RAMzine 27 | Avatar, Festival Flashbacks, Sister Shotgun

So yes he has matured hopefully
because I hope that I have matured
over the years. But we are one and the
same. Not if you ask my wife, not if you
ask people around me, they still have
some idea of me being in character,
but it’s more if you go clubbing on a
Saturday night or you sit with grandma
for Sunday roast, is one of them
in character and the other one not
in character? I don’t think so, it’s just
different times and places. Different
expressions, different aspects of a
person and this is an extreme version
of that. I don’t believe that means that I
have a more extreme duality going on,
opportunities for extreme expression
I guess.
RAMzine: It’s just a part of you that
exists and the band is your place for
it to come out.
Johannes: Exactly! It’s that space of
going crazy or acknowledging a lot
of stuff that is hard to find a home for
otherwise. That’s the psychological
aspect of writing and performing. The
whole reason why the job description
I want in this business is to write and
perform my own material specifically.
It’s all connected to that.
RAMzine: On the new album, Hunter
Gatherer, are there any tracks
that you think are particularly
unique?
Johannes: Well an obvious answer
would be ‘Gun’, just because we had
never gone that mellow before. It took
7 years to write that song, which I
guess adds up to one note per month
(laughs). It’s because that first little
piano theme that it’s based on and one
version or another of the first verse
existed for the longest time but then it
was just figuring out what sort of song
it would become. Each attempt included
a heavy power chord somewhere
in the middle, so I’m like ‘Oh this is Bon
Jovi now, this is a power ballad, I hate
it, throw it away and start over next
year’. That happened for such a long
time.
I think that the turning point was the
last tour before we went to the studio.
We were meeting with Jay (producer)
in Los Angeles, going through the
songs and I think John brought it up
saying ‘Johannas that give a boy a gun
song, that’s great, just finish it, or if you
can’t do a full song of it, just let it be
that little piece and have it be like an
interlude between songs, that would
be so cool’. And my ego 3 sizes and
I was like ‘Fuck you I’m not writing
fucking interludes, I write SONGS!’ It’s
funny because we do this all the time
with songs, take a step back, what do
you have, let this song be what it is, it
doesn’t need to transform into something
else if it doesn’t want to. Write
another song that is that thing, let this
song be that thing. I took a step back
and kept that minimalistic approach
and suddenly it was really easy to finish.
[It was] a huge awesome challenge
to record because I kinda started in
the deep end. I started yelling a lot in
this band, and have been slowly working
my way towards having more and
more nuances in what I do.
I think this was the greatest challenge
yet in that because yeah you wanna
sing pretty, you wanna sing in pitch
and on time, and just nail it musically,
but then if you want to convey that
vulnerability, that sense of loosing
and that brokenness. Then you can’t
just be super sweet either, ya know?
There’s a balance there and expression,
so that was a big challenge for
being a short simple song. It was a
tough one to nail.
RAMzine: Will you be taking ‘Gun’
into your live performance?
Johannes: Definitely yeah! I have
ordered a piano, but the delivery got
slowed down due to Covid. Yeah, it’s
definitely one that we want to do live
because it would add so much to the
live sound, it’s a nice little break in the
middle.
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