Day Jobs - Javelin

L-R: Tom and George. We went out to dinner at Supercore (a cozy Japanese eatery in Williamsburg) but they convinced me that the best place to take their photo was inside this one-person bathroom stall.

Tom and George of electronic duo Javelin don’t really have day jobs anymore – which, trust me, is a damn good thing. Judging from what they’ve told me about their past jobs, George probably would have been charged with manslaughter by now while Tom would have drowned in sexual harassment lawsuits.

They’re one of the few lucky indie bands that makes music for a living full-time, but they weren’t always this professional. One of their first ‘musical’ collaborations together happened when they were eleven years old: a 20 minute-long recording of just… farts.

VICE: Hey Javelin! You guys use a lot of audiovisuals for your live performances. Do your past jobs have anything to do with that?
Tom: Well, I had a couple jobs that got me interested in making art – mostly manual labor stuff with x-acto knives. I hadn’t thought of it before, but yeah I think that did affect our live shows, especially with the whole boombox spray paint thing we got into. That came from my painting work.

But neither of you guys have day jobs currently, right?
Nope.

I’m aware one of you guys is a new daddy, though!
George: That would be me!

That must be one hell of a job.
Oh, that’s a total job, absolutely. It’s way more than anything.

How old is your baby?
Asha is almost eleven months old.

That’s a beautiful name. Has it been difficult being a new father?
I’m pretty used to the sleep deprivation at this point. Time management is a huge challenge for both me and my wife.

Did you have to put your work on hold because of her birth?
Tom: It affected our music a little bit.
George: Yeah, we had to take some time off from touring last year. It has also affected us in terms of reaffirming our need to hustle. We just have to grind a little harder.

Have you considered sampling her crying and using it for your music?
Oh, no, but I will get there! I plan to exploit her beyond anything she can possibly comprehend.

What did you guys do when you did have day jobs?
Tom: My friend Nick and I had a painting company called Green Painting. We got into house painting randomly and we took on jobs when we had no idea what we were doing but we got them because we underbid. I went on my first job without ever having painted before in my life.

Were there any consequences from your lack of experience?
Yes, we once painted the entire Joffrey Ballet and in the process we would sleep there, like two hours at a time, and continue painting. There was one night though, around 4 AM, when I was pushing Nick around on a dolly as he was spraying the ceiling. He fell off and almost shattered his knee. Luckily the floors were made for ballet dancers so there was a lot of give. I thought he was dead but he got back up and was completely fine. Somehow we got through all that stuff. We were stupid about it – we would spray without masks and then we’d wake up so fucked up the next day. We’d see paint on our eyelids and then realize we’re supposed to wear goggles.

Oh my goodness. I’m guessing you guys were high off paint?
Absolutely [laughs]! I was like “Painting’s a really hard job… I’m soooo tired at the end of the day.”

Does paint-high make you do anything retarded?
Yeah, we would get off work and buy cheap beers and drink them in a parking lot somewhere. We were just idiots. Fortunately, Nick has totally cleaned up his act now and is taking on serious, high-end projects. He’s a total pro.

He wears masks now?
Oh yeah. What about you, George?
George: I was a carpenter’s apprentice for a little while. I would do that during the day but at night I’d be holed up in my studio working on music. I would show up to work sleep-deprived and pre-occupied with music. I was doing a lot of manual work, so I was constantly worried I would injure my hands. I thought, ‘My hands are my life! I know I’m not a professional musician yet but…’
Tom: Some day!

You know, it makes so much sense that you guys are painter and carpenter.
George: I know!

This is a picture I took of them when they played NYU a few years ago.

What was the worst moment on that job?
We were framing out this walk-in closet as a part of a renovation and the electrician also showed up to install outlets. He was down on the floor and I was up on the ladder using a nail gun. This was the second time I had used the nail gun and I was feeling pretty confident…

Uh oh…
I was also not paying attention. I put in one nail and it ricocheted out of the board and went straight down and into the stud literally three inches above the electrician’s head. Whoosh!

Holy shit.
I wasn’t allowed to use the nail gun for a while but later that year we had to take off the roof of a house and add another story and then put the roof back on. There was a snowstorm coming so we had to work quickly. It was my job to seal down the house – which involved using the nail gun once again – and the way I was positioned, I was aiming it towards myself, under my arm.

