Although Jinx (Lost In Ohio) was never officially announced as such (at least not with any specifics like a release date), the fourth solo record from Superdrag’s John Davis was intended to be the aforementioned Knoxville, Tenn., quartet’s sixth full-length and first since 2009’s Industry Giants. But after way too much time passed for the group’s liking and Davis experiencing a bit of a conflict with the intended producer, that idea was scrapped, and Davis tracked the songs in Knoxville with past collaborator Stewart Pack producing and slapping the bass and Pack’s son, Henry, playing drums and serving as recording engineer.
The results are a taut, 10-song, punk-inflected affair that easily stands with the best of Davis’ top-notch catalog, Superdrag-branded or not. (If you don’t know this already, and you should, Davis is one of his generation’s greatest songwriters.) How everything played out didn’t stop the original Superdrag lineup—Davis (vocals/guitar), Don Coffey Jr. (drums), Brandon Fisher (guitar) and Tom Pappas (bass)—from getting in the van and trekking to Chicago in July for a glorious club show and a street festival gig on back-to-back beautiful nights.
The recently engaged Davis talked to MAGNET via video chat from his Knoxville home about Jinx, the Chicago experience, the Lees Of Memory (his other great band) and, yes, the possibility of future Superdrag records and shows.
Selfishly, I want to know what you thought about the whole Chicago show experience, having been there myself for both of those.
Oh man, we had a blast. It was fun as could be. I think I can speak for the others, too, when I say I’m just constantly amazed at the lengths people go to come and see Superdrag. That crowd on the first night in particular, I could hear them singing about as loud as I could hear the PA, which was awesome. I feel pretty grateful to be in a situation where stuff we did a long time ago still matters that much to people.
It was really cool that your sons were there, and I was wondering, are they into your music or are they just like, “Yeah, whatever, Dad”?
I think the older they get, the more they appreciate it. When they were real little, they thought Superdrag was made up or something until they figured out how to go on YouTube and look for it. And then Elijah, he watched some radio show or something where we had a really big crowd, and that kind of blew his mind. I think it kind of changed his attitude toward Superdrag after that. They both have their favorites. I think Paul really likes (2000’s) In The Valley Of Dying Stars). Elijah likes the (side project) Used To Be record best of all because it’s the most raw, and he likes (2007 solo LP) Arigato! a lot. That’s pretty cool.
You’ve talked about it in some other interviews so far, but the whole thing about how Jinx ended up as a John Davis record and not a Superdrag record—in as much detail as you’re willing to go into, what happened?
Well, long story short, it was kind of an unfortunate series of misunderstandings. Ultimately, I just got frustrated with having to wait six weeks to do a guitar overdub. It’s a terrible, horrible way to make art, not being able to touch it for a couple of months at a time. After six months, we had four songs in various stages, and only two of them were finished. Don said he was done after the whole blow-up between the producer and I, so I just started looking at it in terms of it being a completely different project than what it started out to be.
Once you decided to press forward with Jinx as a John Davis record, how long did it take you to complete it?
The actual tracking of the record was pretty quick because we would get together and spend maybe an hour or an hour and a half playing through a song and arranging it. That was the other thing—we totally started over. We weren’t bound by any of the decisions that had been made prior. I called up Stewart because originally I was trying to get ahold of his son, Henry, because Don told me that Henry had the best operation in town for recording. Don’s opinion goes a long way with me about anything like that. So I just hollered at him to see if he thought Henry would even be interested in helping me make this record. The next thing I knew, Stewart was on board to produce, and he played bass and Henry played drums. It was a package deal, which was very fortunate for me.
At the tail end of the tracking phase, Stuart broke his leg riding a motorcycle. He does those races where they’re going up and down the trails on the side of a mountain somewhere—you know, gnarly and obviously dangerous. He broke his femur, which is about the worst break you can have. At that point, we were mixing the record. I think they spent more time mixing it than we did tracking it, but I was just so pleased with the way everything sounded. I was so happy with all the changes that we made. I felt like every change we made was for the better, and it made the songs better. We took out all the excess. Sometimes you circle the airport a couple of times waiting for the next idea to happen. We took all that out. I don’t think the record sounds like the Ramones in any way, but that first Ramones record was a big inspiration. The whole deal is pretty spartan, and I like that. We didn’t necessarily set out to make a punk record, but we definitely talked some about SST and all of the three-pieces that were on that label. So many of my favorite bands are a three-piece, going all the way back to Jimi Hendrix Experience. It’s just a format that I like.
