Interview conducted with Jonathan Jones, singer and piano player for Waking Ashland. Conducted at the Orpheum in Ybor, FL on September 4 by Nick Zimmer and Matt Steinhauer.
First off can you state your name and what you
do in the band?
Jonathan Jones. I play in Waking Ashland and I play piano.
What does the name Waking Ashland mean?
Well it has no really crazy meaning. Ashland is a city in Oregon so that’s
where that comes from. I wanted it to have some significance to it and not
just be some name so I applied the Waking to it. It’s giving music to wake
people up.
What are some of your major influences?
Musically it’s changing. Like I go through phases. Right now I’m on a
singer/songwriter phase. Like really into Damien Rice, Brian Adams, who else
have I been into lately, Josh Rouse. I mean I’m going on like a Paul
McCartney, Chaos in the Backyard or whatever it’s called. Definitely a
singer/songwriter phase right now.
The first time we saw you guys you were a two
piece, the second time it was a full band, so what’s going on now?
We are reestablished. Last time we had fill in players. What you see now is
Waking Ashland. It’s really nice because now we’ve started writing our next
full length and they’re brilliant, good guys and it comes out in their
music.
Favorite song to play live?
We have a new song called Diamonds in the Hillside that I’ve been digging.
Of the older stuff, I really like October Skies. Shades of Gray can be cool.
Favorite city to play in?
That would have to be Salt Lake City or Tempe, Arizona because of the
crowds. We draw really well there.
You guys met in college. Where was that at?
It was at Cal State Northridge. I met Ryan there. He had heard that I was
writing pop music.
Did you graduate or want to finish school?
I was a music major which now in retrospect is kind of silly. I was a music
industry major. This is the major right now what I’m doing. I didn’t need to
go to school for it. At the time. Once I met Ryan it wasn’t a conflict of
interest because my heart was on the road. I wanted to tour. I had that
total beginning in a band guy phase going on. Pretty much failed out of all
my classes and did the summer tour. I’ll probably go back to school some day
for something completely different than music. I like school a lot. I
believe in school. At the time, what I was doing wasn’t making much sense.
When can we expect a new full length?
March hopefully. March 2007. We are going to record it and track it in
November and then the record companies generally like around three months to
set it up. It’s going to be good. I don’t know how commercial it’s going to
be but I think it will showcase our growth with our lyrics and songwriting.
Who does your cover art?
Different people have done them. For the EP we were really happy with it. It
was done by some guy named Isaac. He works at Immortal Records, our label.
He’s really talented. I should learn his last name because we get asked that
a lot and I need to give him props.
How did you guys get discovered by Tooth and
Nail and then Immortal?
With Tooth and Nail we were just touring and hit the road for eight months.
Real DIY, punk ethic. I guess the labels like that. There were a couple
labels interested in us and Tooth and Nail made the best offer. Now
Immortal, they offered us a contract a long time a go and we turned that
down. Then they came back with a pretty cool offer.
What genre would you classify the band as?
Well it’s changing and I hesitate to use the word pop because pop can mean
so many different things. Like it’s definitely an indie pop type vibe. Like
classic rock/pop. Definite classic rock vibe and guitar feel. It has that
flavor in it. It wouldn’t be so much alternative any more. It would more go
towards a Beatles/Beach Boys type pop. I would love to think of it as like
the Beatles but were not that good. You know Britney Spears is pop and then
so are The Beatles so there’s definitely two different things going on
there. So hopefully it’s classified as good pop.
What do you think about sites like Myspace and
being on the first Myspace Compilation?
Myspace is brilliant. It’s the devils greatest invention of the 2000’s. It
does a lot of good. It has exposed us to a lot of people. I don’t know how
well it actually correlates to selling actual records but getting your name
into groups and circles it does very well. We’ve been on the front page a
few times.
What was it like making the video for I Am For
You?
It was fun. It was our first video. It was a learning experience. I think it
went pretty well. A lot of it was me walking around and that was kind of
weird because I don’t want Waking Ashland just to be Jonathan Jones. I felt
like I should apologize to my band mates like, sorry there was so much me.
In your songs, who are you writing to, who are
the lyrics toward?
Everything. I don’t like to answer that question because so many people put
their own takes on it. Everyone takes something different from each song.
I’m sure that I’m always writing about a specific thing but I feel that
someone takes something a different or specific way. Kind of like if you and
I were to read a book, different chapters may mean different things to us.
Like the way the author says it. Like “the leaves fall”, like to you that
mean death and to me that could mean life. I don’t know. Just one sentence
of song can be taken so many different ways, so that’s why I hesitate.
How is this tour going so far?
This tour is going okay. It’s not what we were hoping. I’m just being
honest. It’s just been us being the main draw. It’s been a humbling
experience. There are some markets where we aren’t drawing as may people as
we had hoped, like tonight. It’s been humbling playing in front of only
thirty or forty people and then some nights a couple hundred. So it’s been
good. We canceled a whole bunch of this tour because we want to go home and
write a lot more.
Do you prefer playing in a larger venue or
something more intimate like this?
We just prefer the road itself. We don’t care where it is, large or small. I
think the fans have been liking it lately with only like thirty or forty
people.
What are your plans for after this tour?
Like I said, to go home and write the record and take a little time off.
If you weren’t playing music what would you be
doing now?
I would be like an American History teacher or maybe somehow working at a
coffee shop. Which isn’t that huge of a job. I go back and forth.
Why was Telescopes released in Japan first?
It was a free ticket back to Japan. We do well over there. Telescopes is
basically like b-sides to hold over the fans and then Immortal decided that
they wanted to release it over here to keep our name out there.
Any last words for the fans and readers?
Thank you to everyone who comes to our shows. It really helps, especially
with a band at our level. It’s really awesome to be living our dream and
playing music because people buy our stuff. We hope everyone likes our next
full length.
