RONNIE WINTER of THE RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS: Facing It All Head On
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Fifteen years ago, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus exploded onto the music scene with their single ‘Face Down’, a track that heartbreakingly resonated with thousands of their fans across the world. Using their newfound fame for good, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus were soon headlining the US Take Action Tour alongside bands such as Rise Against and My Chemical Romance, a tour organized for the prevention of youth suicide.
Five studio albums later and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus will finally make their debut appearance here in New Zealand. Coming off the back of their latest album – which just so happens to be a concept record addressing the topic of suicide – lead vocalist Ronnie Winter is particularly excited to be able to share some of their latest work with their New Zealand fans.
I recently spent some time chatting with Ronnie about their tour, their latest album entitled ‘The Awakening’ and his relationships with everything from his music to his wife and son…
So the rumours are true, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus will indeed be performing in New Zealand!
“We are! First show ever in the history of our band. We have tried to get over there once or twice before and had some passport issues. You know sometimes people forget that when you’re in a band like this there is nothing we can do about that kinda stuff; but everything looks good this time, so it’s kinda a big deal for us. We’ve been a band for fifteen years and this is our first ever show in New Zealand!”
It’s a big deal for your fans as well, many of them never thought that they would get the chance to see you play in New Zealand, so they are very excited.
“Right on. I hope so because it’s going to be … you know you only get to see a band first time once, so, it’s going to be special for all of us.”
‘On Becoming Willing’ has now been No. 1 on the Billboard Christian Rock Chart for ten weeks now. Ten weeks!
“Yeah, it’s actually twelve weeks now which is pretty nuts. We feel really great about it and you know that’s our main genre so that’s as good as we could be doing. We had three big hits with Virgin, and now we have had seven hits after leaving Virgin, so it’s been a long ride and it’s nice to be back on top. Not gonna lie, feels good!”
See that’s New Zealand for you, we’re so far away at the other end of the world that we are a bit behind with the information …
[laughs]
… because that’s three months! That is beyond impressive…
“Three months, it’s unreal!”
Three months; when you put it like that it’s just amazing. Your song has been number one for three months.
“Yeah. It has been three months, it’s pretty amazing and we’re grateful. I mean what else do you say to that? So, you know we’ll definitely be performing that but either way it’s going to be a good show.”
Now, speaking of this track that has been No. 1 for three months, let’s talk about the story behind it. What prompted you to write it?
“This [The Awakening] is a concept record; I have always been the main songwriter, I’ve written almost all of the songs entirely from the beginning of my career. Essentially this is the first time writing a concept record, ever.
So, it’s track one, which leads into track two, which leads into three and four and right down the line. This happened to be track two and we released them in reverse order; so number three was first and then, number two which is this one and next is going to come number one. The album is out, people can listen to it all the way through.
In this particular song the character is going through what I like to kinda look at as just a deep, dirty bottom of depression and drug and alcohol abuse and all that … he’s pretty much ready to end everything which I actually say in the song, I say: ‘Maybe I’ll end it all on this night”
So, I can’t be anymore clear, this song is directly reaching out to those who are thinking about taking their lives. I’m not beating around the bush, I’m talking to them directly; and then I’m sharing with them what I did and others like me and them and how we got through.”
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And I greatly admire that, because that’s something that since the beginning of The Red Jumpsuit’s career you guys have always been very involved in; work around suicide and teenagers in general which is brilliant. Sadly, it is also something that is needed more now than ever.
“Well thank you for remembering that, it is something we have always done, it is something that we did when we were the biggest band out, it was something we did when we were the smallest band out and it’s something we’ll always do. I do wish that you saw more of it but either way as long as we have an opportunity to be heard that’s something that we are always going to bring to the table.”
How do you view the world today in regards to increasing depression and suicide rates?
“Well, all I can really do is share my experience; I was the singer of a rock band who some might say at a certain point in time had the biggest song in the world and I barely lived through it. So, if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
It doesn’t surprise me, and those are the people that I’m trying to reach. We can just put out records like everybody else and try to gain popularity and gain label support and radio support and pop out Instagram’s and Facebooks – or we can actually talk to people directly; we can speak to them through our songs with a purpose. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
I also love the fact that – as you just said previously – you are not beating around the bush with this. Even though it is an important topic people often try to avoid it. They don’t like saying the word suicide, they don’t like even bringing the topic up.
But if we don’t bring this topic up, how do we open the lines of communication? The word suicide is treated like it is dirty…
“Correct. And the reason why is because that word is linked to pain. Lots of pain. Everybody – regardless of whether it has been in their family or friends or network or relative – everybody at this point has dealt with suicide in a certain way.
They have been affected by it, if they haven’t their spouse has, if their spouse hasn’t then their spouses’ sister has, or the spouses sister’s husband has.
We’re all connected, we all know somebody now that has gone through that and the pain that is involved, so it’s a knee-jerk reaction to a painful topic that unfortunately we can all relate to.”
That’s sadly very true.
