| Line Up |
Membres actuels
Jimmy Ratchitt, vocals/guitar
Athena, drums
Dave Whiston, lead guitar
Rev Jones, bass
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| En deux (ou trois) mots |
Vocalist/Guitarist/Drummer Jimmy Ratchitt has been a songwriter all his life. In 1994, in grunge-infested Los Angeles, he just couldn’t find anybody in town to share his singular vision. “It was like a ghost town back when it came to metal,” he remembers.
Then he met drummer Athena and his whole world changed. “You have got to check out this guitarist,” she crowed. Enter Dave Whiston. His hotshot runs were almost exactly what Ratchitt was hearing in his head. After adding bassist Rev Jones, with Athena behind the big kit and Jimmy switching to guitar, they started writing and recording as Krunk.
Fast-forward a few years and Jimmy gets a call from the Scorpions. “I started playing drums with the Scorpions in ’96. By ’98, Krunk, in between Scorpions tours, had played hundreds of gigs around Southern California. Scorpions was kinda like the ultimate day job. Krunk’s debut finally came out in America and Japan in 2000. We sold some, but music always evolves and changes. By then, nobody was into grunge anymore. Even punk was on its way out. Krunk was sorta Cheap Trick-meets-Green Day-on-a-bad-day. So I’m singin’ and playin’ guitar with Krunk in Japan, Germany, the Western U.S. In 2001, I had to take a break. Worked only with Scorpions for the next three years.”
But you can’t keep a good headbanger down and in early ’95, Ratchett was kickin’ out the jams again in the studio punk & roller style. “We just let the album sit but hell, we figured if we were really gonna do this, let’s just go for it and do it properly. The CD was finished in the summer of ’05. I had my German dude shop it around and, all of a sudden, here comes like three or four labels. I swear, ’98, ’99, ’00, we hit every label there was…and nothin’. The problem was, back then, the music business was goin’ through such turmoil and downsizing, you couldn’t get arrested. I’d call my dude at Hollywood Records and he’d go, “we’re workin’ on it.” I’d call him a week later and be told he wasn’t with the company anymore. That’s not an excuse, that’s just what goes on.
“So here we are in ’05 with four, five different labels knockin’ on our door,” he continues. “We first started talkin’ with Escapi Music early in ’06. They seemed to understand best what we were all about. But it’s Kottak now, not Krunk. Hell, Krunk’s too mainstream nowadays anyways. There’s Krunk skateboards and Krunk this and Krunk that. There’s Little John & His Krunk Buddies down in Atlanta. It’s too generic for us now. So it’s Kottak, man. But no one in the band is named Kottak. Our drummer, Athena, has a brother named Tommy Lee who plays in a different band. I’m still singing and playing guitar and I still suck but I look great. And I can sing my ass off.
“If I had to describe us,” he continues, “I’d use a phrase going around London these days called punk’n’roll. So I’m a punk’n’roller, dude.”
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