JETSAM Interview
JETSAM are a drum + bass + vocals powerviolence three-piece from Montreal. In the few short years they've been active, JETSAM have played shows in nearly every corner of the local scene. Recently, they went on their first small tours out of the Toronto-Montreal-Quebec City corridor, and if you haven't heard of them already I expect you will soon. Jack (vocals, they/them) and Neon (bass, she/her) answered my questions by e-mail in January 2025.
Martin Force: What is the story of JETSAM? How did the band start? What was the goal? What is the mission statement of the band? Where did the name JETSAM come from?
Jack: Neon and I were both taking drum lessons from a friend and whenever we were on our way to lessons, we'd trade music back and forth that we liked the drums in. At some point I played her a CLOUD RAT song and we started talking about how we wanted to start a powerviolence band. Maybe a week or so later, we were picking up some drums from Neon's friend Wawa (who works at a place that picks up and repurposes garbage) and Neon mentioned this idea to him, and he was like "rad wanna jam right now?" So we went to our jam space and within the next hour, we'd written our first song (trigger discipline), and then over the next three weeks, we wrote three more songs (excoriate, sine spe recuperandi, and clayborne). At that point all that was left was to start playing shows.
Neon: I just wanted to be able to play in a band and not be the vocalist. I wanted to play really heavy and fast bass without a guitar in sight. High frequencies and treble sounds have always really upset my ears / brain, even as a kid before I could identify the cause of the discomfort. I'm just glad the sound I wanted for myself also ended up resonating with others! Our drum teacher, Sarah, was the drummer in one of my previous bands. She was going to drum in this new idea for a project but ended up having to move out of town. Wawa appeared back into my life out of nowhere and we immediately bonded as a trio.
J: If there was ever a goal for the project, it was just for us to play in a band together, and for me to get to actually play in a band—I'd dabbled in a couple other projects but nothing that really felt like 'mine.' I guess the other goals were to release a full-length record (because Neon had never done that before) and go on tour in Europe, both of which are still in the works.
The name "JETSAM" actually just came from a lyric in the song sine spe recuperandi ("where the waves give and take like so much flotsam and jetsam"), which is something I'd written a long time ago about an abusive relationship I experienced. We were casting around for a band name and Neon picked that out and it just stuck. We both felt like the idea that there are things you have to throw overboard so that the ship doesn't sink really worked for us.
N: There's a pretty obvious analogy with the trans experience there—whether the things left behind end up being family, friends, jobs, or anyone who refuses to give us the baseline dignity we all deserve.
MF: This summer you did some small touring in the USA which was the furthest the band has traveled so far. Where did you go, who did you play with and what were the shows like? What are your highlights of the past summer/year? How was the experience of touring for you all?
J: We played in Syracuse (at Lost Horizon with FED ASH, VOID EMPEROR, and AMOK) and Rochester (at Psychic Garden with FENTANYL TAP WATER) with our friends in SUNROT, and then in Buffalo with HIRS (at Amy's Place with HIRS, ALL MAINE POINTS, MUDDLE, FOREST FIRE). All of the shows were good but Psychic Garden was an extremely cool DIY venue with the raddest sound person in a big old warehouse with a wall of old TV screens behind us while we performed. And Amy's Place just all-around rules, plus that show was in the middle of Pride and it was packed with trans people, and there was a community org doing free 15-minute HIV testing outside the venue.
For me, those out-of-town shows were the highlight of my summer. I love going places and seeing things from a different perspective, and we met some incredibly rad people who are still our friends. It's such an honour to roll up to a city and have people be excited you're there, and it's also an honour to get introduced to new people in this way. We also had a very sweet time at this music gear store in Rochester where the person helping us gave us fudgesicles.
We love touring! We wanna do it more! It's just hard because it is not feasible for bands from so-called Canada to cross into the states—touring visas are incredibly expensive—and then going anywhere else requires flying, which is expensive. We are scheming some things though.
MF: OK, how many drummers have you been through so far? Four? Which drummer was your favorite (kidding)? Last I heard, you are without a permanent drummer after an amicable parting with Marcie. Without jinxing anything in the works, what are you hopes or plans for the drummer slot going forward?
