BITE ME! Silent Civilian Interview

Jonny Santos of SILENT CIVILIAN -By Nikki Neil

Some time ago the BiteMe! Squad was hanging out at The Whiskey waiting to interview Dino, who at the time was still in Fear Factory. Whilst we waited we noticed a group of cute young boys participating in a photo shoot. “Who are you?” We asked. “SpineShank,” they said in unison. “We’re playing tonight. Make sure you catch our set.” We did and it was love at first note. After that day we couldn’t get enough of the SpineShank boys. We hung with them at clubs, caught all their L.A. shows…in fact, SpineShank caused us to break our one-time only interview rule, and they hold the title as BiteMe!’s most interviewed. Then one day our boys disappeared. We thought they were in the studio but months went by and nothing manifested.

A few months ago a press released announced the arrival of Silent Civilian fronted by Jonny Santos. We were delighted to see that Jonny was still around, but sad to know that it meant the demise of one of our favorite bands. As expected, Santos didn’t let us or his loyal fans down. He found three musicians—Chris Mora (drums), Henno (bass), Tim Mankowski (guitars)—with the same drive, passion, and vision. The energy that these four create as a unit is a force to be reckoned with.

In case you were wondering, Silent Civilian sounds nothing like Spineshank. In fact, you may find yourself saying, “Dude, is that Jonny?” You can rest assured that it is. Driven by brutal intensity Silent Civilian’s Rebirth Of The Temple will take you on a gripping, exhilarating ride. Experimental twists and turns around every avenue of creative heaviness seem to be second nature with this crafty group and the end result is anything but dull.

Jonny, how have you been? I missed you.

I’m back in the saddle.

I’m so happy to hear that.

This time I’m tearing ass a lot harder.

So I’ve heard. How’s the road treating you so far?

The road has been awesome. I’m so happy to be back out. I was home for almost two years and it sucked.

That must have made you nuts.

I’m used to being home for about two weeks.

Have you been getting a lot of support from your old fans?

Totally. They are coming out. They are showing up to the shows. It’s really cool to see that they are all still there. Being away for two years is a gamble. Coming back into it I had to wonder, “Am I going to still have a fan base?” It is kind of a scary feeling… coming back on a different label…everything is different now. There was a lot of uncertainty there at first. We went out on tour with Nothing Face in February. That was the band’s first tour and I was really scared of how the fans were going to react and accept the band. But, oh, my god it has been every night…. You know what I hear every night?

What?

“Dude, don’t take this the wrong way. I love SpineShank but this shit blows SpineShank away. You guy are fuckin’ crazy.” That is what I hear every night.

You know I have to ask because you guys were our boys. What happened with SpineShank?

Um…well, I quit. (Laughs) I guess I was just over it. I kind of felt like the band ran its course. I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, and I can’t really say that we were getting along that great at the time. We had just gotten nominated for a Grammy so I said to myself, “If there was ever a time to quit it is now.” Instead of watching the shit go down, it was better to leave on somewhat of a high note. The label wanted us to go back and do another record and I wasn’t feeling it. They didn’t even try to push the last record that hard at all, and I didn’t really think they would push the next one so I said, “I’m out.” Those guys are doing their own thing now. From what I hear they have a new singer. (According to the last update on the band’s website [11-7-05] his name is Brandon Espinoza-NIN). I don’t think they are using the name SpineShank though. (According to the band’s website the remaining members of SpineShank will emerge under a different name.-NIN) I wish them all good luck in their endeavors and whatever they chose to do.

I wish you all good luck. I loved you guys, but I’m sure I’ll love your new band too.

I think you will. I’m really proud of this band. I was so hands on with the whole project from day one – more so than I’ve ever been in SpineShank. I don’t regret a day of being in SpineShank, and I don’t regret any of the records I made with SpineShank, but I do feel that this is my best work ever. I really do.

Did you have a difficult time finding the right people to complete this band?

The most difficult part was finding my drummer. I really needed to find a good, solid drummer. After being with Tommy for so many years…I got spoiled by being in a band with such a great drummer. I had not been in a band with any other drummer but Tommy. I knew I had to find that guy, and I found that guy. In fact, he actually found me through myspace of all places. He came down and auditioned the first day and got the part. I knew he was the one. We started it up. I got the other guys involved. Chris, my drummer, and I had most of the record written before we finished the line-up of the band. We went in with Logan (Mader) who did the record, and the result is an hour of just face bashing. (Laughs)

Exactly. I haven’t heard something that heavy and that good in a long time.

It’s super heavy, but at the same time it has some very twisted and emotionally moments to it. I also feel that some of my best melodies as a singer are on this record too. The first time Dino (Cazares) heard it he said, “This can’t be Jonny’s band. This is completely different. Who is this?” Logan said, “It’s Jonny dude. It’s Jonny’s new shit.”

