We caught up with Jonboat Jones and Jimmy Rose from Hogjaw prior to the band going on stage at Bannermans a few nights back…
Welcome, at long last, to Scotland! Having been listening to you guys since Ironwood, it’s been a long time waiting to see you come over.
Jonboat: It’s been a while; 3 years now it’s been in the making, I guess you could say.
The show last night in Glasgow was amazing, it’s a pity the late finish meant you had to cut the set a touch short.
Jonboat: I thought we had time for one more but that was it; I wasn’t even paying attention to the time
Jimmy: We’re not always that good with curfews [laughs]
How are you finding your first visit to Scotland?
Jonboat: Beautiful! Love the weather – believe it or not – we come from the land of sun, so this is like a little bit of a reprieve for us. It’s hot back there, right now.
You have a day off tomorrow, are you having a wander around Edinburgh or heading straight down to Newcastle?
Jonboat: We’re gonna go to Newcastle and from there, I don’t know.
Jimmy: we had some time today though to take in Edinburgh.
Since 2011 you’ve toured a fair bit in Europe, 2016 was the first time you were in the UK, it’s taken a while to get to a full UK tour, is the UK ready for you now?
Jonboat: I think so! So far, so good. I mean, we have a lot of friends over here that we’ve talked to over the years and just trying to get everything to line up has just taken this amount of time, but here we are. We’re real glad to be here finally. I can’t wait to see everybody and keep this going.
It’s a good length of tour you have for the UK as well, some bands when they’re first over here, it’s only a couple of dates.
Jonboat: Yeah, we’re spending a good fair amount of time here, it’s pretty much dedicated to the UK tour.
Jimmy: I think our last time was a short one, we had three shows.
Jonboat: Yeah that was it, we came over for the Ramblin’ Man Festival.
You had a warm up show in London as well?
Jonboat/Jimmy: Yeah we did, The Big Red.
The band were formed back in 2006, how did that come about?
Jonboat: BBQs! And drinking whisky! We all went to high school together, we’ve known each other over the years for a long time we’ve stayed friends. It got to the point where we ran into each other somewhere, at some point and “Hey, man we should get back together, play some music, and do some BBQ-ing and hang out”. Next thing you know, we’re doing this more and more on the weekends, then we start deciding “Hey, let’s tear down the front room and set up all the shit in here,” and we set up all the gear at the house, let’s just start writing songs. We had some stuff that was already prepared over the years, but it started rolling real quickly, then next thing you know it’s “Hey, let’s go play a show…hey, let’s go record a record…let’s record another record,” and it just kinda grows from there. They talked me into singing early on. I didn’t wanna do it I was like “What the heck you guys talking about, me singing? I’ve never done that,” but it worked out I guess.
It definitely did!
Jonboat: Funny how you always hear the stories about guys, that thought “Y’know…I’m gonna be one of them, I guess”.
You have a sound I would not associate with Arizona, more Kentucky and those kind of places.
Jonboat: Well, I did grow up in the South, so maybe I’ve carried that with me and we all listen to that kind of stuff anyways; it’s the Southwest, it’s still in there, at least along those lines. I grew up all over the South: Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, I kind of all that stuff I guess you could say.
For the benefit of our readers, could you tell us about the band’s musical tastes and are they all similar?
Jonboat: Well, speaking for myself, I listen to the same old music a lot. I’m into the country, the old school classic country music. Some of the 80s, 90s belt-buckle country. I like old metal, like when I grew up in high school listening to Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer and Iron Maiden and all that stuff, so that’s kind of obvious, I guess. Then the Southern rock, so Lynyrd Skynyrd and all that stuff, Molly Hatchet, Charlie Daniels Band, country, all kind of rock and jazz. Hank Junior, anything that kinda has that Southern rock vibe I’ve always been in to, I can’t actually speak for all the other guys, but I think they’re all equally into the same kind of stuff.
Jimmy: Mine was the old school country. I grew up on the whole country with Johnny Cash, Billy Joe Shaver were my favourites growing up as a kid, Waylon Jennings and Hank. Playing guitar was blues, I had a love and a thirst for blues; that’s all I wanted, then I started hearing BB King, Albert King then I started hearing Southern rock and how they took the blues. Then you come into Skynyrd and they got all the sound right there; they got blues, they got jazz, they got country, they got rock ‘n’ roll and I think we kinda came up the same way but just maybe a different guitar preference. I wasn’t so much into the metal scene, I wasn’t in the 80s scene; I wasn’t into all the glam rock stuff more into Tesla, Guns N’ Roses, of course our age group we didn’t like that guitar work. I think we all came up. Then it kind of spread, you start listening to Skynyrd and then you start finding out about Marshall Tucker. It was after Skynyrd I found out about Marshall Tucker and then start finding the deeper ones, like The Allman Brothers Band and it kind of just spread from there and all of a sudden your influences start coming together. My guitar playing is kinda a conglomeration of all my influences I grew up with, the blues and everything come together.
Jonboat: That’s where I’m at too, I think.
Hogjaw…where did the name come from?
Jonboat: You’re trying to come up with a band name, it’s kind of challenging because there’s already a band for every name pretty much, it seems like. We were combing through old National Geographical magazines from the 70s and come across a page it had an article on a food-eating contest, eating hot dogs or I don’t know what it was but probably hot dogs, I guess. There was a guy sitting in there with a little sign up there; he was like one of the winners from the contest and he says “My names Hogjaw and eating is my game,” or something like that and we were like “Hogjaw?” and I was thinking to myself “Hogjaw” is a term I used to hear my Grandfolks say; it’s a Southern term through eating or drinking, or eating too much, living to excess. You can also use it as a verb: “Don’t be hogjawing all those biscuits now,” that means you’re eating everything up. So it kind of fits; everything to excess, we like to eat, drink, party and play loud music…it fits! And we definitely like to eat!