J: We have had two full-time drummers and now three part-time drummers– Wawa who's now playing in OCIOSA, and then Ty from FEED and LEASH AGGRESSION was filling in for us for a bit, then Marcy, who is still killing it in TACHYON and as DJ W1K1L34K5, then Gab from BRUE and APRÈS L'ASPHALTE (who will still drum for us sometimes), and Evelyn from PINKSNAIL and BRUE. We would love for Gab or Evelyn to become our forever drummer but they are both in so many other rad projects. We love all our drummers equally!
N: The experience with all of them has been very sweet in different ways. I think the worry is always to not lose what made the band click in the first place. We always want to hang out in a way that feels like friendship and family, and to walk out of band practice smiling and excited about the next one.
MF: With the many drummers, there have already been many different iterations of JETSAM. Have all these lineup changes been frustrating? Or do you feel like it's allowed you to experience the band as more of a family/collective? You are also often joined by Kayla (and other friends) on stage to sing with you, so I am wondering if you ever toy with the idea of leaning more into the "expanded JETSAM family" in the future, or if you are craving more stability in the lineup.
J: We joke all the time that it's just the natural inclination of trans bands to wanna become collectives so that we can feature all our extremely cool and talented friends (à la HIRS). The lineup changes have been frustrating only insofar as we keep having to teach the same songs to new people instead of getting to write new songs, but every person we've worked with has been rad and has brought something special to the band, and I do think it's really cool to have these different personalities and visions pull us in different directions. If we are able to get a full-length out this year, we want it to feature friends from all different scenes—expect noise, rap, other instruments, etc.
Ideally someday we can get away with doing the Jenna thing where we just leave an extra mic on stage and anyone can get up and jump in on vocals. As much as Neon and I are the core of the band and are also a couple, we are not precious about our place in this project: we want it to belong to everyone who loves it.
N: The drawback has been the time spent teaching the song and how it has slowed progress, but sharing this music with super talented drummers from different backgrounds has also brought its good share of positive changes. Things are looking good now with Evelyn as our drummer and Gab as our back-up! Both of them also play together in BRUE and I have been helping with bass on APRÈS L'ASPHALTE so this is all a nice exchange that has already started to feel like a small collective in its own way.
MF: Your last release was the Assimilation is Death split 10" with GUMMO from August 2023. Are you working on a new release? Do you feel like your sonic direction or influences have changed since you started? What's the plan for the next release/recording?
J: Absolutely yes we are working on a new release—two, in fact. One will be a split with Kayla's band OBJECT OF LOATHING, and the second will be a full-length. Our influences change constantly. We both listen to a really wide variety of music (which mostly fall outside of "punk") and most of our songs come out of one of us hearing a riff in something we think is cool and then excitedly bringing it to band practice. That said, I think a general goal we have is to write some more songs that are more like... traditional powerviolence. We've been listening to a lot of like INFEST and CROSSED OUT and MAN IS THE BASTARD (shoutout Eric!!).
N: We've had the songs for a new EP / Split mostly written for a while now, some of which we've been playing live already and a couple more still needing some work. This will be finalized and recorded as soon as we've solidified the current set with Evelyn. Not to jinx it, as you said, but the plan is to get on that right after our Québec to Trois Rivière to Montreal Madhouse little "tour" in a couple of weeks.
MF: After the tours this summer, what are your future tour ambitions? A big long tour? More smaller tours? Europe?
J: EUROPE. And yes, longer tours. Honestly, we'll go wherever will have us as long as we can get there.
N: Europe with GUMMO, absolutely!
MF: Fantasy question: you are booked on a huge North America tour and can bring any current band with you, who do you bring?
J: Hard question!!! And I feel like this could change by the day with me depending on what particular sound I'm into and also who I wanna hang out with for an extended period of time. So today, I say CELL DETH.
N: The easy answer would be OBJECT OF LOATHING. The more complex one would be all of them!
MF: Fantasy question 2: Time travel is possible and you can insert yourself into any package tour or festival of the past. What is it?
