[Exclamation] Point Made!

The mere presence of an exclamation point immediately catches your eye, doesn't it? Hitting you hard in a similar fashion is the album,

, by the band Jonny Lives! Hailed by Blender, SPIN, and the NY Daily News the album is like a midnight train out of hell: fast, thrilling, and a sheer rock n' roll joy, interspersed with the occasional acoustic serenity and just enough pop sheen to smooth out the ride. The four-piece band includes leader Jonny Dubowsky, Christian Langdon (guitar/vocals), Tommy USA (bass), and Jon Weber (drums). I had a chance to chat with, Dubowsky, about his biggest career mistake, Tommy Lee and Kid Rock's MTV Video Music Awards fight, opening for Stevie Wonder, and life on New York City's Lower East Side. However, not only is Dubowsky a man of rock, but he's a man of action as he talked about what really gets him in a rocking mood: his non-profit organization, Rock n' Renew, which focuses on sustainability and renewable energy. Check out the interview to see why Jonny Lives! has more than enough credibility to employ the use of punctuation as hype.

The Interview

Souleo: I was checking your MySpace page and I see that you replaced the "Get Steady" music video that I appeared in with the National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, movie soundtrack version. So, what's up with that?!

Jonny Dubowsky: [laughs] I protested just because of your cameo in the video but we had a great opportunity to work with Kal Penn [star of National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj]. He directed the music video because the song, "Get Steady," wound up being on the soundtrack and was basically the featured song of that movie. Art [Alexakis] from Everclear, Kal Penn, and me wound up doing promo for the movie. We went on like a month long 26-city promo tour so it was really cool.

S: Congratulations, and now that the whole promo for the movie is over, did you really like the movie? You can be honest now.

JD: No, I didn't like the movie. It was pretty terrible but it was funny for what it was--you know it's a teen comedy.

S: Since you share the same management team, have you checked on your boy Tommy Lee after the fight with Kid Rock at the MTV Video Music Awards last month?

JD: [laughs] I didn't talk to Tommy. It looked like, you know, love will make you do crazy things that's for sure. It's almost like a Shakespeare love triangle.

S: I don't think Tommy got to hit him back but who do you think would have won?

JD: I think it would be a pretty good fight. They're both tough rockers so it would be evenly matched I'm sure.

S: Speaking of tough rockers and crazy fights many of your songs seem to capture the debauchery and the wildness of New York City life. When and what was your initiation into that fast-paced city lifestyle found on the Lower East Side of Manhattan?

JD: I was fourteen--I played my first show in New York City at CBGB's. We had a band called Page named after the lead singer [Page Hamilton] of a band called Helmet and we started playing CBGB's. It was tough there in those days. The Bowery was still dirty and dangerous and there were still junkies in Tompkins Square Park. It was a scary city and growing up in light of that I learned street-smarts. I think the best experiences that you can have are really with artists that are a couple of years older than you because they kept the ball really high. With all of the bands back then it was a different era and now with CBGB's gone it's definitely a new chapter for New York City and its music scene.

S: Being fourteen and having your debut at the legendary CBGB's must have been intimidating. What was the crowd's reaction to your young band? Did they give you hell?

JD: Well those were young shows, so the audience was fourteen and fifteen too. It was like Sunday afternoon at one o'clock and there'd be 200 kids lined up to get in. It was great and it was really amazing. I just heard a band named, Too Busy Being Bored, they're fifteen year-olds, and they reminded me of my old band. When you're that age you're just defining who you are but you're not so caught up in the responsibilities of life yet, so it's a very idealistic time which makes for some really great songwriting.

S: From CBGB's you were on a roll and went on to open for Stevie Wonder at the age of fifteen. What was that experience like?

JD: That was amazing. Stevie Wonder, for me, is the embodiment of happiness in music. If you're having a bad day and you put on a Stevie Wonder song it makes you feel good, it makes you smile, and he's really like that in person. He's just really warm--he seems like he's definitely got something special. There are certain people you meet in this world that just have that thing--you feel like you're in the presence of greatness.

