MIRACLE DRUGS
Zac Damon – Guitar/Vocals
By Brian Reeder
Zac Damon from ZOINKS and BIG IN JAPAN has a new band called MIRACLE DRUGS. His bands ripped through a part of history that pop punk bands today will never understand. It was the days when 7” records were a rite of passage and putting out an album, on CD, was the ultimate win. Now, in the digital age, Zac is reaching back into history. He’s a talented songster with a knack for writing songs you will dig and want to take your girlfriend to see live. Think REPLACEMENTS meets 90s East Bay and modern East Coast power pop punk. MIRACLE DRUGS first 7” is composed of two songs that grab you from the first note and is available via Rally Records.
Tell me about your new band.
Basically I had kind of, sort of given up on playing music for a little while. My last band (BIG IN JAPAN) played last in ’08. Between that and MIRACLE DRUGS I kind of had given up. But after a few months of not doing anything, I had written some songs and decided I wanted to do something again. So I just found a couple of guys I know here (RENO) in town. There’s no huge story behind it. Now we have the single out. We’re kind of on hiatus for the summer but come fall I want to get back in the studio and record a grip of songs. My plan is to just produce a series of vinyl singles and maybe eventually, if they sell out, we’ll compile them and make a record out of them.
Any tour plans?
No. Not really. I would like to get out of town here and there, but I’m kind of over touring—like the DIY, grassroots-style touring—I’m over that. Especially nowadays, there’s even more bands around and it’s just kind of frustrating and not fun to play to five people every night. And we’re older—I’m older—the other guys aren’t as old as me, but I just don’t have the time, energy or funds to devote to touring and hopefully building up some sort of fan base over time. That’s young man stuff.
You guys play around Reno though?
Yeah, we’ve played quite a few (shows) now here in town. We’ve gotten out of town once. We went and played a couple shows in Southern California, one of which was probably the best show we’ve ever had. But I would like to get out of town again. This town is not, and never has been, very pop punk-friendly. People here are largely into hardcore and metal and, to a smaller degree, straight up punk rock.
Where is the most pop punk-friendly place?
City-wise and state-wise I couldn’t say, but it really seems like the Midwest and East Coast in general likes pop-punk a whole lot more. And if you talk to many pop punk, quote-unquote bands, they will tell you the West Coast is never a good place to tour.
What do you think the difference is between a pop punk band and a straight-up punk band? You can definitely argue that a lot of NOFX songs are pretty damn pop punk.
I recently read a blog where they broke down pop punk in the 90s into like three sections. One was the FAT Wreck Chords sound, one was like the Lookout sound and one was like the Cruz Records sound. I think you can break it down further but that was a pretty smart way to section it off. The 90s FAT Wreck Chords sound—you can call it pop-punk—but it kind of always had more of a metal edge to it. Then the Cruz sound was a little bit more quirky—maybe a bit more rock. Then Lookout was the more East Bay sort of RAMONES-y sort of influence, and also kind of its own thing. I would say my old band ZOINKS would fall into the Lookout category of those three.
Have you ever ventured out of the pop punk arena?
I had a band in the late 90s called CRUSH STORY. It was very indie rock, and I was way into that. I still love a lot of indie rock stuff, but I’m not really very good at writing indie rock songs. BIG IN JAPAN, I guess you could still call it pop punk, but I definitely tried, at the very least, to have a more mature sound or more mature approach to my songwriting and my lyrics, definitely on the second record.
The new stuff sounds pretty pop punk, like the ZOINKS.
Yeah, it was somewhat of a conscious decision to return to my roots so to speak. Not necessarily try to write songs like I did in ZOINKS, but just kind of let my songwriting be whatever it’s going to be. Let it come out however it’s going to come out, instead of trying to have a certain sound or trying so hard to be different. And my voice is kind of shot—you probably noticed—my voice is like much more gravely than it used to be. That gives it a different edge as well.
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