I can't think of too many other musicians from the hardcore community who can claim discography as robust and impressive as the Todd Jones has built up throughout the last few decades.
Currently focusing his talents on Nails, the Southern California native has also played in such bands as Carry On, Terror, Betrayed, Internal Affairs, and FireBurn, among others. Todd is also a staple at local hardcore shows throughout the Los Angeles and Orange County region, and it's always a pleasure geeking out about new bands with him when we chat.
Last year, Nails came back after a long break from the recording studio with Every Bridge Burned, a ferocious work that I waxed poetic about in this album review.
With Nails gearing up to go out on a North American tour next month with Obituary, Terror, SpiritWorld, and Pest Control, I had an extensive conversation with Todd about his life in hardcore music and how its lead to his music career today.
Let's go back a bit and talk about your first musical loves, before hardcore. Were you into metal before hardcore? That's such a common trajectory.
I was born in 1981 and grew up in a musical home where my dad was a musician. But I didn't fall in love with music till I was 11 years old. Prior to that, I had cassettes by Guns N' Roses, Vanilla Ice, and a few other things. But Nirvana's Nevermind and Metallica's "black album" were the albums that made me fall in love with music. That was in late 1992.
When I told my father I was getting interested in music and wanted to try playing guitar, he had one for me and was able to show me how to play some basic things right away since he was a player himself. It was a blue Fernandes stratocaster, a Japanese knockoff of a Fender strat. It was cool because Nirvana would sometime play single-coil guitars, so I was able to replicate that sound.
I was a bored-ass kid back then. I had friends and all that, but I had plenty of time to sit around at home and just play guitar all day. I remember getting Master of Puppets and trying to play along to it, note for note. Then I got into Slayer and all of the Seattle bands that were on MTV back then. Another huge thing for me was Headbanger's Ball with Riki Rachtman and that got me into stuff like Pantera.
How did that lead into you playing in a band?
Well, I found Green Day and Offspring and fell in love with them. Then it was all of the Epitaph and Fat Wreck stuff. From there, my friends and I would look at the thanks lists on those kinds of albums and that led us to finding hardcore bands.
Then I started playing in a band called Initial Distrust with a good friend named Joel Perkins. That only lasted about a month or two and then I joined another band called It Doesn't Matter with Zack Nelson. That would end up being my first vinyl record appearance on a compilation called Localism in 1996.
I might have 14 or 15 at the time. I don't want to say anything negative, but it definitely sounds like a teenager's first band. That would be the fairest way to put it. We were still learning and trying how to figure out how to even structure songs.
The sound of that band was probably more in line with NOFX or No Use for a Name than it was Minor Threat or Youth of Today. I played bass in that band.
I know you've told me that Minor Threat was an important band for you. Do you remember the first time you heard them?
My friend Joel knew this girl who let him borrow a CD with Minor Threat on it and I remember thinking to myself, "I've been waiting my whole life to hear this." I know it sounds silly, but it was one of the most profound experiences I've ever had. I was like 13 or 14 at the time.
A lot of people in my age group have told me that they had the same experience hearing Minor Threat for the first time.
I'm sure zines were important in your hardcore music education.
I remember getting Hardware Fanzine #8 from [former Annihilation Time vocalist] Fred Hammer around the time I was in my first band and there were three things that upped the ante for me when it came to me becoming obssessed with hardcore. For one, there were Floorpunch ads and reviews, and they way Hardware wrote about that band made it feel like that was something important. So I got a copy of the Floorpunch record and fell in love with it.
I then got the Body Bag 7" from Rain on the Parade, and though that band and record might not have aged as well as others from that time, I still feel a big connection to it.
The third thing that got me deeper into hardcore was Cro-Mags' The Age of Quarrel. Fred Hammer let me borrow his copy of that record and it was a big influence on me when I first got into hardcore music.
What was high school like for you in Oxnard during that time? As a SoCal transplant who grew up In New York City, I imagine surfers and skaters being really popular when you were in school, but maybe that's just a stereotype?
No, the surfers and skaters were definitely popular where I grew up. I hung out with people in those groups, even though I was pretty introverted and insecure. I was a skateboarder and hung out with people in Silver Strand Beach.
My best friends back then were Ryan Fredette, who sang in the band In Control, and Aaron Belchere, who sang in the band Stand Your Ground with me. This was in high school. We were fine socially, and talked to girls and all that [laughs].
I wasn't a "cool" person, but also wasn't on the lowest rung of the social ladder either.
What were some of the local hardcore bands you saw when you were a teen in Oxnard? We initially met through a mutual friend, Andrew Kline, from the band Strife. Did you see them back in the day?