J: The package tour part is touching on "never meet your heroes" territory for me and big festivals seem exhausting and overstimulating but... any of the late 80s/early 90s NAPALM DEATH tours where they played with BOLT THROWER or SEPULTURA or FAITH NO MORE. I feel like anyone who knows me was expecting me to say Woodstock 94... but the actual real answer is that I would put us on stage with the KLF and EXTREME NOISE TERROR at the Brits in '92. The current festival that I want to play is Supersonic in Birmingham on any year that THE BUG plays it.
N: Festivals stress me out so much. Too much happening in too little time. You'll mostly find me with the smokers outside trying to feel included despite my sensory overload (too many guitars!). In a way, I'd say any tour where having us there would mean breaking the status quo of 4-5 dudes on stage. Sometime people tell us to chill-out. But we're not chill. We're angry.
MF: How do you feel about the band FLOTSAM AND JETSAM?
J: The thrash band? Call me out but honestly I've never listened to them. I'm glad they went with that instead of "Dredlox."
N: Watching the Wading Through The Darkness music video now and this is sick actually. Also the vocalist is super pretty! It's a bit slow for my taste but there's a time and place for that.
J: Okay, I just spent some time listening to them and while the vocals don't do it for me now, this is very much the kind of thrash I would've been into as a teenager. I do love that 80s and 90s thrash tended to have a lot of socially aware lyrics.
MF: JETSAM plays in Montreal a lot, and you've played a huge variety of shows. My impression is that you get asked to play/do a lot, and say "yes" as much as you can to get your message out there. But what's the strangest, dumbest, or worst offer you've turned down?
J: We do get asked to play a lot! And up until this year, we've said no as little as possible. At first it was because we just wanted to play shows and were kind of surprised that anyone would ask us, and then it was because we just kept getting asked to play cool shows. We've had some cringey requests where someone DMs us on Instagram to say they "really like our vibe" and can we play with their band and then it's just a bunch of shirtless dudes in what seems like a very apolitical punk band, but honestly if they seem fun and we're available, sometimes we'll say yes anyway.
N: We occasionally book shows in places we really want to go, or because we need a stop between two destinations in a tour. But for the very busy schedule we've maintained, it has mostly booked itself. We say yes because people ask us, and people show up, and because every show is new super talented friends we make. And yeah, we haven't had a lot of bad experiences! We politely say we're too busy if it feels too obvious of a diversity hire situation... But we also make a point of not just preaching to the choir. Taking space in a show full of shirtless dudes can feel more like work, but it's pretty important.
J: Hot take, but one of the only things we've consistently turned down is when we get asked by some local promotion company less than a week out from a show to "hop on" a bill with a big touring band, for $250. It isn't the money because that's obviously not the reason we're doing this, it's that these companies themselves are making bank on these big Ticketmaster-sponsored tours and it's frankly an insult to be asked to fill their opener hole as an afterthought, especially if it seems like we'd be the diversity hire on the bill, and ESPECIALLY if we wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to go to the show / if our friends can't afford to go.
MF: Besides your Bandcamp, you also have your music up on a simple faircamp-based website. Besides your Instagram, you also have a band account on Mastodon. [Disclosure for the reader: I operate both of those services!]. Your music isn't on Spotify, or other major streaming/distribution platforms. Can you talk about your politics or reasoning behind these decisions?
J: We are always trying to straddle the line between accessibility and propping up shit that is actively destroying DIY music. You were actually the person that pulled the wool off my eyes about Bandcamp: I remember you being like "I don't put my music there because someday they're gonna sell out or get shut down and then who's gonna own it" and that was way before they got bought out. Our music is on Bandcamp because IMO it is the place where music-minded people go to find stuff, especially independent stuff. But it is also really important for us to make sure it's in other places like faircamp so that it doesn't disappear if Songtradr or whoever decides to fuck us all.
We will not put it on Spotify because we refuse to have our music and the people who wanna listen to it being used to line the pockets of bigots and genocidaires who see music as nothing more than a market. And, I think the people who want to listen to us are not necessarily finding new music on streaming apps.
