Jon Roniger

Jon Roniger’s heartfelt roots rock is a truly American slice of songwriting. Adding his unique voice to the lineage of great U.S. artists, Roniger brings to the table music that touches on the human spirit without pretence and with much emotional power. Capturing the passion and power of what it means to be us, his songs are mirrors into which we each can look and see ourselves.

Poignancy

Roniger’s songwriting masterfully captures the keen colors of the human heart, embodying the full array of feelings of which we are capable. “Music makes me feel euphoria, desire, loneliness, nostalgia, sorrow and elation,” Roniger says. And his intense emotional life can be heard in each of his songs as he explores hurt and happiness, love and sadness, shying away from nothing, embracing everything from love to heartbreak with equal fervor.

Soul’s Voice

Roniger’s music achieves the depth of feeling it does because of his songwriting philosophy. “Music is the soul’s voice,” he says. That’s the fulcrum of his beliefs, that music is the inner self speaking outwardly. Music not written honestly and without fear or restraint is artificial and lacks true feeling. “There is no other form of communication that is understood so deeply,” Roniger says.

The Artist at Work

Roniger has shared the stage with such artists as Big Head Todd and the Monsters, The Samples, Stroke 9, Luce and others. He tours regularly with a focus on acoustic music of late. Roniger just finished a two-year tour stateside and two tours in Ireland and the United Kingdom. He has recorded a new album at Nashville’s 16 Ton Recording Studios on Music Row slated for early 2008 release; it’s called “Charmed Life.” It was produced by Robert Reynolds (The Mavericks, Swag) and Jim Reilley (New Dylans, Curb Writer). He will be returning to Ireland and the UK in 2008. Roniger is involved in a project in which he releases a song per week for his “Songs in the Raw” blog (http://jonroniger.blogspot.com). He is currently working with A&R Select, the leading indie A&R firm in Hollywood, CA.

“Jon Roniger’s music is full of heart and smarts.” – A&R Select

Eleven Questions with Jon Roniger

By Doug Wyllie

I have for you something like eleven relatively random but relevant questions. Let's just get right into it. The record is so very different from the Still record. The name of the record, "Addicted," seems very provocative to me, considering how plainspoken you about your alcohol abuse of a few years ago. What are you trying to convey with that title?

Well, the way I look at is that I'm never going to get rid of the addictive personality, so I just refocus my addictions to healthier things. I'm still addicted to music. What am I trying to convey with that? Basically it's that I'm equally addicted as I've always been, it's just now I'm addicted to things that are a positive force in my life.

Where was the record made and who was involved?

Basically it was my roommates and me. We did about seventy-five percent of the work at our house on Pine Street. The label we formed was P&L Music, which stands for Pine and Lyon Music. My roommate Dave Hampp produced the record and engineered the record. We recorded the drum tracks down at my rehearsal studio, which is Francisco Studios out by Bayview Plaza. Took the drum tracks home, plugged them all into the computer at home and then did all the vocals and guitar parts and virtually everything there at the apartment at Pine Street. Which, you know, caused some turmoil - not as much turmoil as we thought - but some interesting situations with the neighbors upstairs.

Like what?

Well, of course this was back in the days of abuse, so in one instance I was standing there wailing away on the guitar at three or four in the morning on a Thursday or Friday night and, you know, in a smoke filled room with bloodshot eyes and I kind of look up and there's my neighbor from two flights up, standing there in her pajamas, just like, "Please, please stop. We can't take it anymore." Other than that, everyone was pretty polite about asking us to stop when they needed it to happen. The guitars were so loud that the back of the house was shaking.

When did you make the record?

It took a long time. I'd say we finished mastering in January, and we started recording about three and a half years earlier. That's about when we recorded our first drum beats. You've got to take into account that everyone's working a full time job and we have to bring musicians in as we need them, and you know, throw in a ton of bottles of Southern Comfort and a good cocaine addiction and you know, it takes a little while.