Yeah, Strife played the second or third hardcore show I ever went to. It was Pennywise, Joykiller, Strife, and DFL at the Ventura Fairgrounds in the summer of 1996. I remember when Pennywise played "Bro Hymn" in the middle of their set, everyone in the crowd got on the stage and it broke, so that was the end of the show [laughs].
But the local bands that really stuck out to me were Burning Dog and Missing 23rd. I would go to any show I could go to. A fellow that played in Burning Dog, Joe Rivas, who plays in a band these days called Out of Trust, he was incredibly welcoming and would talk to us younger kids.
I played my first show either on New Year's Eve 1995 or 1996, I can't remember with that band It Doesn't Matter. I remember standing outside trying to get a ride home and there were these two other guys talking about my brother.
My brother was born in the early '70s and he's like an infamous person in Oxnard, like an off-the-rails, violent personality. Anyway, they were talking about him and I say, "Hey, that's my brother..." Then they were like, "Oh...." [Laughs] But he ended up giving me a ride home and that's how I first met Joe from Burning Dog. After that we became friendly and would talk whenever I would see him at local shows.
We've talked about social anxiety in the past, so how did that factor in when you were younger in the scene?
I was probably very annoying [laughs]. But I was very enthusiastic about hardcore. Yes, I have so many hangups about talking with people but I've never had any problems going up to a musician and talking with them. I don't have any fear about that.
Given that I was super into Minor Threat, the Missing 23rd was a band that was extremely influenced by them and I saw them early on and that was big for me. I loved everything about that band.
We talked a bit about metal earlier. What was your relationship like with metal once you became immersed in the hardcore scene? It's clearly an influence you would pull from in Nails years later.
I still loved Pantera, Deicide, Slayer, Metallica, and other metal bands. I remember first hearing Deicide when I was a freshman in high school. My cousin Tony [Melino], who was in a bunch of bands including Annihilation Time, and I were hanging on Oxnard Shores one day and we met up with our friend Alex Burns. Sadly, Alex passed away a few years ago, but he was a big death metal dude and he played us Deicide's Once Upon the Cross album.
So, yeah, I was very much into some metal bands but once I got into hardcore, that's all I wanted to listen to for a while. It's all I paid attention to. I never went to any mainstream metal shows during that time. Hardcore was it for me then. It was all I focused on.
At what point did you declare yourself straight edge?
I don't remember exactly, but I do remember Zack Nelson had a skateboarding distribution catalog called Sessions. There was a page in there where you could order records from them. One of them was a record by that Chicago band, The Bollweevils. And then I saw a compilation called New York Hardcore: The Way It Is and I wasn't sure what it was but it looked cool and I wanted to hear what it was about.
That was the first time I heard any Revelation [Records] bands, and it starts with BOLD. The BOLD and Warzone songs were my favorites on that comp. That had a lot to do with me getting into hardcore. Getting that cassette around 1996 was huge for me.
Were most of your friends who listened to hardcore straight edge?
No, I would say most of the kids I grew up with who listened to hardcore weren't straight edge. Of my friends back then, Zack [Nelson], who now does the 185 Miles Podcast, he was never straight edge but he loved hardcore just as much as I did and that was never an issue. But yeah, I saw certain groups of friends where if you weren't straight edge you were outcasted if you broke edge.
When I got into the local scene, the oldest person was 25, and that was Fred Hammer. [Indecision Records founder] Dave Mandel was also around the same age and he was cool to us. Those dudes were always very cool to us younger guys getting into hardcore.
But part of the reason I loved being straight edge when I was younger was because it was kind of like a "fuck you" to everybody. That was something I identified with. I was a very frustrated and angry teenager back then.
What was your relationship like with your parents at that point?
Well, my parents split up when I was 6. So it was just me and my dad until he passed away when I was 15. He was never really too enthusiastic about what I was doing in music but he was there when I wanted to learn certain things on the guitar.
He didn't really champion me being in bands or anything. But he would pick me up from band rehearsal and was cool with me if I came home late from a show or something. I gotta give him credit for that, but he also wasn't the most involved parent.
What did you after your father died? Who did you live with?
One of the fellas I went to high school with, he was married to a woman who had 2 kids and they lived in Oxnard. They asked if I wanted to go live with them. So I lived with them from age 15 to 18.
When I was 18, I moved to Woodland Hills (in the San Fernando Valley), off Topanga, with Corey Williams (Carry On, Internal Affairs, Piece by Piece). That was my first experience of living on my own, you know, with a roommate.
That was such an amazing gesture by your friend and his wife, to welcome you into their home at such a crucial point for you.
