Everyone wants to be a rockstar. What everyone doesn’t get is that it takes dedication, the right attitude and one hell of a work ethic. Enter J-Sin Trioxin: New Jersey’s horror-punk legend, responsible for the “boo-wop” stylings of Mr. Monster, the face-melting guitars in Blitzkid, and now pulling guitar duty for Michale Graves on a 55 date tour. J-Sin truly encapsulates the rockstar lifestyle, not only playing the music that he loves, but living it and getting his music to his fans no matter what the circumstance: like having a lead singer get seriously ill, having all of his equipment stolen (both during the same tour) and still playing every date. Rock Jimmies catches up with J-sin two days before the beginning of the “Almost Home” tour:
ME: How are you feeling?
JT: Tired. Just did a radio interview and picked up the tour bus yesterday…been working on it, gotta rip out the closet and do all this stuff to it…put in bunks…
ME: How’s the tour looking?
JT: Tiring. I’m really ecstatic about it. But when we’re not touring, it’s not like time off, we’re just gearing up for the next one. You relax when you’re on your way home. I’m really excited about playing; we have a really healthy crew now. Last time it was like a tour manager and merch and that was it, now JV (Bastard/bass player) has his own tech, I’ve got a guitar tech, we’ve got someone doing merch, someone doing the tour managing and all that stuff…They’re all friends. JV’s tech is Germs from Mr. Monster, my friend Bobby, he did merch last time, this time he wanted to be a tech onstage, so… We’re all friends. We all hang out everyday. I’ve never been in a band like that, where all the members hang out all the time and it’s totally cool. It’s very rare.
ME: When you say you have a healthy crew, does that include Michale as well? I remember he got sick with the ear infection thing…
JT: Oh yeah, absolutely. That was bad. There was three days that he was really bad, he got up on stage and I was just staring at him, I thought “how are you up here right now?” We didn’t see him, we were all in a van, but we didn’t see him, he was this ball huddled in a corner, a fever of 103 degrees, I didn’t understand how he could get up there and do that.
ME: Tell me about the motivation behind the Almost Home Tour.
JT: I’m not one of those people that, I don’t watch the news, I don’t stick my nose in the paper, I know George Bush is the president, but I don’t know too much, and I know that’s bad. I heard about the West Memphis 3 for a long, long time, especially when (Henry) Rollins put out that Black Flag tribute. Well, I kind of knew about it but not really. When Michale came to me and told me he wants to go and support this, I had to go watch all the documentaries and read all the books. So I did. At first I kind of did it to be enlightened about why we’re going on the road for 55 cities, but as I got deeper into it, it hit close to home, it could have been any one of us. We were all fortunate enough to grow up in a metropolitan area. 90 percent of the fights I’ve gotten into in my life were between the ages of 13 and 19, for someone calling me a freak or a punk or whatever, but that was it. Worst case scenario, bloody lip, big deal, you know, not capital murder charges. I feel like we have to be a part of this. We’re certainly not the first, Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra have been supporting this for years. I hope to raise awareness to everyone who has ever heard of or don’t really know who the WM3 are and will see this atrocity in America is going on. It’s like the fuckin’ wild west right now, people just getting picked off and hung in the city. It’s disgusting. These people in Arkansas have spent way too much time and money to just say yeah we fucked up, we’ll let you come on out, no hard feelings. They’re not going to do that. They just want to get it over with and kill this poor kid. I don’t know if he’s going to make it. I don’t know if he’s going to survive. I pray that he does. But if he doesn’t and his death goes unwarranted, that will be the worst thing involved. If he’s going to die by the hands of the state of Arkansas people need to know why and how.
ME: I read there was a show in Mississippi that had to be moved.
JT: Yeah, twice.
ME: All because a few people are upset?
JT: Well yeah, Satan’s children are coming. You know, any person that has an IQ over 80 will watch this thing and read these books and realize that these kids did not do this.
ME: 55 dates is pretty incredible…
JT: People always say I’m a lucky bastard, I say fuck you, I work. I’m fortunate to be here, you know what I mean.
ME: I remember a story where all your equipment was stolen on your last tour. Tell us about that.
JT: When Michale came in the room and told us what happened, he told us like someone just died, there was no emotion in anyone’s face, I just smoked a cigarette and got up, I didn’t even realize I was in my boots and underwear, I didn’t even get dressed, I went outside and sure enough there was the van and the window was smashed. I was like “no.”
ME: I’m surprised you had cigarettes left after what I read.
