recording [DBM II], when he was fucked up, he told me he was quitting music and moving to Russia. You can’t take anything he says that seriously. That’s why we thought it was so funny, because all these kids were freaking out. He wrote, “All my CDs are cancelled,” but Craig [Ericson, label head] at Rise informed him that he in fact does not own his music, and you can’t just cancel a CD right before it comes out. So that was pretty funny, and he’d already finished all his vocals anyway. He’s still doing the tours as far as we know, and he says he’s gonna announce something after that, but I don’t really know what that means.
You tweeted in response: “Jonny has quit music to pursue the filming of his documentary I’m still here 2 bitch.” Were you legitimately pissed?
I was just making fun of him, because I’d seen that documentary with Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here, and I just thought if he had made his own documentary based off that, Johnny would quit music to become a rapper, and it’d be like, I’m Still Here Too, Bitch! It was just me saying, “You’re full of shit, stop being a dramatic little baby.” Then he hit me up a day later and said, “That wasn’t cool man. That’s not funny,” but I said, “I thought it was hilarious.”
It sounds like you’ve found a way to cope.
People are like, “[Jonny’s] such an asshole,” but they need to look at him as entertainment, because that’s what he is: an entertainer, a singer. You can also be entertained by his crazy antics by not letting them affect you. He was really funny during the recording, just loud and silly.
That said, you admitted DGD’s future pretty much hinges on whether or not this lineup implodes again. Isn’t that kind of unsettling?
I think that it depends; you’d have to ask each member in the band. We started that whole Secret Band thing—me, Eric [Lodge], Will and Matt, who’ve all been friends since we were 15—so obviously if Dance Gavin Dance didn’t work out, we could continue that band. I know that Will’s gonna continue to make music; he’s probably going to release a rap album. Matt might either go into the industry as a tour manager or go and do session drum work for other bands. Everyone has girlfriends, Eric has an economics degree, Will’s a professional video editor, which earns him a lotmore money than the band does, so everyone has fallback, but that’s just in the event of a disaster.
I don’t think anyone wants to see the band end, but it definitely would be a very strange to replace Johnny again. It’s too hard to speculate, so we’ll go with the flow. People are expecting us to break up at some point, and we have five albums, so that’s a pretty decent body of work, I guess. It wouldn’t be an absolute tragedy.
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