Jonah Roy

January 8th, 2021




Jonah Roy had a big year in 2021. From dropping his second album Floating Head in August, moving from his hometown in Saint Louis, Missouri to Los Angeles and posting his first TikTok on November 11th, 2021, he’s been busy. I had the chance to sit down with him and talk about his life, his friends and his goals for the upcoming year just before his hometown show at the Blueberry Hill Duck Room on January 1st, and before his new single “Fuck That!” dropped on January 7th, an epic kickoff to what seems like another great year for him.

“Fuck That!” is his first single since Floating Head, a genre defying album sprinkled with melodic guitar riffs, soaring synths, and lyrics that you’ll find stuck in your head for hours. When asked why he chose “Fuck That!” as the successor to Floating Head, he replied that TikTok is the reason he’s dropping that one first, and had it not been for TikTok, he probably would not drop that song as the first single off of the album.
 
“People on TikTok we're going crazy about it,” He tells me, flashing a humble smile.

“The market in music moves so fast lately that people just need shit now. If I wait to drop it, people won't care anymore. People's attention spans these days are trash because of TikTok. Honestly, I’m dropping this song simply to see what this app can do for my music when it comes to actually promoting something on TikTok and then dropping it.”

While the song has been pulling big numbers on TikTok and gaining lots of praise, Jonah has been getting a lot of comments about its ‘MGMT vibes’ and he hopes that listeners listen to the full song before putting it into that box as he feels that their mids will change once they really listen because its nothing like MGMT, “‘Fuck That!’ is a straight rock song, a straight banger.”

Tiktok has been a relatively new addition to Roy's life, only really getting into it mid November of 2021 and at first, like many artists, he was quite reluctant to join the platform.

“At first it was like, ‘this shit is so corny i’m not gonna do this’ but then I saw artists like 347aidan and Tai Verdes, like this guy was working at T-Mobile and now he’s playing at Madison Square Garden. It’s like dude, it’s entirely possible; it’s entirely possible because of this app and it’s so easy. Thinking about how artist blow up these days as compared to the 70s and 80s like i’m out here posting up at a fucking grocery store like ‘nobody knows that I made this song’ and my Spotify streams go up like a thousand listeners. Yeah TikTok is dope.”

Just like with TikTok, it seems to be that the internet in large has been the connecting force behind a multitude of great things that have happened in Jonah’s life including connecting with important friends and collaborators like Paco and True Jackson.

“Paco DMed me junior year of highschool because he was making music too, he was just like ‘yo man lets link up, lets collab on some stuff,’”

This DM quickly led the pair to make a cover of Sunflower by Rex Orange County that they posted on soundcloud, the first real track for either of them that was able to rack up around 1000 streams.

“We thought we were the actual shit, like it was super, super dope, and then we didn't do anything for like a year after. We made some songs together, we dropped them and then we kinda just stopped making music for a while. I didn't talk to the dude for like a year and then he came around when he saw what Woods and I were doing and then we just collaborated a ton. We have that song ‘Mind Games’ together which is my number one song on Spotify.”

Paco, who ended up being one of Jonah's closest friends, now lives out in LA with him and his other friend Jack Woods. True Jackson, another one of his friends who also lives in LA, was an even more unconventional connection.

“How I met True is actually really crazy. My mom went to highschool with True’s mom Jennica, and they didn’t talk for like 10 years and then Jennica saw my mom posting my concerts on facebook and was like ‘yo your kid is so talented when are you guys gonna be out in LA I would love for him and True to write a song together.’”

Coincidentally, Jonah was going to LA that upcoming week to go visit some schools, and in an almost too perfect moment, was able to meet up with True Jackson, sparking almost instant creative chemistry.

“I met True and not even ten minutes into meeting her we were already writing a song and then I produced this entire song for her called “Going Away”. A month later, Woods, Paco and I flew out to LA and made a whole album with her and it was a great time. Yeah True the homie.”

Meeting near strangers on the internet is something most people's parents would frown upon and many people might shy away from. When asked if he was skeptical or hesitant at all about this parent-fueled meet up, Jonah seemed incredibly unbothered.

“[My mom] was like ‘yo this girl wants to write a song with you’ and I was like 'say less.’”

This willingness to collaborate and try new things has allowed him to wind up in just about every opportunity possible, including how he ended up shooting concert footage for the band 99 Neighbors.

