Interviews: Jon Hernandez (Timeshares)

For the past seven years, Timeshares have played Fest sets filled with singalong punk anthems sure to please your average bearded, plaid-wearing festival-goer. This year, they'll be playing the Wooly on Friday October 30 at 11:50 PM, but first they'll be heading out on a tour with Signals Midwest.
Punknews interviewer Alex Meylink talked to guitarist/vocalist Jon Hernandez of Timeshares about Fest, their (sort of) new record and Jon's love for spiteful internet commenters.

Since we didn’t get a chance to talk about it when it came out five months ago, I’d like to talk a bit about Already Dead before we get to the Fest. I’m interested in the DIY home recording you guys did for it and its predecessor, Bearable. What was your experience doing that with your new record for Side One Dummy Records?
Whenever the “recording it yourselves” thing comes up, people bring it up like it’s a point of pride for us, and it is. You know, we’re always stoked by how they come out. But really, it’s just always been the only option for us over anything else (laughs). But we’ve been pretty happy with how they’ve come out. As far as connecting to Side One, we demoed most of the record and we sent it to a bunch of people and just tried to see if anyone had any interest.
But the demos didn’t get sent to Side One, and we just figured that we took so long to make a second record, we were probably going to end up having to record it ourselves anyway. So this record is what Side One got. Jamie at Side One got the record from two of our friends who sent it without us really knowing they did. But she listened to it, and it worked out really well for us.

The new record seems to have a heavier distinction between songs by different songwriters in the band. Where Bearable seemed to all come from the same place, Already Dead has a super-varied mix of styles and voices that keeps things interesting. Was that a conscious choice or was just a matter of writing songs on your own?
For this one, we never really talked about how it sounded until it was done. There was so much time between the two records. I mean not that much time, but a lot of time for a band that only has two records. I guess in the time that passed, all four of us moved in whatever direction each of us were going as songwriters and on this one we weren’t writing in the same room as often as we were on the first one.
I mean, there’s no song on either record that just one person wrote alone, but I think all of us did a lot more working on songs on our own than we did on the first one. And Jay (guitarist) didn’t even have a song on the first one, and he’s got a song on this one, and that makes a huge difference. And Erik’s song is always the only song that sounds the way it does. Erik’s song is always the one where you’re like "I think the drummer wrote that." (laughs)

“Naïve,” right?
Yeah, “Naïve” on this one and uh…um, “Focus Eddie” on the first one. I can’t remember what the songs are called on that cause they’re all jokes.

It’s kinda cool being able to talk to you about this record that came out a while ago, cause you’ve had time to tour on it and have people listen to it. Do you have anything to say about the record or anything you’ve learned about it that you didn’t know before?
Oh, totally. Yeah. It wasn’t lost on us that it sounded different than the first one did. I guess we didn’t realize how differently people would treat it. There were a lot of shows in Europe where people would come up and point at Bearable and tell us how much that record meant to them and how they showed all their friends and listened to it all the time and how much they can’t wait for us to play the songs. And then I’d say, “Oh, do you know we’ve made a new record? This record just came out,” and they’d go (deadpan) “Yeah. I know.” (laughs)
I’ve just been so excited for it, though. It’s the first band I’ve ever been in that’s made a second record, so it’s been really exciting going out and having two records to play from. It’s cool, it’s kind of getting to the point now where people are more consistently knowing the words to the new ones. I don’t know if it’s cool, but there are people coming out who know the words to this one and haven’t even heard Bearable. I kind of like the idea that we can go from a gang vocal screamer to the next song being a mid-tempo three-part harmony song (laughs). It’s been fun.

Yeah, it’s easy to see what’s so likable about Bearable -- it’s like a quintessential Fest record. But Already Dead definitely has a lot more going on. I liked it a lot when it came out, but I’ve gotten more and more into it since.
That’s kinda cool. It means more to me to hear that than, like, a good review, you know? That it’s a grower. I don’t think anybody would have said that about the first record. (laughs)

Now, we’ve gotta talk about Fest. How many times have you been personally? Have you gone as an attendee or has it always been just as a performer?
Always been as a performer. We’ve been going long enough where the first year that would have been a viable option for me to even go, we were fortunate enough to be a band that was playing. This’ll be the seventh time all four of us have played as Timeshares, but on the first one we played, the four of us were in a band called the Knockdowns and that Fest, which would make it Fest 8, was that band’s last show, and we showed up with boxes of the Timeshares demos.

So you were moving on?
Well, we didn’t want to do a last show for the Knockdowns, but we were like “We get to play Fest, that’s a big deal,” and this might be the only shot to let people know we’ve got a new band. So we did that and they’ve invited us back ever since. It never gets old to me. It’s one of the few sets I still get nervous through songs for every time we play. I get chills going into that one. Not like in a jaded, bummed-out guy way. I mean I used to read about Fest online, on Punknews!
I used to use my computer time at school to check out the Fest lineups, going “That sounds tight!” And now I’m gonna go play my seventh one. I think it’s awesome.

