Backround infoOrigin: Chicago, Illinois
Genre(s): Pop-punk, metalcore, post-hardcore
Years active: 2006 - present
Labels: Thortful Records, Magic Mush Music, A Time to Die Records, From the Depths
Website: Juneau.orgMembersDallas Conners - Vocals
Kellin Falconer - Guitars/vocals
Josh Isaakson - Guitars
Ryan Oberst - Bass
Jordan Peters - DrumsPast membersAaron Duffy
Paul Sklaff
Joe Arnold
BiographyJuneau (pronounced Zhoo-no) is a five-piece American rock band from Chicago, Illinois founded in April 2006 by lead singer Dallas Conners and guitarist Kellin Falconer. They are known for the way they bring a strange amalgamation of their favourite musical stylings, giving them a rather unique and sometimes obscure sound. The band mixes clean vocals and the upbeat nature associated with pop-punk with the somewhat chunky riffs and screamed vocals that have become synonymous with metalcore. Dallas Conners has previously described their sound as "a product of our times", referencing the scenes that gave birth to the band itself. The unusual combination has earned them something of a dedicated fanbase in their native Illinois, and the band has released 4 EPs throughout their career. The current lineup consists of Dallas Conners on lead vocals, Kellin Falconer on guitars and backing vocals, Josh Isaakson on guitars, Ryan Oberst on bass guitars and Jordan Peters on drums.
Throughout the timeline of their career, Juneau has been signed to a number of different local labels, releasing and not releasing material at certain times through the likes of Thortful Records (2007), Magic Mush Music (2008-2009), A Time to Die Records (2010 and 2013) and From the Depths (2011). Their four EPs - Downfall (2007), Escape the Escape (2009), The Last of the Remembered (2010) and In The Eyes of the Beholder (2012) have all been well received in the Illinois music scene, and have also seen the band gain an international fan base, despite their never having played outside their home state. The releases of The Last of the Remembered and In The Eyes of the Beholder have both seen the band undertake small local tours, during which they have often sold out the modest venues they performed in, particularly in Chicago, where the majority of their fan base is situated. In 2012, the band also launched the first Disrespect Your Surroundings Festival in Chicago. The event, which had two stages and featured a number of local and national bands playing pop-punk, punk, hardcore, metal and post-hardcore was a surprising commercial success, and ranked in the top 10 of Punktastic's top 20 independent festivals of 2012. It is expected that it will return in 2014 after a year's absence in 2013.
HistoryEarly years and debut EP (2006 - 2007)After having played in a number of different alternative post-hardcore and metalcore bands in the Chicago music scene, 18 year olds Dallas Conners, Kellin Falconer, Aaron Duffy and Paul Sklaff would come together in early 2006 after having met each other at a local battle of the bands. Brought together by their love of pop-punk, a genre that none were playing in their own primary bands, the band would title themselves Selfish Machines in their early years, adding Joe Arnold to the lineup in spring of 2006. As primarily a side project, Selfish Machines would tour Illinois for a short period in summer of 2006 playing covers of songs by bands like New Found Glory and Blink 182, and garnering themselves quite a reputation for boisterous and entertaining live shows. At the end of the tour, the band would sign a short deal with Thortful Records, a local label that had been impressed by the reputation the band had drummed up on Myspace as a great live act. Dallas Conners later said: "A guy approached us after a show one night and thrust this piece of paper under my nose to sign. I saw stars, of course, as an 18 year old, and I just signed it. We basically made no money, even though the EP sold well." For the rest of the year, Selfish Machines worked on writing their debut EP, a pop-punk effort that was largely written by their new guitarist Josh Isaakson, who replaced original member Aaron Duffy shortly after the original tour. On January 9th 2007, Downfall was released as their debut EP. It spawned one local radio hit in the track "I'm Still That Guy," which gained a lot of airplay on Chicago stations. The EP would sell 8,000 copies, despite having little-to-no budget. However, disputes with the label over the minimal royalties led to both Sklaff an Arnold leaving the band.
