Unraveling the Deep Essence of Tonie Joy

An interview with the pioneering guitarist

Guitarist Tonie Joy is an icon of psychedelic rock by way of outer limits hardcore. That’s all I’m going to say on that matter. I had the urge to write a long intro that was possibly going to include a track-by-track breakdown of Moss Icon’s Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly (easily one of my most-listened-to albums of all time), but then realized that was unnecessarily punishing and the interview is long enough.

(but I should do a separate post like that and you should hold me to it)

That being said, there will be a 33 ⅓ book coming out on the album next year (it’s mentioned below). I did see Moss Icon when they reformed in 2001 to play More Than Music Fest in Columbus, OH at Alrosa Villa (the place that Dimebag Darrell would be shot to death on stage in 2004). That was a great weekend of music, killer bands of all sorts (capped off by a Suicide set Sunday night). High On Fire were still pretty new and ripped it and asked if anyone had weed from the stage, so I went around back and smoked grass and hash with them and kicked it. Bride of NoNo! Man, people forget how good they were. The Rapture at their best, right before they blew up. Six Finger Satellite, Alec Empire, I Am Spoonbender, The Need, The Locust, Thrones, Tonie’s contemporary band Convocation Of etc.

Moss Icon headlined the first night and it was fucking glorious. I was real into it. Then, later that night there was a house party somewhere off Indianola, not far from the Legion of Doom. And Tonie Joy was DJing* with a couple of hastily set-up turntables and I remember he dropped the Contortions’ “Dish It Out” and I went fuckin bananas. Danced like a total asshole, geeked the fuck out. And then the cops came. So, yeah, some Columbus shit.

*getting word from Tonie that this was actually Chris Coady spinning. in my defense I remember Joy standing behind the turntables!

Here’s where I’ll link to the piece I wrote last year for Bandcamp Daily about the Universal Order of Armageddon set on Numero Group. I talked with Joy and singer Colin Seven via email for THIS RIGHT HERE.

I saw Moss Icon again at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC some years back and those songs retain their eccentric and esoteric power. In the below interview we don’t focus on Moss Icon as much as other projects he’s been a part of, including new band Deep Essence. Thanks to Tonie for spending the time to jaw about some of these matters.

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Tell me about your father, who was a musician himself.

My father primarily sang and wrote songs. He would play piano to write, but he was a singer. He started straight out of high school in the early to mid-’60s. He was in a band that was sort of like blue-eyed soul.

It was white kind of rural redneck-y dudes who got into playing that kind of thing. They would play at clubs or dances. They would learn Beatles songs and songs that were popular, but they also did original stuff. There's two 7”s that his first band released and the funny thing is I just got one of them off of Discogs because I lost it years ago. It was like $25. That band was called The Verdicts and sometimes they were called Bill Joy and The Verdicts. As it got into the late ‘60s, everyone grew their hair out—they smoked weed, they were doing acid. My father really liked drugs.

This is really funny because I just realized that X/Twitter, whatever that bullshit, that asshole…..their AI thing is called Grok. Well, my father's fucking late ‘60s/early ‘70s psych-slash-soul rock band was called Grok. I think the word “grok” comes from the sci-fi writer Richard Heinlen, who wrote Stranger In A Strange Land. I think the term ‘grok’ came from that

book [it did—knowledgeable ed.]. That band was interesting because they had two singers, and the other singer was a woman named Colette, an African-American woman. So it really did have this good vocal and soul element to it, but the music was pretty typical for the era, kind of heavy psych rock, but not too heavy. They only ever recorded demos. My father left maybe six months or a year before the band ended. The guy who took over singing when my father quit is actually the only guy to have the tapes and have the money. He released this small edition of CDs 10-12 years ago.

For years and years, I didn't actually talk to my father much, from like the age of 5 to like the age of like 40. I didn't live with him from the age of 5, through my childhood and adolescence. I would maybe see them once or twice a year. But when I got older and I would talk to him, I'd always bug him—Where are those demos? I wanna hear that shit.

What did your dad think about your music?

