Interviews: Jonah Falco (F*cked Up)

When discussing Fucked Up, publications almost invariably focus on Damian Abraham, the obsessive, bearded, pro-toking vocalist, or Mike Haliechuk, the mysterious, visionary, oft-reserved lead guitarist. And to be fair, these two men are punk-par-excellence, both having taken the genre to daring, weird new heights. But, who is the guy that serves as the band’s backbone, the band’s engine, the metal sinew that holds the whole thing together while injecting himself into the proceeding (most of the time without you even knowing it?) That’s drummer Jonah Falco.

Falco’s drumming is flexible and distinct. He can roll out quiet, expressive comments in a barely there jazz cadence, but he can also storm down like Keith Moon if Keith Moon was in a d-beat band. But, on top of that, Falco is also a song-writing acolyte, having contributed to a great many Fucked Up songs. In fact, the band’s newest release, Year of the Hare, out tomorrow on Deathwish, is mainly the work of Falco and Haliechuk.

The release, which is the band’s seventh of twelve planned Zodiac 12-inchers, finds the band taking a song, tearing it apart, and then sewing it back together in a grotesque fashion. The tune, which pays slight homage to Alice in Wonderland, details a dude just completely losing his shit. To learn about how the this daring, fractured tune came to be, Punknews’ John Gentile spoke to Falco about the new release, being the “regular Joe” in Fucked up, and why Penny Rimbaud is cool.

Now Jonah, I feel as though you are the “everyman’s” insight into the band. You’ve got Damian, who is this big, wild guy that loves weed. You’ve got Mike who is this mysterious orchestrator. You’ve got Sandy who brings a sort of art-chic to punk rock. You’ve got Josh Zucker who seems to remain in the shadows on purpose. You’ve got Ben Cook, who is this sort of international playboy. But, you seem to be the guy that fans like myself can relate to- the window into the band.

I would sort of agree that I tend to be the most accessible and the most representative of an open book. I might tend to be the everyman of the band. Maybe it’s because of personality, or touching on a lot of different corners musically of the band. I think you are commenting on how Fucked Up has so many different personalities in the band and how maybe unattainable Fucked Up is capable of being. I have trouble of being honest in this type of interview- I’ve lost the ability to be pretentious on purpose, buy accident.

Are you saying that you have trouble saying what you feel or that you always say exactly what you feel?

I guess I’m sort of joking and saying that I always say what I feel. That’s more likely to come off as artifice than anything else. Because I try to say what I really feel, perhaps things come off as more detailed or specific than they need to be.

Do you feel as though people project their views of the band, or what the band should be, in an interview?

I don’t think there’s ever a huge inaccuracy of what people take form the band and feedback to us- Fucked Up is so open ended and leaves room for interpretation. I think for any band trying to make an open statement, is to give an audience their own statement. Whether or not when a person feedbacks to us, if their statement is 100% accurate to the intentions of the band, is irrelevant. There can be a bottom line where a song is about “Sunshine” or a historic event, but anything is available for interpretation for people.

Do you feel like a regular Joe?

Ha! That’s a funny question. I sort of get the impression that most people feel like a regular person. I sort of think the idea of a “Regular person” is meaningless. I think that most people would not consider me an average guy, even though I am. I don’t feel it difficult to elate to anyone, more or less. I think if someone wants to be as banal as talking about the weather, it’s no more offensive than if someone wants to talk about Edger Pererz, which is on the other end of the spectrum. Some people do relate to being a regular person and some people relate to being outside of the flow of things. I think I am somewhere in between. I sort of recognize my place outside the normal conversations about life. In some ways, I am an exception to many, many norms. I am in an exceptional position. I et to be in a touring band. I am in a creative position. I don’t have a codified lifestyle. But, that doesn’t prevent me from feeling “normal.”

Now, because there’s so much talent in Fucked Up, people don’t often mention how unique of a drummer you are. I think you are powerful and emotive. Heck, the band even put out an alternate version of your last LP focusing on your drumming. Do you not get enough props?