MF: Lit Corner! You have a song called "Clayborne" which, besides being a shoutout to the friends in CLAYBORNE, is your own Mars triology (by Kim Stanley Robinson)-based track. "New Colossus" opens with a lengthy quote from anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre. I also get a vibe from "Anéantir le Néant" that there is a text or writing referenced (my guess: maybe baedan?). What is the source or reference in that song? Any other references in your lyrics you want to draw attention to?
J: You basically nailed it. anéantir le néant is specifically from "Preliminary Notes on Modes of Reproduction" (2010) by gender mutiny, and both that and villain are heavily inspired by the various essays in What Is Gender Nihilism? (2019) from Contagion Press, especially "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" (1994) by Susan Stryker. Both songs are about how we see the very concept of gender as incompatible with a just/free world.
The intro to new colossus is Voltairine de Cleyre (quoted by Emma Goldman), and the lyrics draw a lot from Carceral Capitalism (2018) by Jackie Wang, as well as a story that I thought I read there (but maybe it was somewhere) else about an American doctor who saw the incarcerated men at Holmesburg prison in Philadelphia and said "All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a field for the first time." He proceeded to run years of medical and cosmetic testing on them, some of which was horribly painful and disfiguring. The title "new colossus" is the name of the poem Emma Lazarus wrote about the statue of liberty. I guess there are a lot of literary references in our lyrics because I have a lit degree.
N: Music writing for us looks like the three of us sharing thoughts on riffs and vibes and a lyrical theme. Then Jack ends up sat down with 50 tabs open on their browser and 4 physical books opened in front of them, looking for inspiration and references and cheering us whenever the riffs feel good. They're a huge nerd.
MF: What are your favorite books or writers, fiction or non-fiction, that most heavily influence the band? Both in terms of lyrics directly, but also thematically. Writing that brings together for you the themes of queerness, resistance, rage, mental health and brutality?
J: Kim Stanley Robinson is obviously a big influence. There's a moment where his character Frank Chalmers is (IIRC) described as "prone to violence, prone to despair" and as much as he's not the character I wanna identify with, well...
I'm not necessarily organized enough to have specific writers I look to for specific things; it's whatever I'm reading or have in my sight at a given moment. That said, I look to Diane di Prima's poems a lot when I'm trying to figure out how to write lyrics. I look at the lyrics of songs that make me feel something. And I look to whatever my smarter and more organized friends are reading.
N: When I was still a punk baby, I listened to a CRASS album. Now here we are! I'd say I draw more inspiration from my own life, my own grief, my friends, and my community than from any literature. But if I had to name one it would be Emma Goldman.
MF: On a lighter note what fiction are you reading lately?
J: I mostly read fiction! I don't have a great attention span. I've just finished all of the Murderbot books and I'm currently reading Blindsight by Peter Watts.
N: Not to expose myself too much as a big loser here, but most of my reading time is used up reading about and preparing for the next TTRPG session, usually in a context of personal, political, corporate, and/or space horror. I like reading about scary times in space and cyberpunk futures. MOTHERSHIP is the one that's been keeping my attention lately.
MF: PV Corner! Normally I like to ask people how they got into punk or hardcore, but since we are all are in powerviolence bands here, how did you all get into powerviolence? What was the first time you encountered it?
J: I blushingly admit that it was VILE INTENT [the interviewer's band] that introduced me to powerviolence and got it stuck in my mind as the home for music that is loud, angry, and unapologetically political—and that was in around 2011. Before that, I really was not into punk at all, never mind hardcore—those were the genres that the guys who picked on me listened to. I grew up listening to metal, mostly, made the jump from post-metal to screamo, and then to grindcore and powerviolence. G.L.O.S.S. was the first hardcore punk band that made me pay attention to the genre. I read this article once that described the difference between grindcore and powerviolence as something like: "grindcore is the sound of the apocalypse of late capitalism and powerviolence is the outcry of the people trying to survive that apocalypse" and I was like: yeah, that is the legacy within which I want to situate my band.
N: I've always listened to a lot of music genres, but with punk I started the the usual with anarcho stuff. Crust punk was an easy gateway toward powerviolence and grindcore. I always needed my music to be faster and with more blast beats, so I'd listen to a lot of black or death metal, but the scene itself was such a turn-off. Perhaps ironically, powerviolence ended up being my safe haven. CLOUD RAT was definitely one of my big eye openers!