The amount of musicians used was ludicrous. Most of the tracks feature Tony Ross on drums. Mark Abbott is the drummer on two tracks, "Big Old Mirror" and "Along Come a Day." He also plays in my band Still. There are I think three or four different bass players. Chris Ward, who used to play in a band called Steak, plays on several tracks. Charles Thomas plays bass on the track "Loaded." He's a local blues musician. I play bass on a bunch of the tracks, and of course Chad Heise, who plays with me in Still also, plays on "Weight of the World." Let's see, Randy Forester of the Eddie Money Band plays Hammond B3 and piano - if you hear piano or Hammond B3, it is Randy Forester. Guitar players include myself, a guy named Alain Godmer AKA Riot from Montreal, plays lead guitar all over the place. Another local guitar player named Rico Mastodanato plays some tasty parts on a few different tunes like "Along Come a Day" and "Big Old Mirror." Pete Sayour plays guitar parts on I think "Weight of the World" and "Lay Down Your Head." He also plays with me in Still. I think that does it for guitar players.

Who provides that angelic voice on the back-up vocals?

My roommate Jenny MacNamara and then Jamie McKenzie handle all of the background vocals all over the whole record. There are a few miscellaneous people here and there, but that's the bulk of it. That would be the band, if there were a band.

It'd be a crowded stage.

Yeah it would be a very crowded stage, but you know, the more the merrier.

That brings me to a question I hadn't prepared. How is it you plan to support the record, considering the fact that you don't really have a band per se, to tour with? Are you planning on traveling?

I do plan on travelling. I'm taking the initial steps to put together a Fall and a Spring college tour, hopefully throughout the west coast, south west and maybe even over to as far as New Orleans. I'll be doing that, mostly acoustic. The band that I'm in now does play several of the songs off that record. So for the most part, I'm working on promoting and marketing this thing through the Internet. I'm really focusing on promoting it acoustically, because the band is sort of moving in a different direction.

Well, yeah, we'll get to that in a moment.

(Laughs)

What's the website?

The website is www.jonroniger.com.

The arrangements are, to me, at once simple, and rich. I'm wondering how you accomplished it, and further, what was the aesthetic you were going for with the background violin in "Weight of the World," for example?

We actually feature a Cello on that, and well, we changed directions on that song probably ten times. As an overview of the whole record we wanted to make what we thought would be a Classic Rock album. Something where one or two of the songs might be radio-play and the rest of them might be album cuts that don't ever make it on the air but real fans really enjoy. That was the overall goal, and then for example, in "Weight of the World" the cello track just kind of came up. The arrangement just kept getting thinner and thinner to where it was almost just bass, drums, guitar. We had tried putting down a string part, and a keyboard part and it still didn't sound as full as we wanted and then Dave did a session with a cello player and invited her back to do a part on that one. Her name was Karra Duchi.

The idea we had for the arrangements in general was that we wanted to record everything so that when it came time to mix, we had more to choose from. So things just king of fell where they did. So the mixing process, we had a ton of fun doing that because we had all these things to choose from. We'd say "OK, let's bring the piano part in here, and leave that out in the next verse, or bring the acoustic guitar in in the third verse but leave it out in the second." The options were definitely great.

In many ways, and especially on certain songs, it's vastly more down-tempo than your band, Still. Is this the darker side of Jon Roniger?

I would say so. I mean, to me it's basically a dark album. That's kind of the concept that made Dave the happiest as well. I don't know, the songs were all written in, let's just say, the darker times and that's just kind of the way it fell you know?

That sort of gets me to my next prepared question, which was the development of the record obviously took a long time. So from the writing standpoint, did you write the songs as you went? What was the evolution of the record?

