issue 6: Rustbelt
I met John, formerly Juiceboxxx, at a friend’s birthday party in Times Square. It was a year or two ago, between one COVID wave and another, when people were starting to make their way back to the city. We all stood around in the glow of the big LED displays.
I could tell he was someone who absorbed a whole lot. I got the sense that for every observation he shared, he kept two for himself. Musical and cultural knowledge, specifically, he seemed to file away in a large mental database. I gleaned that he had probably traveled quite a bit–in the US at least–but I didn’t ask about it. We landed on a topic like “early 2000’s party music” and I haphazardly mentioned the name Juiceboxxx, not knowing that Juiceboxxx was John, and never having heard the music. He made a funny face but didn’t let on. We moved on to other topics, the only one I remember being the 2021 reality TV show “FBoy Island.”
Soon after, I made the connection that John was Juiceboxxx–formerly, anyway–and that the travels I’d picked up on had been 15-20 years of relentless touring. I say formerly because, around that same time, the Juiceboxxx moniker was laid to rest. After 20 years of obsessive touring, writing, and recording, John had killed the alter-ego he’d honed and courted since high school.
It seemed like as good a time as any to give it a listen. When I did, I was struck by the way John’s singular style cut through the various genres he tried on: pop, punk, rap, rock, rap-rock. He toured a lot, first on the Greyhound with an iPod full of backing tracks, later with a three-piece rock band. Even when rapping, he channeled rock icons like Lou Reed, Alan Vega, and--his most obvious influence--Springsteen. Even if his music wasn’t your cup of tea, it was difficult to deny John’s dedication, or his singular intensity as a performer and personality.
There’s a book about Juiceboxxx, and I read it. The Next Next Level, by Leon Neyfakh, follows the project from its high school origins to TV appearances and high profile tours. The book isn’t a strict biography. Instead, John’s story serves as a reflective surface for Neyfakh’s explorations of his own identity as a creative inhabiting a 9-to-5 lifestyle. The writer’s open naivety is refreshing and exhausting in equal amounts. But the story of Juiceboxxx itself is something anyone who has spent years in the American underground– or anyone who’s pursued an irrational dream–is likely to find relatable and timeless.
The most revealing piece of Juiceboxxx-related media I encountered was the “State of the Thunder Zone” series on Youtube, a year-long weekly video dispatch from 2013-14. The videos show John talking freely into a cell phone camera for three or four minutes. The series is ostensibly a way for John to connect with fans and provide updates about the label he runs from wherever he happens to be living. But it also provides an intimate window into his wildly fluctuating mental state. He’s in LA in the backseat of an anonymous car. He’s in Virginia drinking tequila in a Motel 6. He’s riding high, yelling, hyping up a release or a music video. He’s in a bare room in New York, dark circles under his eyes, lying in bed. The weekly transmissions are filtered through the Juiceboxxx persona, but just barely, and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where the persona ends and John begins. In nearly every one, a sense of hopelessness begins to surface. Often, he forces it back down. “Do I hate myself? Maybe!” he half-shouts in a video from November 2014, “But I’m in this motherfucker, alright?” I’m watching these in 2022, at a time when everyone films themselves constantly. But the series’ vulnerability is refreshing, and surprisingly rare. Here is someone fully exposed, trying to keep the darkness at bay.
A few months ago John debuted his new Rustbelt project with a single, “Fade the Mix.” It’s a self-deprecatingly funny and honest indie rock tune from the perspective of a decades-long DIY musician approaching middle age. Essentially, it’s a song reflecting about Juiceboxxx.
The song was released along with a video and 2,000 custom-made soda cups. The cup shows the band name repeating itself in a classic ice font atop a red-to-white gradient. It’s a beautiful object, and one that has begun to acquire a life of its own.
We met up in Greenpoint and orbited a McDonald’s while discussing Rustbelt, soda, and life after Juiceboxxx.
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Discussed: cups, confusion, The Gathering, Mcdonald’s on Meeker, spicy Sprite, cups, Americana, branding, low stakes, Showtime at the Apollo, Born to Run, forward motion, Top 40 pop music, compromise, Public Enemy, the swing revival revival, mental health, etc.
[John is talking about the Thunder Zone energy drink he released as merchandise for his label of the same name.]
I have three cans left. I gotta hollow them out and cast them in resin or something, just for preservation. The company I made them with, they’re still in business, but they only make the Monster Energy drink size now–16 ounces. Thunder Zone Energy was 8.5 or whatever, like a Red Bull.
It’s slim.
It’s slim, and the koozies are slim. They’re energy drink koozies.
All that stuff has since gotten much bigger in size.
Yeah. One of the only people that still does the eight ounce is Red Bull, I think. That would’ve been time for me to upgrade, Thunder Zone XL, but I was winding down the label at the time.
Is the label no more?
Yeah, the label is done, but the website is still up. I did 50 releases. The final release was by an artist who just played The Gathering of the Juggalos.
Whoa, who is it?
This guy Tricky Youth. He kind of comes out of the punk scene here [in NY], but he’s juggalo adjacent, I guess, and he got on the bill. It blew my mind. I was scrolling The Gathering website and saw his name on it. It was the best surprise of the year! Factory Records was a big influence for the label, but so was Insane Clown Posse. So it was about just trying to split the difference between those kinds of approaches.
I’ve been by this McDonald’s so many times, but I’ve never been inside.
It gets shouted out on the Joel Ortiz “Nissan, Honda, Chevy” remix with Jim Jones. It’s sick. Ortiz raps about eating a Filet-O-Fish. Very few rappers are shouting out anything Greenpoint, but I guess it’s right off the highway. It’s a quick stop on their way to their homes in Queens or something.
Maybe he had to print something out at Staples.
This place is sick, too. The Call Box Lounge. I’ve DJ’ed there. They used to throw parties all the time.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it open.
It’s kind of a cop bar, but they let kids throw parties. They would claim they would give you like 10% of the bar or something. It’d be packed out and then they’d give you $75 at the end of the night–that kinda style. It was never a viable place to throw a real party. People would throw their birthday parties and take control of the sound system.
I like this logo.
Yeah. It’s clearly a fine establishment in some ways.
[We enter the McDonald’s and John approaches the counter. The cashier tells him to use the self-service kiosk.]
One of these sodas is spicy?