So as you may have noticed (*snort* I’m sure) the Jonx have not been playing much recently. We did a couple of shows back in September and October, and then in November. . . well to tell you the truth I don’t really remember much from November right now, but long story short, we got caught up trying to get Vocabularian Herds out, I had some family stuff going on, Trey moved to a new apartment, Stu had to redo his bathroom. You know: LIFE.

BUT! With Vocabularian Herds FINALLY being out, we’re ready to start playing some shows, and Joel from Fired For Walking was nice enough to invite us to play with them at Rudyard’s for our GRAND COMEBACK, in preparation for our TOTALLY AWESOME CD release show which I’m TOTALLY NOT GOING TO TELL YOU ABOUT YET because THIS POST IS ABOUT THE MARCH GIG.

FOCUS PEOPLE! FOCUS!!!

ANYWAY. This whole Grand Comeback thing is a bit crap because in recent years it seems that we’ve had to do this pretty much every spring as we slowly gear up from being caught with other stuff during the holidays. Basically we only play shows during baseball season now. Hey, we’ve been a band for seven freaking years. We don’t load gear in cold weather anymore. It’s in our rider.

Where was I? RIGHT WE ARE PLAYING A SHOW. Fired For Walking are a local quartet who play cranked-up indie rock. They sound kind of like Swervedriver. One of them even has dreadlocks like Adam Franklin used to, weirdly enough. I dig their EP and I’m really looking forward to seeing them live. I definitely recommend checking out their music on the Tunes page on their website, because not only do they have a smooth built-in player, the player allows you to play all six tracks at the same time, which sounds, as you might expect, COMPLETELY FREAKING AWESOME. Memo to Jonx webmaster (aka Stu): make this happen!

Opening up the show will be the Bottom Four. I don’t know a ton about this band, and they haven’t been around all that long, but they’re friends of Fired For Walking, so they’re probably good guys. You can hear their songs on Myspace- (kind of a cheery, quirky indie-rock thing, very appealing)- and they have a couple of music videos and their own YouTube channel, which is more than I can say for the Jonx. Man these bands are both kicking our butts in the web department. Also, I like their song titles.

OK, to recap: Jonx, Fired For Walking, the Bottom Four. Rudyard’s, March 6. And have I mentioned it’s FREE? Well now I have, anyway.

Also: Flyer. Because nothing says “March 6″ like two hands making a heart shape and a naked woman’s torso painted like a flag!

(Buy Vocabularian Herds!)

Danny

As a preface to this post, the following exchange was had on teh Facebooks after the Houston Press’s interview with Stu and me ran last month:

So apparently Snogfever, the communal blog that I used to do with Shawn and Jay, is no longer online. In an attempt to use the wayback machine (Thanks Angela!) to track down some of my old posts, I serendipitously ran across the interview that Viki was talking about above, which was done with David Cobb of Houston Calling way back in 2004, before we had even recorded Wrath of Shawn. You can read the whole thing at the link above, but herewith I reproduce the fake answer that I wrote on Viki’s behalf:

Viki (guitar): I am too cool to participate in your dumb interview. Also I am busy playing the Lord of the Rings edition of Risk and training for my three month expedition to Macao where I will live with the monkeys as their peer. Also I am illiterate. (ghostwritten by Danny)

HILARIOUS. I really don’t know what she was complaining about.

Other observations:

- Shawn already knew at this point that he was quitting the band, but he hadn’t yet selected Trey as his replacement (Quote: “He/she better not be cuter AND a better bassist than me”). I’m not sure I even knew 100% who Trey was at the time this interview is done, although I know I had met him at least once prior to this. That is a weird thing to think about, considering that it is hard to imagine the Jonx without Trey at this point.

- I was just as much of loudmouth back then as I am now. . . sorry everyone.

- This interview (and Shawn’s post on Snogfever that led me to it) reminded me of the name of a song, written back in our first year and never recorded in a studio, that I could not for the life of me remember: “Combustion.”

- Finally, Shawn had some touching thoughts on leaving the band that I will herewith reproduce, lest they be lost to the void of the Internet. I don’t have permission for this bit, so Shawn, let me know if you want it taken down.