He was interested. He went to see Moss Icon once in DC. It was at the Wilson Center. We opened for Scream and Fire Party. Years later, he watched this Dave Grohl show on cable or HBO or some shit [Sonic Highways on Apple TV], where he'd go to different cities [and spotlight regional music—couch pot. ed].

My father watched the DC one, about go-go and the hardcore scene, and he was like—You were in the outer periphery of that shit, and I was like—Yeah, and then I was like—You remember when you went to see us? Well, Dave Grohl was the drummer of the band that played after us. My father probably left, so he didn't see Scream. But I was like—Dave Grohl was the drummer of Scream and he was like—Whoa.

How did Breathing Walker come about?

That band happened because over the course of 1987 to 1991—which is basically the time that Moss Icon existed—we stopped and started playing like—I don't really remember exactly—4 or 5 or 6 times. There were periods where Jon (Vance) just didn't want to do it. Then there was a period of time where he spent a semester of school in Australia. One of the times where the band had sort of fallen apart because of him just kind of being sick of it, or apathy, or just like fuck this, so we stopped playing. But within a few months, Jon and Alex (Badertscher), who ended up being the 2nd guitarist in Moss Icon once we reformed, started jamming with some other people, doing even weirder music than what Moss Icon was doing up to that point. One of the first people who got involved was Mark (Laurence), the drummer of Moss Icon, then Monica (Digialleonardo). I caught wind of that and I started playing with them. So basically everyone who was in Moss Icon started playing with these three other people and that became Breathing Walker.

Breathing Walker included Zach (Fusciello), who was playing percussion and who's going to be writing that book [a 33 ⅓ edition on Lyburnum due in 2026—librarian ed]. Tim (Horner) was a violin player. Years later he moved to Portland and ended up being in the first incarnation of Grails.

Alex was playing bass, and then Monica started playing bass, and so there were two bassists. Alex didn't start playing guitar until he joined Moss Icon as second guitarist. We started to form songs. The way I was back then when I was young is I would always kind of push things. I was like—This is a new band and we should play shows and we should record and not everyone was always into that. I was always cracking the whip cause I had this vision. We did record one time. Breathing Walker only played like 4 or 5 shows, something like that.It definitely was less than a year, maybe nine or ten months, then it just stopped. And then almost immediately we started doing Moss Icon again, but as a five piece. After Breathing Walker, we did the Memorial recording session. “Guatemala” was a Breathing Walker song that I presented and wrote most of. When we started doing Moss Icon, we kept doing that song.

[Here’s where I tell Tonie parts of the Breathing Walker album remind me of Amon Düül]

We were open to the randomness of just the weirdest music coming out of us. There was definitely never any dislike for something that might be considered hippie music. Jon and I were into the Grateful Dead as much as we were into early Bad Brains or Crass. We were into all kinds of fucking music. Jon had older siblings who were smoking weed and dropping acid in the ‘70s. Mark was really into reggae.

Any thought of reissuing the Breathing Walker stuff?

When Numero came to me about doing the UOA stuff, they really wanted to put out every band I've ever done, except for Born Against. But Moss Icon was already taken by Temporary Residence. Numero has talked about doing the Breathing Walker stuff, but I just think it's not a priority. I said to them—You can put it out, but you're gonna have to get people to realize what this weird shit is, so that people actually want to listen to it. After UOA being reissued, it's just not important to me. But I would be happy if they did Breathing Walker. So if the world doesn't totally implode in the next couple of years, I think it could happen.

How did you end up joining Born Against?

I was into what Born Against and Citizens Arrest and Rorschach were doing and one of my favorite bands from that era was Nausea. I went to see Nausea and Born Against in Philadelphia and I think that's when I met them. Like, I was into Born Against, but to drag my ass up to Philly for a show was because of Nausea. It had been a year or so since Moss Icon ended and I was just kind of looking for new people to play with. I met Brooks (Headley). I was living in Annapolis at the time, he lived in Baltimore, so it's like a half hour away from each other. I met him at a show, maybe an Econochrist show. We talked about doing something. For a little while we were just trying to find people and we jammed with a few people, actually one time we jammed with half of Hoover, Joe and Fred, which was kind of funny. I knew Colin (Seven) and then we figured out Colin would want to sing and his cousin Anthony Scott (Malat) would play bass. As UOA was coming together, Born Against asked Brooks about playing drums. I had already known Sam (McPheeters) and Adam (Nathanson) for a couple years. They asked Moss Icon to play with Born Against at ABC No Rio, that was like 1990, maybe '91 [Dec. 1990, see below—calendar ed.]. They asked Brooks to play drums and then I think it dawned on them they could ask me to play bass. We were in our early 20s, so we lived cheap and crazy. You don't even want to hear how cheap my rent was back then, it was like $100 a month. Somehow Brooks and I were able to pull it off. Brooks had the more reliable car, so we'd be driving up to northern New Jersey to rehearse. We were fucking young and we're just like fuck it, we can do two bands. If we're gonna do one, why not do two.

