Jody Fontaine, one-half of AG Club, sat down with Medicine Box for an interview at Medium Sized Backyard that felt less like press and more like a confession - the good kind. Running on coffee and cigarettes and visibly jittery before his set, Jody opened up about the solo EP that broke him down, the month of August that rebuilt him, and the Philip Seymour Hoffman song nobody saw coming.
On the Performance and the New Songs
Medicine Box: Let's talk about the performance today. You're going to do a few songs for us - do you want to talk them through?
Jody Fontaine: So I didn't really know what the vibe was, and I brought my friend Jasper with me - he's from a group called Peach Tree Rascals. He came to play some acoustic guitar. I think I'm going to start with more of like a jammy thing and then I'll do my song Precious and my song Roaches from the new project. People were asking me if I was going to do old songs - I didn't know that was an option, so no.
Medicine Box: Can you talk through the two new songs?
Jody Fontaine: Actually, all of it - even the jammy stuff - is going to be on the new project. I'm starting with this song I wrote called Toy, and then this other song PSH that I wrote about Philip Seymour Hoffman. Just because I really love him and all of his movies. And then I'll be finishing with Precious, which is the single, and Roaches. It's all new stuff. I worked on this project for two years, but everything I'm doing today I made in the month of August last year.
On the August Sessions and Making "Precious"
Medicine Box: What happened in August?
Jody Fontaine: I worked on this project with these guys Ryan and Nick - they have this group project called Boy Life. I met Ryan two years ago and we were doing one-off sessions, just bouncing around, throwing stuff at the wall. Then mid last year Ryan hit me like, "Yo, I really care about what we're doing and I want to be able to give it time. I'd love to EP your project." And I was like, "Oh yeah, for sure" - it was something I wanted him to do but didn't know how to ask.
Jody Fontaine: Their process was something I'd never experienced. It was scary - really scary. It played with my confidence a lot. I kind of had to relearn how to make music, had to strip myself and be really vulnerable with my process. And with Ryan that was doubled, because he basically forced me to go to his house every single day in August and make like three songs a day, and he wouldn't bounce them out so I couldn't listen to them. I have a habit of over-strategizing. I'll make a song and immediately be like, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do with this." He taught me detachment in a way I'd never experienced before.
Medicine Box: And that's where Precious came from?
Jody Fontaine: Yeah. When you do a process like that, the first week you come in thinking you know exactly what song you're going to make. By the middle of week two, because you can't listen to anything and you don't know what you've done, you get looser with it, less rigid. So for Precious - it was maybe the end of week two, second song we were working on. I had written something to an original beat and I hated it. I was like, "This is so bad." He was like, "Just record it, stop thinking about it." So I recorded it. And then he did the little tappy tappy, and like 15 minutes later he played something back that was unlike anything - it was unreal. Something I never imagined that idea could become. And I got really excited and wrote the second verse, and it became one of my favorite songs I've ever made. This whole process has been really hard - trying to have confidence in myself, believe in myself, have that level of self-importance that's necessary to do this alone. And he took such a chance on me, was really stern but always reminded me how much he believed in what I was doing. Precious feels like the snapshot of the whole process.
On Going Solo After AG Club
Medicine Box: What does this world look like to you stepping into it with this EP? You've been in music for a long time, and now you're pivoting and trying something new - what excites you, and what scares you?
Jody Fontaine: It's like the most terrifying thing in the world. There have been so many tears - smiles and belly laughs too, but so many tears. I've never done a project by myself so I didn't really know how to do it, and I over-strategized to my own detriment. I had this whole concept mapped out, all the references, a strict program. But working with Ryan and Nick, I learned that ultimately the music is the most important thing and the music will inform the concept and the world. And what I realized I actually wanted out of all of this was a certain tenderness.
Jody Fontaine: When you work in a group, no matter how the dynamic is, you always have the reassurance of things falling on someone else's shoulders too. What I learned very quickly here is that I'm the person who's going to care the most about this. Every day I have to wake up and care about it the same amount. And some days it was hard to be like, "No, you still like this, this is still what you want to do." One of the biggest things was not hiding the fear in what I was doing. When I was in the group it was all bravado and rowdiness - "We don't care." But then it was like, no, I really do.
Medicine Box: Your core AG Club audience is going to be so excited. Is there a part of you thinking, "They're really going to see this other side of me"?
Jody Fontaine: For sure. Our last project together was Brody World, and for me that felt interesting because of where I was at in my life when we made it - I had so much to say and I feel like I didn't say it on there. So it was a bit difficult to maneuver because I didn't get the catharsis I needed. With this project I'm just really excited for people to hear my voice, you know? The opportunity to present myself in a way that feels authentic. I feel like we say authentic a lot, but that's the goal - to present my voice as is. I'll be happy regardless if I'm able to just do that.
On What He's Been Listening To
Medicine Box: In the process of creating the EP, what artists have been exciting you or inspiring you?
Jody Fontaine: Boy Life - maybe too much so. I just love their music. Loukeman - I think that's how you say it, L-O-U-K-E-M-A-N. I don't want to butcher that. And a lot of singer-songwriter music. Adrien Linker - I hope I'm not butchering that either - she has this song Karina and that's my joint. I was really attracted to singer-songwriter music while making this because there's a rawness and a stripped quality to it where the words cut through a lot more. I was trying to figure out how I could do that while still maintaining a lot of the harder hip-hop beats, because that's still a part of me - I'm still very much Memphis at heart. And then just friends I love: Casper Sage, Brandon, and Laundry Day. I love Laundry Day so much. Like, I do know them, they're the homies, but even if I didn't, I'd be their number one fan at the concert with Laundry Day painted on my chest. They get that there's a level of vulnerability in their songs, they make it listenable while still hitting all those emotional beats. They can write a damn song.
