Let's face it, CKY have infiltrated our ears since 1999 with their brand of hard rock and we wouldn't have it any other way!
“You want a tour of my house? We just moved in, my mum just left actually, we‘ve been loading in and unpacking all weekend so I think it’s time for this well-deserved beer,” Jess Margera hospitably offers as he takes me on a phone tour of his property, analysing the feng shui of his dining room and admiring his picturesque Downingtown, Pennsylvanian view.
“My kids were like, “You’re not a neighbourhood guy” so I moved to a place with no neighbours,” he jokes.
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It’s hard not to feel akin with Jess Margera and his homelife having witnessed the chaos of it unfold for entertainment purposes on MTV through the likes of Jackass and Viva La Bam alongside his parents and brother Bam Margera. Things have settled a lot since the family’s early 2000’s rise, namely the family man position that Jess Margera has embraced with four kids including one in college.
“It’s chaos,” he laughs. “I worry about the one in college the most. She’s at the party age and she’s living in the city. You can get in a lot of trouble there – I know from experience. I’ve made some questionable decisions in my life and at that age.”
Whilst we can all probably fill in the gaps of the questionable decision-making, Margera also made a decision at around the same age of 19 that would shape the rest of his life. In addition to his family camp, a mainstay for Margera has been his closest camp, Camp Kill Yourself, better known as hard rock band CKY, for which he is a founding member and the backbone drummer.
“It’s pretty trippy that our biggest songs still I had skipped school to write. It’s still paying my bills for the most part. That was not on my bingo card. I did not see that coming.”
It’s 25 years later and those songs and their five albums, soon to be six with New Reason To Dream incoming, are being celebrated on the road including a stop in Australia next February with Alien Ant Farm. It’s a time that has seen Margera and co filled with laughs, jokes and revisiting the chronicles of CKY. But song memory lane for a band isn’t like a photo album, containing only the happy moments. There are some memories, or lack thereof, that are best kept in the past.
“Carver City and An Ånswer Can Be Found are hard to revisit because we were a mess as a band around those days. We were just going through it. The band were in shambles – all of the cliches of partying too hard and everyone had drug addictions. Luckily we got through it but it’s like asking you to revisit a part of your life that you would rather not. There’s like half of An Ånswer Can Be Found that I don’t remember doing. I was that out of it. I do not recall making ‘As The Tables Turn’ at all,” Margera explains.
“It’s weird to listen to and have no recollection of making it. I literally didn’t know how to play it so I had to learn it for the road and have had to learn others from those albums for these shows.”
In addition the band has seen some internal changes with founding member, vocalist Deron Miller having exited the band in 2011 and a revolving door of bass players dipping in and out of CKY across the years. For Margera, however, as long as he and Chad I Ginsburg are kicking, CKY will continue on.
“We’ve kind of become the Spinal Tap of bass players,” he laughs.
“I feel like me and Chad are at the point where we don’t have to even discuss where we are going or whatever. We just start playing and that’s what happens. That’s rare to have. We don’t have to talk about it, we just pick up our instruments and go. What happens happens.”
That’s fairly well the making of their latest project New Reason To Dream. It’s an album that comes out of reinvigorated enthusiasm for playing for Margera as well as renewed hope surrounding the recycling of rock.
“After a while it feels like everything has been done, but I’m happy to always be proven wrong. As soon as you say it like King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard comes along or Sigur Rós and they blow your damn mind!”
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Thus, CKY continues on creating and celebrating, living up to Margera’s mantra.
“One of my favourite bands, Clutch, has this song called ‘Earthrocker’ and it’s about people that as long as they are on this Earth they will rock and they will die on stage or at least when they die a tour has to be cancelled. I aspire to be that. I’m at the point that if I was hit from a car and woke up from a coma and was told to go on stage and play ‘Flesh Into Gear’ I think I could.”
Catch CKY when they head into Northcote Theatre, Melbourne on Sunday 9 February. Tickets can be found here.
