New Yorkers are no strangers to cold February nights in the city. However a warm yet comforting presence could be found in Brooklyn’s The Sultan Room, with sounds from Sunset Park’s very own juno roome. Squeezed inside a stairwell, Rice & Spice had the opportunity to speak with Juno, alongside his videographer and personal friend Rickey Kim, about new songs, touring, and the overall artistry behind Juno.
What are you most looking forward to tonight?
What am I most looking forward to tonight? Well this is the first time we’ve sold out a show, so I’m really excited about that. Although it does sound like we oversold, so logistically it might be tricky. Hopefully everyone fits and is a good sport.
What song are you most excited to perform?
I just wrote a song about the Rock, Dwayne Johnson. I’m excited to play that and it’s gonna be my next song that comes out.
What’s your favorite part about performing in live shows?
Definitely the instant connection. I usually work alone at home in front of my computer, but people don’t get to hear that for a long time. That’s also just the music aspect, but if I play music in front of an audience and tell stories it feels really fun to connect in the moment.
Do you hope to tour sometime in the near future?
Yeah! I would love to tour later this year, I don’t know how likely it is since I’m a smaller artist. It makes sense to do bigger local shows, like this one. We sold out and I’d like to move up incrementally the rest of 2023. In August I’m gonna do a 350 capacity show, which is a little larger than the current show. I would love to tour, but I wanna do it when it makes sense.
Is there any dream artist you’d like to open for?
Yeah so many! Moses Sumsey is really great, Thom [Yorke] is also really cool. A bigger name would be Bon Iver always. There are a ton of really good artists with a similar vibe and if any of them want me to tag along, hit me up!
Your posts often blow up because of your humor and talking in-between songs. Has engaging with your audience through comedy and social media interactions been something that you’ve done naturally or something you had to be intentional about and make an effort?
That’s a really good question. When I play I’ve been told that I retreat into my own world. There are musicians who make eye contact when they sing; I can’t do that, it just feels weird. So whenever I play music I kind of alienate the audience. When the talking between songs came out, it became a way for me to connect with the audience more and invite them in. I’m not completely alienating everybody the whole time, there’s a little introspective moment in the song and I can talk with them after. I guess I got better and better doing stand up bits where it became a fun way to introduce songs. Now I write songs that become a companion piece to the story. With The Rock, the song doesn’t work without the story, and the story doesn’t make sense without the song. So now the story’s become an important part of what I do and has become complementary to my music.
You released “Just Like Before” last year which is in Korean and English. Do you plan to release more songs with Korean? How do you think writing songs with Korean lyrics helps you be in touch with your heritage and identity?
Not at the moment, it’s just not in the works currently. It was really hard because I’m really bad at it. I moved to the US when I was 10 so I had only a 10-year-old level of Korean. So when I was writing I would send drafts to my mom and she’d be like “This makes no sense.”
I’d also send the lyrics to a friend in Korea and she’d help me as well. “Just Like Before” felt like it was the perfect song to write in Korean because Korean is very monosyllabic, and that song felt that way. I don’t think I could’ve written English to that melody. It was one of the things I hated about learning English when I first came to the US. It didn’t make any sense, the English pronunciation. I loved how organized the Korean language was. So in that way I connected back to my heritage.
Your song “capitol” from 2 years ago was a commentary on the political state of America. Do you plan to write songs inspired by political and social issues in the future?
This is so funny because this is the first time someone is interviewing me about my work. It was an interesting song to write, people didn’t like it though. Like it gets the least amount of streams.
You’re saying something important then!
I’m really proud of that song lyrically and musically. That just felt like the right thing to write at the time, and maybe I’ll write something that’s political in the future. One of the next songs I’m gonna put out is about generational mortality, it’s whatever I’m feeling in the moment that I wanna write. It was also a crazy time, like June 2020.
In January you released the lyric video for Thursday Mornings (after ur therapy). What’s your process for making music videos, and do you have any hopes for future video concepts?
That’s a really interesting one because that’s all Ricky! It was the first time I had no hands in one of my music videos, because I always have something to do with it. I’m really particular, but he sent it to me and I was like “this looks great” and that was pretty much it.
Ricky, would you like to take over for this question?
Ricky: Yeah! When listening to songs, you wanna read along since you engage with the artist. All the footage that I used was from when we first met on my camcorder, so it made it look more special.
Juno: I felt like it fit so well, because the song is about me walking around killing time, which is what me and Ricky did.
Your songs and aesthetic typically are described to be soft, nostalgic, dreamy. Do you plan to stick with this style or do you plan to experiment more with genre, aesthetic, etc. in the future?
I have certain songs I want to put out as I’ve envisioned them for the next couple of years. But after I’ve gotten them out I wanna expand more and collaborate with whoever is cool and smart at the time. If I could do EDM or whatever thing I feel would be really cool.
Going off of that, was this always the kind of music you always created or has it evolved over time?
In my mind, this is what I feel like I’ve always created. But when I go back and listen to my songs from high school it’s really different. A little bit of punk and emo, sometimes a bit folksy. Objectively no, but in my mind, yeah.
Do you have any projects or events you’re planning right now? Could you give us the scoop?
I’m really excited about the next song which is about The Rock. I think it’s a culmination of what I’ve learned as a producer/writer. People will connect with it and there’s a funny story as well. Hopefully it will be one of the milestones of my career, so I’m really excited about this one.
