Jonathan Toth From Hoth: Interview with a Prin alum turned fulltime rapper
| by Kenji Yoshinobu Music Columnist |
For a decade, Prin alum and Saint Louis hip-hop artist Jonathan Getzschman has been making music under a variety of monikers – particularly one Jonathan Toth From Hoth. After founding his record label, the Frozen Food Section, in 1999, the Omaha, Nebraska native gathered local hip-hop acts and began steadily producing and releasing records. His most recent work, Sick Boys, is an album dedicated to skateboarding culture, which he collaborated on with St. Louis’ DJ Crucial, another fixture of the area’s flourishing music scene. Over the phone, Getzschman and I discussed his influences, his latest album, and why making music makes him cry with delight.
Principia Pilot: When did you first start making music?
Jon Getzschman: I started singing in fourth grade, doing opera. I also did Shakespeare with my mom in local Omaha productions. From there it evolved to musicals – The Sound of Music, Oliver – as a fifth grader. Then we went on a Christmas Carol musical tour of the West Coast through the Nebraska Theater Arts program. My mom took me, Dave and Rob – my younger brothers – and we were on the road for, like, two or three months.
PP: What got you into making rap music?
JG: It was 1987 and I started listening to the Beastie Boys. I ended up transcribing “Paul Revere” because I was so impressed by the lyrics – how they flowed together and the storytelling aspect. That was the first rap I ever memorized. Through 1990-91, I started hearing Cypress Hill. When I heard “Insane In The Membrane,” I decided I was interested in writing raps. I’d done poetry and I’d done music, but rap was really undiscovered country in terms of what I could create. I didn’t feel comfortable enough as a white kid to be rapping. Cypress Hill were Latino and Italian and could pull it off. I still felt uncomfortable, but I thought, what if I ghostwrite raps? So I started writing down raps.
During my sophomore year at Prin I met some St. Louis rappers. They taught me how to freestyle, or rap off the top of your head without prepared lines. Once I realized I could do it, I was amazed that I had the capability of rhyming impromptu like they were doing it – albeit not as hip as them. From then on it was all about developing my own styles. All I really did was freestyle, but I didn’t do much recording. It was unfortunate because when you’re free-styling and you have great lines, only the people you’re with are going to hear it. I eventually got a beat machine in ’98 and got tutored by DJ Crucial, but for about two years I just stared at it.
It was really the year 2000 when things started to get moving. For me, it was my choice to be led by divine inspiration. What resulted was a year of intense creativity and conceptualism of my first album, Brainwashing. That was really my opus of what I thought music was – how it should be listened to and created. It was when I realized I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.
I don’t consider myself an emotional person, but the times when I was making beats and they were coming together, I remember being so astonished at how amazing it would sound that I would cry at the beauty of it and that God was giving this amazing happening all under my fingers. Whether you want to call it ego, pride, or being swept up in the moment – I woke up for months just making music and crying, like, “This is so amazing!” [Music] for me has become a lifelong adventure of seeking critical moments in sound, taking those moments with so much gratitude, and combining them with my own sense being and awareness.
PP: When did you decide to found your record label, the Frozen Food Section?
JG: In 1999, I discovered that any spending of money on music was a tax write-off, so long as I was making music a business instead of a hobby. So that year was the turning-point of taking my music from a hobby toward the direction of a legitimate business. I remember a conversation I had with my dad at the time: I was sitting on the fence in regards to rapping. I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, but was aware of the facts that musicians don’t make much money and so far, white rappers don’t garner much attention. I asked Dad if I should follow my dream or stay practical and focus on making money.
“Will staying practical make you happy?” he asked.
“Not at all, Dad,” I said, “but what if I fail at being a musician?”
“It’s impossible to fail,” he said, “because no matter what path you choose, regardless if it’s wrong for you, it will inevitably lead you to your perfect place, and that is God’s law, so there’s no need to worry – ever.”
Thanks, Dad. The rest is history.
PP: What are the challenges to marketing yourself as an artist?
JG: Like most artists, translating music into money is a whole different universe. Some artists are very business-like. I have the hardest time trying to jump out of the creative mode and get to the business mode. For me, life is a lot more fun when you’re always in the creative side of things. On the performance side of things, famous people who have focused on their work and become masters at their craft inspire me. For the master artist, every day of his life is his best show. I love that idea of, whether you have a happy day or a depressing day, you made something. You took that day and something with that emotion. I really work with that idea in prayer with my work and performances. It helps me figure out the other stuff in terms of marketing.
PP: How did your education at Principia influence your musical career?
JG: I double-majored in mass comm [mass communication] and history. I did radio with Rick Dearborn, and I recorded my first song at Principia using the programs they had. Also, my senior year I took historiography and I wrote a 55-page paper on the history of hip-hop for my capstone. It helped me gain a context of hip-hop music.
PP: Why have you decided to remain in St. Louis?
JG: Mainly because my family is here, but also because I can’t stand the fast-paced nature of some of the bigger cities. I love New York and Los Angeles. They are nice places to visit, but it is hard for me to cultivate ideas. It really is a place where you can borrow ideas and amalgamate them to make something different. On the coasts especially you have different music scenes and it can be very polarizing for creativity.
PP: Why write an album about skateboarding?
JG: [DJ] Crucial and I have been skating for 22 years each, and, when you become a skater, it’s usually because you’ve found something deeper than Day-Glo colors or a rebel lifestyle or hitching rides from cars like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. In our case, we really love skateboarding to the point that it made sense to create an album based on its history, culture, specific anecdotes, and how it makes us feel to be skaters. It also helps that skating is at its height of popularity … creating more opportunities for licensing, videos and/or distribution.
PP: How long did this album take to write and record?
JG: We began perusing our skate vids from the last 20 years to find samples of interest. Over the whole of 2007 we kept collecting pieces that sounded right for the album, and made beats out of them or used quotes to enhance the subject matter. By the beginning of 2008, after going back and forth from the Cooler [the Frozen Food Section’s former HQ and recording studio] to DJ Crucial’s house exchanging ideas, the album was basically what it is now, so it was about a full year in the making.
For samples of Sick Boys and Getzschman’s other music, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRvdStu4usk
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRvdStu4usk
and
Copies of Sick Boys are available at the Bookstore for a limited time.
REPRINTED FROM:
http://principiapilot.org/2009/10/30/jonathan-toth-from-hoth-interview-with-a-prin-alum-turned-fulltime-rapper/
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