Going back to what you were saying before about The Awakening being a concept album; what prompted you to make one? Concept albums can be notoriously difficult and somewhat of a gamble for even the greatest artist.
“It was one hundred percent a gamble and it was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done. I don’t know that I would ever do it again, but I am very happy that it came out the way it did and that people like it. It came about with simply just deciding to tackle these issues head on and instead of trying to do it fragmentedly like I had before on other records, I wanted at least one record that I could look back at at least ten or twenty years from now and say ‘This whole record was dedicated to talking to you guys on this topic’ which is what the album is about.
It’s somebody who at the beginning of the record they are going through just a bad time in their life, they’re trying to figure out how to be happy, so they’re trying drugs, they’re trying alcohol, they’re trying late nights, they’re trying relationships, they’re trying the internet …. they’re trying all the things that we know that people try to fill that void, that feeling, that creeping depression; and you follow the character through a transformation that happens – or an ‘awakening’ as we dubbed it and many others have over time.
Even if it’s not necessarily directed towards you, it’s a great lesson. The inspiration for doing it was I needed to just do it and have it be done so that the rest of my career I could make any other record that I need to. I just had to get this one out.”
Obviously, there is a protagonist in the album – I must ask – is the protagonist based on yourself?
“That’s a great point, I definitely have been on this journey, there have been a lot of ups and downs for this band. Anyone who has followed us through our fifteen year career will know we’ve had some pretty high, highs and some pretty low, lows and everything in between and that’s just what comes with being a real band and staying around and relevant for as long as we have: so that’s all expected but as far as whether or not the lyrics are retrospective to my life? Of course they are.
We’re the band who wrote the song ‘Face Down’, that song was about my Mom. My brother is in the band with me, there were things that we watched when we were kids growing up that happened to my Mom, so I’ve been pretty open about things that happened to me and what I’ve experienced from the beginning. So, all I have done has not changed that, this is definitely a record, a concept record based on things that I have discovered that I’ve been through, but the actual character situations are different but essentially you know things that I’ve experienced and what I’ve learnt.”
And of course, you are a parent yourself now.
“I am. My wife and I – she co-produced the record, Angela – we had a son, Wolfgang, who is now two years old.”
Children certainly turn your whole perspective of life on its head!
“I’m glad you said it. This is our first kid, and you’ll never be the same. You never look at anything the same. In the best way of course, in the best way possible.”
As you were saying, both you and your wife worked on this record together. How was that, because most people love their spouses, but not everyone wants to work with them…
“[laughs] We have a studio in our house; we have a nursery in one room and right next to the nursery is the studio. We really just spend a lot of time pre-planning and taking our time, we didn’t jump into it. So, her and I could produce it right here, in our home studio. She also – and me and my brother Randy – engineered it. We were sending files back and forth to him from Florida from his home studio.
Angela was a producer when I met her in Los Angeles and I was flown in for a writing session – because I write songs for a lot of people – and she was there working, and I couldn’t believe it, I’d never seen anybody … I’d never seen a female producer first of all, just never seen it before in my lifetime with all the crews I work with!
That and not only was she obviously very good looking but super talented with what we call pro tools which are the most high fidelity recording software. So for me it was like ‘Ok, this is the one right here. I just have to convince her!’”
[laughs]
“We actually work pretty well because we do the same thing, I’m a producer, she’s a producer, we use similar software and she’s also a songwriter and a really, really amazing singer; you can hear her on the records, she does some background vocals for me. So, if you hear those few sprinkled in parts in there, that’s actually her.”
That’s very cool…
“That’s very common of a concept record, Pink Floyd did it, The Who did it; you’ll hear female vocals come in and out so we took advice from some of those old great concept records.”
I must say it’s sounds like it was love at first sight!
“It was for me, and definitely…uh…yeah, I’ve been married for a while, so I know that you will have to ask her point of view.”
[laughs]
“But as far as working together, I felt like it went really smooth. You know we literally had the same goals and I have been making Red Jumpsuit records for a long time and she just happens to be really good at the few things that I’m not good at and vice versa so we complement each other well. It was meant to be!”
Well it certainly sounds like it!
Speaking of previous records, I know from an interview with you quite some time ago, you don’t like to pick favourites; or as you put it ‘the last record that you create tends to be the favourite because it’s the freshest in your mind’.
Do you still think that way since The Awakening came out or is the album 4 that you brought out in 2014 still your favourite?
“No. I still feel that way. And I think that just has a lot to do with the way the brain works, like once you’ve digested you kinda put it in this classics category in your mind, you know where everybody likes playlists now.
All the old records to me become kind of on a playlist, and the new record to me is the shiny new toy that I just got, I just opened up the box, I just pulled the ribbon and lifted the lid and I get to look at it.
