Jake Journeys Through Time and Google Hangouts to Reach Wizard Prison

Getting in touch with Wizard Prison wasn’t easy. Well, not entirely. The original plan was that I’d meet them all, together, over a video chat during one of their practices. Among some (completely understandable) fears, that practice was canceled, leaving the four of us to attempt the gauntlet of a multi-person Google Hangout. Why is keeping in touch so difficult in a time when it is also so necessary?

For the uninitiated, I’d describe the band’s sound as a raging blast from the past that evokes the spirit of Ozy and Lemmy and probably Satan, if you listen to it under a gibbous moon. They’re a power pack of face-melting, jammed-out goodness that gives us an oh-so-missed catharsis in this time of somber, jangly, folk-alt. In other words, Wizard Prison knows how to let the lead out. We finally were able to figure out the app, and I got all three of them (guitarist, Greg Puentes; bassist, Jesse Macicak; and drummer, John Grana).                                                                                                                                     

Jake: Lemme just ask you guys straight up, how’re you doing?

Greg: I’m doin’ good. Just chilling. Same old shit, just at my house, y’know, more.

John: I’m just about the same, just, I don’t know. It's weird having all this time. It’s kinda trippy. I’m used to being busier but now it’s like, shit, I gotta, I dunno just deal with myself more, which is, in and of itself, interesting in this time.

Jake: Is that good or bad?

John: A little of both. How about you, Jesse?

Jesse: I dunno, man, I’m just out here.

Jake: Alright, well let’s dive into the band. Where’d you guys get the name? I’m trying to settle a bet. I bet my friend that you were all really stoned, talking about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. My friend bet me that I was an idiot. Which one of us is right?

Jesse: I think one of you is at least half right.

Greg: No, it has nothing to do with Harry Potter, and we did think about that in the conception of the name, originally. But I tell this story way too much, somebody else do it. I’ll sanity check.

John: Nah, I think you got it, Greg. You’re the keeper of the story.

Jesse: Honestly, you get pissed every time we tell it!

Greg: Alright, so, a few years ago, back in like 2015, we set up a big camping festival in memoriam of our friend, Alex, who had passed away. It was just 3 days of all of our homies’ bands. We set up a bunch of camping plots, and people came out. On one of those days we were playing Wizard Staffs, which is a game where you take every beer you drink and you tape it onto the last one, until you have a staff.

Jake: Oh, I’m familiar.

Greg: So we arranged them all in a circle at one point, I guess, when we were bored of that, and I said, “Alright, we're building the bars for the Wizard Prison.” Of course, somebody, who knows who, was like, “That should be a band name.” We were all there and we looked at each other and said, “Hey let’s make this a thing in like 3 years.” So we sat on that for a little bit. 

Jake: So how have you guys been trying to stay engaged with people who want to listen to your music while you can’t go out and perform?

Greg: To be completely honest, we’ve kind of taken the time to back off a little bit, to write more, and to see what we do, individually. I know at some point this week, I’m gonna try to do a pretty big overhaul of our social media presence. It’s one of those things nobody wants to do, but it’s a matter of just sucking it up and typing a bunch of shit and maybe sounding like a dumbass. 

John: Yeah, that’s our weakest point right now. We need some content.

Jake: What kind of content are you thinking about making?

John: I’ve recently compiled all of our jam clips, live-video clips, posters, art. And it’s cool to see all of that in one place finally. All the footage of us recording the EP has never been posted, we’ve just never posted anything about that really. And there’s really great footage in there. There’s Greg doing the actual solo you hear on (The Worst Pharmacist on Mars) in one take. He was just fuckin’ feeling it. The dude recording us was like, I dunno, man, and Greg was like, nah I’m feeling this, I’m goin’ in, and he did and I have the video of it.

Greg: But the thing is that Social media is not as fun as playing.

Jake: How about for your individual creative processes, do you feel like isolation has given you any good ideas?

Jesse: Yeah, I’ve been writing some shit, but mostly it’s punk. It wouldn’t go with this project, necessarily. When it’s just me and a guitar, I tend to write more punk rock.

John: Honestly, I’ve felt stifled by the whole thing. It’s kind of hard to get into it. With everything going on I just can’t even get into that creative and productive headspace. I still make an effort to do it every day, but it’s weird.

Greg: I’ve been blowing up Jesse and John about songs and workshopping, but that’s what I usually do. I bullshit, I listen to music and I play guitar. But I have had time to get into new influences I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Jake: Tell me about those.

Greg: A big one is Rainbow, which is Ritchie Blackmore and Dio. What it comes down to is that I’m always trying to do something else, trying to find a different approach. And I know these two dudes (Jesse and John) are gonna rip it when we come back to practice together. When we’re playing a lot of shows, consistently, we all have less time to approach music creatively. I think, once we come back together, Wizard Prison could have a totally new sound.

John: I agree with that, completely.  I’m not even sure what it’s going to sound like after this.

Jake: So what have your influences been thus far, before that possible change?

Jesse: Clutch.

Greg: Yeah, I think Clutch goes across the board.

John: Yeah, everything off their self-titled, but honestly I feel like we each kind of bring our own element to the band.

Jesse: John is classic rock. Very classic. Greg’s got the metal and I’m the punk.

John: Exactly, if this were an RPG we’d be a very well-rounded party.

Greg: It’s definitely a combination of all of our influences.

Jake: I don’t mean to go negative, but what’s y’all’s biggest disappointment so far? What musical itch haven’t you been able to quite scratch?

John: I think we just want a little more control, especially in the recordings.

Greg: Yeah, like I want to be able to do some more weird shit. Quirky ideas with mic placements, or other sorts of things. We’re not really at the point where we can do that in the studio, yet.

Jesse: I think a lot of that just comes from recording ourselves, right now. And this is a good time to do that, if we can.

John: I think we’d all like another crack at the EP even. Just a totally unadulterated Wizard Prison.

Jake: So what’s next for you guys?

John: I think, coming out of this, we want to do another EP, minimum.

Greg: We all just want to record, we don’t even know what we’re going to record yet. The songs that aren’t on the original EP first, but we’ve been sitting on a lot of new material.

~~~

That’s good news to me.

Written by Jake Webber for Concept Animals.

Check out Wizard Prison’s EP at https://wizard-prison.bandcamp.com/, follow them on Instagram @wizardprison, and go on and let the lead out.