Tell us about your Cheap Whiskey EP from 2007. All the tracks ended up appearing on the first album?
Jonboat: Yeah, Cheap Whiskey, that’s what we were saying with “Hey, let’s go record,” and we were gonna just record those demos and maybe just make an EP but once we got through that we had a process from having the idea to make an EP but by the time that was done we had already written 4 or 5 more songs, we were like “Well, let’s just go make this our full record and combine everything”. So for a little while the EP was available and we never really sold it, we just gave it out; it was more of a demo for getting gigs and things like that. That was our first getting out there so we just give it to everybody, we never sold it and shipped out all over the place. Once we had the other songs recorded we were able to put together the first album, Devil in the Details. If you can find one of those Cheap Whiskey‘s out there, we made them all ourselves, ran them on towers, handmade the labels. Think I’ve got 3 left out of…probably made about 700.
You’ve got a few albums out now, any signs of a live album?
Jonboat: There’s talk! We have to get together with some people on that, it may be happening in the next year or so. I know that we’re putting together a seventh, we’re working on our seventh studio at home, we’re moving through those songs right now. We’ve got a pretty good supply of material written and arranged, we’re just kind of getting lyrical content and everything done. We want to go in to record at the beginning of the year, to start on that but we may need to push it back, I’m not sure. It’s hard to see what’s gonna happen but we do have a tour coming up, it’d be nice to have all that done.
Jimmy: We wanna do that, it just has to fall in line.
Certainly live, your songs take on a whole new dynamic.
Jonboat: They do, yes, for sure. It’d be good to do a tour, there was talk of maybe the tour next year and doing some live recordings.
Speaking of dynamics, did the sound or dynamics of the band change when Jimmy came on board in 2015? The three of you on vocals last night at King Tuts was nice to see and listen to, so I wondered if the dynamics had changed a bit on the past two albums with Jimmy’s input?
Jonboat: I would say there’s definitely the flair of influence that’s poured in quite well, it fits real nicely.
Jimmy: We’ve all kept the integrity of what Hogjaw is. We always push each other whether it’s live or in the studio, we always try to do stuff out of our comfort zone. I think vocally, too.
Jonboat: That’s been the big change, the biggest change is the vocal. The additional work we’re all trying to get in, we’re not taking big giant steps trying to do anything crazy, it’s like walking up the stairs, you know?
Jimmy: We always want to do something new, something different, something fun.
You’ve definitely evolved since the If It Ain’t Broke album vocal-wise, and the new album sounds cleaner possibly?
Jimmy: We try to do that a lot. We try to clean up.
Jonboat: I think so. On the last record for sure, we really dialled back on the overdrive. We really didn’t push the instruments real heavy like on some of the other records. We kinda wanted to open up to make room for vocals, it’s all an experiment, you know? It was harder to play but it sounds cool. You can’t hide from nothing without all that noise. It’s all part of the experiment!
The new album has been getting good reviews, how do you think it has been received?
Jonboat: I think it’s like what we were saying, I think people are starting to see vocal potential and it’s kind of funny, songs a couple of years ago we wouldn’t have thought would be even possible are the ones or people even like them. They’re the ones starting to shine through which is surprising. But it means to me and to us, that was the right move, let’s continue.
Jimmy: I think the fans and people who love our music, I think we let them direct where we go and help us push us.
Jonboat: On the new record that we’re doing, we’re still experimenting with that stuff and other neat things but we’ll see how that goes. I don’t wanna give nothing away yet, I don’t wanna say nothing then have to change it. It’s always an experiment.
Your musical style, would you class yourselves as Southern rock in the veins of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet? I see you more in the vein of Kentucky Headhunters, The Allman Brothers Band and that kind of thing…
Jonboat: That’s been said…
Jimmy: I kind of just like rock and roll.
Jonboat: That’s always a good one too, right? The idea of being put into the Southern rock movement and all that stuff to me is an honour for me to have people think that of us. I dig it, I wouldn’t say we’re a new Lynyrd Skynyrd band or anything like that. We might have a little more in common with some of the early Molly Hatchet on some certain things, but the Kentucky Headhunters…those guys are pretty country and I some of that stuff from the 90s. Allman Brothers, we attempted to emulate some of that recently with some things on the new record.
Certainly when doing “County Line” last night when it was extended, it felt a bit Allman Brothers.
Jonboat: We like to do that, everyone seems to get into that one, it’s a really open, jammy song. It’s got a happy major scale, it fits and it feels good. You can take it up, take it down and kinda roller coaster with it and take people a long for the ride.
European audiences vs home audiences – how do you see the two?
Jonboat: The European audiences seem a little more into going out and ing shows. We do ok back home but it’s so saturated with bands, it’s a harder market to work in, I guess you could say. Whereas here we have a lot of through Manny Montana at Teenage Head Music, he has a really in-depth infrastructure within the promoters, the venues, the fans. It’s a community he’s been building for a long time and you can pretty much just get plugged into it once you get the . It’s hard for me to explain, he’s already got them whipped into shape, including us.
What’s next for the band after the European tour?
Jonboat: Finish writing the record, that’s goal number one and then prepping up for the next tour, European tour next year. Which will be we’re thinking somewhere in-between May and June.
