Like many Americans, Mike Williamson is a man waiting for salvation. He's a man who hangs his hopes and dreams on the notion that a savior will come and deliver us. He's holding out for The Return.
"There have been so many terrible musical genres. It got to the point where synth-pop was on the radio again, and I started thinking 'Well, maybe Nirvana is coming now. Maybe Nirvana will kill this.' Then it didn't happen. I don't know. I'm waiting. It'd be nice."
Williamson, singer/guitarist for Los Angeles' Jr. Juggernaut isn't wasting his time perseverating over the Rapture or the return of any number of assorted prophets, deities or angels to save him. He's waiting for the return of a band that, with righteous jams and the hot stink of rock'n'roll vengeance, can right our poor, poor world's musical mess. He's waiting for the return of a songwriter, a tunesmith or a band with the ability to turn the world on its head like Kurt Cobain did in 1990, The Sex Pistols in '76 or The Beatles in '64. He's waiting for that rock'n'roll savior we've been dreaming of for so, so long. You know, the sort of instant phenomenon that suddenly wrecks this pile of watered-down punk, shortsighted indie-rock fads and youth-oriented bubblegum undergrounds like the shakily piled house of cards it is.
Until he or she returns, though, Williamson is doing what every good devotee does in the interim. He religiously upholds the tenets of his faith in Jr. Juggernaut. Leading the trio into its debut, Ghost Poison, out now from Suburban Home Records, Williamson defends underground rock's holy trinity: Songwriting, power and honesty. Although Williamson is, at his core, a rootsy songwriter with an aptitude for self-reflection, he doesn't stop at an acoustic guitar. With a Marshall stack behind him to power his distorted roots/punk/rock hybrid, Jr. Juggernaut checks the noisy open-chord distortion of bands like Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr. and Armchair Martian as much as the reflective songwriter-on-display approach of the Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen influences that also drive his songwriting. With a rhythm section behind him built to reinforce his rock leanings -- bassist Kevin Keller straddles melody and rhythm equally, while drummer Waleed Rashidi pounds with the ferocity of a born punk smasher -- Ghost Poison has enough firepower to wake up the neighbors.
If Williamson's songwriting honesty and no-bullshit approach to music runs counter to everything that's hip, stylish and manufactured these days, it's simply because he's keeping the faith. Like a musical Sodom and Gomorrah, the post-millennial music business has, to a large part, turned its back on the virtues that made rock so great over the years. Bands favor gimmicky songwriting over solid chops. The road to success isn't paved through a catalog that'll stand up in 20 years, but in an act's ability to lure in bloggers, MySpace friends and everyone else -- often at the expense of built-to-last songsmiths.
There'll be no pillars of salt in Williamson's future. He and Jr. Juggernaut have walked away from the modern hype-machine world and certainly aren't looking back. Ghost Poison has all the power and songwriting that, in theory, should appeal to punk fans. Williamson's guitar tones and songwriting were built off the Armchair Martian model, which in turn, borrowed heavily from Husker Du and Jawbreaker. His lineage is pure, both in terms of raucous, ear-ringing volumes and good, old-fashioned songwriting. It should adhere the band to the punk world, save for the small fact that, punk, like its mainstream cousins is caught up in an endless cycle of fashion, hype and gimmicks.
"I don't listen to a lot of modern punk music," Williamson admits. "I like stuff like The Germs and stuff like that, and post-punk stuff, like SST Records, but I'm so completely detached from any modern punk scene whatsoever. The punk scene now, the people who listen to it and the bands that play in it, seem very youth-oriented to me. It doesn't seem to transcend ages. People playing in The Germs were young, but we still listen to those records now. There's a maturity. The punk bands I see know seem lacking in maturity. I don't see them transcending 30-year-olds. I'm probably painting myself in a corner."
In fact, Jr. Juggernaut is still searching for an easily defined audience. Williamson formed the band in '03, and began gigging around the Los Angeles club scene. After a few years, he deemed the original lineup crap, axed his rhythm section and retooled the band, pulling in Rashidi, whose previous band, La Motta , played with the first version of Jr. Juggernaut. A Craigslist ad that oh-so-unhiply referenced Buffalo Tom peaked Keller's interest, and the new act was born. After a bit of gigging, Jr. Juggernaut 2.0 headed into the studio and laid down the bulk of Ghost Poison, using it as a demo to shop around labels; after signing to Suburban Home, the band laid another couple tracks to tape and prepared to, if not convert the world's musical heathens, at least not-so-quietly keep the faith until another musical prophet arrives to rescue rock's songwriting traditions.
