Wednesday July 11, 2001

Danko Jones Destroys Europe
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Shania Twain better make room in her Swiss castle because Danko Jones is taking over, baby!
His Mangoness Danko, JC and Damon the Drummer recently returned from performing at some festivals in continental Europe and the folks over there dug Danko in a large way. "I think it took us a month to accomplish what took us two and a half years over here [in Canada]," says Jones.
Adds JC, "This just happened so fast." He says that after reviews of the first couple showcase shows in Sweden came out, promoters began to book them into large festivals without even having heard or seen the band live. This all peaked with a last minute invite to the now-infamous Roskilde Festival in Denmark where 70,000 people attended and they played on the same stage as PJ Harvey, Stereo MC's and Nick Cave.
As rapidly as they climbed the ladder, they still remained fanboys though. Particularly when it came to Ms. Polly Jean.
"We were sharing the same dressing room with her," says Danko. "I kinda ruined it for Damon. He was having this cool conversation with her and I went over there like a fan, 'Whoa, PJ Harvey!"
He also paid close attention to what she had for breakfast.
"She had toast and two glasses of milk. And she just left the second glass. She didn't drink it," he says.
That wasn't their only star-studded meeting, though. JC almost knocked over David Byrne at one show and at the Hultsfred Festival in Sweden almost every notable hardcore band in the country came by to check them out and Blaine Cartwright from Nashville Pussy who also introduced them to Jello Biafra. ("I think he's the original Nardwuar," said JC.)
Sweden was particularly excellent for the Danko boys. Now, if you've ever paid attention to Danko's endless obsessive rants about Nina from The Cardigans, you've got to figure he'd be like a proverbial brown panther on the prowl in the land of buxom blondes. That was indeed the case.
"'Sweden' is Swedish for 'Danko's Place,'" says Jones, who enthused that there were women hotter than Nina dime-a-dozen. "That's a whole other story. Everything you've heard about Sweden, it's true! I didn't really believe it until we got there."
JC pipes in, "Spain was the same thing. Except with dark-haired women."
What Europe was smart enough to understand will be our loss however. Whether it's short-sighted Canadian music industry failings like the reluctance to support innovation, the backslapping-favor trading or the slavish copy-catting of trends [personal rant mode off], Danko aren't too pleased with the state of affairs in their home country.
"This [big Euro success] put a whole new perspective on it for us," says Jones. "If anyone wants to 'assist' us, the game has changed." Yes, that can be interpreted as a boldface challenge to Canadian music industry folks.
For now, the band's plans will include servicing a new video for "Cadillac" to MuchMusic and there also may be two yet-to-be-determined Canadian show dates before the band head back to Europe for another round of performances. They'll also do a third round of concerts across the pond in the Fall.
As for album plans, they're hoping to put something out by Spring 2002. Right now they're shopping for a producer and are playing a number of their new songs in their live sets.
- Aaron "The Vanilla Express" Brophy

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