INTERVIEW: TONIE JOY PT I

As the guitarist in Moss Icon and Universal Order of Armaggedon, Tonie Joy had a significant impact on the American underground of the 1990s. With the former, he stretched beyond the expected song length/structure of a ‘punk’ song to include extended, experimental passages that seethed with a mysterious tension while the latter was abrupt, direct, and throttling. Later into the 90s and stretching into the present day, Joy has taken his playing into heavier worlds of sound via the units The Great Unraveling, The Convocation Of, and Rogue Conjurer.

On March 31st of this year, the Temporary Residence label will release a vinyl reissue of Lyburnum Wits End Liberation, Moss Icon’s sole studio-recorded, full-length album that was recorded in 1988 but not released until 1993. Due to the records’ re-release, I was able to speak with Tonie Joy about Moss Icon and the rest of his musical history.

In this first part of the interview, we discuss learning an instrument, the formation of Moss Icon, their relationship with hometown compadres The Hated, and what brought Moss Icon to a close.

What came first? Learning to play the guitar or learning about punk rock? 
I wanted to learn an instrument from a very young age because my father was in rock bands during the early 70s. This was before finding out about underground rock when I was into stuff like Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, and Neil Young. But I found out about punk rock and new wave by the late 70s.

How did your interest in music lead to forming a band? 
Throughout my adolescence to my teen years, I was bugging adults to get me a guitar and lessons. That didn’t happen until I was 16 and had a driver’s license. My father paid for half of the guitar and I never bothered with lessons. I was already talking to people in my high school who were into weird music about forming a band, but it didn’t happen until I met Jonathan Vance, who became the vocalist for Moss Icon. I had to gain enough independence to make it happen.

At first, it was me and Jonathon finding the other people and going thru the growing pains of what it was going to sound like. We were really young, so there was no huge concept going on about what we wanted to do. I didn’t talk to a lot of people or have a big social network so it was just a way to have some kind of interaction with like minds. It all came together within months, not years. Jon had already written poetry and was really prolific and interesting but once we started Moss Icon, he realized it didn’t have to be a verse/chorus thing or a traditional punk rock song. It could be freeform or experimental. It was just a matter of wanting to do it, figuring out how to do it, and then just doing it. We were familiar with the DIY approach. and it seemed feasible. Being so close to DC and seeing what Dischord had done up to that point, we thought, “If they can do it, we can do it.”

So was there a music scene in Annapolis happening at the time with The Hated?
We set up the first Moss Icon show ourselves with a couple of bands from southern Maryland and The Hated showed up. They didn’t know us and we didn’t know them, but we clicked and became part of the same gang, so to speak. There was a definite comradery among us and The Hated. They were our peers, but also our mentors and inspirations.

Were The Hated the people who walked you through how to record, release and distribute a record? 
Absolutely. Kenny Hill who started Vermin Scum and was the drummer for The Hated at the time showed me where to get a record pressed and we recorded at the same studio that the Hated recorded at. They were our guides in how to function in that world. 

What was the reaction to Moss Icon when you began playing out? 
Maybe through The Hated, we got hooked up with a show in DC that was a benefit for the organization Positive Force DC. I think they’re still around to this day. People were curious to see a group of young people from Annapolis because even though it was the capital of Maryland, it was a small city that was conservative, small, and pretty shitty. I don’t think they were expecting something like us or The Hated coming from there. I heard secondhand that Ian MacKaye seemed curious about us when he saw us play, so that was cool. 

We existed on and off from 1987 to 1991. We would try to book weekend shows and the shows would get canceled. So we’d end up driving to Illinois for one show — the kind of stupid shit you do when you’re young. We played maybe seven or eight shows out of our area.

Was Moss Icon receiving any correspondence around the time?
There were people writing and asking us to play here or there, but it was such a dysfunctional band that it never happened. I wasn’t any less dysfunctional than anyone else in the band, but I was also the one who wanted us to be prolific.

How did the split LP with Silver Bearing come about? Was that through correspondence?
That was a guy named Corey who lived somewhere out of San Francisco who found out about us and became my pen pal. I had put out a Moss Icon seven-inch EP and we had songs left over from the session. Now, honestly, I didn’t want to put out records. We did those seven-inch EPs in the hopes of a bigger label wanting to release a full-length LP. I couldn’t find anyone else to release our stuff and we had enough material to fill up half of a record. Since he (Corey) had this other project, he offered to put it out as a split release. I didn’t try hard to find someone to release that stuff, to be honest. The band was as dysfunctional as you could get without there being drug addicts or criminals in the band. 

So was the dysfunction the reason behind the break-up of Moss Icon?
I don’t think we ever thought we were going to be a full-time, professional band. Jon quit the band and we reformed Moss Icon five or six times in the course of four or five years. One time he was an exchange student in Australia for a semester. Sometimes, he’d just get sick of doing it and we’d stop, and then start up again a few months later. Once there was an issue of Jon being sick of the songs, so we just made new songs. There were times when we played kinda improvisational. Jon was the hub that everything ran around because of his lyrics and his whole trip was just so heavy. So if the hub of the wheel is gone, the wheel’s not gonna go anywhere, you know? I don’t think there was ever a time when Jon thought he’d be the frontman of a rock band. It was a unique energy to pick up and focus on and there was probably no way we could have stayed together.

I think the set you did at ABC No Rio in 1991 was an improvisation. After owning your seven-inch EPs and seeing that set, my takeaway was that you must have been legitimate weirdos. 
I remember that being kind of a shitty show. It wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t one of the better ones. But that’s cool! One of my main goals was to be weird and unique. I wanted to fuck with people, but not in a way where you’re being offensive or shitty to people. I didn’t want to just entertain people. 

Listening to Moss Icon now, I hear more Flipper or No Trend in the way you would repeat a guitar line over and over and then crush it like a cigarette and move on to the next one. 
In the wider spectrum of underground rock, those bands were avant-garde and experimental so that’s cool you hear that. At the time, I was just working with the limited skills and abilities that I had to make us a little different. At least we succeeded at that!

PRE-ORDER THE VINYL REISSUE OF MOSS ICON LYBURNUM WITS END LIBERATION HERE

Flyers courtesy of hardcoreshowflyers.net