Danko Jones Likes Nickelback
Thursday March 02, 2006 @ 07:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Danko Jones

It might seem like a bit of a stretch, but the difference between Danko Jones and Nickelback isn't quite as big as you'd expect it to be. Seriously. Mull that one over in your head a bit. See? Kinda makes sense, right? Riff-heavy guitar rock? Check. High-octane machismo? Check. Long, greasy, golden locks? Er, OK, so not everything applies. But two out of three ain't bad.

Maybe that's what promoters had in mind when they thought about putting these two Canadian rockers together for a cross-country tour to start off 2006. Let them play as loud as they want to as many people as they want and kick-start the new year. Some music fans would scoff at Danko Jones' decision to be associated with anything Nickelback, especially since the band — despite it's more over-the-top, hard rock leanings — have quite a few connections to Canada's indie rock scene.

If you ask Danko, though, the decision to join Chad Kroeger and the boys on a recently completed cross-Canada jaunt was a no-brainer, regardless of how uncool it would seem. "Why wouldn't we do this tour?" he asks rhetorically.

"Why wouldn't anyone? I think there are a lot of bands that really wouldn't, and it makes me laugh. We were told by this really, really ultra-cool band in Toronto not to do the tour. Despite us being rockheads, we know all those fuckin' indie rock guys. We've all been pals for years. And so they're saying, 'Don't do the tour.' And I'm like, 'Ten thousand people a night across Canada, our homeland where we haven't played in three-and-a-half years, on the eve of our new record. Why the fuck would we say no?'"

The tour was basically the equivalent of giving Danko Jones the key to the gates of heaven. Playing the band's take-all-prisoners style of cock rock in front of large stadium crowds is the stuff of Danko's wet dreams. And doing so armed with a new album is exactly what the doctor ordered, especially after a sort of downer end to 2005. Citing fatigue and an overall unhappiness, longtime drummer Damon Richardson quit in December while the band were on the road.

"Yeah, it's a happier vibe now," admits Danko. "Damon said himself that he was unhappy, right?

"He clarified it on our website and said that he was unhappy, and I can't argue with that. It was very, very obvious. I just want to keep it clean like that and very amicable, because, y'know, everyone's cool with each other. But basically, after he quit, I went to Europe to do a press tour and came back broke for Christmas. And then we started looking for a drummer.

"Now we're really excited to get this worldwide tour (set for March and April) on this new album going. In the end, it just worked out perfectly that he (Richardson) decided to not be in the band at the right time. It was nice to do it at that point when we had a break for Christmas coming up. Not that it was calculated on his part, but it just worked out that way. Things have a way of actually working out after a while. He left and then we got the offer for this Nickelback tour. And we're like, 'Umm, yeah, we'll take it.'

"And the Nickelback guys are really, really nice guys. Their crew has been treating us really well, too. And everyone in the respective cities that we've been in, like local crew and everybody there, has been nice to us. I mean our name has been around for a while. If you're into the music industry in Canada, our name has been thrown about, so we're not coming out of left field for everybody. I'd say 50 to 60 per cent of the Nickelback crowd has heard of us. Nickelback are pretty much working man's rock, and we're not too far away from workin' man's rock, so everybody's diggin' it."

Danko's rock is dirtier and sexier workin' man's rock, but there's such a fine line there that we'll let that one slide. Especially since the new album is, unsurprisingly, perfectly suited to be blasted in arenas across the globe. Less metallic and more melodic than its predecessor, We Sweat Blood, Sleep With The Enemy keeps the riff count high while being noticeably more catchy. This is a hard rock record made to sing along to.

There's the simple but infectious chorus of the first single, "Sticky Situation." The clap-happy groove of "Don't Fall In Love" is also undeniable. And by the time Danko belts out "I'd break my dick just for you" on "Invisible," (which features John Garcia of Kyuss) well, the party is clearly in full swing.

"Someone asked me before I started writing the record, 'What's the new one gonna sound like?' And I knew it was going to be heavy but a little catchier. Born A Lion was a blues-rock record, and I really hated the blues-rock tag after a while when everyone was saying that. I was like, 'What are you talking about? It's just fucking rock!' I hated that tag.

"So in order to get away from that we wrote We Sweat Blood and then we were a heavy metal band. So then I was like, 'We're not a fucking heavy metal band!' This record is really kind of the best of both worlds, and we're just really happy with it."

Danko Jones is playing a free show at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern at 2:15 a.m. on Sunday morning to cap off Chart's Saturday night Canadian Music Week showcase.

—Brian Pascual