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If you click on the Bandcamp page for Jonny’s Day Out, the first thing you’ll see is someone in a bunny mask, cradling a real rabbit as tenderly as if it were a newborn. It’s a disconcerting and weirdly nostalgic image, a warped Madonna and child, and it might prepare listeners for something much gnarlier than what you’ll hear on the band’s three releases—something more like Mr. Bungle’s thrash-metal classic The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny than the tender ambient rock sketches that populate the group’s Bandcamp.
Jonny’s Day Out came out of a collaboration between singer-guitarist Avery Haines and multi-instrumentalist Eli Goldberg, who records ambient music at Ann Annie. The two made the album The House on the Hill together in 2021 and embarked on a small co-headlining tour.
“The tour itself was super fun, but it just wasn’t reflective of either of our music together, so it became a new band,” says Haines.
After adding drummer Will Dowden, bassist Blu Midyett, and trumpet and keyboard player Jude Abare, the duo leaned into a sound that combined Haines’ folk rock and Goldberg’s soundscapes. While some of their songs (like “I Missed the Bus, Man”) descend from the sound of The House on the Hill, others (like “Intro Credits”) are ambient reveries that will appeal to anyone who knows the name Kranky Records.
“I remember when Eli was first teaching us how to play ambient music, basically,” says Haines. “It’s so hard to go as slow as you need to be, to be as patient as it needs to be. And [Eli] had made us sit in silence for 15 minutes and just stare, and he was like, that’s what 15 minutes feels like.”
Their debut EP, Please excuse our mess, was recorded by Graham Jonson, the onetime lo-fi hip-hop beatmaker who’s recently blossomed into something of a pop auteur under the name quickly, quickly.
It was Jonson who owned the bunny mask that would become a trademark of their sound. The actual rabbit is Louie, owned by Haines’ mom, immortalized on the Please excuse our mess track “Louie’s Banquet.” The thematic connection was immediately obvious to the band.
“Louie became a symbol of Jonny’s Day Out,” Haines says, “and this insane, absurd costume was just sitting there the whole time we were recording. Full circle.”
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