JT: Seriously. It sucked but, you know, my equipment, my pedals, stuff like that you can buy again, but somewhere out there someone’s got MY guitar that has pictures of my ex-girlfriend shellacked on the back, songs that I wrote on that guitar, it’s pretty irreplaceable. I’m upset about it but it’s like a severed relationship, I’m upset it didn’t work out.
ME: How did you recoup from that?
JT: I sold all the rest of my shit on line for whatever else I needed and I had some money set aside, I never knew why I had it set aside. I just walked into the music store and was like, let’s do this.
ME: It’s like that episode of the Twilight Zone where the old guy sells shit on the street and he always happens to have exactly what somebody needs. He gives this guy a pair of scissors and the guy doesn’t know what to do with them until he gets his tie caught in an elevator door. You had that money for a reason. Tell me about your new gear.
JT: I found this Schecter Limited-Issue Vampira guitar. It’s white with blood on it. JV and I wanted to do something like this before, both of our guitars white with blood on it, so we did it ourselves and it didn’t really look right. Then I saw this guitar. I’m using it and I’m using one of JV’s because I really can’t afford another one right now. JV got 2 Gibson Goth Thuderbirds, one is orange and black and the other he got white and he splattered blood on it and it looked totally cool, I was so jealous of his bass guitar. Our dreams came true we both have our white splattered guitars now. I want to say thanks to Doyle, he helped us all get all of our equipment.
ME: Tell me about when you started playing music.
JT: I started on guitar when I was about 14 or 15, I was not seeing results quick enough. I was 14 years old and I thought within 1 or 2 months I would be playing like Slash, it wasn’t happening so I wasn’t happy, I sat at my friends drums one day and I just went off. It was proven to me that day that people are either born with or without musical talent because I never played the drums before. I played drums pretty much throughout high school, and I liked it because in high school I had long hair and I liked being behind a drum set. I got pretty good but then I started saying I want to be out there with the audience. I tried bass, because bass is the perfect medium between drums and guitar. My number one influence pretty much from when I was 6 years old was Duff McKagan, and I read interviews with him where he says he played drums and sang and played guitar, played bass and all that shit. I wanted to be just like him so I said “I’m going to try all these fucking things.” So I did and I actually liked playing bass the most, but I like all the different instruments for different reasons. I’d like to play drums in a 1988 hardcore band. I’d love to play bass in an 80’s trash-rock band. I’d love to play guitar in a horror-punk band and I am so it all works for different things. I’ve been playing guitar the most, but, you know, drums are cool…
ME: No one appreciates the drummer.
JT: Right, drummers have their own little fan club and that’s it.
ME: What would you be doing if you weren’t playing music.
JT: I’d go crazy. Something I do constantly when I’m listening to a song on the radio, with the exception of a few bands, very few, I say to myself “you could have done that, you should have done this,” you know. I’m not necessarily making the song better, just different. Yeah, so I think production would definitely be something. It would have to be something musical, I don’t know how to do anything else. Nor do I want to learn.
ME: What about your other projects? What are Blitzkid and Mr. Monster doing?
JT: Blitzkid just finished up and album, it came out really cool. I’ve heard a mix but I haven’t heard the final mix yet, but it sounds really good, the songs are really strong, (Argyle) Goolsby just signed up for Doyle (from the legendary Misfits) new band, Gorgeous Frakenstein. With Mr. Monster, me and JV write all the stuff for that band but we’re not really serious about going into preproduction. We’ve got a lot of offers to do shows and stuff like that, but I can almost guarantee Mr. Monster won’t play a show this year.
ME: How hard is it to maintain so many different projects?
JT: It’s tough but as long as you’re in a band where everyone has their hands in other things, it’s understandable. At this point in the game, you don’t absolutely want to go where there’s more money or more fans, you go for what you think will work out in the bigger picture.
ME: Anything you would like to add?
JT: Coffin Case, everyone should check them out, they got some cool things going on there and they’re hooking up the entire band. We’re going to be toting their shit all over the place.
ME: Don’t forget the Rock Jimmies. . .
JT: Absolutely. I showed JV the box they came in and he was like, it took him like ten minutes, he was like, “these go on the end of your cable, which end?” I go “whichever end you want.” He says, “So I can have a skull at the bottom of my bass? That’s fuckin’ awesome!”
For more info and tour dates, check www.michalegraves.net or hit up J-Sin directly at www.myspace.com/inkenstein.
