Interview: Jona of I Killed The Prom Queen
on May 14th, 2011With the Destroy Music tour kicking off this week, it marks the return of I Killed The Prom Queen to the stage, and as a band that the fans just wouldn’t let end. To co-incide with the tour, a couple of re-issued I Killed The Prom Queen releases are hitting the stores this Friday, their ‘Music For The Recently Deceased‘ album, in two versions, one with each vocalist, and their popular live DVD ‘Sleepless Nights & City Lights‘, you can order both now [Here]. Chantel D’Innocenzo recently caught up with Jona from I Killed The Prom Queen inbetween Bring Me The Horizon shows in the UK to chat about the comeback, juggling bands, and the upcoming tour and future of the band. Click below to expand this post to take a read, and re-cap the Destroy Music tour dates.
Hey Jona, you’ve just got off stage with Bring Me The Horizon in the UK yeah? How was the show?
Good, yeah, it was really cool. We just played in Cardiff, Wales. It was a bit of a smaller gig than last night that was at London, Brixton which is about 5000 people. So that was really cool. Less pressure.
Do you enjoy the smaller, intimate shows or do you like the big crowds?
Last night was a nightmare. We had management, and our booking agent and millions of industry people there, and friends and family. It’s always really stressful. Tonight was just a normal show so we got up and rocked and now we get to go to bed. Well, after these interviews.
Ok, so, onto Prom Queen, with the great success of “Music For The Recently Deceased”, what was it that caused the band to call it quits in 2007?
At the time that we kind of, I guess, gave up, we had been on tour for probably about a year or so straight with not much time off in between. We just toured the U.S, Australia, Japan and we were in the middle of our second European tour at that stage. Everyone was just get a little bit antsy with each other and was easily annoyed. And at that stage we didn’t have a permanent singer. We were doing our European tours with a fill-in singer and it just would’ve been really stressful for the band to go back to the UK. So, I guess, when we didn’t have a singer and we thought, ‘alright if we get a new singer, it’s gonna be our third singer’. Just that, coupled with the fact that everyone was just kind of sick of each other and touring a lot and all the future was up in the air. I guess, we just decided that the best thing to do at that point in time was just to have a break. We announced it as a break up but I think in hindsight, everyone just kind of looked at it like we just needed to chill out for a little while and reassess things. Now we’ve been able to do that and we’ve started our new bands and had other creative outlets and had a lot more experience, now we feel like we can revisit Prom Queen and do things the right way this time.
How do you feel you have grown as a musician since then?
I went from I Killed The Prom Queen into Bleeding Through, which was a little bit different musically and definitely was a bit more full on as far as touring schedule length. It was also my first move internationally, so I lived in America for two and a half years so that was a big learning experience. Now, I’ve joined Bring Me The Horizon and I’m touring more full time than I ever have before, I think I have about two months off this entire year. So, I guess, with music experience and moving around different places, especially overseas, you kind of learn how to be on the road a lot and how to deal with this lifestyle. A lot of people tell me things like they don’t know how I can be away from my home and family for months on end. It’s definitely something that’s taking a lot of getting used to, I weaved myself into it, from touring just a couple of times a year, to touring full time with just a couple of months off.
Was there anything specific that sparked the reformation?
We did the tour in 2008, the “Say Goodbye” tour, and obviously that was an awesome success. We all had a lot of fun and we met cool friends with all the other bands that we played with and the shows were the biggest shows that I Killed The Prom Queen had ever played. That gave us a little bit of a taste of how good things could be if we came back to do something with I Killed The Prom Queen. Then after that we had a lot of feedback from fans on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace and emails and all of that sort of thing, and it’s just been confident. Confidently, people asking us when we’re gonna do another tour, when we’re gonna do another show, when we’re gonna record something new, even when they knew we had broken up – or at least gone on extended hiatus – the fact that they’ve stuck with us and continued to show us that much attention, it’s really hard not to give them something new.
Are there any working plans on a new album?
We haven’t really had much of a chance to get together, to write stuff collectively, but I wrote with Bring Me The Horizon about a year ago and I’ve got a lot of material left over that never got used. I’ve got really old stuff that I’ve written around the time of I Killed The Prom Queen, when we were last doing stuff, and I’m sure it’ll be easy once we all get together and brush the cobwebs off to come up with new stuff. At this stage, all we’ve got planned is a bit of a rough time frame of when we’re gonna have the time to get together and write stuff. Hopefully, that’ll be at the end of this year, early next year, and then we’ll look at recording soon after that and hopefully have something out by mid next year.
Will the band sport a new sound or will I Killed The Prom Queen stick with its metalcore roots?
