Page 23 - Black Velvet Issue 85

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Chips
Chips

here's a pretty big difference between like “Oh it’s okay, we’ll just pick someone else,” and Mark, they were working a graveyard shift
Tbeing a drummer and being a front- but we were like “No no no no no! We’ll do it, job at a UP postal service where they were just
man, so Jonny had to make some big adjust- we’ll do it!” So I did the show and I sang from loading boxes in the belly of a jet at three in the
ments on stage. “It was very uncomfortable behind the drum set! It was the worst show of morning. They were deliriously tired one night
because the drums were like my security blan- my life. It was so bad in fact that our guitar because they would also go to school all day,
ket. We did a practice show, it was in this dive player that I started the band with, that was and the idea came to them to have multiple
bar that was like our hangout, in front of only pretty much the night he quit the band. So I got people on one bass, so they started working
three people that we told,” Jonny says, recall- really drunk and threw up in an iHop bathroom on it and over a few years it evolved into what
ing his first performance as a vocalist. He con- just super depressed, it was that bad!” it is now.”
tinues, “Unfortunately some people found out Unlike the Battle of the Bands perform-
somehow through the grapevine - some ance, Nothing More's current live show is othing More's self-titled album was re-
friends and fans of the band - and I was so pretty extraordinary and the band (Jonny is Nleased in June of last year, and the
nervous because I was like ‘Nobody’s sup- joined by Daniel Oliver, Mark Vollelunga and band used dual themes of water and fire
posed to be here!’ I just wanted to play in front Paul O’Brien) is known for their crazy drum and throughout the release. “A lot of the stories be-
of the three drunk guys that were always there. bass solos. “The solos evolved out of more hind what inspired the songs were pretty much
So I did that practice show and then the first primitive versions of themselves. For example all trials of some sort or another, things that we
real show, ironically, was the most important the drum solo, I was on drum line in high had to trudge through and get to the other side
show that we played for years. It was on Sun- school so I was always doing things with other of and understand and process. Then we put
set Strip in LA. We got flown out to Los Angeles drummers like performance stuff and we’d be them into songs. At the time they were very,
because we won Battle of the Bands at flipping drums and sticks, so I learned that side just tribulation-like experiences. We all grew up
Warped Tour. We were in the top four and they of performance and show from experience on in the church when we were younger just be-
said if you want all the cash and the prizes then the drum line, so I always wanted to incorpo- cause our parents were a part of it and there
you have to play the show. We just a week be- rate that kind of perspective into a rock band. was always this interesting biblical metaphor
fore parted ways with our singer, so they were Then with the bass solo that came from Dan that was the baptism of fire, and there was a

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