How much practicing were you guys doing?

I think we would do one really long rehearsal, like on a Saturday or Sunday. It was only a matter of months before we learned what the songs were that they wanted to be playing live and once we started playing shows and touring, it came more naturally. Brooks and I only did one full US tour, but we did a lot of East Coast regional things, and sporadic weekends. It's really kind of a blur to me. Brooks and I were in the band a year and a half before it broke up. Pretty soon after that, Sam and Adam moved to Richmond, Virginia. And then at some point, Brooks moved down there. [and I did too—teenage punk loser ed.]

I first heard you guys on the Rock Stars Kill comp. The Born Against/UOA split 7” was a big one for me and helped launch an obsession with the Gravity catalog.

I think the idea was instigated by Sam and Matt at Gravity. Sam was like—Why don't we just do a split record with you all since you're in both bands anyway. And we were like—Yeah, that's a cool idea. It's funny because one or two people in UOA hated the record cover. I didn't really care either way, but I think a couple were like—Man, that's stupid. It was literally from those bags of popcorn you can get, with the clown on it, I think that's what he used.

Any regrets from the UOA days?

I never felt like the best place for us was playing most of the DIY type shows we played. I feel like we would have been better off playing more with Touch and Go bands at clubs. That's what we really wanted to do. But we never really figured out how to get there from where we originally started before we broke up. It was kind of all about to happen when we broke up because we had started doing stuff with Kill Rock Stars. There was this door that was about to open, where we could do more stuff like that and that's what I really wanted to do. Honestly playing in some fucking kid's basement and he pays us in cigarette butts, like that's cool when it's ethical and all, but if you do that a dozen times, it's kind of like—Alright, I'd like to go beyond this, but it just never happened.

Tell me about how you came to be on the classic 1994 Men’s Recovery Project Make A Baby 7” EP.

Sam and Neil had started doing Men's Recovery Project shit right before Born Against broke up. They were recording at a studio north of Richmond, a little closer to Maryland [Neptune Studios in Occoquan, VA—geolocater ed.] For that 7”, it was never like—Will you join the band. It was more just like—We're doing this recording, do you wanna come and fuck around?

I remember it was like they had a very clear vision and they were controlling the whole ship and it's almost like I was just a stowaway. It was very much like this loose, collaborative thing, which I think is almost more what I imagine musicians did in the ‘60s or ‘70s. Years later, I did play a few shows with them.

Tell me about the Great Unraveling of the Universal Order of Armageddon, but in reverse.

Unexpectedly, Anthony was like—Why don't we do something together, and he knew Randy (Davis), the drummer. So we started playing and we couldn't think of anyone around Baltimore to get to sing. And then I was like—Well fuck it, I'll just do it, cause I kind of always been curious about doing that. But my big regret is that I did not learn to sing and play guitar better before we started doing it. And part of that is, honestly, a lack of discipline and laziness. The thing about that band was, even in UOA, Anthony was already doing crazy, really awesome shit playing bass. But he didn't have good equipment, so you didn't really hear it, and UOA was also just louder and crazier. I look at Great Unraveling as Anthony's bass playing showcase and what he and Randy came up with together. I always felt like my contribution was really lackluster compared to theirs, especially Anthony.

What’s the status of a possible reissue?