I basically said the same thing as Dino.

I’m pretty much on cloud nine right now. The record is about to drop. We’re on tour having a great time every night.

How is Dino doing? I haven’t seen him in awhile.

He is awesome. He is doing really, really well. I’ll do a shameless plug for him. I just worked on the new Asesino record (Cristo Satanico due out 7-18-6 – NIN) with him on a couple of songs. It’s fuckin’ brutal man.

Sounds great.

Yeah, it is fuckin’ bru-tal. I sang on two of the songs and Jamey (Jasta) from Hatebreed sang on one of the songs. Andreas (Kisser) from Sepultura played guitar on a good handful of the songs so that is definitely a record to watch out for.

What do you plan on doing differently this time around?

I don’t know if there is anything that I am planning on doing, but I do know that there are things that I am planning on not doing.

Okay, what are you planning on not doing?

I guess I appreciate it a lot more now than I did when I was in SpineShank. Having been in a band and getting signed so young I was really overwhelmed by the fast success of the band and being treated like…I really didn’t have to lift a hand to do much of anything except get on stage and sing. I didn’t take the business side of it seriously. I don’t know if I really appreciated the kind of success I was having in that band. This time around it was totally different. I had to work extremely hard to get back where I am at right now. I had to work really hard to get back to where I am at and get back in the game. I just appreciate it a lot more. I don’t take anything for granted. I don’t take my fans for granted. I’m just a soldier and a hard worker for my band at this point.

Does having children affect your stance as a musician?

I had my oldest when I was 16, so she was with me from the get-go. She is totally used to this. She’ll tell me, “Dad, I’m on spring break. I want to come out on the road with you.” I tell her, “Yeah, as long as it is cool with mom,” and mom is like “No way.” But, when we play Southern Cali shows she jumps on the bus and rolls with us. She is 13 now, so hopefully this summer her mom will let her come out for a couple of weeks. It’s definitely hard at times being away from my kids. Not being able to spend ever day with them like a lot of dads do, but when I am home – I’m home. When I’m home I don’t go to a day job 8 hours a day and only get to see my kids for 2 hours. When I am home I get to spend the entire day with them. If I’m home for two or three months I get to spend more time with them than some dads get to spend with their kids all year. I’m a pretty hands on kind of a dad. We do as much stuff together as we can. My son, unfortunately, lives out of state, so even when I am home I don’t get to see him that much. But, I try to see my son once every month or once every other month and a week or so in the summer and a week at Christmas time. It’s probably a little more difficult on him. Even if I wasn’t touring I still wouldn’t get to see him that much. I actually get to see my son more when I am on tour because we go through the mid-west so often. It’s one of those things that can be rough but at the same time it’s “this is what daddy has done and what daddy has been doing for the last 8 years,” so they are used to it. They don’t really know any different.

Plus it sounds cool at school.

Yeah. My daughter is 13, and she’s a fuckin’ rockstar at school. I took her as my date to the Grammys.

That is awesome.

She got to walk the red carpet. She went back to school with her pictures of her and I at the Grammys. If my dad took me to the Grammys when I was a kid I’d be stoked.

Does she want to be in a rock band?

She is actually starting a band with her cousin. She plays guitar. I bought her first guitar a year ago at Christmas, so she is playing guitar now. Of course the first song she learned was “Iron Man”. I had to teach her some classic shit to start her off on the right foot. So, she started a band with her cousin and her cousin is playing drums and she is playing guitar. I was her age when I started my first band with Tommy.

She obviously takes after you.

Yeah, but she didn’t want to do it for a long time because she didn’t think that chicks were in bands. I took her to see Arch Enemy and she was like, “Whoa. Chicks are in bands.”

The new album is titled Rebirth Of The Temple. Is there an underlying message?

There is a HUGE underlying message in that title. It pretty much ties into me and what I had to go through from leaving SpineShank to coming back. Temple is a symbol of me—mind, body, and soul—and this is a rebirth of Jonny Santos. A reinvention of who I am, rising from the ashes, leaving a Grammy nominated band, and going to absolutely nothing to getting my life straight…just a whole transformation. It symbolizes this whole spiritual change that I went through after I left the band and all the hardships that I had to deal with and going back to being practically homeless again to being back in a signed band on tour. It is very symbolic of what I had to go through the very first year after I left the band because the decision I had made was a very ballsy decision. When I left the band I left with nothing. I went from playing sold out shows at the London Astoria to wondering where I was going to stay at night. I was going though a divorce at the time and a custody battle. I was at the very bottom. I had no money to do anything. I couldn’t even hire an attorney. I couldn’t pay rent. I didn’t know what to do because I had been in a signed band for so long – I had not worked any type of job for so long. It was like, “Fuck, what do I do?” I started to really reflect on who I was and some of the wrong decisions that I made about myself and my life. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and I got going again. I started practicing under Logan Mader as an engineer for a good year and got into production. It was a way for me to be involved in music until I figured out what I wanted to do again. That really helped me a lot. The time off…it was really grounding. It really brought me back down to earth and made me appreciate what I had and how hard it was going to be to get what I had back. The actual song itself is a song about self perseverance and moving on knowing that you can’t change anything that you have done in the past. There is no way, but you can change where you are headed. It’s a song about not giving up and rising from the ashes and moving forward and being positive and believing in yourself. I felt that it was a very appropriate title for the record.

