David Jarnstrom (Rad Owl)
SPB: What was the inspiration in starting this band?
A midlife crisis?
Jarnstrom: In all seriousness, Rad Owl was a bit of a nostalgia trip at first. We were childhood friends who had grown up discovering metal and punk rock and hardcore together in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. We had learned how to play our instruments together, and how to write and record songs together, but we had drifted apart in our musical endeavors in our 30s and 40s as we tried our hand at other genres (indie rock, post-punk, britpop, shoegaze) with different musicians. We all missed hanging out and goofing off and making the kind of melodic, high-energy and emotionally charged music we loved when we were kids, so we started to meet and jam covers once a month. We were all yearning to play faster, more aggressive material than the bands we were in separately at the time -- this is when the first Trump administration had started so there was a lot of anger and frustration to express. Eventually original material started to happen and it snowballed quickly into a record and shows and us being a full-on band.
We found that our shared history made it super easy to write and arrange the tunes -- our musical vocabulary was so instinctual, we could just go. So it was never laborious, and it has continued to be a joyful and rewarding experience to play together. Plus we were, and continue to be, so inspired by our adolescent heroes like Descendents and Propagandhi, who somehow only seem to get better with age. We're still great friends and enjoy each others' company, which is the key to any long-term relationship. So hopefully we'll still be doing Rad Owl in our 50s and 60s!
