Skarred For Life

For close to a decade, Johnny 'Christmas' Christianson has been the trumpet troublemaker in Reel Big Fish. But before he jumped on board with the Californian ska legends in 2004, the 38-year-old was shining towards a different musical path entirely.

“I was going to university when this band was really blowing up in the late '90s,” remembers Christmas, “but I was studying to become the next Wynton Marsalis, I wanted to play jazz. And so that was really my focus. I knew Reel Big Fish, but I was so buried in music school that it was kind of oblivious to me, aside from going and watching our bass player, Derek Gibbs, watching his band Jeffries Fan Club play. I went away to school [then would] come home and go and watch Derek's gigs, so that was really my introduction to ska bands, Jeffries Fan Club.”

As fate would have it, jazz fancier Christmas would end up scoring his position in Reel Big Fish through Gibbs, a long-time friend who he first met aged 13 when they held together the brass section in their high school marching band. Gibbs eventually joined Reel Big Fish also in 2007, and it's those strong core relationships, built around sole founding member Aaron Barrett, that have helped maintained the sextet's worldwide popularity long after the third wave of ska was over. However, this made it even tougher when Dan Regan announced he was recently leaving the group after 19 years of trombone service to focus on his young family.

“Oh man,” Christmas sighs, “the last show was at Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare, and we had Dan over at my house, we had a little party with the band and the crew, and it was a sad farewell, it finally sunk in that he's not going to be here hanging out and playing trombone and saying silly shit. And just being a real professional. We're really lucky to have such a professional crew and such a professional bunch of performers in the band who are really good at this, not only making music but being on the road, everybody is really, really great, and to see somebody who's like that [leave], who really takes pride in what he does, it hurts.”

Currently touring America with Five Iron Frenzy before heading to Australia for Warped Tour, Reel Big Fish didn't have a great deal of time to mourn the loss, so Billy Kottage from Boston's Big D & The Kids Table stepped into Regan's former role after sporadically filling in for him during the past 12 months. Such a quick turnaround was a necessity for the band though, who even after two decades still continue to tour solidly for eight months of the year, every year.

“How lucky are we man?” Christmas gushes. “Making it in the music business, it's almost like being hit by lightning, and we are so lucky we have such a great group of fans. And it's not like a set of fans that are aging with us – there are people like that – but our fan base is constantly regenerating. We're like one of those bands that the older brother gives our CDs to their younger brother or sister and it just keeps getting handed down like this, so there's all these new people every time we play a show. I can't stress enough how lucky we are.”

To keep those ardent supporters entertained, Reel Big Fish are currently hard at work on a follow-up to 2012's Candy Coated Fury. “We're writing songs as you and I speak,” Christmas says, “they are percolating in our very small brains.” But unfortunately, Aussie fans heading to Warped will have to wait a little longer to get their skank on to the new stuff.

“Aaron won't play any songs before [they've] been released on a record, which I kinda understand because people want to sing along with our music,” says Christmas, “and after releasing Candy Coated Fury, that record was one of the fastest accepted by our fans. As soon as it got released, as soon as we started to play those songs, people were singing them in the front row – it was really special. So hopefully we can have another release like that, that gets taken up by everybody and really loved. So we will do our best to write only hit songs.”

Christmas assures us, however, that the band will make their upcoming performances count. All that he asks from us is that we move, sing, drink and bring dessert . “Oh, pavlova is one of my favourite things,” he smiles. “And you guys can drink! Oh, you guys are a challenge, [but] we accept that challenge and we will drink right along with you.”