The Jonze by The Jonze

Here's one for the archives. My first band The Jonze! 90's post grunge masquerading as art punk.
It was 1996 in Pratt, KS. I was 17 and still in high school and living on the farm when I heard about these two older dudes who were looking for a guitar player. Ryan Staley played drums and was going to Pratt Community College. He must have been 21. Judson Klein played bass and was older, in his late 20's and lived outside of Wichita. Somehow I got a tape of them jamming and I added guitar and vocals to it and that became the first Jonze song “Venus Via Valium”. I guess they liked it and we ended up playing together and forming a band that would last for the next year or so.
We played a couple shows while I was still in school, including my first time at Kirby's Beer Store in Wichita. The thing I remember most about this show was getting to drink beer without the owner even batting an eye. Kirby's is still one of my favorite dive bars!
After graduating in '96 that summer I moved with my girlfriend at the time to Wichita. Judson and Staley had already moved there so The Jonze started playing out regularly. We played Kirby's and it's sister bar Kirby's Too across town as well the Rock Island and a few other venues and local festivals in the Wichita area. We played and made friends with a few other local bands on the scene including Thinner, Flo and 86'd.
At some point later that year Staley and I ended up moving 35 miles out of Wichita to the small town of Wellington, KS with our friend Eric. Here in our kitchen “Shithole Studios” is where most of the songs for this demo tape were recorded on a boom box. The rest are from live recordings.
We were in Wellington for several months until moving back to Wichita with Matt Comer from Flo and Matt Ahern from 86'd for a couple of months. It was in this house that the drug scene got kinda out of control. We were a drug-centric band, I mean even the name of the band was a drug reference! But it got to be too much for me and I ended up losing my job at Taco Shop and moving back to my folks' farm.
This was pretty much the end for The Jonze although I think we played a couple more shows after I moved. Matt Comer joined for a bit on second guitar and then took it over at some point and they changed the name to Far From Grey.
Musically I think in my mind at the time we were this experimental art punk thing but listening now we were very grungy and an obvious product of the 90's and there's a lot of stuff that makes me cringe but there were some cool ideas here and there. I especially appreciate Judson's songwriting contributions. Songs like “Natural Selection” and “Beauty in Darkness” allowed me to stretch out and get weird on guitar and vocals. His lyrics also came from a more mature and educated place than my songs.
I do have fond memories of those times and was bummed when I heard Ryan Staley passed from liver failure last year. He was a great drummer, really funny and a good guy. We had a lot of fun.
I'm happy to know that Judson is still making music (and writing books) in Connecticut. He introduced me to a lot of music that I still love like early REM, Elvis Costello, Pylon and They Might Be Giants.
-Steve Hammond

lorchestralrecordingcompany.com
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