Rocks! Article & photos by Rachel Rocks
Damian Fanella
“Simple, sweet and to the point, Jughead Rocks!”
Mark Winieski 16
Simple, sweet and to the point, Jughead Rocks! I’ve seen a lot of bands in the past 9 years. Some are really great, some aren’t quite my style, and some just nail it on the head with stage presence, song choice, presentation, etc., and that is Jughead. I had to ask myself where did these guys come from? Jughead started back in 2010 as an alternative, modern rock band. They’ve undergone some member changes, but they finally have a great, solid line-up again and they are hitting the area stages as hard as they possibly can. The original members, lead singer, Mike Bonilla, Mark Winieski on guitar, and Brad Fisher on bass, have all known each other since their young school days. They’ve played in lots of bands together, but once Mike gave himself a birthday gift and got some vocal lessons from the master, Steve Whiteman, he decided it was time to get serious. After throwing around thousands of names, Brad looked at Mike and called him by his old school yard name, “Jughead”, and the name just stuck. They all said, “that’s it!” (If you can remember back to the days of the Archie comic, and you look closely at Mike, he does look a lot like “Jughead” himself.) They were playing pretty steadily, but in 2014 they took some time to regroup and found their final two members, Damian Fanella, on bass, who works with Brad, and Steve Hallock on drums, who responded to a Craigslist ad, and now they are ready to rock! Jughead is NOT a quiet, background dinner band. You can’t ignore them! They are Rock straight from the start. Their energy and their sound is like no other. It’s not that it’s overbearingly loud, it’s just when you have five guys on one stage, it tends to be a little noisy. Mike doesn’t hold back on vocals, he sings his heart out, and there is no doubt that you are going to hear every note. They play a lot of everyone’s favorite alternate rock songs from great bands like U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Imagine Dragons, Collective Soul, etc. A quirky song they do their own special way is “Love Me Dead” by Ludo. If you’ve never heard it you can check it out on their Reverbnation.com/jugheadband or Facebook.com/jugheadrocks pages, they have some recorded songs and also some videos so you can see what you’ve been missing! Thanks to their newest and youngest member, Damian you can now follow JugHeadBand on Twitter and Instagram too. They are all thrilled to be in a cover band and realize that a cover band is where it’s at for them! They just love coming up with new songs to learn and perform that makes people get up, get sweaty, dance, and have a good time! They work hard at making sure everyone knows the song, or at least enjoys hearing the song. They are constantly changing their set list, deleting songs and adding new ones. Every crowd is different and they try to be as flexible as possible to keep everyone happy and entertained. When I saw Jughead at Double K, I was honestly surprised by how good these guys are! All the staff and regular Double K crowd I talked to gave these guys a huge thumbs up. I know Mike has been calling clubs all the time trying to
PENNSYLVANIA MUSICIAN MAGAZINE
July, 2015