Roll of the Dice: 10 questions with Josh Jurk of School Drugs

Annually since 2021, New Jersey’s School Drugs have been releasing a concept album, Funeral Arrangements, in four-parts. This past June saw the final installment, Disposition, making its way to our ears. TGEFM got in touch with vocalist Josh Jurk for a round of Roll of the Dice. We rolled a TEN.

Hello Mr. Jurk! It looks like our Headitor Jeff rolled a TEN, so we’re going to have some fun here. Question number one, and the obvious… School Drugs just celebrated a release of the fourth and final installment of the Funeral Arrangements 7″ project with Disposition. This was a giant production that spanned almost four years, yeah? Tell us everything.

We weren’t able to tour Modern Medicine (their 2019 LP) the way that we had planned to, due to the pandemic and all, the couple tours we had booked around the record had to be understandably canceled. Following that, we decided to spread our next album over four 7″s to wait out the lockdown. At that time we had no idea how long, or soon, we would be back to playing shows and fortunately the lockdown didn’t take four years. 

The amount of time between each release also gave us ample room to up our production on songs, craft better sounds, and frankly make some really cool shit to include with all of the physical releases. 

Assuming above you mentioned all of the cool collectors shit that you included with each 7″ release… Can we have a run-down of all of the stuff that arrived with each of the installments? From one huge collector nerd to another, do you have any huge, dream/bucket list, mail-order items you would add to these releases if there were no limitations?

Visitation– Custom Rx logo 45 adapter 
Absolution– Rosary beads in a hand stamped black paper envelope
Procession– Frankincense and myrrh incense sticks with a foldable incense holder
Disposition– Black mourning arm band with screen printed Rx logo

Limitation breeds creativity. My major limitation was keeping these items cheap enough that we could justify including them in each record without a price increase of any kind. We also took the financial burden of the extras on ourselves, as Indecision (Records) makes records, not trinkets and such. Keeping that in mind, I had to figure out what I could do myself, what needed to be done somewhere else, what I needed to learn about, and how many little envelopes I’d have to stamp. Example, you want black envelopes? Great. You want printed black envelopes? Too expensive. Now we think and research. Ok, let’s stamp them. Great. With what? Your choices are screen printing (too expensive and a pain in the ass on a tiny envelope), or pigment ink. The problem with pigment ink is that it needs to set with heat. So now it’s 4am and your using a shirt iron on hundreds of stamped envelopes. Each item had it’s own set of problems and took hours of research to develop and turn over for the final product. 

Everything included here is exactly what I wanted. Nothing was thought of and deemed too much or too expensive. The only idea I sort of shelved was a stained glass window box for all 4 records to come in. Even that I wouldn’t say is off the table though. Ultimately, the collected edition came as I had always envisioned, a black poly bag to homage the Superman #75 memorial set. Everyone over the age of 40 knows what I’m talking about. 

The Funeral Arrangements concept was essentially birthed at a time that the world had all but shut down, as the band is back in rotation of regular shows and even European tours, how were the processes of moving these songs to the stage?

Certain parts of songs were done with instruments that would require more people than we can feasibly fit in a band or ask to travel all over the place to play a couple songs. In those instances we figured out how to utilize two guitars to fill in the gaps. For other songs you wind up jamming a ton a words into a very short amount of time, and don’t realize until it’s 900 degress in a squat in Slovenia that you need to sing all those words and essentially run a marathon at the same time. We’ve made it work thus far. 

Your band happens to be graced with the presence of a pretty legendary drummer/engineer in Chris Pierce, can you elaborate a bit on your relationship with him and his many roles in the Drugs?

Chris Pierce: Driver, Drummer, other word that starts with a “D” (NOT THAT WORD). He’s the most New Jersey man from Maine. The east coast king of the console. You’ve seen him in Doc Hopper, Sinkhole, Deadguy, Groucho Marxists, Nervous Triggers, The Measure, and more. 

Chris drives 98% of the time and drums in School Drugs 99% of the time. Chris mixes and records 100% of all our releases. He’ll smoke 25% of the joint. 

Chris cooks breakfast in the morning if we’re staying somewhere that has amenities for such luxuries. Chris likes his coffee with cream and sugar. Chris enjoys bizarre energy drinks from sketchy gas stations. Chris plays either the calmest or most unlistenable music you’ve ever heard while in the van. Chris types on his phone real weird. Chris is the best drummer we could ever ask for. Chris is a great guitar player. Chris has 900 stories about the band Spazz. Chris needs that record on every color you have. 

