Here’s a toast to the good, the bad and the ugly.

In celebration of ¡MAYDAY!’s music video for their celebratory ode to Jack Daniels, “On That Jack”, we interviewed the group’s emcees to find out what it really meant to be…well…on that Jack.

Wrek and Bernz were kind (and sober) enough to tell us the great and bad experiences that they’ve had off of the world’s most popular whiskey.

BERNZ

This drink seems to be very important to the band. Let’s start off with the worst experiences you’ve had with Jack Daniels. Tell us about that.

I know how to hold my liquor you know what I’m saying? I’d have to think about that. I can tell you that when I do have bad things happen from it it’s when I’m mixing it with weed. To me, once you decide to go on the Jack route, your weed consumption should be cut down to a minimum or you have to be smoking the whole time that you’re drinking. It has to be a constant battle of the two from the beginning. You can’t just not smoke, be drunk as fuck off Jack, and then smoke. No, that’s the wrong thing to do right there. Me being a smoker, you know, that’s kind of a big deal, once I start drinking I usually stop smoking because I don’t like what happens.

You have to! There’s plenty of nights where you’ll want to smoke when you get home from the bars or club or whatever and then you’re like “Okay, let’s smoke some weed now.”

Right? And you wanna smoke that blunt when you get home! You cannot do that. You must abstain.

Tell us why, for people who don’t know. What happens?

Not to incriminate myself but I’ve heard that these rookies be drinking too much of this Jack Daniels. They don’t realize that once you’re drinking Jack that you have to be faithful to Jack. You’re kind of with your best friend Jack and he doesn’t like weed. Jack doesn’t like to smoke weed. That’s the thing, when you’re hanging out with your best friend you kind of have to be a good host and do what they do, you know what I’m saying? Don’t invite Mary over because she doesn’t get along with Jack.

What happens when Jack and Mary…meet?

Mary and Jack argue because Mary knows that Jack is a realist. He’s a blue collared dude, you know what I’m saying? He just likes to party and turn up where as Mary is a little bit more like aloof, you know what I’m saying? She’s a creative little butterfly and Jack is this rough, rugged dude. He doesn’t like to hang out with that bitch. So that’s what it is.

Love the metaphor. Are you in the middle of writing new music by chance, because that’s some poetry.

(Laughs) Yeah I’m just getting started man.

Good to hear! Let’s talk about when Jack goes right because there’s certain states of drunk, like the wine drunk, the marathon beer drunk, etc.

Yes that is very true! The thing about Jack is that he gives you courage and it goes either way. Jack gives you courage to like talk to women, talk to people, you could be the life of the party if you have the right buzz going with Jack. Or you could be the dude fighting with the whole God damn party if you got the wrong buzz going on with Jack as well. He’s one of those best friends too that for one second he could be talking to all the chicks and the next second he could be literally fighting the whole bar. That’s the good thing about Jack.

Have you learned to co-exist with him?

Well when I was a young whipper snapper, naw I’m kidding, but before, maybe a year or two ago, I used to fucking go super in on the Jack but now I’ve had to actually chill out a little bit. I have to drink it later on in the night. I’ll start off with a lighter whatever, but I won’t get into the dark kind of Jack until later on in the night because I find if I start drinking Jack early in the day I’ll get a little too moody on that to be a thing. So I’ll start on some other kind of shit and work my way to it because Jack is really kind of sweet, you know?

On that note I have to ask, what happened to Wrekonize after he took a shot for every time he self referenced himself on Sway’s Five Fingers of Death?

I left the room a little early man. It got real loud in there. I’m not sure if someone had to throw up or something? It sounded like a little bit of commotion going on. I don’t really know. I left the room three shots in if you noticed. I ain’t about that life. I’ve had enough liver damage in my life already, you know?

The thing that’s interesting about Wrekonize is that most people who drink that much and who are able to drink that much are not as cool and well adjusted as he is. What’s his deal?

