Prior to DANKO JONES's February 13 performance in Long Beach, California, vocalist/guitarist Danko Jones spoke with Bionic Buzz. The full conversation can be seen below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). On the origins of his passion for music: Danko: "Naturally, as a kid, I just gravitated towards music, and wanting to be in a rock band. Watching bands playing on TV and reading magazines and seeing static photographs makes you just want to jump on stage and be in a band too. When I was six, I joined the Kiss Army. That pretty much formulated everything, and I went from there. From KISS, you try and find out other rock bands. Then I got into heavy metal, and from heavy metal, I got into punk rock. Once I discovered BAD BRAINS, I pretty much realized there's only two kinds of music — good and bad. Then I started listening to anything my ears told me were good, but because of my foundation in rock, I always went back to rock. I always will, no matter how far I stray." On the band's music being used by WWE to promote their wrestling pay-per-views: Danko: "It was a big deal... I'm a big old-school wrestling guy. I used to buy [magazines] Pro Wrestling Illustrated, The Wrestler [and] Inside Wrestling when I was a kid. I used to read all that from first page to last page. Being in Toronto was like an NWA [National Wrestling Alliance] hub with Maple Leaf Wrestling before it became WWF wrestling. We didn't get all the Atlanta stuff, and we didn't get the West Coast stuff and the Northwest wrestlers. We got more of the mid-Atlantic stuff. I was a huge old-school wrestling [fan], and then there came a certain point where I kind of stopped watching, but I always go back and check it out. I love the classic stuff — Abdullah The Butcher, Bruiser Brody, [Jimmy 'Superfly'] Snuka, stuff like that." On the Ulf Linden-designed cover art for the group's forthcoming album, "A Rock Supreme": Danko: "He did the cover for GRAVEYARD's last few albums. They're so amazing. He's so talented. We met him kind of halfway — he had the artwork halfway done, and we liked it so much. He changed it and altered it to suit our band — he put an SG [guitar] in there; he put some of our older album artwork in there somehow, and [it] became ours." On working with producer Garth "GGGarth" Richardson (RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, TESTAMENT, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS): Danko: "It was so easy working with Garth. We've heard through the grapevine that he'd wanted to wor with us for years, and we wanted to work with him. When we got to his place just outside of Vancouver, we realized, Garth and I actually grew up, maybe, a 15-minute walk away from each other. I didn't know this. He grew up in Toronto [too]. He grew up in a suburb called Willowdale, and he told me the street he lived on, and it was pretty much a 15- [or] 20-minute walk from where I used to live. The public school he went to was directly in front the window I looked out of in my bedroom all the way until I was 11. I think Garth was going to that school when I was, like, an infant or a toddler. It was kind of cool. From there, it just went on. All of us got along. We just laughed through the whole session and made some good rock together." On the band's recently-released single "We're Crazy": Danko: "There's no inspiration. We just came up with a hooky rock riff. It's just about a couple, whether it's your relationship or mine. It's very vague — nothing specific happened that spawned the song or anything. Our music isn't that deep. [Laughs]." On hosting podcasts: Danko: "I have two. I have an official podcast, [where] I just get people on — usually people in bands or comedians or friends or people I admire. The latest episode is Ernie C from BODY COUNT... I've been doing it since 2011, and Ernie C's episode is number 188. I do it every two weeks. My second podcast is the 'Regal Beagle Podcast', and it's a podcast dedicated to the sitcom 'Three's Company'. Every episode is about a different 'Three's Company' episode, in chronological order. I do it with my cousin Cameron, who has never seen the show, so he watches it and we discuss his first impressions. He finds doing the podcast almost torturous, so I'll give him a break and I'll do it with friends – everyone from Ace Von Johnson from FASTER PUSSYCAT [to] Scott Reeder from KYUSS and FIREBALL MINISTRY [and] Derrick Green from SEPULTURA... It's fun." DANKO JONES's new album, "A Rock Supreme", will be released on April 26 via M-Theory Audio (U.S.), Rise Above (UK), Indica (Canada, AU, NZ) and AFM (rest of the world). The band just completed a West Coast tour with NASHVILLE PUSSY and has a number of high-profile European performances scheduled in the coming months, including a Helsinki date supporting THE OFFSPRING and appearances at Sweden Rock Festival and the Highfield Festival in Germany.
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