POWER GAMES

Danko Jones is, by his own admission, a rock’n’roll lifer. Hooked on Kiss when he was six years old, and having expanded his musical repertoire ever since, he’s spent the better part of a quarter-century touring the world with the band that bears his name, playing alongside Beck, Guns N’ Roses, Motörhead, Nickelback and others.

But like just about every other musician, Jones’s plans for the future were derailed when covid-19 hit in March 2020. With no live work on the horizon and no plans to make a new record (at first, anyway), he found himself with an abundance of time to devote to his successful podcast series, or maybe flexing his love for rock in columns for publications such as The Huffington Post or the Toronto Star. At least that was the plan.

“I have to be honest, I haven’t done shit!” he admits frankly. “I’ve been living in anxiety hell.”

It’s difficult to imagine the man behind records like and doing absolutely nothing for the better part of a year. Like many of us, however, Jones spent much of the pandemic in a doom-overloaded fugue state. Podcast on pause, unable to muster