Are there any bands that you’re excited to check out this year at Fest?
I try to check out stuff I don’t normally get to see. I spend a lot of time seeing my friends play, too. Usually, I’ll check out bands I just got into in the interim, between the Fests. I’m excited to see Worriers. I love everything Lauren’s ever done, but that record is destroying me. Hop Along has my favorite record of the year, and I missed them last time, I think they played Fest 13.
I live in Philadelphia, so I should see them more. So I guess those two are the ones I’m most excited for.

Since you’ve been so many times, do you have any Fest survival tips for someone coming for the first time?
I have a million, but I’ve never followed any of them (laughs). Quit smoking before you get there. What else? If I paid to go, I’d probably have a hard time leaving and taking a nap. I have a back problem, so I’m slow anyway, let alone if I had a financial investment in it, it might be hard. But I started doing the nap thing the last few Fests and….whew. It goes a long way. In fact, last year I had this thing where I would let everyone go into town without me to nap, just to make sure, whatever was happening at 1 or 2 a.m., I’d be ok. I’d just lie in bed, not even stand on two feet until the last possible second I had to, and I wouldn’t get into town until like 4 p.m. just to make sure.
Because there’s no worse feeling than dozing off downtown and your hotel room is too far away and you’re just wandering around, stuffing pizza in your face, hoping it will wake you up. Ugh.

That’s honestly the best advice for any weekend festival. After doing Riot Fest this year, I realized that the nap is crucial and when you don’t get it, you’re toast.

Yeah, you have to. You can’t do all three days without a nap. That’s a young man’s game. People who do all three days without a nap…hats off to you.

At Punknews, we have an editorial we run called “What Fest Means To Me,” and not to put you on the spot, because it’s a very grand statement, but what does Fest mean to you as someone who’s been performing for the last seven times?
I’ve been really fortunate. I’m only 28, but the older that I get…every time I begin a sentence with “The older that I get…,” I have to remember, you know, I’m not that old (laughs). But the longer I’ve been around, the more I appreciate the fact that I’ve gotten to be a part of a really interesting and inspiring community. Punk kids, you know? When Fest comes, it’s like the summit for it. Especially cause the longer we’ve been around, the more we make friends with bands that don’t really tour anymore, and our only chance to see them is at Fest.
Fest is just this great reminder of how amazing this whole community we’ve been lucky enough to be a part of is. I get to see all these people that have done kind things for me and helped me live my life the way I’ve lived it and inspired me endlessly. And the bands are cool, too, man! I used to read about Fest before I could ever go to it, so it’s never lost on me. I’m not one of those dudes who got older and got tired of it.

Do you guys have anything big planned besides the Fest and your upcoming tour with Signals Midwest?

[At this point the interviewer and Jon got off on a five-minute tangent about a strange Milwaukee show Timeshares played recently. You can read more about that show here: http://www.punknews.org/review/13802/timeshares-arms-aloft-live-in-milwaukee]

The Signals tour is the first time we’ll ever play the west coast. That tour’s going to be awesome, I’m excited for that. By the time I get to Fest, I’m gonna be a dead man. After that, we don’t have anything lined up. We want to get back out, but we just got back from Europe and did the tour that took us to that weird Milwaukee show, and we were booking them all in succession, so we don’t have anything planned beyond this. I know we’re going to take a couple weeks and try and not see each other after this .
We’re trying to do more in the winter; there’s still a couple spots in the states we’ll have not hit yet that we’ll go try and hit, but no specific plan yet. Also, it took us so long to make this last record that we’re thinking of getting together and writing before the year’s over, so we don’t do that again.

So we won’t have to wait another four years for another record? (laughs)
Exactly.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Oh, there was one comment I wanted to shout out: I have no resentment for people who wrote mean comments about us on Punknews. Actually, it made me feel like we were a real band for the first time. (laughs) I was talking to people about these comments when the video for “The Bad Parts” went up… One guy said it was "One guy said it was 'like a 90s sitcom theme" and it’s funny, cause I got more than one text from people who knew what an honor and a compliment I would take that comment as (laughs). One of my friends said “That motherfucker has no idea what kind of compliment he just gave you!”

I’ve always wondered what the band’s perspective is on some asshole making a throwaway comment about them on the internet.
Some people are super, super sensitive about it. Like when we get talked about on a bigger blog or site with a particularly active comment section, people are always like “Get ready, it’s mortifying what people are gonna say about you,” but I love it. I don’t know, especially now. Cause with Bearable… If you heard it, you were probably the target audience for it and will like it. I mean, not necessarily, but there’s a pretty good chance if this record found its way to you, you were looking for it. But with this one, now people are talking actual shit, and it means it’s legitimate (laughs).