S: I read that you have a very unique songwriting style. You stated that you write songs in your sleep as you're dreaming, and that you finish them once you wake up. To me that sounds like a very spiritual creative process.

JD: Oh, absolutely. I was just talking to my dad about this last night and we were talking about religion, and I think music hits you in a way very similar to the way that I view religion. It gets underneath the surface. I try to get out of my own way and just let music come into my day. Whenever I sit down to try and write a song I never do--it's always out of my life experiences. When you try [to write a song] you'll often just run in circles but all of a sudden, I'll just wake up at five in the morning with a fully formed song.

S: On one of the highlights from the album, Outside , the lyrics seem to depict high school gossip and love. What was the inspiration for that song?

JD: That song is actually a love song that I wrote for some friends that were getting married on the beach of Mexico. They asked me to write a song for their wedding and I'd written the melody but I hadn't written the lyrics. The lyrics came out on the plane on the way to the wedding. I just remembered the couple that everybody whispered about--how they were the cutest couple. There's this sweetness about falling in love when you're twelve or thirteen. I really think that if you're lucky as an adult you find that person that brings back that kind of a sense. So that song was kind of playful [begins to sing] about love, all you need is love.

S: You once stated that you made some huge mistakes in your career. What was the biggest mistake and how did you correct it?

JD: I think that the biggest mistake was probably not being patient and really wanting to speed things along. You know there's a natural order to things. I think that your career has that similar arc and if there's a lot of resistance you shouldn't push so hard [laughs]. It's just a life process that happens and I've become a lot more patient. You know a year seems like a very short amount of time to me now, and it used to seem like ages a couple of years ago.

S: I read that you have a lot of musical influences from the 1960's some of your favorites include: The Kinks, The Who, and others. Many people compare your music to the Brit pop/rock of the 1960's. Do you ever feel like you're making music in the wrong generation, or ever wish you could go back to the 1960's and just create music during that era?

JD: That's a good question. I feel like the '60's is a great example of what is about to happen and what needs to happen now. The musical scene of the '60's was directly related to the politics, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Today if you take a cross-section of TRL [MTV's Total Request Live] and what's on the top 10 radio charts, if you were an alien you wouldn't think that anything was wrong with the world. Certain types of pop music, the stuff that actually sells the most tends to not be about much other than basic love or a simple emotion. It's not really politically charged and I think that there's so much going on right now that we need to take action about as a generation--not just the environment, but genocide, AIDS, and there's a lot of gross poverty. There are a lot of issues out there that seem insurmountable to tackle as a young person, but truthfully it's really just about doing little things. The music and artistic culture of our time right now needs to echo that sentiment. I'm not saying write songs about trees or be hokey, but in an artistic way, the same way that Dylan did it and the Beatles did it, you gotta talk about the times.

S: Someone needs to warn U2's Bono because it looks like you're about to take the title as the great rock star humanitarian with your non-profit organization, Rock n' Renew, which educates youth about global warming and the sustainability of our planet. In your travels to schools across the country do you think that the message of saving our planet is getting through to this generation at all?

JD: I think that the message is getting through. I came into the whole world of non-profits and environmental groups early on since the eighth grade with the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Federation. About a year and a half ago I started Rock n' Renew before sustainability was such a hot topic. So I started working with the NRDC, the natural resources defense council, and they have a program called, itsyournature.org, and we started co-partnering events. We did the Download Festival with Snoop Dogg, Modest Mouse, and the Shins, and all these great bands in Chicago and Boston. We gave the kids at these concerts a really targeted plan. We had a ditch the bag campaign. We set up a tent at the festival and we gave away hundreds of canvas bags to these kids and we had them making their own artwork on them, painting them, and punking them out. The whole thing is to get people to stop using paper and plastic at stores. It's real specific--you have to do this particular thing and this particular thing, and all of a sudden you find that in your daily life you become a sustainable person and you reduce your footprint greatly. I think that's where things need to go.