I agree and I didn't even understand how it amazing it was at the time. But we were always cool and I never caused them any trouble or grief. But yeah, I agree, I don't know if I would be able to do the same for one of my child's friends like my friends did for me.
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When did you start going out on tour?
I became friends with this band from Cleveland called Committed, and they stayed at my house for like a week. I don't know if I can call it touring, but we went all around Southern California wherever they had shows on that tour.
I also was pals with Chris Kelly, the guy who ran Teamwork Records and sang for 97A. I remember taking a bus out to Las Vegas to meet up with the band. I rode with them from Vegas to Oxnard to Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo. So, I'm not sure that qualifies as touring but that was my first experience getting in a van.
My first proper tour was in the summer of 2000 when I was in Carry On. We went out to the East Coast and were supposed to do 7 shows but 3 of them fell through. Very typical.
I want to make it clear that anytime I did a band with someone, I was super into what I was doing. The thing is, I've always been into so many different styles of hardcore. For instance, Carry On was a band that needed a guitar player, they were my favorite band at that time, and so I joined. They already had their sound by the time I joined.
To put it lazily, the sound was inspired by Revelation Records' straight edge catalog. That was my shit at that time. So we did that. It was a predetermined sound.
When Carry On ended, I had the opportunity to start a band with Scott Vogel, who I was already a huge fan of from his work in Buried Alive. So we put our heads together and tried to figure out what style we were gonna do. We decided it was gonna be NYHC with whatever else we wanted to add to that. So we did Terror.
Another band I did was Betrayed, which was basically a melodic hardcore thing. That was super fun.
Yeah, I loved those Betrayed records.
Internal Affairs was another band I joined, and that was basically Corey Williams' thing. What I'll say about Internal Affairs is that given it was Corey's, and he was the main creative input in that band, it all sounded like Corey's personality. It really does and I've always loved that about Internal Affairs.
So, was Nails like your way of starting a band from the ground up in your sole stylistic vision?
Well, I wasn't really playing music at one point and not for any specific reason. I just wasn't in a band. So I said to myself that I wanted to start Nails to do what I wanted to do as opposed to joining up with 2-3 other people and figuring out a style and then doing it.
Just like Internal Affairs is a big reflection of Corey's personality, it's the same thing between Nails and myself. I feel like of all the bands that I've played in so far, Nails best captures my personality and who I am.
That's interesting because when I think of and hear Nails, everything about it is blunt, mean, and aggressive. But knowing you outside of the band, you come off laid back and even-keeled as a person.
[Laughs] I'm in my early 40s and I've learned how to get along with people better, communicate better, and have some more emotional maturity. I love connecting with people. I love talking with people that have the same things in common that I do. [Laughs] I can play in Nails and still be cool with people even though all that other stuff is still in me.
After the campaign for the You Will Never Be One of Us album was over, there was a lot of speculation about you and the band's future since you were the only member left. We didn't know each other yet, so I wasn't privy to what truly was going on. It almost felt like you might have been over Nails and/or dealing with the music business side of things.
There are two things I never see myself doing. First off, I'll never go on social media saying, "There's gonna be an announcement soon!" It's like you're making an announcement for an announcement. I think that's terrible. And part of that was that there was nothing to announce. I was busy putting a new band together, writing songs, and until that was done, there's nothing to talk to you about.
Another thing was, I didn't want to come back without having a new album. I didn't want Nails to come back like a reunion band. I play in bands to make music. That's my number one motivation, so I wasn't going to come back with Nails to just plays shows and then go write a new album. I want to contributing to hardcore and give people something new. I want to keep pushing forward the best that I can.
COVID also happened during that break in things.
Yeah, that's another thing that impeded Nails. I wasn't going out and meeting new people. So I couldn't find new people to play with. Another thing was that a lot of people were able to be really creative during COVID, but not me.
Nothing was happening. I didn't have a reason to write a song. I didn't have reason to write lyrics. One of my main motivators to write a song is going to shows and seeing bands and getting charged up by that.
It's interesting that you said that you didn't have a chance to meet new people to play with in Nails during the lockdowns. Your profile in hardcore and metal is so that you could have the pick of the litter of musicians to play with.
I never saw myself making a post on Instagram saying, "Nails is looking for a drummer and bassist." I never felt right about doing something like that. I see that as a last resort kind of thing. I'm not sure why.
My first priority was finding a new drummer. The oxymoron of playing drums in Nails is that I need someone who can play double bass. But I also need that drummer to be able to play punk rock-type beats.
If there's a guy who is a "metal" drummer, he's probably not interested in learning how to play in a punk rock style. And if there's a punk rock drummer, they're probably not interested in learning how to play double bass. That combination is an extremely rare to find in a drummer to play with in Nails. Finding Carlos [Cruz] was perfect.