The answer to your question is no, all the songs had been previously written. We started by making a four-track tape of every song I had written, which at the time really wasn't that many - maybe like twenty or something. We just picked out our favorites and the ones we thought were the strongest and just went from there. It was pretty basic. We wanted to do a ten or eleven or twelve song record. It's funny, "Waiting," one of the acoustic songs towards the end I was just kind of sitting around the apartment one day and the microphone was set up and we were just kind of learning how to work the program so I just kind of recorded that song. I recorded the rhythm track and went back and recorded the lead track, which is more like a lick track just to double the guitar, and then recorded the vocal with the same setting on the mike and then four years later we were just kind of listening to that song and we were like, "We can work with this, let's just throw it on the record. The joke between us was that it was going to be like the "hidden track" or the "bonus track." You know how you fall asleep with the album on and like twenty minutes after it ends, another song pops up? So the joke between us was that the bonus track was actually track nine, because that wasn't intended to go on the record at all.

You've already mentioned "Waiting" and I have two song titles in this next question. I want to know the inspiration behind "Loaded" in particular and "Waiting" because those both kind of jumped out at me.

Let's start with "Loaded." Growing up in New Orleans, one of my favorite bars was on the streetcar track on St. Charles. Hundreds of nights -I can't even count - I'd end up walking home because my friends would be like "Hey, we're leaving, do you want to go?" And of course me the lush, no I don't want to leave I'm going to stay here and keep smokin' cigarettes and drinking and playing pool and doin' whatever. So that song kind of is just my little walk down memory lane of how many times I've walked down the streetcar track to get home. The funny thing for me was that no matter when I started walking, the streetcar inevitably came down the streetcar track going the wrong way. It's just a little story about me getting drunk at a bar on the streetcar track in New Orleans.

Nice, and "Waiting?"

"Waiting" I wrote when I was away from a girl I was dating at the time and we were in the middle of a long-distance thing. I had moved back to New Orleans briefly and she was living out here and that song just kind of popped into my head one day. I'm sure you'll understand that when you're in a long-distance relationship half of your time is spent wanting to be with that person and that's just kind of where that one comes from.

How many records have you made?

This is only my second full-length album. I've done a lot of three, four, five song EP's.

What I'm kind of getting at here is I guess that the saying I once heard when I started first doing music, was that if you don't learn something from every studio session, you're not paying attention. I wonder if there was anything in particular that you learned over the course of this fairly drawn out process or anything that maybe surprised you during the creation of the record?

Oddly enough, I think this might be the only time - well this and the Still project - have been the only two times when I'd actually learned and had life-changing knowledge gained. I guess what I learned most from this one is that it's more important to do it right than to do it quickly and I also learned that the most important thing to me is that making a record is about where you are now. So five years from now, I need to look back on that record and say that was a part of my life, that's where I was in my life then. Because we could still be making that record if we wanted to. You could spend an entire lifetime making twelve songs, but what's the point. I want to do another record. And then I want to do another record. So, the learning process was "it is what it is, and let go of it and move on."

It's a snapshot.

Yeah, basically that's exactly right.

This could just be my perception, it could be something stronger. To me there's a real Country feel - especially to the backline - but also to other elements of the sound. Are you a Country singer?

(Laughs) I'm definitely not a Country singer, but I don't know if I'm a Rock 'n Roll singer either. I write all of my songs on acoustic guitar, sittin' around the house. I almost feel like I'm a Folk singer. Even the band has recently accused me of being "Folkier" than I let on. I take that as a compliment. As I get older, I know that I can sit around the house and play acoustic guitar and write songs. I can do that until I'm a hundred and ten years old and hopefully I live that long. So, if that's what Folk singers do, then that's what I am. But I definitely throw in the Southern twang.

There were certain times, as I listened to the album for maybe the third or fourth trip through, that I was kind of reminded of early Eric Clapton in the vocals. I know we've talked about this before but to whom do you hear yourself being compared?