S: What was your take on the Live Earth event this year? Some critics say that it wasn't very effective in terms of creating a concrete change in the way people respond to the condition of the planet.

JD: You really have to start with you're mentality with sustainability and the solutions to our climate crisis. I believe that the people that really need to make the changes in their lives that are gonna fix this planet are the ones that are gonna take the most convincing. It's gonna take a lot for them to start recycling, buying local food, and start thinking about these different things. So a concert like Live Earth is the type of event that's gonna get through to the person that doesn't have sustainability at the front of their minds. That's why I think it was a success. It was a great awareness raising event. [However] an event like that is gonna be real hard to get people to do the specific action points. I think that Al Gore has always had a really keen sense of how media affects people's viewpoints and I think that we need to make sure that when people come that they take mass transit and they don't drive their SUV's to the event [laughs]. I think that it's gonna take a hundred more of these events to now really turn the cultural shift on the issue.

S: There are a lot of people that are critical or suspicious of celebrities and artists getting involved in serious political/social issues. Some say that one's celebrity status may actually hinder an issue's chances of being taken seriously, since many celebrities are viewed as simply jumping on a bandwagon for publicity. What's your take on that?

JD: I do agree with those critics that you mentioned if they're referring to an artist that's merely jumping on a bandwagon without actually believing in it. Some guy in some band once said to me, "Oh yeah, we're really looking for some cause to align ourselves with. It doesn't really matter which one." There are so many social action causes out there that you should pick one that has relevance to you. Getting those artists to practice what they preach that is really what would be an excellent thing. In Rock n' Renew we have a roster of artists that take an unwritten pledge. It says that they will include sustainability into their rider and make sure that their concert t-shirts are made out of organic material and not made in China. And bit by bit you start showing your peers what they can do, and all of a sudden they make these great lifestyle changes.

S: The organization is expanding now with an ecology center in Bayonne, NJ.

JD: We are building a 2,500 square foot garden and ecology center and we're gonna do a big 5k road race in May. The Rock n' Renew 5k race is gonna raise money towards the construction of an energy sustainable ecology center, which is gonna be a class room for a few of the different schools involved in the program. It will be open to the public and it will serve as an ecology learning center. We're gonna have farmer's market type events, cultural events, and it's to bring more of a peace to the dense inner-city around the different metropolitan areas that we work in.

S: What are some of the challenges you've found in getting this message of energy conservation to low-income residents in the inner-city?

JD: I lecture all over the place to all age groups in about 20 states and 8 countries so far. I found that the lecture takes on a very different tone when you're talking to a family that's on welfare and doesn't have the upfront money to get low impact fluorescent bulbs, they don't have a car, and the energy conservation elements aren't as directly applicable to their 600 square foot apartment. But they're the ones who feel it the most when the energy bill is so high because oil is so expensive. I think that the greatest way to teach about the planet that we're trying to save is to create a relationship with it. I think inside of us is a natural sense, a real connectedness to nature that living in a city takes away from you. We're trying to bring more of an interaction between kids and their planet.

S: While you're trying to save the world you're still working with the band on a new album. What can we expect from this upcoming album?

JD: I've been writing songs since I was like twelve, but only recently have I started to really write music that I think will carry me into the rest of my career. Even my first record is a collection of songs that were written up until my early 20's and now I'm 29, and the second record is gonna be very different. My older brother Eric Dubowsky is producing it and he is currently working on the new Weezer record with [producer] Rick Rubin and his crew. My brother is amazing, and he and I are co-writing some songs on it and we're gonna record it out with the boys in LA. I'm gonna do a song with Art [Alexakis] from Everclear out in Portland, and we're recording in a completely sustainable energy studio--not using any power off the grid. The tour from the album will be done using alternative fuels--it's gonna run on grease, and it will be a major college tour that ties in together all the environment work that I'm doing.

S: You studied philosophy at NYU so tell us the philosophy behind the band Jonny Lives! Please complete the following sentence: Jonny lives for ________________?

JD: Jonny lives for the fulfillment of grace.