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Want to know what the true secret to success is? For Barry Johnson, it’s not worrying about it.
To look at the trajectory that Joyce Manor have taken over the last 18 years, from basements and bars to sharing the stage with legends as one of modern guitar music’s most lauded and loved acts, so much of it has come from just doing what feels right for them. Though when you have come up in a scene where such a mindset is part and parcel, it’s that little bit easier. From Tigers Jaw to Title Fight, Modern Baseball to Basement, the bands the band have kept up with over the years have all found success by simply doing what they love and appreciating those who want to come along for the ride.
“I think a lot of those bands managed to maintain really good quality, and I think it has a lot to do with never actually skyrocketing to superstardom,” Barry explains. “It ends up in all of this pressure, and you get in your own head. I think bands might not be making their best work because of that pressure. I think that because someone like Turnstile has had such immense success, people are wondering how that’s possible for other bands. How can we have that happen for us? I don’t really think about stuff like that.
“The same with playing shows with bands like Weezer and Jawbreaker. We aren’t using this moment to seize an opportunity. We are just like, ‘Oh, sick, we get to play a show with a band we think is great, and we are going to play shows the way we want to play shows.’ Just the act of doing it is cool.”
And much of the last sentence sits at the centre of the band’s latest creation, ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’. Nine songs coming in at just around 20 minutes, it is a sharp, sincere and sensationally catchy burst. The sort of record that comes from embodying the same energy that propelled you at practice in the garage as teens and using it to keep you rolling, even if everything else in your life is chopping and changing.
THE SOUND
Something that Joyce Manor have that many a band in the past probably didn’t is a team around them that serve as fans as much as they do colleagues and advisors. That’s what they have with Brett Gurewitz, founder of Epitaph Records and renowned frontman of punk legends Bad Religion. Rather than wanting to push the band in a direction that has equated to success for one of their peers, for Brett, it has always been about making sure that Joyce Manor are being Joyce Manor. And that feeling extended towards a completely new role and relationship, some 12 years since they first signed to the label.
With the batch of songs that Barry initially penned at the start of the writing process for Album Seven not sitting entirely right – a bit too the samey as what they have done before and a bit too different at the same time – Brett offered up a proposition. Let him pay to produce a song himself, just so they could see what he felt the band should sound like; if they are into it, great. If not, no problem.
“That was really enticing because it didn’t feel like a risk,” Barry recalls. “One of the scariest things about going in to record is you feel like you have to use it. You pay all this money, and it could be a huge waste of someone else’s talents and time. You have to be really wealthy to have that not affect you.”
Approaching the session, Barry wrote the song ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’, a vibrant piece of “blink-182 worship”, as he puts it, that felt like the band without treading old ground. So, there was already excitement about what this could become, a key element in what is necessary for Joyce Manor to function. Luckily, Brett embodied that same essence, making the experiment a roaring success. That’s how Brett came to produce the whole of the album, allowing that excitement to spread through everything else that was subsequently written.
“He had great energy,” Barry continues, the admiration and appreciation for Brett clear in his voice. “He’s really good at coaching takes and keeping things going and not spending forever getting a guitar tone right. He knows what he likes, and he finds it quick. You can start to feel really uncreative when a producer is like, ‘Let’s try this amp’. Some producers can spend forever chasing that tone, and it feels uncreative. It can suck the energy out of the session.”
Combine that with stripping away layers rather than adding them, not doubling up on anything for the sake of it and just letting what the band do best take precedent, the result is a sound built around clarity. The likes of ‘Well, Whatever It Was’ and ‘I Know Where Mark Chen Lives’ thrive because of their infectious catchiness, whilst the punk rawness of ‘The Opossum’ and 80’s post-punk grittiness of ‘After All You Put Me Through’ feel expansive without colouring outside of the lines.
Though within all that clarity, it’s also an album that refuses to stay in one place, something Barry admits Brett was concerned about. But the truth of the matter is that cohesion only really properly existed, in Barry’s eyes, on 2011’s ‘Joyce Manor’ and 2014’s ‘Never Hungover Again’, with the rest of their discography daring to delve into different waters. For Barry, that’s an intent that stretches back to life before the band, when his desire to start a new project every three months to indulge in a different sound was rampant.
“I’d be in a powerviolence band, but then I’d start wanting to do an indie rock band or then doing more of a low-key singer-songwriter thing,” he laughs. “I was just writing in all of these different modes and writing different versions of songs, but I never thought of keeping it all in one band or trying to get to do it all in one band. It’s hard enough getting shows or building a following as it is.
“I guess the goal for me has been finding out how I could resist the urge to write stuff that was really different from track to track. How could I bring elements from Hank Williams or The Knife and incorporate them, but not let them take over?”
THE COLLABORATORS
Throughout the band’s sonic adventures, the three-pronged creative partnership among Barry, guitarist Chase Knobbe, and bassist Matt Ebert has been a true constant. But a revolving door of drummers has become a kink in the flow. So when it came to ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’, a different three-pronged attack was formed. In addition to touring drummer Jared Shavelson, who used his close relationship with the band to deliver takes exactly as he would on the road, Brett brought in two exceptional players to offer their experience.
The first was David Hildago Jr., known for his work with punk rock icons Social Distortion, who handled the more raw and rallying tracks with ease and enthusiasm. And the second was Joey Waronker, who spent 2025 travelling the world and playing some of the biggest songs ever written as part of Oasis’ reunion line-up. And though he was employed to take on the more indie-leaning tracks, he would still find joy in playing whatever was put in front of him. Fast and fierce D-beat? Delivered with gusto.
It’s that unbridled love for simply getting to play that Barry appreciated and resonated with the most, because he is the same with his expertise.