I've heard people say that I kind of remind them of like a John Hyatt. My vocal coach as of late said, "You kind of have a John Hyatt with a little Steven Tyler thrown in there." I was like, that's a really good group of people to be thrown in with, even though I don't hear that. But, I mean, Eric Claption, a huge influence on me. John Hyatt is one of the best song writers out there. So to me that's a phenomenal compliment.

We've reached question eleven, which is always the same. I know I missed something, what the fuck did I miss?

Is that the question?

That's the question.

Um, you know what, I think we just about covered everything. And the beauty of not covering it all is that it maybe it leaves us something else to talk about next time. You know, I guess my goal for this record, which I don't know if we've talked about, is I just wanted to have something that I could hand people and say, "This is me." And I can now do that, and I can say I'm proud of what we've done, I'm proud of the artwork that we have to show it visually to people and I'm really proud of the work we did. It certainly wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done but it was made with love and there it is. I hope you like it and if you don't, not a problem. Find somebody who does. Hopefully a ton of people will like it.

My guess is that a ton of people will, because I definitely did and that's not just because I'm a friend, it's because I know one or two things about music and I definitely found it to be very strong through and through.

Cool. I really appreciate that.

Doug Wyllie is a freelance writer and communications consultant in San Francisco. He can be reached at dougwyllie@thunderhush.com.

Buy Jon's CD, "Addicted," now.

Q & A with Jonathan Roniger

San Francisco, July 21, 2003

Singer-songwriter Jonathan Roniger is a solo artist and the front-man for San Francisco-based four-piece Still. A native of New Orleans, Roniger has grown his musical career in the fertile artistic soil that is the Bay Area since his arrival there in 1992. Still is currently completing a demo with Chris Manning (Carlos Santa’s Supernatural is just one of Manning’s many credits) that’s already getting early buzz in The City. A regular performer at local venues including Fly Bar & Restaurant, G Bar and The Cannery on Fisherman’s wharf, Roniger is also due to release a new solo album in mid-August. Freelance journalist Doug Wyllie recently sat down for a conversation with Roniger to discuss New Orleans versus San Francisco, sobriety versus intoxication, interpersonal relationships and music as an antidepressant.

Tell me a little about your youth. Where did you grow up? What was your elementary school teacher’s name?

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. My dad was in the Army, so we traveled around quite a bit until I was about six, when we landed in Baltimore. I can’t remember my elementary school teacher’s name, but I went to so many different schools it was unbelievable. I went to three different high schools, different first and second grade schools, different nursery schools, all the way up. I finally landed back in New Orleans when I was about twelve, just in time to take up a healthy alcohol and drug regimen. Back then, in a city like New Orleans, if you weren’t drinking, something was wrong with you.

That’s when you started to live a rock & roll lifestyle. When did you begin to sing?

My singing career, as it were, actually began in Baltimore when I was in fifth, sixth and seventh grade. I was a member of an all male church choir. It was kid of my introduction to band rehearsals. We had practice every morning before school for about forty-five minutes and Thursday nights for three hours after school and we were in church every Sunday. I did that for three years. That was, of course, right before cigarettes, pot and Jack Daniels entered my life.

Those are always good for the singing voice.

Sure, if you want to sing rock and roll.

So now we know where and when you began in music. I’m curious about the why.

I just thought that my older cousin, who is about two years older than me, was a cool guy (and turns out, he is a cool guy) and he was in the choir. That’s kind of the reason I got involved. I had taken guitar lessons; I’d taken piano lessons. It was one of those things where my parents spent all this money and bought me an upright piano and then two years later I stopped playing it. It was kind of a weird situation where it seemed like the cool people in fifth sixth seventh grade were all in the choir. I don’t know why that worked that way, but it was kind of a derelict crew. These were the guys that I later started drinking with. So the only reason was just ‘cause I thought it’d be cool. I didn’t do anything again until what must have been junior year in high school.