“Do you know the band 99 Neighbors? I shot video for their show at The Morrocan like a month ago and stuff like that, I love that. I actually know seeyousoon’s videographer, I know a good friend of theirs who does videos for them, @cultclassic.mp4, his name is Colin he's super sick and he makes some crazy videos. He put on his story ‘need a videographer for LA tonight’ and I just swiped up and was like ‘I got a camera.’”

Very quickly it became clear that Jonah just does whatever he wants. When he sees an intriguing opportunity, he jumps at it. When he has a grand idea, he asks the right people the right questions to get it moving towards fruition. When he was struck with the idea of playing a farewell concert on a Saint Louis rooftop before his big move to LA, he didn’t just sit on his idea and fantasize about it longingly, he got up and figured out how to make it a reality. 

“The rooftop show was totally a last minute gig. Paco and I wanted to have a show right before we left for LA just to put the cherry on top before going off to that whole world of Los Angeles. I have this homie Aaron who’s a vintage reseller and he owns an apartment complex that he sells clothes out of that has this rooftop and I saw that he threw a show up there two weeks before and I just had the idea and hit him up and was like ‘yo dude do you think we could throw an intimate 50-60 person concert on your rooftop?’ and he was like ‘yeah for sure.”

And that’s just what they did, they threw that intimate concert.

“I got my homies Bleach, Paco and our homie Maddie played too. Sometimes I would look back and just see the skyline of Saint Louis and get all emotional like damn, these really are my last moments of living here, but that was an amazing time. All my friends, all of Paco’s friends, all of Bleach's friends. Just everyone in the same place, it was just all love, everyone just vibing to the music. Super good energy, good vibes, good music, just an amazing time and an amazing farewell to Saint Louis.”

If a rooftop show riddled with a sparkling skyline and all your best friends in one place to celebrate your farewell doesn’t sound ambitious or impressive enough, it's safe to say that Jonah’s show inside of an abandoned mall complex hits all the criteria of ambition and imagination.

“We played a show at an abandoned mall like a week and a half before [the rooftop show]. It was at this mall called the Chesterfield Mall that was abandoned and they put a skatepark in it. One of the members from this band, Bleach, knew the owner of the skateboard and just asked him like ‘yo can we throw a concert in the mall.’ and he was like ‘yeah for sure.’”

Sound familiar?

“So we got a stage, we got lighting, we got all the sound equipment, everything. It was totally DIY but we did it all. Shoutout to Jackson from Bleach like he really put it all together, that was super dope. We pulled in like 500 people, it was probably the best concert any of us had ever played. It was such crazy energy like mosh pits the whole time. You looked out and it was just this big ass crowd and you looked back and you saw the Sears sign. It just was so sick doing the show somewhere I've been going for my whole life, that was a really really fun show for sure.”

Getting those 500 people to show up was no act of luck, but instead, a legit marketing push, Jonah tells me. They promoted the show all around the neighboring towns like Kirkwood and Chesterfield, even postering all of main street with the help of his girlfriend. It seems that within his hometown, Jonah was able to build up a community of people who support him and show up for him, but it wasn’t always this way, he tells me.

“I went to this private school, 7th grade through freshman year. Going there, it was an all boys school and it was like if you weren’t part of the norm, which was playing sports and being that sort of dude, people just kind of clowned on you. I was in a band for 6 years from age 7 to 13 and I had music videos out and songs out on spotify and people would just kind of clown me for it, they would play my music videos in class and just laugh at me and call me slurs. Really degrading towards what I loved to do and I really kind of fell out of love for music when I went to that school.”

By freshman year, Roy no longer felt like he belonged there, and transferred over to Kirkwood Public School, which he recalls being one of the greatest decisions of his life thus far.

“it was the first time I went somewhere and realized nobody gave a shit about what you do. You can be whatever and nobody cared, nobody was gonna clown you because it was such a big school and everybody was doing creative stuff.”

Besides a better overall school culture that fostered creativity and growth through its more accepting student body, Kirkwood also brought something else monumental into Roys life; one of his best friends and closest collaborators, Jack Woods. Despite going to the same school for 3 years, Jonah and Jack hadn’t crossed paths or really even knew of each other until junior year. After listening to some of Woods’ music and getting his phone number through a mutual friend, the two joined forces.