Rebrand and Escape the Escape (2008 - 2009)Following the argument over royalties with Thortful Records, Selfish Machines replaced the departed Sklaff and Arnold with Ryan Oberst and Jordan Peters of Chicago hardcore punk band Neo-Nero on bass and drums respectively. The band would then enter a legal dispute that saw them out of action for the majority of 2008. Refusing to work with Thortful again, the band were refused the right to sign elsewhere by the label unless they released another two EPs, as they had been signed to do. As the dispute escalated later in 2008, the band sought legal advice, which led to Thortful stepping up its claim. The label claimed ownership of the trademark Selfish Machines and refused to let them play live shows under the name, thus strangling the band's only real revenue stream and holding them to ransom. "We were sat in a meeting, a bunch of 19 year olds opposite this fat fuck of a capitalist who was telling us we couldn't use our own band name any more. I've never been violent, but I could have punched that guy that day," Conners would later say. In January 2009, however, the band would deliver a killer blow in the dispute, when they merely stepped through a large loophole. Renaming themselves Juneau - a name taken from a song by Conners favourite band Funeral for a Friend - they negated their contract and were free to move on. In celebration, the band played a show in Chicago's Ice and Sleazy along with Days Alone and From the Pit. They titled the show Disrespect Your Surroundings, and released it later on DVD and digital download for free. "It was the final fuck you to Thortful," Kellin Falconer claims. "It was the most punk thing we've ever done, and I've never been more proud of us. That show had so much damn energy. I think that was where we got more violent musically."
It would be March 2009 when the new lineup with the new name would go back into their practice space at their old high school to write new material. With three new members, and a much more metal background than they had had at the time of writing their first EP, the resultant sound was very different. Various members of the band have spoken of the disputes that took place in the early days of recording, with a near 50-50 split in pop punk and metalcore songs. The idea of a split EP was floated, before they later decided to make something that became defining for what they were doing as a band. The amalgamated sound of pop-punk and metalcore was born, and the second EP, Escape the Escape, a much more mature, unique record with more political and social commentary was completed in May of that year. The original intention was for Juneau to release the record themselves, but when requisite funding proved hard to come by, they would enter their second record deal in as many EPs. Magic Mush Music was a smaller label than their previous one, and they would retain much more control and get more royalties than in the past. The controversy surrounding their release from Thortful had drummed up quite an interest in the band, and the EP was critically acclaimed for its unique yet unusual sound. It would go on to sell 14,600 copies. this allowed Escape the Escape to become the defining moment in the career of Juneau to date, giving the band the platform from which to launch themselves.
Touring and Hiatus (2010 - 2012)After the release of their second EP, Juneau would embark on a tour that would be described as "a make or break moment" for them by Josh Isaakson. The band had received sufficient royalties from the sales of Escape the Escape to suggest the potential was there to professionally pursue a career in music - until this stage all of the band except Dallas Conners had been holding down full-time jobs. For the majority of the rest of 2009, however, very little would actually happen as Oberst and Peters in particular debated the pros and cons of potentially quitting their full-time "stable" jobs to chase the dream. It would be June 2010, a full year after the release of their EP, that Juneau would finally hit the road. This much larger Illinois tour took in 8 cities and over 50 venues for approximately 90 shows as the band looked to make a name for themselves outside Chicago, where they were already largely quite popular. After 8 months on tour, they finally returned home for a triumphant two-night stint at the House of Cards in Chicago, where the band surprisingly played two nights to a sell-out crowd of over 500 at the popular venue. It was the start of something big for Juneau, or so it was believed at the time. As with anything in the band, though, there would be yet another spanner thrown into the works. In March 2011, after having spent months on tour, Ryan Oberst was worried about his finances. Touring had left him with enough to pay the bills and survive, but it was far less than he was used to earning in his day job, and he opted to quit the band later that month. They searched fruitlessly for a replacement bassist, at one point even auditioning Matt Johnson, who would later go on to join Kai Rollins' band. Following 2 months of deliberation, the band decided not to continue without Oberst, who had been an integral part of the songwriting process since joining the band in 2008.
They announced the indefinite hiatus through the band's Facebook page on April 8th 2011. The statement read: "It is with a heavy heart that we have to announce that as of the present, Juneau is on indefinite hiatus. We appreciate all of the love and support you guys gave us on the Illinois tour in 2010 and early 2011, we had the best time and got to do something only dreams are made of. However, when we returned, we learned that Ryan was feeling uneasy with regards his earnings in the band. It's not all glitz and glamour, and he was earning more in his full-time job, which he has now returned to. We thought about the future for a long time after this, especially because we didn't want to let anyone down, but we decided it wouldn't be right to continue without a guy who put his all into this. Maybe we'll see you again some day. For now, eternal thank you. Dallas, Kellin, Josh, Daryn."