I’m leading the conversation, but here we go. I didn’t do much except party and flirt with chicks until junior year in high school when I got in a really bad car accident the day before spring break. I spent the entire spring break in the hospital. I had this cash saved up to blow on spring break and a friend of mine went and bought me a bass with that cash so I could be in his band ‘cause he had just started playing guitar. That’s where the whole thing started. I’ve pretty much been in a band since that spring break in my junior year of high school (1985).

You got involved in music, in a sense, sort of accidentally then.

[Laughing] Yeah, literally. And it was a bad accident too. I lost like a gallon of blood out of my body and I was in intensive care for four days. It was not good.

Was that an alcohol related accident?

Well, it could have been but it wasn’t. We were actually on our way to a party with a trunk full of beer. We were in a ’65 Mustang convertible and the brakes failed. We went right through a stop sign and somebody plowed into us.

So out of tragedy comes art. Have you ever written about that experience?

You know, I haven’t really pondered that. But now that you mention it I might have to take that into consideration and see what comes out. But as you know, I didn’t really ponder much until about a year and a half ago because I was just so diluted.

Who do you think have been some of your biggest influences?

My earliest influences — the earliest music I can remember really stopping and listening to when I was two, three, four years old was like Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baiez, Jim Croce. The folksters, you know what I mean? I feel that a lot of my writing comes out of that. When I write songs, I sit around with my acoustic guitar and just noodle around until an idea pops up, and then hopefully that leads to a lyrical idea and boom, there it is. Traditionally, I write the music first and that springs up a melody and a rhythm in my head. For me, songwriting is about a millisecond in time; an instant where something strikes you either as odd, or strikes you very deeply. I thought about this the other day. In that instant, kind of everything in that instant becomes apparently clear as to why that moment exists. From that comes a song.

Do you find that you write at any specific time of day? When do you feel most in tune with that instant or does it just take you whenever?

It kind of just takes me whenever. I think because of bartending and the nighttime aspect of music, I find that afternoons to be kind of my zone. After I’ve done my wake up time and before I have to be mentally committed to something else.

How do you feel that your San Francisco and New Orleans experience have coalesced as influences on you as a person?

Well, I find both places to be — I don’t know how you would say it, culturally enriched cities. They’re both deep in their own tradition. I feel that New Orleans is unique in the fact that it’s such an old city and so conservative that very little has changed over the course of the past couple hundred years. But I find San Francisco to be very deep in its own tradition although it seems like the people are constantly changing. It seems like the same type of people are drawn here, thereby almost keeping it the same, even though it constantly changes. That’s a good question. I’ve had, the eleven-plus years that I’ve lived here, I’ve been very focused on music, but also at the same time very heavily involved in drugs and alcohol. I feel very connected to The City in that everyone here is almost like me. It’s a very creative city and everyone kind of feels like my age, which I consider to be like 25 to 45. So it’s a good vibe and a good fit and it’s been very welcoming or friendly to me. It feels very comfortable to be yourself here.

There’s also a lot of art, and a deep appreciation for creativity, and that’s conducive to going about your own path.

I think you’ve said it perfectly; creativity and individuality, which I found actually kind of stifling in New Orleans, where it’s not necessarily the case there. But at the same time, New Orleans is soooooo deep culturally in music and in joy of life. You know, eating and enjoying other people’s company, and music of course, is a big part of that. But San Francisco is just a great town. It’s a great city, and it’s so interesting to me to be part of the Bay Area and yet so apart from the Bay Area.

How has your time in San Francisco influenced your art? Has it changed you in any way or allowed you to develop differently that you might in New Orleans?

I’ve come really full circle on that. I’ve tried to break away from what found that New Orleans was pulling me towards. New Orleans is very attached to it’s musical sound: jazz/blues based, the African rhythms and things like that. San Francisco, to quote Jefferson Airplane, built this city on rock and roll. It’s kind of like that. It’s a very rock and roll town. You look at the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and the bands that came out of here in the late sixties and the bands from here are very rock-oriented. I’ve come full circle in that now, I’m not trying to be anything that I’m not. Even in New Orleans, I’m not a blues/jazz guy. I’m more like a folk writer. I guess San Francisco has really given me the ability to be exactly what I am musically, as opposed to trying to mold to what other people might expect.