But as any believer will tell you, faith is a burden. Particularly for Jr. Juggernaut, whose loud-and-mature ethos is a combination that lands it out of bounds for fans of both the noisy and the grown-up rock. Maybe if he didn't stick so fervently to the orthodoxy that made his favorite eras in rock -- the late '60s and the early '90s -- so fertile, he'd be able to put his head down and fall into line in a less demanding, less zealous portion of the underground scene. You know, start pandering to the metal-core set or something. Or toss out the full stack in favor of an acoustic guitar and hope that NPR comes a-knockin'. But no, Williamson is a True Believer. He'll stand by his rocking, mature songwriting even if makes Jr. Juggernaut an outcast or a martyr. It's just what the faithful do.
"I remember seeing Jawbreaker playing a 21-and-over show, and I remember Blake (Schwarzenbach, singer/guitarist) saying something to the audience about how grateful he was to see people in the audience that were older than 16 years old. I don't know what happens to people -- it hasn't happened to me -- but as people get older, they turn away from rock that's loud," Williamson grumbles. "There's songwriters that are mature but still like to turn it up, but somehow they get ostracized from the people in their own age group because they haven't mellowed."
If there's a glimmer of hope for Williamson and other likeminded keepers of rock's faith, it's that Jr. Juggernaut joins a small but swelling cult of bands using punk's tools to build a sound tailored not for fickle teenagers, but for mature listeners. Like everyone from Against Me and American Steel to Automatic 7 and The Gaslight Anthem, Jr. Juggernaut's power-trio goes punk aesthetic is helping rebuild the notion that punk can be a passionate, intelligent movement instead of just a marketing gimmick or teen fashion. It's a hard battle, indeed, in the war to take punk back.
The biggest struggle in the crusades to bring mature punk and rock back into focus isn't going to be winning over listeners. It'll be wrenching the music business from the hands of bean-counters and opportunistic shareholders to put a long-range focus back into the industry. A little throwaway pop and trendy rock is all well and good, but these days, the majors are more concerned with a quick return that capitalizes on a short-lived fad than nurturing a band whose back catalog will sustain budgets for years to come. For all the vaunted talk of the long-tail, those forging the contracts with bands don't seem to have the desire, or possibly ability, to look any farther down the road than the next couple seasons. And it's coming back to bite them: Digital piracy has certainly taken a bite out of record-company profits, but ignoring career artists in favor of the flavor of the month's left the recording industry in an untenable position that's sacrificed long-term sustainability with a quick shot of cash.
"I don't think that record executives, when they're pushing their newest product, I don't even think that thought enters their minds, like 'Is this a relevant band? Is this band going to be around?'" Williamson groans. "I don't think it matters. I think it mattered to whoever was running Elektra in 1969. I think it mattered to them to have a roster of artists they could be proud of. Now, I don't think it's even an issue of is this music worthy? Music has become just product as far as the record company is concerned. It's who's pretty and who will sell 200 thousand units this week. This is why I'm glad places like Suburban Home exist. I swear to God, he'll lose money on Jr. Juggernaut, I hate to tell him. Bless him for wanting people for wanting people to hear good music, for wanting people to hear music that's real and that comes from someone's heart."
When you start to look at it, the deck seems stacked against ever seeing a band bring back the traditions of rock power and honest songwriting to the mainstream. Listeners' bad taste and labels' bad signings are forming an ever-tighter feedback loop that's all but cut out anything that's challenging, difficult or, sadly, mature. Are bands like Jr. Juggernaut, whose mix of noisy abandon and smart songwriting would have made it a shoo-in for a major-label deal in the '90s alt-rock boom, doomed to live out their lives fighting for a hand-to-mouth existence in the underground? Is rock finally dead and we're just feeding on its carcass? Williamson doesn't think so.
"There's always the chance for Nirvana," he gushes with the zeal of a missionary. "When some young, enterprising A&R executive who actually gives a shit pushes a band he likes because he has a soul. I'm a real firm believer that if you play good music for people, they'll like it. They really will."
Until the next Nirvana comes along, though, we'll all have to keep the faith in our own little way. For Williamson and Jr. Juggernaut, it's all about the little rituals of rocking hard and putting his soul on the line in reflective, intelligent lyrics. Faith may sustain us after all.