Only Living Witness

Innocents (Century Media)
An interview with vocalist Jonah Jenkins
by Scott Hefflon

Finally. Only Living Witness finally comes out with another full-length album after almost three years, and yeah, it’s a doosey. It’s also got some unexpected moments that make you wonder what the band was thinking when they decided to put certain tracks on the CD. A ballad? Some country-fried ca-ca? Heyetide it out. Bet your ass this is a great record, even with the aforementioned lapses in judgement.

Too bad the band broke up.

What was the band doing for the three years between albums?
We toured Europe twice and played all around the Northeast, but had no full U.S. tour. The majority of the time, actually, was spent bickering with the record label. The first record was handled pretty poorly, but as of late, things have been going amazingly well. Unfortunately, the band broke up in October.

The drummer quit, right?
Right. He said he didn’t want to tour. That’s what we were all looking forward to, and that’s what all the talk had been about – but he said he’d rather stay home. We’ve all gone our own ways now: Craig, the guitarist, is getting married; Chris, the bassist, is working, as far as I know; and Eric, the drummer, is playing guitar in his brother’s band now. The main reason we decided not to continue the band was because we had a certain chemistry together. Eric was an amazing drummer, and to lose him was the end of the band. We weren’t Witness anymore. We were all pretty pissed off about it.

Most bands try to play that “musical differences” bullshit and say they parted friends.
Musical differences definitely came into play – Eric wanted to play more of the stuff like the instrumental “Placid Hill,” and that’s about the furthest thing from what I’d like to play. Everyone at Century Media has been working really hard for us on this album, and that’s one of the main reasons I’m doing interviews, even after the band’s broken up. It really seemed silly for me to not talk with people who give a shit about the band. A lot of these friendships, I cultivated over the years through this band, and before that even when I put out a ‘zine, and I’m not about to turn my back on my friends.

What led to the breakup of the band?
I guess the drummer left the night we approved the artwork for the album. I’m not really sure what led up to it. Some sort of bickering that had to do with the artwork led to greater problems within the band that hadn’t been communicated well enough. I think the communication skills within the band were very poor.

It’s strange that a band that toured so much together would have such lack of communication. Touring was a major aspect of Witness…
Well, we never toured here in the States. There were many, many tours we got offered that I would have loved to have taken, but it would have meant that certain people would have had to give up certain comforts, and certain people weren’t willing to do that. As far as I’m concerned, hard work is what’s going to make a band – if you’re not willing to work hard, there’s no reason to keep a band together.

What are your personal plans for the future?
Well, I’m obviously very frustrated with the situation at the moment, but I definitely will continue singing. Whether or not it’s in a band that plays out or tours remains to be seen, but I’m playing with friends in other bands, so I doubt anything I’m doing right now will really lead to anything. I’m enjoying myself and jamming with friends. Actually, that’s something I never got to indulge in while in Witness.

You also run a label now, Secular Records.
The first single I put out was Honkeyball. The second single I’m putting out is a split 7″ with Cast Iron Hike and Doc Hopper. Both of them are doing G.G. Allin covers. The next one is supposedly going to be Anal Cunt, Insult, and one other band. So many of the people I’ve asked said “Yeah!” but they haven’t been exactly motivated enough to get stuff to me. Future releases should prove to be quite interesting. I’ve been talking to some cool people.

You didn’t release the Only Living Witness 7″?
No, “Freaklaw” was on Chainsaw Safety Records. Same as the La Gritona 7″.

Let’s talk about the album, Innocents. There are some serious changes both musically and lyrically. You write all the lyrics, I believe.
All except for one song, “Hank Crane.” Eric wrote that about a friend of his that he lost, and the feelings that went along with that. It’s kinda abstract actually.

Wasn’t it hard for you to sing a song, a tribute, that someone else wrote?
Because everything was very obtuse, it was easy for me to understand and attach my own associations. Originally, Eric sang the song, but he wasn’t happy with it. I actually liked the way he did it, but he asked me to do it instead. I like the sounds he got – stuff he picked up from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. He used really old equipment to record it as well. He also brought in the string section and oversaw the production aspect. He produced the whole album with Tim O’Heir, who did our first album as well. We recorded at Fort Apache again, same as last time, and used both studios, old and new. Most of the songs were recorded at the old one, then we ran out of time because Weezer, I think, was coming in. We finished up at the new studio.

Lyrically, what does this album mean to you?
As a whole, the record describes how I was feeling leading up to the breakup of the band. Even though I didn’t really know it was coming, there were underlying currents that I could feel. I was, I guess, hopeful that the feelings were going to be purged in the recording process and then in the tour of the world that was to follow. Unfortunately, it turned into all of us arguing over a logo and never talking to each other again.

Any specific songs that mean a lot to you?
I really like “Strata.” It’s about growing up and putting a lot of faith in one person who, sooner or later, lets you down because they change. The bad grammar, the poor punctuation and stupid poetic techniques I chose, trying to show the immaturity of the concept. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by people, but to chose someone as a hero and put all your stock in another person, you’ll eventually be let down because they won’t live up to what you want them to be. Never mind a cultural icon – I mean a friend, a brother, a parent. You realize they’re fallible, they’re human.

What about good old pump-yer-fist rebel anthems?
“Deed’s Pride” is like that. It was inspired by this stupid white power kid at one of our shows in Burlington, Vermont, who was starting fights and eventually got his ass kicked. The idea behind it is: I don’t have any pride in my race, I don’t have any pride in my heritage – I’m basically Heinz 57 Variety, I don’t have any idea where I really come from and it doesn’t matter at all to me. Who cares? It’s what I do that matters, it’s what I make of myself that matters.

The theme of redirecting anger into motivation seems to be a pretty constant theme throughout the songs.
Like “Some Will Never Know” and, yeah, basically, all the songs. No matter what kind of ignorance you see around you, no matter what kind of hatred you feel for the asshole next to you, you can’t sink to their level. So many people are channel-clickers and aren’t doing anything; the hatred you feel for them should be used as an inspiration to do something, whatever your thing is, and hopefully you can influence people in a positive way in the process. Communication skills are something I think our society is lacking. We’re so bombarded with media and our own “cultures” telling us to celebrate our thing, our similarities within our culture that differentiate ours from someone else’s culture – we forget how to connect with everyone else.

We’re living in a very dysfunctional society. It’s good because it forces the individual to be strong, but there is a definite lack of contact with our surroundings. It’s as if we lost ties with some anchor, and now we’re drifting, grabbing at each other for support, banging into each other for stimulation… I don’t mean to really insult the family structure, ’cause my family is great; I just see a lot of lost people…
When my mother left me when I was 15, I thought my entire world had ended. From that point, I knew I could build off my pain, and make it into something to help me heal. There are a lot of traumatic events that occur, in everyone’s life, to a variety of degrees, and you’ve got to use them to grow stronger. I don’t like to wear my afflictions on my sleeve, because everyone has their pain, and everyone has to overcome it in their own way. I turn it into an abstraction so I can deal with it, but that’s just my way. I certainly don’t want to use it as a crutch to explain why I’m such an asshole to people, I want to generalize so that other people can connect with it. Anybody can jump up and down and complain, but if it doesn’t accomplish anything, what’s the use?