It's a Thursday night at the end of September, the night of the Friend's season premiere. The interveiw is conducted during commercial breaks and videotaped. Honkey Dorey has been broken up for almost three months when we sit down to talk to Johnny, the bassist. The ensuing conversation included many more things that were unfortunately edited for spacial reasons. Someday the entire interveiw will be public...
Seat Seven: There's a lot of speculation on wh Honkey Dorey broke up, and I'm not saying this because I want everyone to get mad at you, but why did you break up? Johnny: OK, OK. So last summer, the summer of 2001, we were suppsosed to go on this tour. I booked 14 shows in 12 states. I was all about going, but people kept canceling dates until were were down to 6 dates. So they're like "whatever, we don't want to go" So we canceled the tour. Two days before we were supposed to leave, I got 6 more shows, so we wouldn've had 11 shows.
At the end of the summer, the whole band was fighting, no one cared. We mended that but it never was completly fixed. We had a lot of fun playing that winter, we did this Misfits thing for Halloween at Westfield State.... Went on tour in January, a two week tour that cancelled down to two shows in Pittsburgh. We just woke up Thursday morning, drove 12 hours, played a show, found some guy's house to crash at that ended up being a wicked dick. Some vegan guy that wouldn't let us eat cereal out of his bowls because it has marshmellos in it... And we played the second show, and Kevin slipped on some ice and couldn't walk, so we're like "Let's go home now." WE left at 11:30 at night and got home around 9:30 am.
And after that Honkey Dorey was great. We just started playing shows all the time, which was getting really repetitive cause they were all in the same places for the same people. Nowhere else would book us. It got aggravating. Matty was getting sick of it and didn't want to play shows anymore.
2 months before the infamous Pulaski Park show me, Adam, and Kevin would show up in the van, and Matty would show up in his car. WE'd play the set and leave, not saying anything to each other. And there was obviously tension in the air while we were playing. So at the Pulaski show, he was like "I'm done playing, you guys can do whatever, I just don't want to be part of this band anymore." And we were like "Well, we don't want to get a new drunner or anything, we'd rather just stay your frined." Insead of having hard feelings because we kept playing.
And we decided we were going to do the last show.
It was just done. Matty was done playing shows and we weren't going to replace him.
S7: So that's why Honkey Dorey is no more. Are you doing anything else? J: Me, Adam, and Kevein were supposed to do the Ridgefields, which nver got a practice in. Then one day I was hanging out with Matty and he's like "Man, I just want to play again." And I was like "Me too." Sp we went to Kevin's and he's like "I don't know, I don't really want to play anymore." And we convinced him into one practive and he was like "Alright, yeah, let's do this." SO we go to Adam and he's like "No I don't want to be in a band anymore." and we're like "Ok. we gotta start a new band." So that's when the Emotionals came out. We practiced, and wrote a song. And then I didn't talk to them for a week and when I did they were like "Oh yeah, Adam's in the Band." Which I didn't understandbecause if he didn't want to be in Honkey Dorey, why did he want to be in the Emotionals?
S7: But wasn't it the same thing? J: No, It was a completely different band.
S7: But It's the same people! J: The instramental side was more like At the Drive In, like really crazy like that. So we procticed twice this past weekend and I'm like "I'm done. I don't want to be in this band."
S7: Are all the Ramones references [on Long Awaited] on purpose? J: I don't know... But like Who Dat? [thier first album] we recorded that 15 song CD. All the songs on that, we used to write by taking Screeching Weasel songs and playing the songs backwards. SO if you take Who Dat? and play the songs backwards, it'll be Screeching Weasel. Except Let's GO to The Beach." That's original. And "Original Original". That not original. We didn't even reverse the chords. That's a Screeching Weasel song with diffrent lyrics.
S7: You guys are so confusing! J: Yeah, I'm confused too. But we're all still friends.
