Jonas & The Massive Attraction

Jonas Tomalty has gotten quite a bit of success in the past few years as a solo artist. However, it was never a solo project, as you’ll be able to understand later in the interview. This is why Jonas & The Massive Attraction was born. Now officially a complete band with Jonas on vocals, Corey Diablo on guitar, JS Baciu on bass, Henri Fortier on keys and Francis Fillion on drums, they have released their first album under that name.
After parting with his old label and starting his own, Jonas began writing songs with Corey for this band and their debut, ‘Big Slice’, produced by Thomas “Tawgs” Salter. They aimed for a big sound, benefitting from the help of many mixers who have worked with bands such as Metallica and U2.
When they played a show at Club Soda back in September, I had the chance to chat with the lead singer about the album, the band and…his mole?
CONFRONT : What have you been up to lately?

JONAS : We had a chance to get out to play in Germany and in Denmark and then came back here and were kind of starting to tour here.

CONFRONT : Yeah you have a bunch of Quebec dates planned for the next few weeks!

JONAS : Yeah! We did that kind of European mini-tour and then did another warm-up date back here. And now the tour officially starts today. We’ll be doing probably about 30 dates or something…25-30 dates. And going out west as well! We’re going to tour out west for a bit and then we go over to Europe.

CONFRONT : Wow! Big plans!

JONAS : Yeah big plans! Lots of plans!

CONFRONT : Can I have a little history about you and the band?

JONAS : Sure. Corey and I started playing together 14 years ago. I was 17 and he was a guitar player that used to come by and frequent this place called Déjà-Vu on Bishop Street. On jam nights, you know, we’d go down there and meet up and we just hit it off. And him, my father and myself, we started what was called The Blues Blooded and it was a side-project to my main project Rubberman. It was my concentration at the time. We were signed and we were touring and we were working on a new album. But then what happened was that The Blues Blooded started getting more gigs than Rubberman just because for the blues market, we know we could work as a trio or we could work as a full band. So we really had a wide variety of venues that we could play. Then at some point, my concentration turn ed a little bit and veered a little more towards The Blues Blooded. And Rubberman had a falling out with our record label and the band ultimately broke up. I resigned with that record label.

CONFRONT : Oh really?

JONAS : As a “solo artist” at the time but it was never a solo project. It was always Corey and myself and a full band behind us. So we followed that route, you know, we kind of took the lead. I constantly fought with our record label. We did great things, they did great things but it was definitely an eggshells kind of relationship. As it were, it was always kind of fragile but we did great things. They did amazing things for me; they put me in a place where I could work my butt off and I did. Then, progressively, you know we put out our album, we had a great tour across North America, put out the second album which was right in that wave of mp3s and everyone downloading and not buying CDs. And it’s still going down but there was a real big rush when it first hit and our album didn’t have as much success, which made an already unstable relationship between an artist and a record label even more unstable.

CONFRONT : Of course.

JONAS : And then the last four years, I wanted out. We fought. You know, tooth and nail. We should’ve split but we didn’t. Ultimately, we went and did you know, the classic rock and roll biography where I went in and you know, artist versus record label. Ultimately, we kind of went to war and we ended up coming out on top. We bought the record contract, we bought over our future contracts, our publishing; everything from them. We started up Big Slice Records with Todd Littlefield, my manager, and in the past year, we’ve just been working onward and upward with a positive look on things.

CONFRONT : That’s a great way.

JONAS : Absolutely! Onward and upward! It never got to the point where I didn’t want to play music anymore. But it certainly stunted my creativity for a while so now, this last year has just been incredible!  I feel like the control is back in our hands. We can make the music we want to make, we can be the artists we want to be and I think the team that we’ve built behind this whole thing has ultimately flourished and Big Slice was born.

CONFRONT : That’s what’s important!

JONAS : Yeah! And where the Massive Attraction got their name!

CONFRONT : Where did that name come from?

