Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - Doin' It For The Kids
Ronnie from the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus caught up with The Dwarf to discuss housemates, fan contact and making a difference.
There must be something in the water in Jacksonville. It’s spawned Lynard Skynard, Evergreen Terrace, Yellowcard, and it’s latest export is the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, coming our way for Soundwave in February this year. And RJA couldn’t be happier, “excited would definitely be the word for it… basically I hope to see a kangaroo.”
One of the reasons that RJA are headed to Australia is because “we have a lot of fans over there and we want to play for them because they’ve been really supportive… we’re coming there for a reason and the reason is that people have bought our CD and they care about us and they want to hear us, so we’re coming”. RJA are all about fan base support, “if you look at our career, we’ve only gone internationally to places where we’ve had a legitimate myspace response. And we’ve let our fans know that, if a bunch of people in a country are telling us to come there we will, but if they’re not, we won’t”.
Apart from looking out for their fan base, RJA are using their growing fame for good causes, prior to Christmas RJA were “playing a show in our home town, which we don’t normally get to do, … [it was] our first opportunity to expose our non-profit organisation the Guardian Angel Foundation [by] doing a charity show for Toys For Tots for the kids in Jacksonville”. You can find the charity online at www.redjumpsuitalliance.com, the charity currently focuses on support under-funded high school band programs to promote musical development; support individuals affected by domestic violence to break the cycle of abuse; and contribute to research that focuses on management of acute hyperglycaemia in hospitalised patients. The reason that the band “started that was just to do whatever I want as far as charity organisations are concerned, that way we can just immediately pair with anybody and do anything, whatever we can imagine, you know, whatever is limited by the human imagination”. The Toys For Tots association came because “they came to us and basically said they needed money, and [that] there was a possibility that some of the kids weren’t going to get any toys this year and asked if we wanted to help out. We immediately signed on and then we had two weeks to just kinda figure it out and throw it all together”.
RJA’s philanthropic endeavours came because “we just had one goal, which was we wanted people to listen to our music and judge it for what it is, but we also knew that if was the only opportunity we had to make a difference we should do everything that we can, because we might not get another shot. I don’t know, if you’re gonna look back when you’re like 60 years old and you have kids sitting there on the couch, the story that you want to tell them is you, here’s how I tried to change the world – now you go out and do it”. Despite telling the grandkids to go out and change the world, RJA are “not trying to preach to anybody, I’m definitely not saying that we are perfect people, but at the same point in time we feel that most normal, regular people care about other people, about the society that they live in, and about the overall greater good of the planet”.
This attitude also brings out a vision of the perfect world, “its a little clichéd, but I would say, no famine – I hope that nobody has to go hungry. I would hope that the homelessness situation would be resolved so everybody would have somewhere to live. And other than that, I would wish that people would just calm down and get along and stop killing each other, because once a life is taken you can never get that back, it’s permanent and that’s something that a lot of people don’t realise. If everyone had food in their stomachs, a roof over their heads, and nobody was killing each other I think it would be a pretty awesome world to live in”. I agree. The permanence of death has been softened by our violent world.
RJA started with Ronnie “and Duke, we met in high school back in 2000 or 1999 or something like that, a long time ago. And we basically unofficially started the band on my couch after we graduated, ever since then we’ve been friends”. Such tight friends in fact, that Ronnie and Duke have just moved in together. When “we finally stopped touring on this record, which we actually made in 2005 (about 2 and a half years straight of touring), basically we were like, alright we’ve gotta move out, so we got a house together and converted the garage into a studio and have been working on our new record”.
That’s a lot of contact for two people, but Ronnie insists “it’s awesome man, Duke’s my best friend. I’ve already been basically living with him for the past 2 and a half years but that’s when you have to work the whole time. It’s definitely a whole lot easier when you’re at home and you can just hang out together because you don’t always have to worry about putting a show on every night, because that’s serious stuff. We take that very seriously. It’s one of the only things we do take seriously, our live performance, because we like to shred and basically if you’re not focused you’re not going to shred. So we’re very intense on tour but when you come home and get to relax and reflect and I couldn’t ask for a better roommate, honestly”.
The thing that keeps RJA taking their live show seriously, and continuing to shred is “overwhelming fan support, not only in the States, but in Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, specifically all of those countries”. Support comes in the form of “non-stop emails and people just calling in, we have our number on our myspace set up so you can actually call up and leave us voicemails, we do call people back and leave them voicemails if we get the opportunity. We just really keep in contact with them and honestly, they just keep us going and that is a little bit of divine intervention I think. We just try and keep our heads on straight and worry about what matters, which is the music”.
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus plays Soundwave Festival nationally