I honestly don’t know. With all the members that split off and went to do other bands, we all went to vastly different bands. Kevin’s got In Trenches, JJ’s got Deez Nuts which is like rap meets hardcore and I’ve been in two different bands, one which was bordering on black metal and now one that’s… I don’t even know what kind of label you can put on Bring Me The Horizon, it’s definitely an interesting sort of genre that we’ve created over the years. So, I honestly couldn’t tell you what’s gonna come out. We might go into the studio thinking alright, let’s write another “Music For The Recently Deceased” and it might turn out exactly the same or completely far removed. I honestly couldn’t tell you.
With many of you joining other bands, what are the positives and/or pressures of juggling two bands at once?
The pressure is obviously, it’s a timing issue. As I mentioned, I tour with Bring Me The Horizon full time with only about two months off this year and because they’re gonna be my priority, it’s sort of a matter of me finding times that I have off from Bring Me The Horizon, then going to JJ and saying ‘hey I have these weeks off, do you?’ and checking his weeks off, then going to Trevor and seeing what he’s doing. The difficult part is going to be co-ordinating everyone’s spare time to be able to come together and do Prom Queen projects. Having said that, the hardest part is going to be finding a couple of months to write and record. Once we’ve done that I can plan a tour for I Killed The Prom Queen while I’m on tour with Bring Me The Horizon, send all the emails and do all that kind of stuff. All we really need is a window of about a week or two that we can all get together and pull out a quick Aussie tour or something like that. That’s the more difficult part but the benefits are pretty much that we all have moved on to established other bands now and that reflects back on I Killed The Prom Queen, it’s almost like it’s working in reverse. At first we were in Prom Queen and we built up a name for ourselves and we became known as those musicians, now we’re in these other bands and there’s probably gonna be a lot of fans who haven’t even heard I Killed The Prom Queen. You know, young Bring Me The Horizon fans or Deez Nuts fans that were never really into the metal side of hardcore and they’re gonna recognise us as members of those bands and then go ‘oh, let’s check out this other band they’re all doing’. So, I guess that’s one cool thing. And the fact that the guys in Prom Queen are my four best mates in whole world and we used to hang out on tour and the second we got off tour, we were still hanging out with each other and doing everything together. So the fact that I haven’t seen those guys a lot in the past few years, it’ll be awesome to be able to hang out with them a lot more.
The Destroy Music tour is selling out across the country; did you expect such a welcome back?
We’re lucky to be on tour with a band like Amity Affliction because they’re doing really well. It’s almost a bit a safe option for us to take this tour, you know, like it’s been three years since we last did anything. Although there’s been the obvious feedback, like we still have a lot of followers online and things like that, it’s kind of hard to gage how well we’re actually doing until we get in front of a crowd. The fact that we’ve been able to do it with a band that we’ve been such good friends with for a long time and toured together years ago, it’s more of a comfort zone for us and it’s a bit of a safe guard I guess.
You’ve touched on it in bits and pieces now, so to close, what does the future have in store for I Killed The Prom Queen?
I guess no one really knows that. I mean, obviously we’ve got plans to write and record this record. I’ve told you that we have no idea what it’s gonna sound like, so I think everything’s pretty up in the air. All that we know is that we’re back as a band and that there’s not gonna be any changes in that. We’re just gonna do our best to try and come up with some cool stuff in the future and hopefully people will keep following the band and it’ll do as well as it always has before.
————————————-
DESTROY MUSIC TOUR
THE AMITY AFFLICTION, I KILLED THE PROM QUEEN, DEEZ NUTS & OF MICE AND MEN
Friday 20 May – Billboard The Venue, Melbourne (18+)
Tickets SOLD OUT
Saturday 21 May – Billboard The Venue, Melbourne (U18)
Tickets SOLD OUT
Sunday 22nd May – Billboard The Venue, Melbourne (18+)
Tickets from Moshtix on 1300 438 849 or www.moshtix.com.au, Ticketek on 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au, and Fist2Face 03 9095 7911
Tuesday 24 May – Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide (Lic AA)
Tickets available from Venuetix on (08) 8225 8888 or www.venuetix.com.au
Thursday 26 May – Roundhouse, Sydney (Lic AA)
Tickets SOLD OUT
Friday 27th May – Roundhouse, Sydney (Lic/AA)
Tickets from Ticketek on 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au
Saturday 28 May – Riverstage, Brisbane (Lic AA)
Tickets from Ticketmaster on 136 100 or www.ticketmaster.com.au, Rockinghorse Records on 07 3229 5360 and Kill The Music on 07 3012 7751
Punknews.org