JONAS : We’re a rock band; there’s nothing subtle about us. When you watch us onstage, we’re not subtle. It’s rock and roll, we always were rock and roll and the name of the band had to reflect that. We’re not an emo band, we’re not an ambient kind of background music band. It’s a little tongue and cheek too; it’s cocky rock and roll and it goes together well. And the band, honestly, I always wanted to name them. We always wanted a name. It wasn’t “Jonas”. Corey is not Jonas’ guitar player now, he’s a guitar player for The Massive Attractions; his project, not mine: our project.

CONFRONT : Your album just came out recently actually. How has the response been so far?

JONAS : It’s been great! The response has been the best on radio, the sales have been the best and it’s the best feedback we’ve ever had from fans.

CONFRONT : That’s great!

JONAS : It’s ultimately the three things that are most important. First of all, how the fans are reacting to is because no matter what, I make music for me and for the fans. That’s how I like to make music because I want to get onstage, enjoy what I’m doing and have a great night enjoying it with everybody in the crowd. And then secondarily as an artist, especially when you own your own record label, you kind of look at what the radio is and radio ads have been…we’ve never had more ads, we’re top 20 rock radio right now, which has never happened to us across Canada. And the album sales have been the best we’ve ever had for the first opening weeks. So it’s been a blast! We’re really having a really good time with this and this album has also opened up some more doors for us. The foundation of the album is a good song with a voice and a guitar. And I think that when you write from that perspective, it’s an honest song when it comes out at the end no matter how big the production on it is. I know the production on this album has got that big sound to it, you know? That was intentional. We wanted a big rock album and I think by kind of crafting it that way, we really noticed that the reaction and the opportunities that have risen just from this album are exactly what we were hunting for.

CONFRONT : That’s good to hear. And actually, working on your own label, how was it different from your past experiences?

JONAS : Well you fight with yourself instead of fighting with the record label.

*laughs*

JONAS: And it ends up being kind of schizophrenic back and forth you know? Because what’s right for me, what’s right for the label, what should we be doing? It’s been one of the best experiences because I’m co-owning the label with my manager and he keeps a little bit of a lid on things. I’m a little loose, I like to spend money and have these grandiose artist’s ideas that he kind of puts the lid on sometimes and puts me in check. But it’s certainly more liberating, creatively. The team, again I know it’s a theme in the interview, but it’s a theme in my life right now; team building, the support that’s behind the band, is just as important as the band and so the management, the publicists, everybody that we’re working with, the producers, the co-writers that we want, this was a team that was hand-picked by us. And not by somebody in a suit behind a desk telling us what they think should happen because it’s better for numbers. And I think it gives a good sense of pride at the end of the day when things are done and it’s working well.

CONFRONT : Of course.

JONAS : But you also kick yourself in the ass when you made a wrong decision.

*laughs*

CONFRONT : You must also be really perfectionist with yourself and all right?

JONAS : Absolutely! And the band. We have a subtle way of smacking each other in the face. It’s like with a padded glove.

CONFRONT : That’s a nice way to put it!

JONAS : Yeah because we’re all sensitive to each other, we’re buddies, we’re brothers, we tour with each other. We really don’t argue.

CONFRONT : Really? That’s great!

JONAS : We don’t really argue, no! We talk through things a little bit, we take little digs at each other. There’s certainly little spats but nothing deep. We’ve got good communication and that might sound hippie and futuristic but it really is a good thing, especially when you’ve got anywhere between 5 and 12 people in a tour bus.

CONFRONT : Yeah of course.

JONAS : You want to be getting along and you want to be able to deal with that sort of conflict well so yeah! I think we do.

CONFRONT : And how would you describe your sound on the album?

JONAS : Big rock! It’s certainly big rock. It sounds huge, it’s what we kind of always wanted to make. A lot of people say we went a little commercial on some aspects and I mean, since when is pop and commercial bad? It’s music I love to play, it’s music people like to hear. If you don’t to hear it, then fuck off and don’t buy my album!

CONFRONT : Yeah it’s too bad for them you know?

JONAS : Yeah and I love making that kind of music. I think it’s really been fun to be more creative with our pop sensibilities and it’s definitely fun to play onstage. To be able to replicate it and say “how are we going to make it sound like the album?” When we were in the studio, we’d record 10 guitars on an album, how do you do that with one guitar onstage? We really had a great time crafting it creatively and kind of reworking it for the live performance.

