Rob Braden - Drums and Vocals

What first got you interested in music? 

Chicks and Beer.  What else is there?

What instruments can you competently play?

I play a very little bit of guitar, but competently, I really only play drums.

What was the name of each band you were in:

1.  The Few  
2.  Briggs Beall
3.  All Shapes Ensemble
4.  Once Fish
5.  Johnny Bravo
6.  Diner
7.  Sure Gold (Oldies Band)
8.  Jump the Gun

What are the top 10 albums or CDs of all time in your opinion?

1.  The Clash:  London Calling
2.  The Police:  Zenyatta Mendatta
3.  Frank Zappa:  You Are What You Is
4.  Red Hot Chile Peppers:  Blood Sugar Sex Magic
5.  The Minutemen:  Double Nickles on the Dime
6.  Rush:  Moving Pictures
7.  Jeff Beck:  Blow by Blow
8.  Bela Fleck and the Flecktones:  Greatest Hits of the 21’st Century
9.  The Jam:  Snap
10.  Dead Kennedys:  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

 

What is your favorite JTG song that you currently play?

“Anyway”

What is your favorite JTG that is rarely or no longer played at shows?

“There Will Be Times (from the Driving in Spirals unreleased)”

Name some artists and some of their works that you might be ashamed to mention in public.

I LOVE Ricky Martin, Clay Aikin, and Mark Harris

Name some big name musicians that you have warmed up for or had an association to be around with otherwise. Please share those stories.

There are three stories I’d like to try to tell in this section.

In 1984, when I was 16 or 17 years old, I was friends with these three guys.  They were in their twenties at the time.  Their names were (and still are) Brett Schmid, Tommy Leanza, and Ron Long.  At the time, the three of them were somehow scraping up enough money to rent a house on Ross Street in Lancaster.  How they came up with the money for rent is to this day a mystery to me, because I have no memory of any of them, except maybe Tommy, ever going to work.  (This is not entirely true.  Brett looked fabulous in his uniform when he worked at Wendy’s for two days, but that’s another story altogether.)  Anyway, they had a party one night where I was introduced to a friend of Brett’s named Art.  He was a very nice guy.  At one point of the evening, I was sitting next to Art talking, and because the room was pretty much full of musicians, the conversation turned to music.  This guy Art seemed to have a lot to say about music, and I found myself not agreeing with many of the things he had to say, so being 17 and toasted on liquor, I began arguing with him.  I don’t remember exactly what was said, but Art would say something like “The key to making a hit record is….” and I would say “Bullshit, I think…..”  Anyway, it never got ugly or anything, and the evening ended, and I went home.  A few days later, back in the house on Ross Street, Brett showed me the autographed copy of the album (there were still albums) his friend Art Garfunkel had given him at the party.  As it turned out, Brett had picked up Art Garfunkel hitchhiking some years back, and they had become good friends.  The point being, at 17 years old, I unknowingly sat with and told Art Garfunkel that he didn’t know shit about music.

In 1989, when I was on the outs with a band called Once Fish, (now Hexbelt, a band and group of guys I love to this day) I played an opener at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster with a one gig act that we were calling Protein Gas.  Protein Gas was a three piece group, myself on drums, Christopher Elser on guitar, and Chris McKay on bass.  We all sang.  I remember we were a little bit short on material to cover the 45 minute set, because we had only rehearsed twice to prepare for the show.  I had played with Elser in Once Fish previously, and also with McKay in another one gig band called Filling Dad’s Shoes with my friend Tim Ellis, now living in California and still playing music as Fire Engine Red, but the three of us only rehearsed together twice.  We decided, in order to help fill the 45 minutes, we would get a piñata, fill it with candy, attach it to a mop handle, and dangle it above the dance floor to be beaten by the crowd.  And that’s just what we did.  Fortunately, the unruly crowd made short work of the piñata, and nobody was hurt.  Just some harmless cheap hard candy strewn about the floor, that got pulverized into a sticky mucky mess as the crowd went nuts for Phish, the band we preceded.  The guys from Phish were just as you’d expect them to be.  Good Guys.  They welcomed the Protein Gas into the green room, and we were happy to be there. 

In about 1993, I was playing in Johnny Bravo with Michael Robinson, (I later formed Diner with Robinson) Chad Kinsey on Guitar, (Chad is still a very active musician in the area, involved with a bluegrass act called Highfalootin and in a Beatles tribute band called Imitation #9, just to name a few) and Chris Layser on bass.  This was by far the craziest band I’ve ever been in.  We used to practice above the Metro Express pizza shop in Wabank Road in Lancaster.  We would drink to excess at every rehearsal, and at every opportunity.  We used to drink Mickey’s Malt Liquor, and by the end of the rehearsal, we would be fighting, and hurling glass bottles at the wall as hard as we could.  I’m telling you Mickey’s makes you psychotic.  I should mention a guy named Vic Jarunis here, but I could write a book about Vic.  Anyway, we were offered an opener, again at the Chameleon, for Amy Mann and ‘Til Tuesday.  We were very fired up for this show, and were looking forward to meeting them, etc…  As it turned out, Amy Mann was a first class bitch.  She sound checked forever, yelled at some poor girl from the Fly Magazine for taking her picture (this I actually understood, because she looked like a poor man’s Andy Warhol.  In fact, we referred to her as Amy Warhol from that day forward.), and was just uncooperative and cunty in general.  Not only was Amy bad, she had this road manager who was a total dick.  Chad wound up calling him a fat bastard to his face.  I’m laughing as I’m remembering this now.  They would not allow us into the green room, and we never actually met any of the “talent”.  They were also very uptight about their equipment.  Anyway, we finally made it to the stage without a sound check to play our set, and we were fired up and of course, we were drinking heavily because that’s what we did then.  Our closing number that night was to be an original song (we played all originals) called “Fit The Suit”.  Somehow, Michael had come upon this cheesy Halloween Elvis suit (I think he got it from Vic Jarunis) and he decided he was going to run backstage between songs, and come out for the final number wearing this ridiculous suit and pretending to play a three dollar child’s plastic guitar.  There were never any strings on this guitar.  Probably had a handle that you crank or something like that.  So out runs Mike, in the suit, with the guitar, and we rocked “Fit The Suit” with great fortitude.  Mike was so excited in fact, that during the guitar solo, he smashed the toy guitar into pieces, using one of ‘Til Tuesday’s front monitors as a chopping block.  By the end of the solo, there was a chunk of wood missing from their speaker cabinet.  They were not pleased with us.  We spent the rest of the night in a closet that was our green room drinking endless beer and laughing our asses off.  We never saw a second of their show.  We hoped maybe they would be a little bit nicer to the locals in the next town.  I doubt they were.