I heard that the video for “Rebirth of the Temple” is making its debut this weekend on Headbanger’s Ball.

Fuck yeah! I’m so stoked. So happy.

SpineShank was nominated for a Grammy. Were you disappointed that the band didn’t win?

No way. I mean, come on, the fact that we got nominated was a fuckin’ fluke. Somebody over there just liked us a lot. I don’t know what the fuck was up with that. As soon as I saw who we were up against I knew that we weren’t going to win it. We were in the same category as Metallica. Give me a fuckin’ break. I was just thrilled to have been nominated. The shitty part was that MTV was running a banner and they said we had won, so I kept on getting all these phone calls.

In your opinion what are the essential elements for making a good album?

From my experience, I think the essential elements for making a good record is not really giving a fuck and doing what you want to do – writing the songs you want to write. The thing about this record is Media Scare gave me complete and total control over my record. They didn’t say, “We need 3 singles and they can only be 3 minutes and 30 seconds long and they can’t have any screaming in them and this and blah, blah, blah.” Instead the said, “Jonny here is your budget. Go make the record you want to make.” I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. I said, “You got to be kidding me.” The said, “No, we signed you off your demo and we want an album full of those songs. We want you to do what you feel most comfortable doing.” So, I didn’t care. I wrote songs…there are songs on the record that are 6 minutes long, and I don’t care. Metallica did it 15 – 20 years ago. Why can’t I do it now? When the record was finally finished people were saying, “Oh my god,” and we were like, “Wow! We have something good here.” I think that was one of the biggest problems with SpineShank. There were always too many chefs in the kitchen. Someone would say, “The song is too long. It’s 3 minutes and 50 seconds. We need to bring it down to 3:29 / 3:30. And, we’re going to have to do a radio edit of this song,” or just before we went to record the record we needed three singles. I think that really ruined a lot of it for us. I’m not that kind of musician…I’m not a pop single writer. I can’t just pop out radio singles all day long. I’m a metal guy. If a single is going to happen it’s gonna happen because it just happens and not because I intentionally try to write a hit radio song. I didn’t have any of that pressure on me while making this record. I was totally given full reign and complete control over what I wanted to do. I can even recall the label saying a couple of times, “I think this song should be a little heavier,” and I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me? You fuckin’ rule.” I just don’t see why more bands aren’t allowed that kind of freedom. I understand that it is a business and the labels want to make a lot of money, but I really think that when you do that to artist you kind of deprive everybody of the artist’s true potential and what they are actually capable of. When Logan produced the record he knew what I was doing and instead of trying to change it he just enhanced it. He said, “If you’re going to do this type of a song let’s make sure it is the best way that it can be.” That was just really cool. It was such a fun process. I’ve never had this much fun making a record. During the making of the last two SpineShank records at some point people were fighting, physically fighting, in the fucking studio. This time around everybody was happy. Every one was having a great time. It was so low stress, and we got to take our time with it. We took three months to make the record. “Oh, we hit a rough spot. Okay, let’s take a couple of days off. Everybody go golfing or something. Clear your head.” It was so cool to have that kind of freedom. I think also because it is the band’s first record we were allowed to be the underdog. We’re not under a lot of pressure to get this record out quickly because are no expectations out there. Already people are saying, “Wow! Jonny, I knew your new shit would probably be pretty good but I didn’t expect this.” That is cool. I just really hope that I can accomplish the same kind of shock value on the next record.

As long as you have the creative freedom that you have now you will.

Exactly. I think part of that has to do with being involved with an indie.

Absolutely.

I have to admit that I am so happy with Media Scare – the staff and everybody there. Most of the staff at the label are musicians in bands. It’s not like we have a bunch of old suits working over there. We’re all young guys and chicks working over there. The owner of the label is only a few years older than me. It’s really a cool vibe going on over there. People are going to be hearing and seeing a lot of good things coming out of this label in the next year. The roster is getting pretty big. Plus, I have an A&R gig over there now so I’m signing bands. It’s just cool.

It’s great that you are able to give back to the music community in that way.