I perhaps struggle with my own humility, so it would take a lot for me to publically throw a tantrum or requests to be paid attention to. I think the other guys in the band are aware of people’s desire for attention. Everyone in the band is a fairly astute judge of character. In some ways I feel like I did get shoved to the front of Glass Boys… I would love for people to fawn and think about and contextualize over me, and that would be wonderful, but it’s not something that I put too much effort into wanting. I’d rather speak in deed than words.

The drummer is supposed to be the most reliable, metronomic, and mechanistic part of the band. It helps to propel the musical arrangement or accompaniment. As the rock drummer got more focus in the 60’s and 70’s, like the surf side with Sandy Nelson, and the jazz has also had a focus on percussion, and Bernard Purdy steps forward in the funk world and codifies the drums, as rock and punk progressed codifying what the band is supposed to be, and in the 70’s you get guys like Keith Moon or John Bonham whom I idolize very much

But in punk, it’s sort of like this clatter and such chaos that you never get to focus on the drums. I had this conversation with an old bandmate of mine, he was the drummer. I said, “I want you to do this, and hold back on this…” and he said, “Well, what’s the point? Drums don’t matter.” I thought that it was so strange that someone would say that drums don’t matter if they are in fact the drummer in the band. I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “Well, there’s no such thing as a ‘good punk drummer.’” Well, from that day, I set off to prove the opposite. It might be a secularly inflated thing to have to admit, but I do think there is such a thing as a “good punk drummer,” and the dynamics of being in a band can extend all the way down to the most pummeling, ignorant music- which can be expressive if you have the right link.

Well, I agree with you one hundred percent. Just think of some of the greatest punk bands without their drummers- Chuck Biscuits, Dale Crover, Lucky Leher…

Rat Scabies, Animal Taylor, Spit Stix.

Even Penny Rimbaud!

Exactly! He’s a really wild player and these people are not necessarily “good” in a Neal Peart style, but they have this outrageous sort of creativity which takes them somewhere new.

How much of Year of the Hare is your work?

The sort of main motif- Year of the Hare was put together out of a guitar only demo that I had made. I brought it to the band and it faltered until we decided to use it for Hare. The acoustic bits at the beginning and the general riff are mine, I suppose. The greater arrangement came down from Mike. He added parts and bridged them together. He and I worked together to bring this into some sort of coherent existence. It came together in the studio.

Creating the affection of Hare was almost more based in music production than it was songwriting or song playing. If you think about it, the bare bones of the songs- these things always sound so out of control and so big. When you teach it to someone, you get an idea of how to put it together. We’ve been learning all the Zodiac sons to play live. It was a challenge to learn these songs to play live and teach them to people.

When we were teaching Year of the Hare, I couldn’t believe how minimal it was- verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, c section, chorus, outro. It’s just a regular song structure. The key to putting this song together was assessing it and putting it together in the studio it and jumbling it.

That’s one of the things that I really liked about this, is how fractured it is. Did you say to yourselves, “let’s make something that breaks the rules of how a song should flow?”

I happen to massive interested in song craft. My idea in song craft is tonal and harmonic. I like to think about music and notes playing. I have trouble thinking outside the box when it comes to structure. I wouldn’t be able to make that fracture on purpose, but I could do it by accident.

Making this song fractured was important. It was done after the lyrics were written. The lyrics, which are Mike’s, vaguely detail a person unraveling. “Too many ticks, not enough tocks.” In order to make this song interesting, the song had started to take on the qualities of the lyrics itself. Usually you write lyrics to what’s the mood, or if you try to upset that. With this we had the opposite. We had a song which had a set of qualities. Generally speaking, they were standard for Fucked Up. Then the lyrics were written. Then the song was changed to fit the lyrics. It didn’t get changed tonally. It got changed structurally in a very artificial way with gaps. This is representative of a different adaptation of song craft- maybe it’s a focus on technology over the instruments themselves, which drives people to madness sometimes- the loss of the physical world. All of these things which are going away, which were taken for granted- the physical is becoming fetish. And here we have this song, with these people and these instruments, which is supposed to be the most direct line between the participants, the producer, and the receiver, and it’s really being disrupted by the technology in the way. In some way, the format of songwriting itself is being disrupted.