Andrew Jackson Jihad

Standing outside of a dirty venue, half a block from the Occupy Edmonton campsite, I spoke with the duo known as Andrew Jackson Jihad. The guys had just finished performing in front of a sweaty club full of people who were either singing along with their songs or standing silently in awe. It was clear that AJJ had won over a legion of fans in a cold land a far cry from their sunny hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.

Photos by Mitch Coulter.

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Dustin: So guys, that was a great set. The audience was really into it. You guys seemed surprised. It was your first time playing way up here.

Ben: It is way up here. I was surprised when I looked at a map and was like holy shit Edmonton!

Sean: We didn’t know where it was until we were looking at a map and were like, wow, Edmonton is really far up there.

Dustin: This is probably the farthest north that you guys will play in Canada.

Ben: I think it is the farthest north we have ever played period. We’ve been to Germany, but we’ve never been to like Scandinavia or anything.

Dustin: Where should we start?

Sean: I had a fun time! The show sold out. My throat held out for the show, which I am very proud of it doing, despite all of the cigarettes I smoked trying to kill it. I had a whiskey too.

Ben: Some vitamins. (With an obvious fake English accent)

Dustin: How has the reception been so far on the tour?

Sean: As far as the tour as a whole, it has been really good, really impressive. We’ve been blown away by a lot of the places. Some places are new places, some places are old places, but pretty much every show has been a surprise. People are showing up and having a great time, so it’s been a great tour.

Dustin: You guys definitely have a unique sound and Frank Turner is  a little more mainstream, so I was curious about the crowd reception.

Ben: A little bit. I think in the UK, especially in England, he has played a lot over there, so in that respect he is much more mainstream. He’s more popular over there. He is bigger than us in the States, but he is still establishing a larger audience in the States.

Sean: He is still a very honest songwriter. Mainstream or not, honesty is important and he is honest with himself as a songwriter. I find that to be very beautiful.

Dustin: Did you guys play with him before he picked you to go on tour with him?

Ben: We played with him one time at the Troubadour in Los Angeles about a year ago. Then I saw him play and met him for the first time when he played a show in Phoenix at a place called Modified Arts. He was on tour with Fake Problems and Cobra Skulls. It was a wonderful show and a great tour. I picked up his album and met him at that time. We are really stoked that he was interested in taking us on the road with him.

Dustin: When I talk to different people they have different ideas about what to call your sound. In my line of business, talking about genre is always a complicated thing. I think that if someone is easily labeled, maybe they are kind of boring.

Sean: I’m with you there.

Dustin: You guys obviously have influences from all over the place and you bring in a lot of different musical styles. How does that all come about?

Sean: Do you have something?

Ben: I would just say that I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock and stuff. It wasn’t until I met Sean that he actually heard Operation Ivy, which was cool to me. Not to say that he didn’t listen to punk rock, we just come from different schools of punk rock. That’s one of the important things about this band I think. We both kind of came from different musical worlds and we ended up playing in a band together. Since then we’ve just accepted that fact that, especially for me personally, there isn’t a single genre of music that I listen to. I both really like and hate all genres, depending on who is performing within that said genre.

Sean: Well said.

Ben: I just like the fact that this band is open minded when it comes to influences, whereas other bands maybe aren’t quite as open minded to those different genres. Like pop punk bands that only listen to pop punk bands. I mean, I like pop punk and I love some of those bands, but I also like a lot of other things too.

Dustin: Is there anyone out there that you ever run into… I always wonder if when you are out there playing music for other people every day if you step away from being fans… do you ever see somebody else play, where you are just like wow, this band is great?

Sean: I try to not stop being a fan. I will still always be a fan of music. At the same time I conduct myself better now as a fan than I used to. I know how bands think and I know how bands react to fans coming up to them in certain ways. I try to be a responsible fan.

Dustin: Like the awkward moment that Frank Turner just had on stage?

Ben: I missed that.

Dustin: He was talking about the harmonica piece where he used to bring a fan up on stage to play along, but he doesn’t anymore and how he wants the entire audience to participate by playing air harmonica. Then some guy jumps on stage and is standing beside him just as he was about to begin the song and pushed Frank away from the microphone like he was going to sing. Frank asked him to nicely get off stage and the guy just keeps standing there and it got awkward. He politely asked him a couple more times and then the crowd started to yell at the guy, then he finally got down. It must have been uncomfortable for Frank. Some people just don’t get concert etiquette.

