Ronnie Winter, the talkative frontman of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus sounds casual and relaxed over the phone. All the way from Middleburg, Florida and standing under the stars by a campfire he chats with me, setting aside time to be interviewed about the forthcoming tour downunder for Soundwave Festival. On the other end, it is late morning and the rain is torrential in downtown Melbourne. But how is the weather in Florida? “It’s awesome, compared to the rest of the country, you know, it’s a little cold right now, but we’ve got a campfire so it’s all good.”
In just over a month, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus will make their first trip to Australia, Like me, Winter is excited by this prospect… “Yeah, can’t wait, it’s the first one ever so it should be interesting. It’s gonna be sweet man, there are some really awesome bands playing.This is our first time, we’ve been talking about it all week, we’ve been talking about how excited we are.”
While initially drawing a blank at the bands he’s looking forward to seeing at Soundwave, Ronnie soon namechecks pals Scary Kids…
“Oh, we got some friends playing, I definitely wanna see Scary Kids Scaring Kids, they’re awesome and I really like their new CD. Yeah, they are super rad, who else, I know there’s two other bands There was someone else I really wanted to see, I just can’t remember who it is! I’ll get back to ya.”
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are massive in the US, and the internet has expanded their fan-base quite rapidly gaining worldwide attention for the band with one of their best known singles Face Down gaining massive airplay. How has Winter found Austalians have taken to the band?
“I don’t know,you tell me” says Ronnie ” I’ve gotten a whole lotta emails on MySpace, I can tell you that. We haven’t done a whole lot of international touring. Japan and Canada, because those are the two places we have had the most reponse. And, Australia was right up there on number three. Basically, the reason why we’re even doing this is because we’ve had so much response. I know we definitely have a pretty good fan-base.I’m pretty confident about it.”
Ronnie and his wife, along with the guitarist, Duke have recently revamped their garage, which is handy for jamming and working on new material for this relatively new band. He explains: “Well actually right now we converted our garage into a studio, we’re doing pre-production and a lot of recording and we’re just working on a new record but I do believe we have quite a few touring dates lined up, I guess we’re still probably more concerned with the music right now.” So, for the moment, RJA are jamming it up in Florida, but soon enough they will hit our summer shores to rip it up at Soundwave.
He again reiterates his excitement about the upcoming tour dates .”Yeah we’re pretty excited man, I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, being from Florida, it’s just, we kind of share the same environment, the warm climate, pretty much on all sides of the state we’re surrounded by water, y’know, everybody in my band either surfs or does a variation of some type of water sport, we’re all really into just the whole scene, so we’re excited. I think it’s gonna be pretty incredible. A life-changer for me probably.”
I say most American bands find a kindred spirit amongst the Australian compadres and Winter agrees with me: “Yeah, that’s definitely the vibe amongst bands, cause you know, bands talk to each other. I’ve never heard anyone say they didn’t like it there.[Australia].”
Whilst RJA maybe hitting the limelight – winter confesses they still spend much of their time hanging with their old friends. “I would probably say, well we’re still friends with a lot of underground bands that we did a lot of touring with before we were big, like I said mostly bands that we were in a band with, growing up, trying to live, sleeping from parking lot to parking lot, like back in the old days. Those are probably like our favourite bands but we’ve been pretty friendly with Angels And Airwaves, Jimmy Eat World, 30 Seconds to Mars, we try and make friends with everybody”
Given that the band has spent considerable time on the road of late dows RJA still find time to find the fun?
“How much fun do we have? Haha, maximum, what do you mean? Honestly man, we are five dudes from a small town who made it, and you know we’ve had a fair chance and we play music for a living so everyday it’s the best day of our lives, it’s only gonna be better doing it in a brand new country. The cool thing about your country, is everytime you turn your head, you look from left to right you see something brand new you’ve never seen before.It’s gonna be pretty awesome” I agreed with Ronnie on this one as well, being a fairly patriotic person.
With the exception of some recent arena tours, Australia has never seemed to provide the exciting prospect of meeting up with your favourite band and getting signed merch or a photo opportunity. This year, however Soundwave have arranged for this privilege for fans and RJA will be happy to meet and sign posters and cds. “We always do signature tents,” says Ronnie. “Well the way warped tour works, we do secret signings, and there was a competition, so if your band got voted in as the energizer band then you would do a signing that day, so we ended up doing like twenty five signings for warped tour. We do them all the time, we dont have a problem with it at all, we like to meet people, those are the people who bought your CD, they are the reason why you are there, so saying hi, taking a picture, whatever you know?” So there ya have it folks, RJA will be only to happy to meet and greet and sign till their hearts content.
With such prepakaged programs as Idol, it can be easy to lose faith and become disillusioned with the music industry and it’s hard to find real artists with real integrity, Ronnie adds his thoughts on being finally given a chance and how RJA got to where they are today. “I guess you can never really say honestly that you can expect anything, this is a crazy world that we live in, the music industry is in so much shambles, it’ s really kind of a blessing that we have done as well as we have, so I can’t say i expected it, I can say I strived towards it and I can say that we sacrificed everything that we had and really gave it our all and we’re successful so I think…I didn’t expect it, but I am definitely glad that it happened and I know that we worked hard for it, it was amazing, it was a fluke. We’re reaping the benefits from what we put in.To this day, I tell very band that I meet who asks me, because I know that we are a real band from a real home town and we’re not put together by a label, I say, dont give up dude, go out there and keep playing, that is how you do it, you just stay together.”
I had to ask Ronnie if RJA would be playing any new tracks they have been jamming with but his intiial response wasn’t quite what I had hoped for. “Well, I will say, honestly, we really just wanna stick to the album because we’ve never played there before, and we’ve sold so many CDs, we really dont wanna disappoint the fans and we don’t wanna have a really long set, so I wouldn’t say that we would probably be putting any new music as far as unreleased music, but we’ll definitely be playing as many songs as we can in that set for all the people that are coming out to see us.”
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Boys Like Girls, Madina Lake, Halifax play the following sideshows:
Sydney Tuesday 26 February The Metro- Licensed All Ages
Melbourne Thursday 28 February Billboard The Venue – Under 18s
Soundwave Festival:
Brisbane
SAT 23 FEBRUARY, Riverstage & Parklands
Sydney
SUN 24 FEBRUARY, Sydney Park * Subject to council approval
Melbourne
FRI 29 FEBRUARY, Melbourne Showgrounds
Adelaide
SAT 1 MARCH, Bonython Park
Perth
MON 3 MARCH, Steel Blue Oval, Old Perth Rd, Bassendean
