Danko Jones

DANKO JONES IS THE KIND OF ROCK STAR EVERY CITY NEEDS. Danko has led his eponymous power trio for nearly thirty years now, and is heading out on another European tour this week, through the summer festival circuit where he represents Toronto and Canada to metal and hard rock fans all over the continent.

I was lucky to get a bit of Danko’s time just over a month ago, in between tours, when an improvised studio space in my own home suddenly became available in the middle of our kitchen renovations. It was an appointment I’d been trying to keep since I suggested a portrait sitting to Danko two or three years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, when he was DJing at an old school heavy metal fan event at a local craft brewery owned by an old punk rock buddy.

The Violent Brothers, Toronto, 1996

My history with Danko goes back to before the band that bears his name. Back in 1996 while shooting for our local alternative weekly I was assigned to photograph the Violent Brothers – a band Danko had started with his high school friend Paul Ziraldo. I showed up at a house in the Annex to find that they’d already set up for the shoot in an uncluttered gable room where the light was good; I was frankly impressed with how much thought they’d put into presentation and aesthetics, and kept an eye on Danko over subsequent years.

When Danko Jones came together not long after I took my photos, Toronto’s rock scene was probably as healthy as it had ever been. Influenced by bands like Rocket From the Crypt, Jesus Lizard, the New Bomb Turks and (especially) the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, they all mixed garage, blues and noise rock in varying proportions. Danko Jones’ predecessors and peers were groups like Phleg Camp, the Leather Uppers and the Sadies and they played the usual circuit of clubs, opening for every remotely sympathetic U.S. band on tour through the city.

What held Danko Jones apart, though, was a kind of purity of vision. Their early recordings (released ten years ago as Garage Rock! – A Collection of Lost Songs 1996-1998) showcase all the influences from that time, but what distinguishes it all is what everyone could see was an abundance – perhaps even an excess – of swagger. That swagger never went away, and helped transform them into a group who sounded more right-sized for an arena than a basement club by the time they put out Born A Lion in 2002.

Danko Jones the front man was a persona that emerged as the band came together – a walking party who dared the audience to rise to his level of enthusiasm. I knew I had to try to capture as much of that 24/7 showman persona with my shoot, knowing that the actual person who created that character had three decades of experience projecting his assumed identity onstage.

Because the man who showed up at my door was as soft-spoken and impeccably polite as the one who I photographed in that upstairs room in 1996 – famously so in everything you read about the band. I tried to set the mood by putting on a record just before he arrived, and Danko spotted that immediately when, sitting on the stool in my compact little studio, he asked “Is the Thin Lizzy for me?” (It was, and I apologize for picking something as obvious as Jailbreak, but it’s still my favorite record by the band. So sue me.)

Behind the scenes, Danko Jones sitting

By the time Danko agreed to sit for this series of portraits of local musicians I admire I’d had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to capture in my photos, so I sent him a scan of the notebook where I’d created a collage of ideas for the shoot. I like my sitters to have the same visual cues in the front of their mind that I do; some of them were obvious enough – Yul Brynner and Jack Nicholson – but then there was an image that has stuck with me since I saw it for the first time as a boy: the cover of Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, which is always present whenever I photograph someone with a clean skull.

As a portrait photographer it’s always fun to deal with a sitter who arrives with a persona. It’s also a challenge to try to play with that persona and even find a way to turn it sideways enough to catch the idea or person behind it all. Sometimes you ask for permission, sometimes you don’t, but every portrait sitting (I always tell myself) is a collaboration – especially when the subject has some celebrity that tips the balance of the scales in their favour.

I ended the session – as I do with nearly every one I do these days – by suggesting we try something with my pinhole optic on the camera. Everybody’s been game for trying to sit or stand perfectly still for anywhere from six to twenty seconds, and I’m pretty happy with my pinhole portrait of Danko Jones, which is as good as anything I’ve done so far. And I’m grateful that Danko was able to make time for this sitting, a re-match of sorts after that first shoot in that upstairs room.