Sean: Yeah, I’m not gonna pull shit like that.

Ben: You should tell the story about Tampa.

Sean: We were playing down in Tampa and a guy jumped up on stage and grabbed the mic. Was it from you or me?

Ben: It was from me.

Sean: Yeah, he grabs the mic from Ben and he yells “I love you Ben.” I had to remark in the best way that I could, what a beautiful thing to say and what an inappropriate way to say it. That same kid kept wanting to get up on the stage. I was having a pretty bad night as well, so I was getting ready to kick him in the face.

(At this time a fan walks right into the middle of us, pushes me out of the way and says in a drunken drawl “you guys are my fucking heroes. Your path is paved with glory, even if no one remembers it.” Sean responds with “thank you. They aren’t going to. I appreciate you.” Both of the guys introduce themselves and are super kind to their fan. Then the guy walks away and we have a laugh at the ironic timing of the interruption.)

Dustin: How is hauling that big standup bass around on tour? I’ve talked to guys in rockabilly bands who have stories about the nightmares of travelling with such a large piece of equipment.

Ben: It complicates things for sure. The first time we went to the UK, a good friend of ours let me borrow his bass for the UK dates, which was great. Then we went to Europe, I played an electric bass unless someone was kind enough to bring me an upright I could borrow for the show. The most recent time we went there I borrowed an upright bass from Berlin, which was awesome. It is awkward. Usually we travel in a Chevy Astrovan or GMC Safari and it fits in perfectly. That’s one of the reasons that we love those vans, the bass slides in perfectly. It lays nicely right on its’ side. It does create some issues when we are going out of town to play a one off show.

Sean: We’ve really lucked out. Playing college shows, as far as our requirements for playing the show, we will ask them to rent a bass or loan us one from the college music department. That works out great actually. Ben has gotten to play some very nice basses. Much nicer than the one that he has.

Ben: Yes. I played a bass in the Czech Republic one time. It was the most beautiful thing ever. I don’t know if we even ended up playing acoustic that night, but I took it out of its’ bag and plucked a string and that one note was just amplified throughout the whole room. It was beautiful. I didn’t know that a bass could sound this good. I got to play it that night and it was awesome.

Dustin: You didn’t slip it into your bag and sneak it back home?

Ben: Yeah, just smuggle it home.

Sean: I’m sure that he was very tempted to sneak it home.

Dustin: Do you guys ever run into problems? I hear a lot of bands having trouble on the road. Tumbledown recently came up to Vancouver and ended up losing all of their gear. An alt country artist just lost his van, trailer and all of his gear down in Texas yesterday. Do you have tour horror stories?

Sean: Oh wow. That has never yet happened to us and I hope that it never does.

Dustin: I hope I don’t jinx you.

Ben: The worst that has happened is that we have left things at venues. I tend to leave my bows behind. It’s weird, both times I’ve lost them, I know I’ve lost them at least twice, and people have found them. They got in touch with me that they’ve found my bow, so I give them my address and ask them to send them to me. They just never send them.

Sean: We have had people send them back to us before.

Dustin: This is your first time up here, so you haven’t had to deal with our weather. It’s still nice right now, but have you had any issues with weather while touring?

Sean: Yeah, we did a 1080 once, without trying. On our way to Detroit from Chicago. There was something in the road or something. Dan was driving and we spun multiple times. We were very lucky; there were very few cars on the road.

Ben: We didn’t even get stuck. We landed right on the shoulder, looked and checked ourselves. We didn’t even know how many times we spun until we got out and looked and were like; wow we just spun 3 whole times. Then we got back in the van and drove away. It was surreal and horrible. We try not to tour in the dead of winter because it’s just not worth it. Touring in the winter is brutal. The snowstorms you have to worry about and people don’t want to come out to the shows because it’s cold out.

Sean: On that tour, I had to go to the hospital twice. I had persistent upper respiratory infections, from either staying in the van or staying in houses with cats. It was no good.

Dustin: That is the joys of what you guys do. I think sometimes people think its all supermodels, fancy cars and glory.

Sean: Not at all.

Ben: If we were to make a music video it would have all of that in it, but that’s not reality at all.

Dustin: You guys have a lot of guests on your recordings. How do those come about?

Sean: Whatever fits the song best and whoever is willing to do it. On this last record we made, Knife Man, we ended up getting an all Arizona cast which is pretty cool. We were gonna outsource a vibraphone part to our friend Skylar in San Jose, but that didn’t end up working out.