He’s just a drinker dude. He’s just a drinker. Some people are born drinkers, you know what I’m saying? I’m not really a huge drinker like that. Wrek can wake up and drink. He’s one of those type of dudes. Plex is like that too. I don’t know what it is about my European-descended brothers over there but they can really hold down some liquor dude. That’s what it is.

WREKONIZE

What is your worst Jack Daniels experience?

If I had to go for worst right now…when we were on this last tour, the Something Else run, we had a day off in Tahoe. We were right next to a casino – I think it was Harrah’s – and I definitely like to gamble. I’m one of the dudes who shouldn’t be left alone at a casino and I went and gambled some money. I had lost some money in Vegas then at the last minute I won it all back so when we were in Tahoe I kind of still had the itch to gamble. I went and hit the tables and the thing is we had nothing to do the whole day so I was in Harrah’s pretty much drinking the whole day. I was trying not to drink hard liquor, I was just drinking beer and I ended up losing a fucking bunch of money and getting in my feelings about it and that’s when I decided that it was a good idea to switch to Jack, which was a terrible, terrible idea. Being the smart guy that I was that day I ended up going back to the bus trying to lay down, doing one of those, “Oh, I’m so drunk, I should just go to sleep” and everyone knows that’s not a good idea.

So I end up laying myself down in my bunk, the whole world started spinning and instead of getting off the bus, I ended up having to go fucking vomit my whole life away in the bus bathroom. Which is like rule number one: you just don’t do that. That was probably the worst. I don’t know if because it’s the most recent it feels like the worst, but I’m gonna call it the worst for now. And vomiting is never a good end, especially when you’re on a bus full of dudes who are just gonna clown you for the whole tour. On top of that I was so fucked up that I couldn’t really clean up after myself so it was one of those situations where I left a mess and it was embarrassing on top of not good form at all. Not a good look.

What is your best Jack Daniels experience?

It’s hard to map out the better experiences. I will say this, everybody knows me to be like, “Whatever.” We talk about drinking a lot and I’m definitely a heavy drinker. I’m not as big of a smoker as I am a drinker, but the thing is that I’m pretty good with mastering my ability to drink and stay inside the lines. It’s hard to narrow down one good experience because most of the time I’m real in control of how much to drink to get to that perfect level without making a fool of myself. I’m a pro at this point – I’m thirty! I know how to drink to be professional about it and do just the right amount and never end up in the danger zone. So it’s more easy to remember the negative. I can’t even pinpoint good ones because most of the time it’s the shit. It’s always a positive experience.

Because you’re such a pro?

Because I’m a professional! That’s what I do! And If I’m gonna throw one positive anecdote onto the end of that about being a professional and that it’s all good is that we did do a show once in Miami where we were able to rope in Jack Daniels to sponsor it. They sponsored the whole show, and they ended up bringing out a couple new mixed drinks they were messing with and even made a ¡MAYDAY! mixed drink that had Jack, ginger and something else in there that was bomb. So they ended up coming out and sponsoring the show and that was a dope experience. I definitely want to do some more of that. It’s one thing to be the guy who drinks a lot of JD and talks about it in his music, but it was another thing to have them officially be on board and sponsoring one of our shows in Miami. I don’t even think we were signed to Strange at that point, but we were still heavy advocates of the Jack so that’s why we were able to get them to come on board for a show. That was definitely an epic night and that was one of the nights that ended as a positive spin and didn’t end up with a traumatic experience.

That would be pretty cool to have an official ¡MAYDAY! cocktail that involves Jack Daniels.

Yeah, we definitely need to lock down an official “SOS” drink of some kind or some kind of “¡MAYDAY! Morse code.” It needs to be in the works and if they’re not going to make it official, we’ll have to do it on our own. We’ll have to take it to the lab and experiment and see what we come up with. Experiment like professionals.

• What has been your best and worst drunk experience?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE BELIEVERS