Drummer Patrick Muzingo thinks back to how Junkyard lost record label deal and disbanded

Drummer Patrick Muzingo thinks back to how Junkyard lost record label deal and disbanded

Junkyard drummer Patrick Muzingo and guitarist Tim Mother were recently interviewed by the UK’s Rock Today in advance of the band’s upcoming shows in the UK starting tomorrow at the O2 Academy in Newcastle, England in support of their new album High Water.

With respect to some of the band’s history, Muzingo advised (with slight edit): “It was a very very strange time. After we came back from the UK (1991) we immediately jumped on the road with Skynyrd. At the end of that tour our management gave us a lot of reasons why we need to go right back into the studio and start on the follow up to “Sixes, Sevens and Nines.” which was totally confusing to the 5 of us! The label had this grand scheme of us being out on the road for at least 18 months using this release and we had only done maybe 6 months all in.

We followed what management said (since we thought they were on our side) and started writing, and writing and writing… probably too much writing! (Laughs). For all of 1992 and into 1993 we recorded tons of demos (which was later released as “XXX” & “Joker“) and our A&R guy finally felt comfortable to throw around 10 songs to the rest of the staff at Geffen. A few days later we got a call from our lawyer that the label (not really the whole label, just John Kalodner) didn’t hear “a hit” and that they had sent a one paragraph document out in the mail explaining that we had been released from our contract (dropped like a hot potato) and are welcome to shop to other labels with these demos.

So we did a few more local shows to try and grab some extra money and had some interest from a few major labels but they eventually used the same excuse that all the other labels did: “If this was 6 months earlier we would have signed ya, but this Nirvana thing is blowing up” which we were totally happy about since all the “grunge” bands were all old friends of ours. So we packed up our stuff at our rehearsal space and went our separate ways. It wasn’t a huge drama type of situation – it was a life situation. What the hell were we gonna do now?

We continued to keep playing in bands (Brian and Todd in “Careless” and then eventually Brian with Bad Religion, David in “Borracho” with Jo from Dogs D’Amour, Chris had a few bands and went back to Texas and I went on to play with “Suckerpunch” with Tim Mosher and in “Speedbuggy” (with Timbo from “Sugartooth“) and eventually got jobs, that became careers for a few of us. I’ll tell ya, it was reality slapping us in the face more than us feeling like a bunch of “poncey rockstars” when we disbanded (note that I didn’t say that we broke up). Looking back it was the best thing that happened to us.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Muzingo and Mosher at Rock Today.