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| downtowncrowd.com
Don’t You Fake It: An Interview with Red Jumpsuit Apparatus by Nicole Willis
Ronnie Winter Gets Real About Music, Career and Addiction
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (RJSA) is a Floridaborn rock band that emerged onto the early 2000s emo scene. Rising to popularity alongside alternative greats like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, RJSA established their own identity as a band from that scene that has stood the test of time.
all those examples—because there are some towns where no band has ever come out of that region—we might not have even went for it. There’s definitely a rich history of rock in Florida and we try to just join up to that lineage.
DTC: While you’re not specifically a Christian band, you often incorporate spiritual themes in your music. How has your experience been with expressing your faith in a genre that typically doesn’t embrace religion such as emo or punk?
DTC: How did it feel to experience success relatively RW: It’s funny, because the people who don’t want early in your career with your first LP, Don’t You Fake to hear about it are the same people who preach The band saw success with their 2006 hit Face Down, It? acceptance of all types. So it’s like, they want off of their first LP, Don’t You Fake It. For nearly two acceptance for how they live, but they don’t want to decades, RJSA has toured extensively both in festival RW: It didn’t feel early to us, but commercially, what a lot settings and headlining tours around the world. Today, of people forget about with almost any band is there’s a lot RJSA continues to entertain audiences across the that went on leading up to our first album. We had done a globe, and later this month, the band will perform lot of shows in Pensacola, Tallahassee, Ocala, Gainesville, live at Vinyl Music Hall in downtown Pensacola. DTC Orlando, Fort Myers, Tampa and Atlanta, for two years had the opportunity to chat with RJSA lead singer before we even signed a record deal. We all still had jobs; Ronnie Winter ahead of the group’s upcoming show we were also working nine to fives, so we would do what we call ‘weekend warrior runs.’ That’s how we got a record in Pensacola. deal, because we had demos before the album. A lot of RJSA will perform at Vinyl Music Hall on February 23. those [demo] songs made it onto that first record, but Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased online at when it comes to commercial success as far as being in vinylmusichall.com. To keep up with the band and their latest the public eye, the album did do really well quickly after projects, follow @redjumpsuitapparatus on Facebook or release date. So by that term, I would say, it felt good! @redjumpsuit on Instagram. [Prior to the album release,] the only people who really DTC: How did growing up in Florida influence knew about us were people in Northeast Florida. They your music? were even a little bit disappointed that so many of our existing songs were on the first record, because RW: I think it had a huge influence. A lot of bands like they already knew them all. But the whole rest of the Underoath and Anberlin came from the Orlando area, country and the rest of the world, it was new to all of and even before that, Limp Biskit, and even before them. It was kind of funny; the hometown was already that, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet. There’s a ready for the second album, but the rest of the world really strong rock heritage in Florida from bands who was still discovering us. It was awesome to have the originated there and have gone on to have a lot of album well received because a lot of times if a band’s success. We always used to think about those bands first album doesn’t do well, they’ll get dropped by the when we were jamming in our little trailer in the middle record label. It’s really important to hopefully have at of the woods. We always used to think ‘Hey, if it worked least a song or two do well on your first release. for them, it can work for us.’ I think if we didn’t have