CONFRONT : So how do you do it?

JONAS : Well luckily, onstage, we have our keyboard player who is really good at filling in the gaps, giving that ambient sound, giving it some beef. Corey is an incredible guitar player who can do the rhythm and the lead at the same time.

CONFRONT : Wow!

JONAS : He’s really good at molding that. But that also comes from doing the duo shows, him and I, acoustic you know? He has to fill in a lot of gaps so that’s been a good school for him and a good way for him to kind of learn the ropes on how to fill that stage performance out after production.

CONFRONT : What were some of your influences on the album?

JONAS : You know, it’s funny, we really try to lock down our ears when we go into production so that we don’t start ripping people off. *laughs* Because any band will tell you; if they listen to an artist too much while they’re recording, next thing you know, you start playing these licks and you’re like “ah! This is a great lick!” and then you go and you realize this song’s been written. So we try to lock it down a little bit or listen to stuff that’s completely not our sound but there is certainly production influences and stuff anywhere from Coldplay to…I love the Band of Skulls, there’s some Chili Peppers stuff on this, I mean it’s hard to say. But then there’s some big rock production stuff too. I think Tawgs (Thomas Salter) coming in and producing it is what makes one song flow into the next song. A song like “What type o’ ride are you” can be put next to a song like “More than a moment” and you know it’s the same band even though stylistically, they’re different because production-wise, he uniformed it.

CONFRONT : That’s cool! And what does the future hold for the band?

JONAS : Nothing but good news. We just really had a lot of great feedback from Europe, we’ve got a team out in Germany now that we’re going to be working with, we’ve got a team in London, and we’ve really set our sights on 2011. It’s definitely going to be us jumping over there and spending a lot of time over there.

CONFRONT : That’s cool! Lots of plans. So actually, is there any difference with the fans when you play over there or over here?

JONAS: Sometimes, they’re a little more polite over there in some ways. No I don’t mean polite, a little more proper almost. They kind of wait for the song to be over. In Montreal, it’s hard because we do come from Montreal where it’s the most reactive audience in the world. When you play a solo, “Ahhh!” it’s big noise! If Corey shakes his ass for a second, it’s big noise! With people here, we’re spoiled. So when you go to other places in the world, with that being said, the rock fans over there, they love their music and the love emulates from the crowd. It’s amazing. We don’t have the same crowd over there as we do here. We’re working from square one over there so we’re playing rooms with sometimes 10 to 30 people with rented equipment that’s not ours. So we’re at the mercy of whatever that day gives us but it’s great for our egos. It’s great for the band, it’s great for bonding and it’s great to make us realize what we’re doing this for and that’s the music.

CONFRONT: That’s what really matters in the end. A few years ago, you got to play the Bell Center. How does it feel playing there, knowing it’s one of the big venues to play at in Montreal?

JONAS: It feels great! I mean, it’s definitely one of those milestone things you know? When you’re standing on that stage, you really feel like you’ve hit some kind of great level! That being said, I don’t want to sound spoiled at all but I like the intimacy of a small show.

CONFRONT: Yeah so do I.

JONAS: I like the Metropolis’ of the world and I’m going to miss Spectrum terribly. It was one of my favorite venues I had ever played. We would be quick to go back and play those venues two nights in a row as opposed to one big Bell Center. That being said, I guess at a certain point, cross your fingers, when you reach a certain point where you need to play those kinds of venues, I don’t think that we’d be opposed to it. It’s just a different element.

CONFRONT: For my last question, I’m going to ask you to draw something that represents you and you have to explain to me how it represents you. It can be a self-portrait…it can be anything you want.

JONAS: *laughs* It’s a mole. *laughs*It’s my mole.

CONFRONT: So it’s a self-portrait?

JONAS: It’s a self-portrait of my mole!

*laughs*

CONFRONT: Well thank you so much for your time! Have a great show tonight!

JONAS: Thank you!

To find out more about the band, check out their website!

http://jonasandthemassiveattraction.com

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