“The first day we ever met up we made 3 songs and two of the songs landed on my first project, Carpe Diem. After that first day it was an instant, ‘i'm working with this kid everyday.’ It was one of the greatest thing that's ever happened in my entire life honestly”

Fast forward to 2022, Jack, Jonah as well as their friend Paco all live out in LA together. Jonah was the first out of all of them to move out to Los Angeles, he tells me, and it had been his dream to make the move for a really long time, maybe even as far back as when he first learned to play guitar around age 6.

“Guitar has always been my main thing, I was playing Guitar Hero. Post Malone did the same thing, he was playing Guitar Hero and then he told his mom that he wanted to do the real thing. [Just like him] my mom got me a guitar and then I learned a bunch of beatles songs and now i'm here”

His first guitar? He recalls it being a bright red Stratocaster, a beginner version of the guitar made special for kids. It was from that moment, that first guitar, those first lessons, that he really fell in love with playing guitar and music, noting that even way back then he remembers dreaming about wanting to live in a mansion in Hollywood Hills one day.

Despite not living in a mansion quite yet, he tells me that he is really enjoying his time on the west coast, although he does hint that he doubts he will stay in Los Angeles for more than two years.

“I just want to see the world, I want to live in a foriegn country really soon. I don’t know, I'm just sick of America. I want to experience a different culture everyday. I think it would be sick to live somewhere in the UK and just experience how they maneuver and how they work because living in America, you only experience the American culture you never experience how they do it in Amsterdam or the Uk or France or any of those places and everywhere is a train ride away in Europe, so I just feel like it would be super dope.”

Even with the move to LA for music, the elaborate and creative shows and the recent success via TikTok, fame has never really been something Roy has strived for and frankly, he doesn’t even want it.

“I don't want to be famous, like I don't want to be like a Justin Bieber. Fame sucks, people don't realize how shitty these famous people have it in the sense that they can't go out, they’re not outside. Especially if you are an A list celebrity but even the guys like Mac Demarco or the indie guys, if they go out to a concert or something people are going to constantly go up to them and ask for pictures and want to talk to them, it’s like they can't just chill out, they can't just go anywhere and be a normal person, they are always going to be an elephant in the room and that must suck.”

As someone who is actively posting on tiktok to gain traction and pulls off elaborate stunts like rooftop shows, it seems almost hypocritical for him to take an anti-fame stance. What would he do if he were to suddenly become famous overnight? He says that his next move would be something adjacent to taking all the money and traveling the world.  

As for his inspirations? Roy quotes that he is most inspired by Tyler the Creator for his multifaceted creativity as it inspires him to do “everything but music” and work on his other passions like photography and video, but that he is also really inspired by his friend Jack Woods.

“I get so much inspiration from Woods when it comes to my own production. I listen to what this dude makes and I hear how he manipulates sounds and that sort of thing and I take that into my own production and make it my own in a way and he inspires me in every way. He is so incredible with what he does. He inspires me a lot.”

“The sickest thing that happened was when Woods sent me the transition from ‘Claustraphobic’ into ‘Only One’, its like a Tame Impala song and then it goes into a like John Williams orchestra moment, super dramatic string section and I remember the first time hearing that I like broke down crying and was like what the fuck. I remember the next time I saw this dude I literally hugged him because the transition was just so emotionally insane for me and just insane on his part. The dude woods, kudos to that bro he is just insane. And hearing that transition, that was super sick.”

With his New Years Day show in the rearview and his single “Fuck That!” finally out, he walks me through his goals for the rest of the year. One of his specific goals for 2022 is to go on tour as a supporting act.

“I would love to open up for somebody and just play my songs with my band, I feel like that would be the dopest thing ever.”

Alongside that, he expresses interest in signing a publishing deal and becoming a writer / producer, work more heavily on his music videos and visuals, and drop around 5-6 songs this year, mostly rock stuff he hopes. Outside of music, he is really interested in traveling outside of the country as he is yet to leave the US, and wants to focus on “treating everyone in his life how they treat him, all really solid goals.

“Who are you?” I ask him, at the close of the interview.

He looks up at his ceiling to think about his answer for a moment.

“I'm simply a kid from the suburbs who got a guitar when he was 6, fell in love with the Beatles and Elton John and my life is literally just music. I literally wouldn’t even put it into a sentence. When you ask who I am, it's just music. All I think about, all I do, all I really am driving for is music.”



Listen to Jonah Roy’s latest single “Fuck That!” here.