Danko Jones Has No Plan B

With Leo Rising on the horizon, the hard-rock lifer talks work, consistency, and why excitement has nothing to do with getting the job done.

By Sebastian Buzzalino

Published on November 19, 2025

Put in the hard work, trust your ears and the rest will follow. There’s no lightning strike of inspiration coming to save you, there’s no time to wait for the perfect riff to arrive fully formed, ready to redefine rock and roll; landlords don’t care what you do for a living, the capitalist wheel keeps on grinding and the fucking rent is due, man. Everyone’s gotta pay their rent, even if you’ve been fronting Canada’s hard rockin’ Danko Jones for the better part of three decades.

“The rent. Gotta pay the rent,” starts Danko Jones, doing his press rounds ahead of his band’s 12th album release, Leo Rising, out November 21 on Sonic Unyon. “That’s pretty much it. When you do something for 30 years, and that’s all you can do, that’s it: there was no plan B to start with and any job skills we had 30 years ago have fallen by the wayside.”

Jones is quick to follow this otherwise cynical sentiment with the admission that “this is a great job and we’re very thankful, grateful that we get to do this. But it’s still a job.”

Since 1996, Danko Jones have toured their hard-workin’ hard rock across the world. It’s no nonsense, no frills, heavy on the anthems and that imagined working class consciousness of an honest day’s work, a crisp cool one afterwards to relax, that working-nine-to-five-working-for-the-weekend dignity. Danko Jones have carved out a portion of the music industry for themselves, have developed their audiences across North America and Europe, and seem comfortable with their place in the grand scheme of things. They’re not operating under any illusions and having the energy to be a victim of delusions of grandeur is an ingenuous man’s game.

“What always gets thrown at you in these kinds of interviews is like: ‘So, are you guys still excited to do it?’ As if there’s no excitement, it’s not worth doing.

“No, we do this. We still do this. The only way to get art done — and I hate using that word: ‘art’ — is to put in the hard work. And hard work is not always fun and games.”

Jones is steadfast and measured. As he tells me, he’s not here to pose. Consistency is the only true path to success and consistently putting in the hard work is the foundation on which Danko Jones’ career has been built. Consistency is why they’re able to write, record, tour an album every two years, why they’re able to pay their rent at the top of the month, how they’re still alive and kicking after a lifetime in an industry that looks nothing today like when they started. It’s a meat-and-potatoes philosophy that’s legible in how they approach their music.

“That’s the problem with how people who are in the fine arts — let’s just say the creative class — that there needs to be this excitement and fun attached or it’s not worthy of anything. And I just don’t believe that.

“In terms of being in a band, there’s this thing that comes with experience, with being in it for a long time: I think every band is allowed a window of time where they do think they’re the greatest band in the world and act accordingly. And if you stick around long enough, you will realize that’s not the case. And you handle that blow to your ego and then you keep going. So you take those blows to your ego, you get your back up against the wall, and you’re like, ‘OK, I have to put up, put in the unglamorous work of being in a band, of being an artist.’ ”

So the big wheel keeps turning, the cycle keeps churning. Here we are, in the year 2025 of our lord, and Danko Jones is ready to release Leo Rising. Ahead of the album, two singles have been sent ahead to whet some appetites: first, the anthemic, chugging, optimistic, “Everyday is Saturday Night,” followed by “Diamond in the Rough,” a barefaced homage to Danko Jones’ North Star, KISS, featuring Megadeth’s Marty Friedman on guest shreds. Neither track is a surprise, but they’re not meant to surprise. They follow in a long-line of hard rock bangers with readily traceable lineages, surefooted steps in the half-century-long evolution of the classics. In the absence of one of those rarefied moments where the music meets the cultural moment, defines a generational attitude and manages to achieve any kind of staying power in a pop culture environment that only knows how to demand more and more and more, the only thing that is left is to keep chipping away at your career, put one foot in front of another, focusing on “the rent. Survival.”

“I was saying this in an interview the other day: I’m puzzled by how many bands aren’t motivated by that. And that tells me that this is a hobby for them. That tells me that they have the luxury to do it or not do it. We don’t have that luxury,” says Jones.

“Every time you put anything out, whether it’s a song, or you play a show, or you put out an album, you’re back to zero. I mean, a band like us, we don’t have an ‘Ace of Spades,’ or an ‘Enter Sandman,’ or a ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ or a ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ to always rely on. So, if we put out a lemon, we’re zeroed. The last album cycle, the last touring cycle ends, we’re back to zero. We’re only as good as the last thing people remember us by.

“A band like us, in our position, no matter the decades we’ve been around, the albums we’ve put out, we’re still only as good as the last thing we put out. We’re not allowed any chance to rest.”

Leo Rising is out November 21 via Sonic Unyon.