What are some of the themes or topics that inspire you and permeate your work?

I’m kind of a sap. In musical terms I’m kind of a romantic or maybe a traditionalist. I stay away from politics in my writing quite intentionally. I’m very much drawn to more of an emotional stance. I believe that for me, it’s easier to connect with people from their heart or from their soul than it is through their head. I’ve believed that for a long time. I consider the catch-phrase about my songs as light-hearted songs about love and loss. That’s kind of the way I approach it. I try not to take myself too seriously although I’m serious about certain topics. I believe that you have to be able to laugh at yourself and laugh your problems and maybe you can help other people see that there’s always a situation that could be a lot worse than the one you’re in. That you have to kind of step out of your own box to see that.

I’ve seen your acoustic cover sets a couple of dozen times. Where do you perform your original work?

Interestingly enough, I do slip in the original work even at my acoustic gigs, where I try to do a lot of covers just ‘cause it’s the happy hour scene. People aren’t so into opening up to new music. But when I play with the full band, called Still, we do nothing but original music, songs that I’ve written.

Have you guys toured?

We haven’t gone out on the road. We’re now making a demo and I have a solo record coming out and everything is going to kind of be done in the beginning of August.

What’s the name of the solo record?

I haven’t come up with a name yet. I’m thinking about calling it Reflection. That title has changed about twenty times though. From that we’ve gotten some good response from people who are recording with us and hopefully we’ll take that out and get some radio play somewhere and take it from there.

Tell me a little about Still.

Still is a four-piece band, with drums, bass, two guitars. Pete — the guitar player — and I have been playing together since college so we started playing together in about 1987. The drummer and the bass player are from another band called Box Set. They’ve been around for a while and we’ve been good friends. Here’s how the story goes: The guitar player and I moved out to San Francisco in January of ’92. We came out with the drummer from our college band to play music out here. Through a mutual friend of ours met the bass player, Chad who’s currently playing with us. We had played in another band called Slack Dog Dynamite. That band lasted about a year and a half, where Chad quit, moved back to Vermont to play with his college band, quit that band to come back here and join Box Set. I’m going to say that was ’94. When he joined Box set, Mark (our current drummer) was playing Box set, so that’s when those two started playing together and is when we met Mark. So the four of us have known each other for a long time. Only about three years ago did we start playing together as the band that’s currently called Still. We kind of did it as a “Let’s get together as friends and play music.” In December of 2001, we randomly got a gig opening for Box Set at Slim’s. We put in a bunch of time rehearsing and got a good set together and it just went off really well. We all got very excited about it and just said, “You know what, why don’t we just make this thing a band, rehearse twice a week and try and get some gigs.” That’s where we are today.

So you’ve played Slim’s and I imagine some other venues in town.

Our two best gigs were Slim’s and Great American Music Hall. We have a gig coming up at Bottom of the Hill in mid-August. We’ve played Tounge-n-Groove, Velvet Lounge, Last Day Saloon, Sweetwater and those kind of places.

Here’s one from left field. Tell me something about yourself that would surprise people that even already now know you well.

Huh. Something about myself that would surprise people that kind of already know me well. That’s a good question. Um… Hmmmm.

Perhaps I’ll put it this way. One of your closest confidants would tell me ‘X’ about you.

[Long silence]

We just stumped the band!

[Laughing] I think it’s a great question. I’m trying to think of what the answer would be that my closest friends might not even know about me. That I have, like, low self-esteem in almost everything I do…Why do I go on stage? Because I used to get nervous about it.

What are the best and worst things about being a musician?