Yeah, Carlos Cruz joined on drums, and you also brought in bassist Andrew Solis and guitarist Shelby Lermo into Nails for the Every Bridge Burning album. Since there was such a long gap between albums, was Nuclear Blast Records getting impatient for new material from you?
No, Nuclear Blast has always been cool and were find with however look it took us. One of the main reasons I signed with Nuclear Blast was [A&R executive] Monte Connor because I really wanted to work with him. He was extremely supportive during the time I was trying to find members for Nails.
I remember Monte said something to me that opened my eyes a lot to a perspective I didn't have before about Nails. He told me to look at the Spotify monthly listeners and said, "You are well over 100,000 monthly listeners and you've been gone for years." He was basically saying that Nails had established an audience and they weren't going to abandon us because we didn't have a new record. It was what I needed to hear.
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How involved were you in the marketing plan for Every Bridge Burning? Or do you just let Nuclear Blast dicate that?
I do get involved but they also know what they're doing, so I try and not get in their way. With that said, on the You Will Never Be One of Us record, they had me doing like 150 interviews with everyone and anyone, and for this new one, I told them I wanted to do more like 50. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but definitely over 100 interviews last time.
It's just a lot of work to do and I have a day job, and a wife and two kids. I had to be careful not to burn myself out. But I love logistics. I love planning and routing tours. I love talking to our booking agent about venues. I love everything behind the scenes about the music business.
I'd like to think that I know a lot about the music business at this point. I know the booking world. I might not know as much about the label side, but I do know a lot about it. I like talking to our merchandiser about getting Nails shirts done. I love doing all of that kind of stuff.
Would you say that you're a control freak?
Absolutely. I love marketing. I love the way records look. I love the way t-shirts look. I love design. I love graphic designers. I do have a vision of what a Nails shirt should look like. I don't want to hand that task off to someone else and have them do an OK job when I can just do it myself and have it look the way I want it to.
Some people would say that being a control freak about this stuff isn't a great behavior, but what I can I say? It's just part of my personality.
But you're also very hard on yourself.
I'm definitely hard on myself. I think I've driven a lot of musicians away because I've always been as hard on them as I am on myself.
What I've come to realize is that I am excessively hard on myself and I cannot be like that towards other people. There's been an unhealthy amount of criticism I've laid on myself throughout the years. Very unhealthy. But that's been my process in the past.
Would you say that you've been a yeller or more passive-aggressive when it came to being hard on other musicians you've played with?
I don't know if I was a yeller, but of those two options, it would probably be closer to a yeller than passive-aggressive. Because I feel that being passive-aggressive requires thought and think about what you're doing. That's kind of like a manipulative way of doing things.
I was always a guy that didn't think of what I was gonna say so the raw emotion would come out of my mouth. It would just fucking bum people out. It would always bum me out, too. It's terrible because you feel like, "Did I really want to make that person feel that way?"
Then you think to yourself if you could have done something better and the answer is always yes. It was a skill that I had to learn because it was something that didn't come naturally to me. So I have, and it's great.
Is Nails a hardcore band, or are you a metal band?
We are a hardcore band, especially given that I'm one of the bigger creative inputs in the band and hardcore is the world I grew up in and cut my teeth in. Can Nails be looked at as a metal band? Sure, and that's something I feel comfortable with. I've been listening to metal for as long as when I first fell in love with music.
If anyone disparages me for not being a metal person, I think they're highly confused. But deep down into it, hardcore music would be my number one.
***
Every Bridge Burning is available now via Nuclear Blast Records.
Obituary, Nails, Terror, SpiritWorld, & Pest Control North American tour dates:
Apr 18 San Antonio, TX @ Aztec Theatre
Apr 19 Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater
Apr 21 Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
Apr 22 Mesa, AZ @ The Nile Theater
Apr 24 San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
Apr 25 Anaheim, CA @ House of Blues
Apr 26 Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether
Apr 27 Berkeley, CA @ The UC Theatre
Apr 29 Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
Apr 30 Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
May 02 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
May 03 Denver, CO @ The Oriental Theater
May 05 Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater
May 06 Chicago, IL @ House of BLues
May 07 Detroit, MI @ The Majestic Theatre
May 09 Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
May 10 Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall
May 11 New Kensington, PA @ Perversing Underground
May 14 Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
May 14 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
May 19 Louisville, KY @ Mercury Ballroom
May 20 Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
May 22 Maspeth, NY @ Knockdown Center
May 24 Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
May 25 Reading, PA @ Reverb
Tagged: a life in hardcore, betrayed, carry on, fireburn, internal affairs, nails, terror