Ben: He was having a kid and he was really busy.

Sean: He would’ve nailed it but…

Ben: It worked out fine without it.

Dustin: How has the reception for Knife Man been so far?

Sean: It’s been out about a month now. The reception seems good. People seem to be buying it and the critical reception has been good.

Ben: It seems like when we have been playing the new songs at the live shows, people like them. It is my favorite album.

Sean: It’s our baby.

Dustin: Is that how it works for you, every time you put out a new album it is always your favorite?

Ben: It has been that way and I hope it continues to be that way. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. We are like we have these songs we like so we go into the studio to record them.

Sean: We aren’t mandated by anyone to put out an album in a certain amount of time, so we have as much time as we need.

Dustin: Would you guys prefer to stay on an independent label if you had the option?

Ben: We would like to stay in control of the creative element of the music for sure. The way we approach these sort of questions, if someone expresses some interest in working with us, whether it is booking or a label putting out our material, it basically has to do with how we feel about that individual at that time.

Dustin: You have a lot of humor and satire in your music and an obvious political focus on a lot of songs. Right now the #Occupy movement is all over the news. The camp in Edmonton is just on the other side of the street there.

Sean: Yeah, we are going to go over there tonight.

Dustin: The whole movement started up here in British Columbia. Adbusters magazine had talked about it for a few months beforehand and when it happened on such a large scale it was nice to see. How do you guys feel about that?

Sean: From what I have read so far, I find it to be a very beautiful thing. It is completely autonomous and it is a democratic process to figure out what the demands are. That is very special and very cool. So far, the list of demands is looking really good. A return to financial responsibility.

Ben: Taking away the idea of corporations being viewed in the eyes of the law as human beings. That is a dangerous thing. It would nice to review that whole concept. The whole thing started just as we were going out on tour, so it is hard to stay up on the news, but as far as what we have been hearing from people and reading in the news, it seems like a really good thing. I like the fact that it is also a peaceful protest. I am very happy about it. Unfortunately, we haven’t had more opportunities to support it directly, but it is a good cause.

Dustin: Activists are quite active obviously, but I think this is a neat movement because it goes beyond those usual political activists. There are blue collar folk, union members, stay at home mothers, police officers… the movement is made up of a representative group of the people it affects, instead of just being confined to the activists. I think that is a large part of why it has grown so fast.

Sean: It is a movement that everyone is invited to and where everyone is welcome, which is very important when trying to create a change. If it is just activists being active, then only activists will listen.

Ben: It would be very ineffective then.

Sean: One of the things that I found interesting was Martha Plimpton from the show Raising Hope is a huge #Occupy Wall Street supporter. Do you guys have that show here?

Dustin: Yeah.

Ben: You actually kind of look like the dad. Sorry, I just came up with that.

Dustin: You guys come from Phoenix. Is there a big music scene down there?

Sean: I wouldn’t say it is big by normal standards, but it is very high quality. It has its’ up and downs.

Ben: There is the whole story of the Phoenix, with the death and then the resurrection from the ashes. The music scene is kind of like that, where people will stop going to shows as much and then bands will break up. It is a very great music scene if you are willing to stay around in the long term. Most of the same musicians are around, maybe not doing music for a while, but then they get back into it. I love the music scene in Phoenix, Arizona. Some of my favorite bands in the world are from Phoenix, Arizona.

Dustin: I always wonder because there are certain scenes that get a lot of media hype, such as Seattle’s grunge scene in the 90s or the punk scene in Florida right now. Living in Edmonton, I see that we have a great scene made up of a variety of musicians, but they just don’t have a lot of exposure outside of the city. It makes me wonder if there are little pockets of great music hidden all over the continent.

Ben: Where are Chixdiggit from?

Dustin: Calgary.

Ben: Ok. I’m a big fan of Canadian music. We did a Neil Young song tonight. We are big fans of Nomeansno.

Sean: Leonard Cohen. I just found out that he is Canadian. I didn’t know.

Ben: That’s fucking awesome. There is a really rich history of music in Canada.

Dustin: That’s good, sometimes I think people only think of Canada as the home of Nickelback.

Sean: Really, Nickelback? I thought they were from Fort Lauderdale or something. That sucks. Canada has my two favorite songwriters, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen so that’s ok.

Dustin: Thanks guys for taking some time to talk with me.

Sean: Our pleasure. It was great to meet you.

Ben: Thanks.