MF: Speak about the politics of the band. How does JETSAM identify politically? How important is this identity to the band, and how you write music, perform, reproduce the band? Is JETSAM an anarchist band?
J: I am an anarchist, an anarchism specifically informed by feminism and transness, and that not just informs but is integral to the way I write music, perform, and interface with the world as part of the band. It isn't that the band is a vehicle for me/us to express our politics but just that like, my politics are the filter through which I experience the world. Personally I would say that we are an anarchist band, yes. That is something that has united every member of this band and I can't imagine that we would get along well enough with someone who isn't at least vaguely an anarchist to make music with them.
N: I've always admired bands who made very reactionary music in the sense of reacting to what's going on around them. Songs or even full albums as a response to an event in the world. We are anarchists and are an anarchist band by virtue of the way we navigate the world and the scene and the things we talk about. We will always be comfortable being read as such! We never set out to be a band by and for trans people, and never spoke about whether this was going to be a project about anarchism. It became those things because those things are who we are!
MF: Can you give a brief scene report of the milieu and context around JETSAM in Montreal? What scene or scenes do you feel a part of, and how would you describe them to an outsider? What bands and projects should people check out? What recent local happenings are most inspiring to you all?
J: The first scene to really embrace us here was the grind scene; our first show was as the last-minute seventh band thrown on a six-band grind bill at [the anarchist social centre] L'achoppe, and we've played a lot of big grind shows around Quebec since then. But we've also been accepted into what I'd characterize as the queer(core) screamo scenes (especially outside of Quebec because the screamo scene here is very francophone), the crustpunk scene via playing at Traxide, the SHARPs, the indie cool-guy heavy music scene via playing with bands like THE BODY, the plateau punk scene, and this rad scene that I don't have a name for that's mostly like 20-somethings making all kinds of freaky loud music, which is funny because we could be their parents... we're all over the place and we like it that way. We're set to play Montreal Madhouse at the end of this month (January, 2025) which will be our biggest foray into the hardcore scene.
By virtue of the fact that we also book shows, and specifically have been booking a series of free shows that feature trans bands of every genre, and the fact that we are trans—we have a big and thriving community of trans musicians around us.
A few local shows JETSAM has played/booked
I think it can be said of all these scenes that they can feel really insular and forbidding to newcomers or anyone who doesn't fit the specific hyper-regional aesthetic of the scene, but it turns out that almost everyone is a sweetheart. This has honestly even been true of the all-dude grind fests we've played where Neon and I were the only people on the bill who weren't cis men. We came outta the gate expecting to get so much hate for taking up that space and calling ourselves a powerviolence band and writing songs that often stray very far from the powerviolence/hardcore formula, and it just has never happened. Everyone, everywhere has been lovely to us, with very very few exceptions. Even more than that, a shocking number of people have seemed to really get what we do: they understand who our music is for and why we do it, and they make space for the freaks and queers.
It feels almost impossible to recommend bands because there are always SO many and they're SO good and did I mention my attention span. I'll always shout out our besties in OBJECT OF LOATHING, TYPEFACE, RATPISS and VVOMB. I love HRT and LOBOTOMITE and THE PUBES and DUREX and STREET GLOVES and MULCH. I think TRUCK VIOLENCE and NO WAVES and BIRDS OF PRRREY are local bands to keep eyes on.
I think the thing I'm personally most excited for is seeing the ways in which all the little microscenes are bleeding into each other. Montreal Madhouse booking bands that aren't strictly hardcore bands, unlikely bills, Turbo Haus kids going to Traxide (RIP) and vice versa, and bands that intentionally transgress the boundaries. That's the good stuff.
N: I think Jack said it all, so I'll just add some of our local crushes like CLAYBORNE, TONNES, BACKXWASH, TEMPETE, GUHN TWEI, MULCH, DUREX, and VERIFY <3
JETSAM on Bandcamp: https://jetsammtl.bandcamp.com
JETSAM's faircamp site: https://jetsam.likeweeds.org
JETSAM on Mastodon: @jetsam@438punk.house
