Alex ‘Daddy Wonk’ Johnson
Do you remember when punk erupted in 1976, disgusted at the stagnation of the music world, vowing to rip up what had gone before and start over? Yeah, well that was 1976, man. Punk has moved on…
The world turns and the music scene changes. There are still many bands dressed in the late Seventies style, screaming against injustice and oppression, but they’re in danger of becoming that self-same dinosaur that brought about their creation. Not all punks are like that though. I caught Wonk Unit at another gig, and came away texting our editor Dan that I’d seen something special. Although definitely punk, they’ve gone off in a new direction. They can get loud and shouty when they need to, but band mainstay Alex ‘Daddy Wonk’ steers his band at a tangent. Gentle acoustic guitar and lyrics about everyday life abound. Written with a wry sense of humour and a disconcerting honesty, they’re a refreshing change from the usual image of punk rock. Dressed in a baggy T-shirt and jogging bottoms, with a baseball cap perched on his head, he looks the antithesis of a punk rocker, but his love of the DIY scene that embodies it these days confirms the old adage about books and covers. Let’s find out more…
AJ: “I put together the original line up of Wonk Unit in 2006, though it seems like it was only about three years ago. Previously I was with a band called The Flying Medallions, who were something of a ‘hype’ band, in the music press every week and on the verge of bigger things when we had a horrendous bus crash on tour which killed the bassist, so that put an end to it. Eventually I felt that it was time for another band, and so Wonk Unit came to be. It’s always had a very fluid line up, essentially just me and a backing band for a lot of that time. Bassist Pwosion is the longest serving member, but wasn’t a founder, and Tommy remains the longest serving drummer I’ve had at about four years, so the rhythm section is pretty settled now. We had a bit of a bad run on guitarists this year after Bushyhaired Benny quit. We got through a few before Kenny got the gig, and now we’re pretty settled. The changes mean that we’ve become geographically challenged, with members scattered
across England, with only Pwosion and me living in South London these days, so we don’t get to practice as a band – ever!
A lot of bands might find that a bit of an issue, but we don’t work like most bands.
I write all the songs on an acoustic guitar and it’s important to me that the songs are played exactly how I write them, they’re my songs. This is where Tommy excels, he picks up exactly what I want and does it almost intuitively, that’s important to me. I don’t feel that we have to have a certain sound, if something is written and I feel it will work best with a country feel, then that’s what it gets, and this is what Pwosion and Tommy understand. If it’s possible to define what we sing about, then it’s the mundane. The horrors of working on building sites in crap weather, following a girl through town because she’s got a nice arse, crappy supermarket jeans, when your wife cuts her finger when you’re in the bath and old trains… just everyday things which interest me. A lot of my lyrics start off as poems from my blog. I’ve always written poems, and if it’s any good, then it gets posted. Anyway, on Christmas Eve 2011 I was working on my blog and I thought I’d see if I could write some music for ‘Horses’. It was like ‘Well, that was fucking easy!’. Next was ‘Pon The Scaffold, The Wind Doth Blow’, so I wrote some music for that. By the end of the night I’d written about 75% of the album ‘Muffy’! Result!
I like to think that some of the lyrics aren’t as obvious as they initially seem. ‘Siobhan’ on ‘Nervous Racehorse’ is about my wife’s vagina… Once you know this, it puts a whole different spin on ‘I haven’t seen you for a while, you make me smile’, or her being late for her period gives ‘Siobhan, come on...’. You get the idea. Real world experiences are relatable to most of us, so I enjoy writing that. It’s also a part of my life that I’m sharing with you all. We don’t discuss politics to any
extent. I’m willing to talk about it as an individual, but not through the band. There are a lot of others doing that, they don’t need my songs too. Can you imagine me going “SMASH THE SYSTEM”? It’s never going to work, is it?
There’s always the chance of alienating yourselves from your listeners if you get too preachy too. Wonk fans are part of our big happy family and that’s important to little bands like us on the DIY scene.
When I started Wonk, it was purely for my own entertainment, nothing more. We had a bit of PR luck a couple of years ago, and that seemed to lift our profile. We were appearing at Hastings Mardi Gras festival and this bloke comes up after our Tuesday night set, and tells us how much he enjoyed us, that he’s not seen a punk band as exciting in the last 40 years.
Turns out he’s only the bloody music writer for the Daily Mirror and wants to do an interview! Obviously I said yes, and the next thing I know my phone is going mental with people telling me I’ve got a full page in the paper! It was a great lift for us, but it was also a bit ironic as, with the exception of the recent push to launch Plasterer Records, I’ve never bothered with PR, preferring to allow word of mouth speak for us. We’ve never pushed for gigs, reviews, airplay… anything. Speaking of which, Plasterer (the building trade is a recurring theme throughout Alex’s work) was originally meant to be an outlet for our material, but it’s expanded.
We originally released through the great Manchester independent label TNS who were the only ones interested in releasing our debut album, and we’ll continue to work with them to an extent as they’re brilliant and helped open us up to Northern audiences, but I wanted to take more control of our releases. It’s grown though, and we’ve released Cincinnati’s highly rated hardcore band The Dopamines, and breakthrough youngsters Aerial Salad have their debut through us. We’ve a release due from The Dub Writers, a ska/reggae band from London who are great along with a few more. I’ve no visions of expanding the label, but it’s a lovely feeling when boxes of new records turn up on your doorstep!
There’s also Wonkfest, which is pretty much a small festival I like to put on to thank the bands we’ve enjoyed working with through the year, but that began as a reunion for the Medallions for my 40th birthday. I enjoyed it so much I wanted to do it again the year after, but the band said no, so I went ahead and created this instead. It’s people I love, not necessarily bands on labels or in ’zines, but ones that somehow showcase a year of Wonk. Success isn’t measured in money for me, I’m skint, live in my parents’ garage with my wife, but I’m travelling the world doing the thing I want to do. I’m living my dream. Hell, I’ve even built a skateboarding pool in the back garden recently. How rock and roll is that? That’s success for me.”
Wonk Unit have a new album out shortly, called We Hate Everybody And Everything’s Rubbish, a massive nod to the title of The Flying Medallions’ only album. Interview and gig images: Nik Skeat Extra Images: Steven Potter