A few minutes into our interview with AJJ frontman Sean Bonnette, he paused to have a quick chat with someone else in the room with him. His voice temporarily became a little more loving, kind, fatherly.
“I have two small children,” Bonnette explained afterward. “They’re awesome.”
Their arrival also changed Bonnette’s songwriting, though he hopes he’s never self-aware enough to explain exactly how his style has evolved in the years between the Phoenix-based band’s 2005 debut Cap Guns & Cigarettes (released under the band’s former Andrew Jackson Jihad moniker and featuring songs Bonnette no longer performs live and has compared to rereading a high school diary) and most recent studio album, 2023’s Disposable Everything. While the newer material’s more sophisticated arrangements and production methods are obvious on first listen, the demos included on 2024 companion album Disposable Everything Else show agitated acoustic folk punk remains at the heart of AJJ’s songs.
But Bonnette can explain how having children has changed his worldview.
“It’s made me a lot more nervous for the future,” Bonnette said, “a lot less devil-may-care and a lot less nihilistic about where things might end up. I have a little bit more invested in it now.”
Possibly related: 2008 compilation Only God Can Judge Me and More concludes with “We’re All Gonna Die,” a song featuring a kazoo chorus and the lyrics “Who knows where we go when we die? Who cares? I’m just glad to be alive,” while Disposable Everything’s title track states, “Lately I’ve been digging through the garbage with my son. My mother called it ‘mudlarking.’ We did it all for fun. Two humans living in a place that hates humanity. Disposable family, disposable dignity.”
AJJ is scheduled to play Resonant Head, 400 SW 25th St., Suite A, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 26. Tickets are $31.25.
What’s the motivation for releasing demos and alternate versions from Disposable Everything and 2020’s Good Luck Everybody?
As a fan of music, I personally like that kind of stuff a lot. I come from a time when you could buy the deluxe edition compact disc and it comes with a whole second disc of demos, alternate takes. Some of my favorites like that are Pavement. They’ve released the first couple of their albums that way. I especially love the Slanted and Enchanted deluxe edition. Super good. I like Van Morrison’s Complete Bang collection. The last 20 or so tracks are this recording session he did to get out of a recording contract, so he just kind of makes up all the songs on the spot as he gets, like, drunker and meaner. Those are great. There’s not really a good time to release that stuff nowadays, I feel like, besides maybe a year after the record comes out or something. I guess it does, to an extent, buy us a little bit more time as far as writing and recording a new record to do that stuff.
Is there anything coming out soon that we should mention?
Nothing really worth announcing yet, although I’ve got a big stack of songs that I’m slowly introducing to the rest of the band, and we’re going to record a new record starting this year and next.
Do you think any new songs might make it onto the set list on Aug. 26?
Yeah, that’s the hope. I want to send a bunch of demos to my band, and then part of the idea for the next couple tours towards the end of the year is we’ll be working some of that stuff out on the road. Kind of taking an approach similar to our album The Bible 2. That’s what we did.
We had all the songs at our disposal, and then we would arrange them in the van on the way to the show. We bought these two crappy, tiny guitars that you can fit in the van, and we’d workshop stuff on the way to the show and then play around and jam at soundcheck. If we get anywhere, we have a new song to try out that night.
Would you say the inspiration for new songs comes more from a musical idea or a philosophical idea?
I would say kind of from a philosophical idea, but also, usually when something works out the best for me, it’s kind of in the form of a jingle. And by that, I mean the words and the melody kind of fit together all at once. Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two: words and melody.
I can write plenty of musical stuff, but it’ll take me a while to make up something to a pre-written melody.
Some reviews of Disposable Everything describe the songs as more direct and personal and less satirical or ironic than your earlier work. Does this feel true from your perspective?
Probably, although I don’t consider ourselves to be too much of an ironic band anyhow. Humorous, but not really ironic. But lately I’ve definitely placed an even greater importance on sincerity in art. I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s an underrated thing, one that people kind of go through waves of appreciating more or less. I think it’s on an upswing right now, though. I think people are kind of sick of irony.
Speaking of humor, it seems like when y’all started out, a lot of comedy was trying to satirize racism and bigotry and show how stupid it is. But Sarah Silverman, for example, said she later realized that racists didn’t realize she was making fun of them.
Sarah Silverman’s a great example of that. That reminds me of a song we have called “American Tune” that I kind of wrote as a Randy Newman-style satire song about white male privilege. And we would play it, and eventually it stopped being fun because even people that might be aware of the satirization would still get a little too excited about us playing it. A bunch of guys moshing to that song is not a good look.
Is the comedy in your music a byproduct of the songwriting or your personality, or is it something you intentionally try to do? Are you ever like, “Let’s punch this up?”
I like songs to be conversational, and I like for lyrics to really communicate, and a good way to do is through humor. And I like to make myself laugh. That’s the biggest joy of songwriting, the couple times when you do get to kind of tickle your own armpit and it works.
Are humor and sincerity hard to balance?
No. I don’t think so. I don’t think the two are necessarily related at all. I’d like for more sincere people to realize they can be funny, maybe.
What do you think the version of you that started this band in high school would think hearing Disposable Everything?
I think he’d be pretty excited about it because it sounds kind of like Neutral Milk Hotel. He’d be like, “Oh, cool. He finally did it. He made a band that sounds like Neutral Milk Hotel.” … At the risk of tattling on myself, I think it’s just such a deep early influence. It’s kind of our ideal, whether we realize it or not.
What do you think of Oklahoma?
I love Oklahoma. Tulsa and Oklahoma City are both kick-ass places we played a lot over the years. We played The Conservatory a gazillion times. We love Jim [Paddack] over at Size Records next door. I think both of these businesses might be ancient history at this point. In the band, we’re all big fans of Chat Pile. … Woody Guthrie is another kind of DNA-level influence on our band. Especially listening to Dust Bowl Ballads and listening to my guitar playing for sure. I do all those little pinkie weedle-deedles that he does.
Related events
AJJ
Tue., Aug. 26, 7-11 p.m.
Location: Resonant Head, 400 SW 25th St., Ste. A, Oklahoma City
This article appears in Best of OKC 2025.