Was there any level of disappointment that Jinx isn’t a Superdrag record?
Yeah, I mean, I never intended for any of that to happen the way it did. That was the last thing on my mind or the last thing I wanted to see happen. It’s certainly a lot easier to get people to listen to it when it has the word “Superdrag” on it. That’s just the reality of the situation. It’s kind of an uphill battle when you just put your own name on there. But it was absolutely 100% conceived to be a Superdrag album, and it sounds like one in certain ways.
That actually kind of leads into my next question because people always say that your music sounds like Superdrag regardless of what it’s called. But do you think Jinx would have ended up sounding any different if it was a Superdrag record?
The tracks that we had worked on previously, Brandon’s guitar is a huge piece of the sound. These are the same songs, and I’m playing the same parts that I played before in general, but that extra layer of guitar really changes the sound. I think that’s probably the biggest difference. The drums and the bass lines are also played differently, but I would say for the most part they’re generally in the ballpark of what the other guys were doing.
I hear some pretty straight-up love songs on Jinx. How accurate is that interpretation?
I would say 100% accurate. Whenever I sit down to write, it’s just kind of like a fire hydrant. Just open it up and whatever’s in there, that’s what you get, you know? This record deals a lot with new love but also some pretty deep, dark depression—just kind of a black hole of depression—at the same time. I wrote a lot of this stuff in the middle of the night, sitting out in the garage. I had bad insomnia off and on, and I would just go out there and write. There’s something weird about doing that in the middle of the night. Everybody else is asleep. I don’t know, it’s extra-solitary, I guess.
You’ve been very public about your faith and how it informs your life and your music, and you’ve written some overtly religious songs, especially on your first solo record (self-titled, 2005). Recently, your songs have been more secular, or at least not as directly religious. Am I hearing that correctly?
I would say so. I don’t know if I really dealt with any of that on this album. My faith is always with me, but I just don’t know if it really made its way into these songs. Some of the Lees stuff maybe comes closer to approaching it than this record. I don’t know. I might have to think about that question for a while.
This goes back to your answer before about a fire hydrant. So you don’t specifically try to write one way or the other, it’s just whatever you’re thinking at the moment is what comes out?
Yeah, that seems like the best and most honest way. There’s that documentary about Tom Petty (Runnin’ Down A Dream) where he talks about songwriting in a way that I really could relate to. He’s talking about “The Waiting,” and he just played the same lick for a couple of weeks or whatever, just waiting on the next part to come along. Then, all of a sudden, the next part showed up, and he started playing that and it came together. That’s kind of the same way I’ll do it. At that earliest stage, if you’re sitting there just playing one set of changes or something that sounds cool, usually at least the foundation of a melody will sort of present itself. So whatever thoughts I have at that time that seem to go with it, that’s where the song goes.
I think the very first conversation we had, you said something like whatever’s in your heart is what comes out.
That’s the best way to put it, and that really hasn’t changed. I like to think I’ve gotten better at writing, or more effective, after doing it for a long time. Maybe, maybe not. But the method is still the same.
In one interview recently, you said you’re writing songs for the next Superdrag record. What can you say about that?
I have one that I’ve been messing with, you know, Tom Petty-style. Don heard me playing it at practice, and I know he likes it, so I need to finish it and play it for him and see what he wants to do with it. I would love to make a Superdrag record. As it turns out, it wasn’t this record, but I would love to make one under some completely other set of circumstances and do it the way we used to do it. I think that would rule.
You played the shows in Chicago, you might have a new Superdrag record—is there any possibility that you would play more shows or do some kind of extended run with time off in between?
Without divulging too much in advance, there has been a lot of talk about doing something similar to what we did in Chicago but in a lot of other places. I don’t know if any of us are really set up in our lives to where we could just take off for a month and drop everything, but I would love to do as much as we can while we can. I think it would be a shame not to because when we were up there in Chicago, it just seemed to make a lot of people happy. I really like that. What a gift that is. Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be the antidote to problems and stress and life, so it’s pretty cool to be a part of that equation.
—Matt Hickey