Last night was my last Jonx practice. It went fairly well, so our show tomorrow, at the Proletariat, opening up for Damon Che should go fairly smoothly (its actually ”Don Caballero” with only one original, albeit very influential member). I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about how my tenure with the band is about to end. After practice last night Danny said, “Wow Shawn, this is your last practice, how do you feel?”. At that point I sort of fell apart. I was hoping that I didn’t have to confront that issue of how I felt about things. I had to bolt outside, because I didn’t want to start crying in front everyone. (Instead, everyone followed me outside, so we could cry together). Even now its tough to express how important the band was to me. In the beginning it was pretty rocky, I used to get into arguments with Danny, there was the whole passive aggressive thing between Stu and I for awhile, and I definitely felt weird about Viki taking over my old job at Baylor… but we, or shall I say… I, got over all that stuff. I enjoyed the music we made. I can get fired from jobs, I can lose my home, I can lose my girlfriends, but you couldn’t take my music away from me. Well, unless I took it away from myself, lol. Right now I just hope I can keep myself together tomorrow, it would be extremely embarrassing to start balling on stage, lol.

In case you don’t know much about our history, there is a humerous interview over at Houston Calling.

These are the 3 most “Shawn” songs in the Jonx, from oldest to newest.
1)Do you wanna fight? (Live)  (EP1)
2) Combustion (Live)
3) Blonde Redhead, AKA “Wrath of Shawn” (EP2)

My last Jonx song will debut tomorrow at the show [I'm pretty sure this was "Departure" -ed], I think its my best one so far. Just a side note on our writing process. Although Stuart and Danny typically brought in complete songs to practice, I usually forced the band to write collaboratively with me, due to my inability to write for other instruments. I appreciate the guys being patient enough to build songs just out of basslines.

Shawn quit the Jonx because he moved to Australia in mid-2004. Fast-forward 6 years, and he and his wife Anita are expecting their first child. Congratulations buddy; we miss you. Although honestly, you were right to worry- Trey is better-looking.

Amazon (mp3 download)

CD Baby (CD or mp3 download)

Theoretically you should be able to buy it at Sound Exchange and Cactus Music in Houston, assuming one of us has managed to put some on sale at those locations.

As the album becomes available in more locations, we’ll post about it.

Also, a few odds and ends:

- Shea Serrano at the Houston Press was nice enough to feature us (and put up with us acting like total smartasses) in his “Artist of the Week” column back in December:

Artist of the Week: Hormone-Free Vocabularian Herds-Men the Jonx

- Somehow samples from VH ended up on a Russian music search engine called Tagoo?

- Something else that I forgot. . . dang.

This Saturday, come see use with two bands I know very little about, but am excited to see nonetheless.

Co-Pilot are a post-rock band that, as we now do, splits membership between Houston and Austin. They’ve been around for at least four years, but they don’t play all that much, and haven’t released any recordings. That’s about to change, though, as they just finished tracking on their first full-length. According to their website, they spent more than a year just recording it. Let’s do a little math. . . we spent six days tracking Vocabularian Herds, so assuming that quality and length of post-production are linear functions of recording time, their new record will be more than 70 times as good as ours. Fortunately for us, it won’t be released until 2063, so we have some time to catch up. Read more about them in Space City Rock.

The Clouds Are Ghosts are an electronicish pop quintet from Austin.They just released their debut EP on the auspicious date of September 11. It looks like you can get it for free from their website in exchange for your immortal soul e-mail address. Judging from the samples on their myspace page, it sounds pretty great, and apparently their music impressed their producer so much that he joined the band, so that says something. Also noted on teh myspace- keyboardist Erin Fillingame is credited on the clavicle, so that should be exciting. I’ve heard of donating your body to science, but. . . I know, I’m being a smartass, but please don’t flame me, it’s just a little good-natured ribbing (har!).

Tracklist and other tidbits are available at our discography page, along with samples, which you have no doubt heard from our myspace page already, for you to download.

The cover, adapted from a beautiful painting by Sharon Lapin of Atlanta:

Also, lesser news: we’re on Facebook now. . . yeah.