I’m still learning, I’m still discovering it, I’m still appreciating it which is fun. And I helped create it, this is how it goes for me, maybe other musicians will say otherwise. It’s that same feeling you get at Christmas when you open a present; that don’t mean that you don’t like all those other presents that you got in the past, some of them might be the most valuable things to you ever, but on that day, and for that next couple of months it’s the new gift that you are really infatuated with so I think they are linked to some type of feeling.”
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus have moved through both the times and the years, and while everybody hates to talk about genres how would you describe the progression from your last album 4 to The Awakening as a band?
“Well again everything is different with this record. This record is kind of its own … it could almost be outside of Red Jumpsuit because that’s the rules of a concept record, anything goes.
So when a band tells you they are releasing a concept record you already know if you’re a real music lover and you know there are different kinds of people out there – I had to learn that – there are people who listen to music casually, they don’t really care, there are people who listen to music because other people in their family listen to it so they feel like they are just fitting in. Then there are the people that we actually call music lovers, and they’re constantly listening to something and they’re doing that their whole entire life, no matter what the format is.
So those type of people we know understand that, when someone says it’s a concept record all bets are off. You can pick any band and I’ll give you a great example of when they attempted a concept record to where it had its own set of rules.
Don’t worry about it too much as far as where it did or didn’t link to 4 because 4 was just another Red Jumpsuit record and there will be another Red Jumpsuit record one after The Awakening. This one is just its own, it’s like a standalone. Kinda like Rogue Squadron with Star Wars; it makes sense, it fits but it’s a standalone.”
Well let me put it this way then – when you first floated the idea of a concept record to the rest of the band how did they take it? Were they one hundred percent behind it or did you have to do a little bit of convincing?
[Laughs] “Yeah, that’s a good question, no one has asked me that. Luckily for me I have been working with these guys for a long time, obviously especially my brother since we were little kids, we started working on music together since we were like nine. Nine! And we are like in our mid-thirties now.
He trusted me but was like curious as to how I was going to pull it off, and the rest of the guys, I just usually send them the parts and say, ‘Learn it’ and they do… [mutual laughter]
That’s just how it goes and they all trust me because we have been doing it a long time, they all really like it and if they want to add something to it, they do and that’s when it becomes a band. Randy was definitely interested in what my plan was and then I told him; one miracle story from beginning to end in three different movements that shift stylistically and sonically which is what happens between movement one through to three and he really liked that idea. And then as I started sending him songs he started to see the whole concept and before the end of the project he agreed with me that it was a good idea.
But you always have to worry about is it going to be digestible, time will tell. I do believe that Red Jumpsuit fans will be able to digest it. What I’m curious about is whether people who don’t like the band or who don’t necessarily love the band if they’re able to digest it. So, time will tell.”
Looking back at ‘Don’t You Fake It’ which arguably was the album that saw you hit the big time; that album is coming up twelve years old now. Do you kinda look at it as the surly teenager that stands in the corner and scowls at you?
[Laughs] “Sure, why not! I mean that’s who we were. Yeah, I mean that was a culmination of all my writings as a young teenager and then we finally got to release it. So that’s essentially what it is, you nailed it on the head, call a spade a spade.”
But how’s your relationship with it? Do you still feel like you are the surly teenager, or are you now the parent trying to deal with said teenager?
“I lean heavily on my wife for parenting, I am definitely a kid trapped in a man’s body, and I’m told that makes me fun to be around so I’m not necessarily disappointed with that character trait but she’s definitely a supermom.
I just do everything I can to support and I’m waiting for him to get big enough, so I can play games with him. I’m a big kid, I always will be, but I cover all the bases, I make sure we’re protected, and we’re provided for but other than that I’m usually just goofing around, so I follow her lead.”
Well kudos that you can admit that! [laughs]
“I’m not above it.”
And I am going to quote that word for word in this interview, so that if you’re ever in trouble you can use this as a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
[laughs] “Yeah, thank you! I like where this is heading…”
So, what’s the plan for the future? How long are you going to let The Awakening sit with fans before you start working on the next project? Or have you already started because you strike me as the sort of person who always has an idea rattling around inside your mind…
“I definitely never stop writing and there were quite a few songs that I couldn’t put on the record because they didn’t lyrically or sonically match the concept record. So, there’s already a lot of material just hanging out in – not limbo – but free space that I can pull from whenever I want, at any time. And I do, pretty often.
So, there’s that going on but at the same point in time the record is not even a year old, you know the current single held number one for twelve weeks, so we are going to continue to push the record for at least a year straight and by that, I mean we’re about to release another music video. Our lyric video – our last one – did phenomenal. On Facebook alone, it got over a million views in less than two weeks, which there are no other unsigned bands doing that so that shows us. We just look at the results that we get, cause some of them we put out haven’t got as many views as that, so we learn from that and this one showed us that there are a lot of people digging it so we’re going to be putting out another one very soon.
We’re a different kind of band. We literally roll with how I decide to do things and I just organically feel how the album is reacting and I time things consecutively.”
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are performing tonight in Auckland at Galatos. Door sales will be available, but make sure you get in quick as it’s sure to sell out!
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