That just sounds like the worst idea!
I mean, it just had to get done real fast. But then I slipped and the nail gun hit me right on my chest. It had a safety but my finger was on the trigger and it hit me right here [taps chest].
Tom: Jesus!
George: I quit pretty soon after that.

Did you get into a work accident?
No, just all these near-death experiences. I would do stupid things, like forgetting to strap down the equipment on the roof of the car. So my boss would drive away only to have everything slip off four blocks later.

Man, you were a major liability. Did you two ever cross paths with the house building and painting?
Tom: No, thankfully.

Thankfully is right! Imagine this guy with a nail gun and a bunch of people high on paint. That’s a dangerous equation.
George: It would have gotten ugly.

Did you guys have even worse jobs than the ones you just described?
Tom: Fresh out of college I worked in an office for Yo-Yo Ma’s non-profit organization. I had no idea how to interact with these people twice my age, and there was sexual tension between me and the secretary.

Sexual tension, eh?
Yeah, I was hyper aware of it. And one time I had to guard Yo-Yo Ma’s cello.

That’s so much pressure!
Yeah! You could’ve made a short film about me guarding it – I could have taken it out and played it, I could have danced around with it, but err… I didn’t.

Well, that was anticlimactic.
That was the most exciting part of the job though. Oh, I just remembered one more anecdote about painting. When you house paint, you cohabitate with people for however long the job is, so you get to observe the weird lives they lead. Some of them would come on to me sexually. There was a woman who wore a nightie everyday and she’d invite us into her bedroom all the time. She’d pat her mattress and be like “sit down here.”

“Us?” So you and your fellow painters?
Well sometimes it was me and Nick, sometimes just me. Nick and I would shoot glances at each other.

Was she a MILF at least?
Sort of – that was the debate.

Sounds like you have a lot of sexual tension with whoever you’re working with. Is there something between you and George?
[Laughs] We’re cousins, so no.
George: Right. That’s why – you know, because we’re cousins.

I think that says something about your work ethic, though.
Tom: Maybe…
George: Those paint fumes…
Tom: I’m easily preyed on by women!

I’m starting to doubt there was any sexual tension there at all.
George: Yeah, I think you’re just a perv.
Tom: OK guys, I totally imagined that she was in lingerie.
George: You’re an egomaniacal perv!
Tom: I guess that’s possible.

[Laughs] Anyway…
George: My worst job was when I worked as a bookbinder. It was a really interesting job and I was very excited about it, but my boss – well first off, he looked like one of the Super Mario brothers.

Which one?
Tom: The fat one or the tall one?
George: The short, fat one.

Mario.
Yeah, and he was like super, super miserable. All he did – everyday, all day – was talk shit about every employee he’s ever had. I never told him anything about my own life, EVER. He found out that I had a girlfriend at the time and he kept saying “I want to meet your girlfriend.” There was no way I was going to let him meet her. He came to my house one time to drop off something. She was upstairs and he heard her and was like, “Oh, is that her?” I was like, “No…” Finally the day I quit, she picked me up and he ran outside to check her out. It was so creepy – the way he looked at her. The trauma of that probably doesn’t come across well.

No, trust me. The whole time you were telling this story, I imagined Mario doing all these things, which is pretty terrifying.
Tom: So maybe he was Wario.
George: Yeah! He was a repressed Wario.

I’m glad those days are over for both of you guys. Are you just too busy touring and making music to have day jobs now?
Tom: We do a lot of licensing.
George: We make really bad music secretly for things that are on TV and the internet.

So like State Farm?
Yeah. Actually, I am working on a bunch of insurance ads right now.

Since you guys are cousins, did you ever work at the same job together when you were younger?
Not really. We grew up making tapes together – mostly comedy but some music stuff too.
George: There was a fart tape.
Tom: We had a legendary fart tape that was 20 minutes of just farts. There was a special tape we would take out anytime we had to fart. We’d run into the room and hit record and let it out. It was pretty legendary.

What! [Laughs] So it wasn’t made in one sitting.
George: No, no! It was a summer’s worth of eleven-year-old farts.

To be released on Javelin’s next album! Just kidding, but maybe? Consider it, guys.

@kristenyoonsoo

Previously - Eleven Pond