For a man who fronts several bands, writes songs for all of them, and is a certified ‘punk,’ John Bonnel is certainly modest. No, seriously. He dabbles in art and design; that $wingin’ Utter$ shirt you’re wearing – he designed it. As the group matures and each of its members expands their musical tastes, Bonnel has also cultivated a passion for art that started during his youth in a creepy, mid-70s Santa Cruz. While murder and death might be recurrent themes in his music, the man with his hands in so many jars refuses to actively sell himself for recognition and admits that most of his fans really are his friends. John Bonnel will now recount his life’s story to you – slightly abridged.

FUN Artists: Can you introduce yourself?

Swingin’ Utters: My name is John Bonnel. I’m the lead singer of the $wingin’ Utter$.

FUN Artists: Can you talk about the new releases and why, after such a long time off, you guys are playing and touring again?

Swingin’ Utters: I think Fat Mike was the instigator of putting out some more music; he was like ‘Hey its been a long time.’ We were sort of taking a break because of kids and jobs, and so the band sort of drifted apart in terms of where we were living. Greg [McEntee], our drummer, moved down to Los Angeles, Darius [Koski] moved to Santa Cruz, I stayed in the East Bay, and Spike [Slawson] and Jack [Dalrymple] live in San Francisco. So we’re all kind of scattered so it was kind of tough to get things together. We’d do weekend shows here and there, but there was no new material – and we were getting sick of what we were playing. We have a lot of songs to choose from, but with no practice you tend to play the same set every time you go out, ‘cause it’s like “they never heard it.” So we got kind of lazy I think… Yeah, Fat Mike was the guy who said ‘Hey lets put out some new music,’ and I lost my job—sort of all the band members had problems finding jobs, so we thought now is a good time to start doing new material and touring again, but Fat Mike got the ball rolling.

FUN Artists: The Swingin’ Utters’ sound has evolved a bit over the years, and I know you thought the more recent records were a little too fast… Was there any talk going in to this recording of how you guys wanted to sound?

Swingin’ Utters: Yeah, we were kind of – not disappointed with our last recordings — but always searching for more of a live sound, so I think we went into this new material wanting it to sound like it had more of a human element to it. ‘Cause a lot of the new music these days is auto-tuned and what not, a lot of Pro Tools used in the recording process. But we don’t mind when things are out of tune, it has more of a human feel to it and a rawer quality. All of my favorite records have a raw sound to them, like you could hear them all, sort of, screaming at each other as they’re recording; ‘Speed up’ or ‘Come on!’ you know, egging the band on. So yeah, that was our main idea. It was just ‘let’s make it sound live’ … and I don’t think it sounds live enough still. I think that’s why there’s a delay on the release. It was suppose to be released in July; we got those three songs out on the 45 so there was a release, so the full length is probably going to come out in September.

FUN Artists: When we get older and tend to like more diverse music and our tastes change, is it ever a chore to maintain this “street punk” Swingin’ Utters sound? Do you have to go out of your way to get back to that sound, or is that still very prevalent for you?

Swingin’ Utters: I think it’s just all the stuff we listen to is so different, every band member has a different taste and they’re always bringing stuff into the van; we get to hear new music all the time. So once you stumble across something you like I think it’s going to be in each song. Spike’s really great at this ‘cause he has such diverse taste in music and he always brings in rad music that I’ve never even heard of – even the style – and it’s like, I told him one time, ‘That makes you a really great person just that you did that. That you let me hear this shit. It makes you a better person.’ But yeah, we don’t really strive for a Swingin’ Utters sound; I think its’ just what we’re listening to at the time. I’ve been listening to a lot of English stuff so a lot of my songs have this sort of dark English sound to it and kind of garage-y, like 60’s garage punk. There’s no way we can get away from the Swingin’ Utters sound ‘cause as a group we tend to speed things up – it just tends to go that way as your coming up with new songs. But yeah, Darius is going to keep writing and he has back catalogs of songs that he wrote when he was a teenager. Some of the stuff he wrote then is popping up now. I kind of think that’s interesting too, I mean he’s got a catalog of shit, of this weird teenage brilliant mind, and that just excited me; I’m like ‘Damn, you wrote this when you were a fucking teenager? You’re like Elvis Costello man.’

FUN Artists: You guys have so many side projects, who gets what songs?