Totally. I’ve already signed one band to the label and I’m actually producing their record this year and then I’m working on signing a band out of New York to the label as well. It feels good to be able to give other people the same opportunities that were given to me when I was younger.

Aside from what you are already doing is there anything else that you would like to give back to the music community?

I’d like to give them back some fuckin’ kick ass metal. (Laughs) As long as I stay in the metal industry for the rest of my life…whether it is being in a band…obviously I’m not going to be in a band for the rest of my life, but as long as I stay in the business and continue to produce. I’m actually going to start my own label, hopefully next year, which is going to be distributed by our label, which will be really cool because at that point I can sign whoever I want. It’s going to be my call. I want to make sure that bands that are signed are getting fair deals, and they are not getting raped by such an unforgiving industry. I see so many bands signed to majors and it’s like, “Okay, you’re signed to Atlantic but you don’t have a pot to piss in. You don’t have any publishing, you don’t have this, and you don’t have that.” I’d like to start a label that is a good stepping stone for bands to give them confidence and a way to put a couple of bucks in their pocket, once they get home from touring their asses off for a year and a half, so they can pay their rent while they work on their next record. That is what I’d like to give back to the up-and-coming bands out there. The band Kerio (Not sure of the spelling – NIN) that I just signed to the label half the band isn’t even 18 yet. They are that good. I’m giving them an opportunity to start their career. When I was 17 I didn’t have a record deal waiting for me on the table, and these kids are that good or else I wouldn’t even go there.

What is the most valuable lesson you have learned so far?

Keep your head out of the clouds, and keep your feet on the ground. For one second don’t take it for granted and think this industry is always going to be there for you. You have to work at it. Being an artist in a band and continuing to make records and be successful takes a lot of hard work. You cannot get comfortable. You have to stay hungry. Once you lose that hunger you’re going to lose it period because people will see right through it. The fans aren’t stupid. They can tell when you are being lazy and making a lazy record. It’s not just in the recording process. When you get on stage you have to work hard again. You just can’t take it for granted. I was at the top and I went straight to the bottom and I’m about halfway back up the ladder right now. It’s been the hardest thing ever. That by far has to be the strongest lesson that I learned. Don’t ever take it for granted. I highly recommend that to any artist out there. I don’t give a shit how many records you sold. People will turn their backs on you if you turn your back on them and get lazy.

I heard Silent Civilian has been added to the One Nation Undivided Tour. Are you excited about that?

Fuck yeah dude! That tour is gonna fuckin’ kill man.

It sounds like a pretty intense line-up.

Eyes Of Fire, Bleed The Sky, us, God Forbid, and Ill Nino. We got a pretty good slot. We are number three out of 5 bands, so we’re right in the middle of the show, which I don’t mind at all. It’s fuckin’ awesome. I’ve known the Ill Nino guys forever and when the tour came about I called up Dave and said, “Hey man I want this tour.” He said, “It’s all you man. You got it.” It was that easy. One phone call. That is the nice thing about still having friends out there. Right after we do the Ill Nino tour we are doing a string of dates with Statik X.

I saw that. You’re going to be at The Key Club. I can’t wait.

Yeah, Wayne called me up and said, “Hey Jonny do you want to do these dates with us?” I said, “Count me in buddy.” It’s really, really cool. It’s so weird we’ve played Ohio about ten times, and we’ve only played L.A. twice. It’s going to be a killer tour. We just played with God Forbid the other night in Portland, Oregon, and that was a great show. We played with God Forbid years ago when I was in SpineShank. We did a show with them, Shadows Fall, and Amen in Cincinnati, so it is kind of cool to be with them on tour and know that they are still going.

Are the Silent Civilian boys big partiers?

We are the most functional drunks ever. (Laughs). We’re a bunch of drinkers. I can’t say that there is very much drug action going on other than the occasional joint here and there. We definitely like our Jack & Coke.

So, what would you say is the best hangover remedy?

The best hangover remedy is a bottle of Pedialyte and a cheese burger.

I never thought about Pedialyte, but it makes sense.

You’d be surprised at how many bands have PediaLite on their rider. I actually learned about it from…I think it was (hed) pe back in the day. I was like, “What the fuck. Who has a kid up here?” They were like “Kid my ass. This is what we drink right before we go to bed.”

I can see (hed) pe coming up with that idea.

Oh yeah.

Well, I can sit here and talk to you all day, but I should let you get back to business. Before you go is there anything that you would like to share with your fans?

I just want to throw out a huge fuckin’ hug & kiss to all my fans out there for still being there and for caring and for the amount of support that has been coming through from everybody. I’m almost at a loss for words because it has been so overwhelming. You guys fuckin’ rock. And, I also want to say to all the new fans out there – Fuck, it’s gonna be a fun ride.

For more on Silent Civilian visit: www.silentcivilian.com or www.myspace.com/silentcivilian