Return and In the Eyes of the Beholder (2012 - 2013)On May 7th 2012, social media was abuzz among fans of Juneau, after a message was posted on their official Facebook page, which had remained silent since the hiatus message more than a year earlier. The message, which simply read. "So......ummm...hi," was liked more than 1,000 times in the first hour. However, despite the slew of comments it received, the band remained silent for another month. On June 7th of the same year, they would post another message that simply read "#Awkward." The next day, a poster was found on the band's official Twitter page, which gave a time and a date (06/14/12 :: 19:00:00) against a black background. They would then go silent once more, infuriating fans and leading to a lot of speculation. On the specified date (June 14th) at 4PM, the band took to Facebook one more time. On this occasion, they gave the name of Ice and Sleazy in Chicago. Fans descended on the venue, and at 7PM, Juneau walked onto the stage in the small hall, treated to something of a heroes welcome. Dallas Conners would address the crowd with a laugh: "So....umm Ryan quit his damn day job...this is called Turned Out Sunny...I wanna see you move." Juneau then played their new EP (In the Eyes of the Beholder) in its entirety before treating fans to a flurry of songs from their previous releases. The concert was hailed as a success, and the release of the EP with no buzz, no previous indication, and without anyone knowing that they had been working together, was greeted with widespread joy. The record would go on to sell more than 40,000 copies, almost doubling the number of sales of their previous release.
It would later emerge that Juneau had been working together on and off since the start of the year. Ryan Oberst had grown tired of the 9-to-5, and had contacted the band on the premise of reforming. They had been working in secret in the basement of Dallas' home in Chicago, writing riffs and lyrics that they later described as "our freshest shit yet, easily." In early May, the band signed a deal with pop-punk label From the Depths, who released the EP. It was also the first time they would release digital copies of their work, allowing for people outside Illinois and the USA to get their hands on a copy for the first time. Following the comeback show and the release of the EP, Juneau announced that they were taking a short break to enjoy the summer. Following this, they announced the Disrespect Your Surroundings festival - a day long event that saw 12 bands from Chicago across two stages in the parking lot of a local supermarket. The festival was something of a success, and Juneau headlined to a rapturous reception from their hometown crowd. After another break in late 2012, the band then went on to tour Illinois, strangely playing every venue they did last time out, once more, spending the period between January and September on the road again. It was during this time that they were also becoming more popular overseas with underground fans, and those supporters would frequently lay siege to the band's Facebook and Twitter profiles, almost demanding that they break free from the shackles of a lifetime and play across the USA and overseas. However, they remained tight-lipped throughout this period on whether they could commit to a full-time career away from home, especially with three members of the band supplementing their earnings with part-time flexible work.
Branching out (2014 -)In January 2014, after announcing that they were going to enjoy Christmas with loved ones, Dallas Conners took to the band's Facebook page to address fans. His statement read: "Alright...alright, it's time we talk about this. For months and months we have been getting requests to head overseas to play concerts to our fans that are farther from home than we ever could have imagined, and we didn't want to say anything, because it would mean disappointing a lot of people. HOWEVER, we have deliberated and deliberated over this issue, and we decided that we've played it safe for too long. It's time to give this a go. #AllOrNothing. In 2014, we will have a new EP out, and we are going to do a proper release across Europe and other areas of the world as well as at home. We also want to play some tours overseas later in the year. That's right - Juneau is no longer just the pride of Illinois. Look out world - we're comin' for ya."
Musical styleJuneau's musical style has been described by a number of different media outlets in their home state in a variety of different ways. It has been described at various times as metalcore, punkcore, popcore, pop-punk and post-hardcore. However, the band prefers the term fusion, referring to themselves as a mix of emo angst with metal and pop-punk influences. The verses and breakdowns of Juneau are primarily made up of metalcore styles, which blend into more upbeat pop-punk choruses. The growing popularity of the sound, as well as their wider acceptance in the rock community has led to a number of different terms being penned for what the band does. "Pop mosh", "pop core" and "easy core" have all been used, with fans favouring either of the first two descriptions. The band itself has even had trouble at times pinning down a style and name. When asked how he would label what they do, lead singer Dallas Conners told Revolve Magazine: "It's weird. In some ways we transcend genre categories. We've been playing this sort of thing for so long now that this is just sorta what we do, without thinking. When we started this, it was not cool to do what we do and a lot of people told us it would never work. I'm betting a lot of them still feel like that. But we've never been about more than just doing what we want to do. We love pop-punk and metalcore, so we play both. It's probably a result of indecision. What should we do? And no one had the answer so we said 'fuck it, let's do both'.".
DiscographyStudio albumsTBC (2014)
Extended playsTBC (2014)
In The Eyes of The Beholder (2012)
Escape the Escape (2009)
Downfall (2007)
SinglesYour Last Memory (2011) - DNC
I'm Inside (2009) - DNC
I'm Still That Guy (2007) - DNC