The thing about reissuing that album is I would like it if it could be remixed. Specifically by my friend Chris Coady [who did UOA—mixmaster ed.] and he's always wanted to do that. But that’s not really cost effective. So it's kind of like if someone doesn't have the money just lying around to throw at it to remix it. Like Numero isn't gonna pay what Chris would need to remix it, which is fine, because it's not a band that's gonna sell a lot of records. I still think it's really cool, so it's not like I'm totally shitting on it. But in hindsight, I should have been disciplined and focused for like a year before we really started doing anything, really got better at what I was doing. But when you're younger, back then I looked at doing music as more of an urgent way to just express, to just spit it out. With all that said, there are like 4 or 5 Unraveling songs that I love. They would come up with these crazy parts and time signatures and I would just be like—What the fuck do I do on top of that? I could barely sing and play guitar at the same time. I'm trying to come up with guitar parts to complement it. It was a challenge.

So then The Convocation Of came together.

After the Great Unraveling ended, I met Guy (Blakeslee) and he was already playing with George (France), the drummer. I played with them and George was just an insanely good drummer. I've always been fortunate to play with good drummers, especially Brooks. But George is definitely, in a technical sense, the best drummer I've ever played with, he was just coming up with the most amazing shit.

Even before the Great Unraveling, after UOA, I had really wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something that had a female vocalist, that had keyboards, old analog keyboards like organ or Moog synthesizers. So after Great Unraveling, I went back to wishing I could find a female vocalist and a keyboard player. I couldn't find anyone. But I just kinda plopped into another amazing rhythm section. So at that point I was kind of like—Fuck it, I should just roll with it. But I do think between doing the Great Unraveling for a few years and then especially after doing the Convocation Of for like a year or two, I finally started to get better at playing guitar and singing. I think my best guitar playing ever was in the Convocation Of just because we played so much. We lived together for a while, in a warehouse. We could play at 4 in the morning, like we could play at any time. I was older and they were younger, so I think they were very much super enthusiastic to just go a million miles per hour forward. We were immediately playing shows and touring.

And now is the time of Deep Essence.

In 2022, I moved back to Baltimore and got an apartment. Randomly, Randy happened to live behind me. I can look out the back window of my apartment and see his house. I had been in touch with him 4 or 5 years prior. We would hang out and he hadn't been playing drums, and he was really wanting to get back into playing. For me, I had really stepped back and I hadn't really been doing much for years and honestly, before the pandemic started, like 2018-2019, I was kind of like—I am totally fine with taking a break and not fucking doing anything. And so that's what I did for a few years, but when he was like—Oh man, I really need to play drums. I was like—If you find a practice space, I'll jam with you so you aren't just playing by yourself. So we started doing that and then I had song ideas. So from there it just kind of snowballed. At first I was like—I don't want to play shows, I don't want to be in a real band, I'll just play with you so you can play drums. We were playing like a year before we even started recording, real laid back, no pressure, I'd come up with random ideas. We had been looking for a bass player and then we finally found Steve, who's sort of a veteran musician in Baltimore, he's been doing a lot of stuff for a while.

He teaches music and has played with people from Beach House. Once we found Steve, it was kind of like—I guess we should be a real band and play shows. It was interesting playing with Randy again after like 30 years. I feel like we immediately just had a musical language for lack of a better word. But also, I'm not trying to do what the Great Unraveling was doing. A lot of what the Great Unraveling was them writing songs and then me bringing parts to it. Deep Essence is almost a little more singer-songwriterly and then Randy always comes up with these really interesting drum beats.

We're not like full speed ahead or trying to do a crazy amount of shit. But if someone asks us to play a show, you know, we'll try to play a show. We played with Black Eyes in Philly. Steve has a really tough schedule, so that limits it a little, which is kind of fine with me.

Bonus Vermin Scum Section

Can you talk a little about Vermin Scum, and also Charm City Suicides.

They were a really interesting band. I didn't know them real well, but the bass player was Guy's cousin actually. I knew the singer Mike Apichella for a while just from being around Baltimore, and they wanted to put a record out. The thing I will say about a lot of the records that were on that label is that if the band liked Vermin Scum, I was like—You can just put the logo on your record. Most of the bands put the records out themselves, and then I just helped them the best I could to sell some of them. So it wasn't ever like a real business. I always looked at it as a community, collective-type thing.