Swingin’ Utters: For our other bands Filthy Thieving Bastards and Drug Lords of The Avenues; starting with Filthy Thieving Bastards, I usually write songs and usually figure it out once you get down to doing demos. I usually do demos with Darius – I’ll like hum them, I can play a little bit of guitar, but I’m not that great yet. So I’ll go over to his house and we will figure it out right there. ‘Ah that’s a Filthy Thieving song; that’s a Swingin’ Utters song.’ There’ve been crossovers, I mean, I think there’s a Filthy Thieving song on a Swingin’ Utters album. So there are definitely crossovers because that’s the way we write, but you sort of know.  Filthy Thieving has sort of got more leeway; Swingin’ Utters are more pigeon holed into this punk sort of rawer sound, but we want to take those raw elements and keep them with Filthy Thieving.  Thieving has more influences of country, early 60’s rock, stuff like that and it just gives us more freedom to do whatever the fuck we want. Not that we have to do punk rock for Swingin’ Utters albums cause there’s always a slow Darius song on a Swingin’ Utters record, or a country song here and there. There’s actually a country song on the new one too. But yeah, you sort of feel it out once you demo the songs. But for Drug Lords of The Avenues it’s just a bunch of young guys that are into Slayer; they just come up with the music and I get stoned and write lyrics to it.

FUN Artists: In the Swingin’ Utters what are your guys’ favorite songs to play and what are the crowd pleasers?

Swingin’ Utters: My favorite songs to play, the reasons behind them are usually crowd response, but there’s one, “Petty Wage,” we play all the time. I think that’s just because of me; I think I let Darius, Spike, and Greg and Jack know it’s one of my favorite songs. I don’t think they like it though – and it’s not a crowd pleaser all the time, but for some reason I like playing that song. I think maybe, its got like breathing room in it, so I’m not fucking devastated and out of breath after the song. But yeah, I think crowd response is the main reasoning behind our sets. And that’s another thing we’re figuring out with these new songs; they are going over fairly well but we won’t know until we do lengthy tours on the East Coast and Europe and stuff which songs are going to be good and which songs aren’t. Yeah, you’ll find out what your favorite songs are live when you get the response from the crowd. If they’re fucking screaming it back to you then your like ‘Fuck yeah this is a song, lets keep doing it.’ It’s keeping me going at least, at this age.

FUN Artists: What is the “Freebird” of the Utters where people are climbing on stage and jumping on your back?

Swingin’ Utters: Oh yeah, it’s “Next in Line.” How do I say this? It’s not my favorite song – and it’s not anything against Max who wrote it, he’s a great songwriter – I don’t know, I just don’t like playing it live, but we have to play it live, ‘cause I mean, certain people will kill us if we don’t.

FUN Artists: Any serious fans out there? We’re talking send you guitars, getting tattoos, asking you to be in their wedding?

Swingin’ Utters: The thing is, when it comes down to fans, they become friends. Most of the time a big fan will become one of my friends. I got a bike from one of my friends, but he is a fan so I guess that would be like… I mean that was just insane; I almost broke down crying it was such a nice gesture. We just shot the shit one night and I told him I like to cruise out on a bike every once in awhile and it just makes me feel really good – it gives me a little break. But yeah, like a week later I had this beach cruiser in the mail on my front porch. I see a lot of tattoos of songs and stuff which is super flattering and crazy.

FUN Artists: Why do you play music?

Swingin’ Utters: I think I do it just to create—and to be able to do this and travel. We’re people in bands, the luckiest people in the world, I think, at least who are able to tour and make records. It’s got to be one of the luckiest – not ‘professions’ – but luckiest outlets to be in, you know? Nothing beats it. ‘Cause there’s so much involved: there’s meeting new people, seeing different cultures, and drinking with people … It’s like rituals; every stop is a ritual – I sort of dig that. A community of people bonding; you don’t see that that often, you know? So I do it because of that mainly, the ritual, the arm in arm, singing the same song together; I can give a shit if I’m the one singing. I mean, I’m the one with the mic, a lot of times; [motions handing a mic to the crowd] I just want to hear them, when you hear it back at you it sounds so fucking rad man, so rad.

FUN Artists: Are there any famous Swingin’ Utters fans?

Swingin’ Utters: I don’t know too many famous people so I wouldn’t know, but Spider Stacy from The Pogues. That’s a big one –  and I don’t think he heard of us until Darius met him in Santa Cruz ‘cause his sister lives there or something like that. Yeah man, I don’t know … Oh, I totally spaced out on this one. When Max was in the band he lived in New York and he worked at this bar called Niagara and Joe Strummer [The Clash] was in the back – this was before he died – I don’t know if this is true or not, but Max is pretty legit, and he said Joe Strummer got on his knees and did the ‘I’m not worthy’ [motions bowing down] to him.