I wanted to take a moment to talk about Indecision Records, who, as far as I can tell, has been happily supporting the School Drugs release installments into their mighty discography. What do you have to say about the label?

Last summer we went out to California to play the Indecision 30 Fest. Everyone that we know had described this familial thing with the label that we never thought of as bullshit, but maybe exaggerated? After going out there and really meeting the west coast bands new and old we can proudly say it was neither lies nor hyperbole. We were treated to some of the greatest people we’ve met thus far in our time as a band. I recall telling a friend from the east coast that was at the fest “Dude you really weren’t kidding about the Indecision family thing” he simply responded “the best people you’ll ever meet.” Our buddy Nate from label mates Skullcrack let us stay at his house and use his van/car. All of the bands on the show we played the next day at Che Cafe moved their set times to give us the optimal spot. Undertow and Unbroken insisted we take part of their cut of the door. Dave who runs the label not only does everything with the records and all but flew us out and put us up somewhere to stay. All of these people and many more have been involved with Indecision in some way for 30 years. Indecision 30 was less of a fest and far more of a family reunion. We couldn’t be happier to be here. 

Staying on the subject of notoriety, I wanted to really open this up for you to shout-out some fellow bands or artists that impress you and deserve a mention that we may not know about otherwise.

The first ones that come to mind are Omnigone from California, Skullcrack also from California, Wet Specimens from New York state, Meth Rats from Baltimore, and Machinist! from Georgia. These are all bands that we talk to on a regular basis and are champions of their respective genres. Extra special shout out to Omnigone who may have a little something special on their latest record “Feral” for anyone that bought an LP from School Drugs in 2019. 

I have the privilege of knowing that you are quite the enthusiast of “Weird Al” Yankovic… Let’s get, like, a top-three songs of his. Dig deep.

1. “Everything You Know is Wrong”
2. “Frank’s 2,000 Inch TV”
3. “Albuquerque” 
Gotta do one more… 4. “Your Horoscope For Today”

One of the most appealing things about School Drugs is the loyalty and authenticity to 80’s hardcore, especially on the recording-side. The band’s entire catalogue mirrors this nod to the analog technology and stacked reverb that really secures that timelessness. What are your thoughts?

Our first 7″ Relative Suffering and our first LP Modern Medicine were both recorded analog, straight to tape. I’m really not a huge audiophile type guy so I mostly only see the downsides of recording that way. I’m just as happy to record digital these days.

As far as reverb and such, that’s just a particular element of the bands from that era that I really enjoy. 

I enjoyed your cover of NOFX’s cover of a Rancid tune, in lieu of the band’s retirement from touring, what do you have to say about the senior citizen punk rock music community? Do you plan on hitting the stage at the ripe ages of Fat Mike or Jack Grisham, or is there an age limit on punk and hardcore?

The age limit is when it stops being fun or fun to see. If you can still get out and play and not completely suck, you should get out and play. I’ve seen Jack and Fat Mike both be nothing but stellar every single time. My only real grievances stem from a lack of understanding of current punk youth by an older generation. If a band from back in the day can’t get behind kids being trans or queer or any social issues like that they need be pulled aside and explained “This is punk. This is rebellion. This is everything you used to be about.” In particular, any of those “right wing is the new punk” idiots can fuck off the nearest cliff.

If I’m able to still do this when I’m Jack Grisham’s age, I’ll see you at the reunion. 

As rad and monumental as Funeral Arrangements has been, how stoked are you to get back into writing without the restrictions that follow the loyalty of such an ambitious concept project? Did the hyper-specific subject matter come easily, or do you have a notebook full of other topics or social issues ready for School?

We’ve got plenty of stuff that didn’t fit with the theming or general vibe of Funeral Arrangements. A few were actively being worked on in between the shorter writing sessions for these four parts. I’m thinking there’ll be a few splits in the near future with some bands mentioned earlier in this conversation. In the mean time, I’m gonna go chill, have a zero soda and stamp some more envelopes. 

Thanks for your time my dude. Cheers!

Thank you!

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Find School Drugs music and more at their Bandcamp or Spotify pages.

Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.