“It’s so cool seeing a session guy play so well but also have so much fun too,” he remarks. “To be able to see someone at such a high level be such a pro who still really enjoys what they do and enjoys playing the drums. It’s just amazing.”
THE LYRICS
When it comes to writing the music, Barry knows he can make it happen no matter the circumstances. Taking a melody, building on it, and before he knows it, there is a song there right in front of him. Lyrics, though, need a more flow-state environment. They also need to actually mean something to him. And at the start of the ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ process, what his pen had leaked just wasn’t cutting the mustard.
“They didn’t mean an awful lot to me. They weren’t evocative of anything, a bit generic and bland. They didn’t get in the way, but they were unfocused. There is always a point where I have to get real with myself and ask, ‘Are these any good?’ If the answer is no, then it’s asking what isn’t good about them. It’s easy to get a melody going. But writing lyrics that mean something? It has to be inspired.”
That sentiment really speaks volumes, given that ‘All My Friends Are So Depressed’ was the first song he got the words down for that stuck. Born from a dark place brought on by an extended period of touring, an excessive amount of drinking and letting the despondence of the world around him hang heavy, the result is as sincere as it is sensational.
The fact that the lightbulb came from such a low moment is one thing, but it also went on to inform the rest of the feeling that sits at the heart of the record. Of not letting your feelings get on top of you. Of knowing that what you are feeling right now doesn’t define you. And most importantly, when looking back on the way things used to be, understanding that the rose-tinted colour of things doesn’t mean that they were strictly better.
One particular practice has helped hammer that point home for Barry, and it’s something we should probably do for ourselves.
“One thing that strikes me as a very visceral and real way to show that life wasn’t much better back then is going back and reading old Facebook statuses,” he remarks. “Going back and looking at things from 2008 and thinking, ‘Holy shit, this sucked’. Reading about a boring conversation that took place back then really took me back to who I was and what my priorities were. These are things from a time before Joyce Manor even existed, something that has come to define a lot of my life. So, transporting me back not just to a memory of my former self, but also to a brutal look at who I actually was. It’s pretty fucked up.”
Sometimes we need that sobering thought, though. We need those realisations to understand just how far we have come and how much good we have accomplished. For Barry, every Joyce Manor album pinpoints a moment in their journey. Go right back to the beginning of their story in 2010, when their eternal track ‘Constant Headache’ was first conjured, he remembers the finer details, like the apartment he was living in and that he was single. Fast-forward to 2015, and he recalls sitting in a Wendy’s whilst touring on ‘Never Hungover Again’ and having a phone call with producer Rob Schnapf about working on 2016’s ‘Cody’, a moment of wonder for a kid infatuated with the work of Guided By Voices, Elliot Smith and Saves The Day.
When it comes to how he will look back on the ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ period in the future, perhaps he will find the band in their most prominent position to date – and their most contemplative. More deeply understanding that there are places, people and moments in time that do not seem so special on the surface, but for you they hold incredible significance. Time may pass, things may change, and the world that we once knew will cease to exist. But the things that we have done, seen and experienced, they will live on within us, no matter what.
“I wanted to say that somewhere that’s not so special can still have so much significance,” Barry remarks. “Like a chain restaurant that you spent a lot of time at as a kid. It’s not special, but it’s about the time you spent there. That’s what always sticks with you.”
THE TITLE & THE ARTWORK
Choosing ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ as the title for this came from that sense that Barry wanted to tell the story of where he is right now in the fewest number of words. It’s clear that the intent is reflective. Looking back at how things used to be and enjoying the warm glow of those memories whilst understanding why they aren’t the same now.
The same sentiment is instilled within the artwork of the record: a photo given to the band by Cris Cleen, a close friend and tattoo artist for Barry and Chase. Depicting Cris’ grandmother at a house party years ago, cigarette in hand and tongue firmly out and pointed towards the camera, it’s playful and timeless. There’s a warmth to it that feels familiar, which is something that could be said to sum up the band’s whole discography. But the same goes for ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ as a mesh of words to accompany it. You know so much despite actually knowing nothing at all.
It’s a sentiment that Barry always wants to inject into his music, especially in his lyrics’ storytelling.
“I think a lot of times, a good song is summed up by a mission statement. And that’s what the first two lines of ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ do. Those two lines really say a lot. You know a lot about the character behind them. You know they like to drink, you know they don’t have a car, and you know they are lazy so that they will go to the closest place. In two lines, you can deduce a lot. That’s the same intent with the title.”
THE FUTURE
Because Barry has been doing this for so long, he has noticed a trend with new Joyce Manor releases. At the time of their dropping, the enthusiasm for the songs within is much more muted than in their previous output. But with a little bit of time, they start to sink in. It’s something that has taken place on every tour for every album, from 2012’s ‘Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired’ to 2022’s ‘40 oz. To Fresno’, and that he knows will happen for ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ too.
But the years have taught him to go with the flow each time. Know that if things are meant to be, then they’ll happen. And as Joyce Manor continue to move from strength to strength, he is just appreciative to be still able to ride that wonderful wave.
“There’s always been a ‘Play the old shit’ feeling,” he remarks. “’Catalina Fight Song’ is the craziest part of our set, but it took years to transpire. When our second album came out, there was a big drop off when we played those songs, but then we would go into ‘Leather Jacket’, and the place would go nuts. Recently, it has been happening with ‘Big Lie’ off ‘Million Dollars To Kill Me’. Its streaming has increased significantly. I’m not fixated on what we’ve done so far, and I’ve been trained to do that.
“I know that, even with this album, there are certain songs that will gain popularity over time. All I can do is try to make good records that people will come around to. But I have so little control over it. We’re really lucky that we have 20+ songs that people know the words to and go crazy for, but that took time. It’s just about having the patience to keep going and get there.”