The very best thing about it is that I feel like I’m never truly stressed or truly depressed because I get that release on a daily basis form music. I feel bad that more people can’t do that. My girlfriend the other day after listening to a bunch of my lyrics — we played a bunch of songs the other night — said, “Man are you depressed?” I said, “No, I’m not depressed. The reason I’m not is because I can write about things that make me sad and I get it out.” That’s like why people started playing the blues.

That’s the best, what’s the worst?

The worst thing about being a musician for me right now is that it’s just a giant money pit. It’s where all of my spare cash and spare time go that might otherwise go to more, I don’t know, more Earthly things.

So it’s an expensive anti-depressant.

[Laughing] Exactly!

You’ve kind of begun to touch on this but let’s take it on directly. How would you describe your style? You’re not flashy. But you’re also not shy.

What you see is what you get. People like Lenny Kravitz, right? I love his style musically, but he’s just a little too cocky. And I would like him more if he wasn’t so full of himself. My goal really in life, and this comes through in my music I hope, is to simply be exactly what I am, and the best of what I am. I’m hoping that come through.

Comparisons are odious, but they happen a lot. To what other artists are you most frequently compared, if any?

Let’s see. The one I appreciated the most the other day came from my voice instructor, my vocal coach that I’ve recently started working with for about two months now. He said, “You remind me of John Hiatt meets Mick Jagger with a little bit of Steven Tyler thrown in there.” I thought that was pretty cool. And then songwriting, I’ve heard things like songs in the vein of Tom Petty with the whine of Neil Young. I dig that. I love all of those artists.

Yeah, that’s really great company.

Exactly, I take it as a complement to be compared with anyone who’s well known. I think that’s just a natural tendency. And if you’re being compared to someone who’s successful, then hey, even better. I have no problem about comparisons. I wrote a song a long time ago and my girlfriend was like, “Oh, very Eric Clapton-esque.” I’m like, “Yeah, sweet! Thanks!”

What are some of the strangest or funniest experiences you’ve had on stage or on the road?

Well, being the drunk that I now am not but used to be, I’ve been kicked off stage by members of my own band in the middle of a gig. I would say that was the most — not strange of course because I’m sure it happens all the time — not pleasant for me. Of course at the time I thought it was hysterical ‘cause I was so drunk. I had a girl ask me one time what I’d most like to see when I walk out on stage and look out across the crowd. I said, “A bunch of V-neck tank tops ‘cause I’m lookin’ down.” Nothing completely out of the ordinary has happened that you might expect at a rock and roll show.

You’ve never accidentally had your pyrotechnics torch the club then.

[Laughing] Killing hundreds. No, thank God nothing like that has happened. Mostly it’s been my own debauchery that’s brought me down.

What musician, living or dead, would you like most to do a duet with?
Wow. I think it would be awesome to do a duet with Bonnie Raitt. She’s just so smooth. And I would love to be able to play a song with Eric Clapton. Those are just some classics.

If you were to do a duet with Bonnie Raitt, what song would you want to do?

I might get the title of the song wrong, but I think it’s Angel from Montgomery. [Singing] Send me an angel… send me a post card from an old rodeo. I can’t remember the title of that song right now.

Do you name your guitars?

I don’t. I might — should — name my guitars but I’m torn between the idea of treating them as just tools of the trade. You see bands that trash their instruments and they’re like “It’s just a tool, you buy another one,” as opposed to getting so attached to them. But I’ve become quite attached to my guitars. I love them, you know? But I haven’t named them yet.

What is — in the best of all possible worlds — your long-term musical goal?

Well, I’ll tell you straight up. I want to be an award-winning songwriter and I’d like to be in a world-renowned, successful band. I’d like to sell millions and millions of records. I’d like to get into songwriting for movies and television. I mean, long-term goal, I’d like to make music my livelihood. I want to be good at it and I want to make a lot of money at it. Some people might have a problem talking about making a ton of money. I don’t.

Either do I, my man. Either do I.

Buy Jon's CD, "Addicted," today.