FUN Artists: If you couldn’t be in the Swingin’ Utters what profession would you be in?

Swingin’ Utters: I honestly think it’d probably just be printing shirts man. I dig that aspect of creating something and not necessarily putting it in galleries but putting it on telephone poles, on people’s chests—on a T-shirt. Knowing your art is walking around and is interacting in different places, I think to me, that’s the most rad way to get your art out there. And the flyers, I mean who hasn’t collected flyers?  The photographs and stuff like that, I never got into photography but that would interest me. But I seriously think just printing shirts, I don’t know why.

FUN Artists: How did you start working at Cinder Block doing shirts and then deciding that you want to do it for yourself?

Swingin’ Utters: It was right after our first kid, I needed to get a job and I was like, ‘Well we get our shirts from Cinder Block, let me just go check,’ sure enough they needed someone to do inks. So I had to clean up their ink room and learn how to mix the inks and stuff like that. I did silk-screening when I was in college and high school, so I was interested in that since I was a teenager. But yeah, I just learned all the aspects of printing shirts while I was there and I found it really interesting and kind of cool.

FUN Artists: So now you’re getting into doing actual shirt production yourself as well as the design?

Swingin’ Utters: Man I still don’t know Photo Shop; I’’m still cutting and pasting. My brother is pretty active in design so he knows all that stuff so if I have any questions I can always go to him. But I like the way things look when they are just cut by hand. You can almost see the hair of the paper at certain points – it just looks more real; it has a rawer quality just like in the music and it looks like it was made by hands instead of like, ‘Oh I cut and paste everything with the computer.’ I don’t know, I don’t like that for some reason. It just bothers me and I have no idea why. Maybe it’s just a grass-roots thing, like gotta keep it grass rootsy and folksy. But yeah, I gotta learn that shit though, right?

FUN Artists: So what are your creative outlets? Do you sketch, make collages…? And where would you like to see these eventually go?

Swingin’ Utters: I’d like to get people to see my art. The internet is a good way to get your portfolio out there. I like the T-shirt idea, and selling T-shirts on the road, that’s getting it out there. I’d like to put it in galleries and stuff like that… I just – I’m not a confident person and I don’t like selling myself. I think you need to; you need to hustle. You need to bust your ass. I’m into busting my ass, but I don’t like selling myself man, I feel like a fucking whore. It’s like tooting your own horn, ‘Look at me, I’m fucking great,’ when I know I’m not fucking great; I’m just as dysfunctional as everyone else.

FUN Artists: But you have a talent because people ask you to do their album covers and make their shirts.

Swingin’ Utters: Right, I have people that ask me to do their record covers and T-shirt designs, but that’s … I made business cards recently, that’s the farthest I can go. I hand them out every once in awhile. I don’t know, I just can’t stand that ;Hey wear this!’ ‘Look at this!’ ‘Look at my shirt!’ I think I’m advertising enough going on tour and designing our T-shirts for Swingin’ Utters, Filthy Thieving Bastards, and Drug Lords of the Avenues, and the record covers. I think most of that is just from other bands seeing that and finding out that I do that I’ll do it for any band that wants it for a fairly cheap price; I can understand times are tough.

FUN Artists: Where would you like to take your art?

Swingin’ Utters: I kind of like that idea of making it look like Velvet Underground sounds. Cause I thought they were the most –  I don’t know – something about it, its got a creepy sound about it, its got a drug fueled sound to it, its got a punk attitude to it, its really tough sounding to me, but it’s psychedelic at the same time. I grew up in the ’70s in a place called Santa Cruz when it was kind of a dark time; we had a lot of bikers in the mountains, it was the murder capital of the world at one time, the Manson family was hanging out in the mountains, there was always someone talking about people walking around in black capes up in the hills of Santa Cruz, there were cults everywhere … And I just like that aspect of like those ‘70s photographs that are all washed out, weird colors – almost like vomit colors with blood mixed in; just like a really creepy, washed out, bright look to it, but demented. I think murder plays a lot in my art, I mean I have a million song titles that have the word “kill” or some kind of weird shit like that, and I think it’s from growing up in Santa Cruz ‘cause it was kind of violent back then. I mean, we had teachers that were abusive to the kids. Growing up on that stuff, it’s gonna get inside you. I thought that was normal at the time. That stuff interests me for some reason. I don’t know why it does. I kind of like being shocking, but having a definite sense of humor cause I think that’s super important in life – to be able to laugh – ‘cause you’ll live longer if you laugh everyday.