Q&A: Yonatan Gat, guitarist for the hard rock trio Monotonix

Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Yonatan Gat, guitarist for the hard rock trio Monotonix, about why they’re not just “that band from Israel,” and the group’s U.S. reception.

CP: What do you think defines Monotonix as a band? The first thing people probably notice is the fact that you’re from Israel. What makes them keep paying attention?

YG: I don’t think our origin draws a lot of attention. We played in Olympia on this tour two weeks ago, and this 50-year-old guy came in and bought a ticket. I was setting up the merchandise table near the door man, and he told the door man he wanted his money back and wanted to go home. When I asked him why, he was like, “I heard there were three bands playing before you and that they are going to play rock. I was expecting to hear Israeli folk music.” I almost told the guy that Israeli folk music is kind of boring compared to American folk like Woody Guthrie. It’s a combination of Greek and Russian and Middle Eastern folk. We don’t really have folk music in Israel. We just have music affected by other countries because Israel is a very young country and people came there from all over the world. Nothing really special has come out of it. It’s just a combination of other things, and it’s not fascinating. We don’t really want to be looked at as “the band from Israel.” What we think draws more attention to us is our lives shows.

CP: So the live shows keep people coming back then?

YG: I remember our first two tours of the states when nobody came to our shows. We played for like five people every night, but now we play for a lot more people because people saw a show and told their friends. Now, we have more people interested in our shows. I don’t think the fact that we’re from Israel helped us a lot other than that it makes us sound a little more exotic to Americans. It doesn’t really get people at the show. It gets eyebrows lifted, but nothing more than that. On the other side, we’re not going to deny where we come from — we’re proud of it, and we like our home — but it’s not the most amazing place to create music. We don’t use it as a card to get people to come see us. We think the music speaks for itself. I think, during the show, people stop looking at us as an Israeli Rock Band and start thinking of us as just a rock band.

CP: I’m guessing your reception back home was a little rocky? People didn’t connect easily with your music?

YG: It’s getting different now, but in the beginning yeah. People in Israel have so many things to worry about and the economical situation is not as good as in the States. I wouldn’t call it a very poor country, but they have many more things to worry about there than in many places, so the culture there isn’t very progressive. Our shows caught people off guard. Venues and neighbors were always complaining about the noise, but the audience was always into it, so we had a lot of shows stopped by cops after noise complaints. It was hard at the beginning because people didn’t know how to digest our live shows. But we just kept playing and getting more people at the shows and finding the right venues for us. We started finding the right venues for our music after we were banned from about 80 percent of the venues in the country. We found plenty of venues that appreciate our music and that we bring people out so they can make money off us. Those are the venues that wouldn’t stop our shows. It’s getting better. I think we draw as many people there as we do now on the West Coast.

CP: I would think touring in America is like a breath of fresh air on that point.

YG: Yeah, it is. In America, rock’n’roll is in your culture — it’s in your blood. You see a band like us, and maybe to some people, what we do isn’t new or what they haven’t seen before, but they’re ready for it. There have been so many crazy, amazing bands that have toured America, so a lot of people have seen it all and aren’t surprised by anything, but we try to catch them by surprise anyway. People here are used to loud rock’n’roll bands, so no one will take a step back or leave. In Israel once, we played a little Kibbutz, and there were 80 people at the show. In Israel, we are considered a very loud band, so once the show started, people started holding their ears. It was seated show, which is very weird, and it got so bad that at some point in the show, about half the people left in the middle of the show because it was so loud. Then, Ami (Shelev) started pouring ketchup on the audience and the band and everybody. He went out of the venue during the show, filled his mouth with gravel and came back in. He spat gravel on the band and the audience and everyone. By the fourth song, the only people left were the opening band, Ami’s girlfriend and the bartender — that’s including the sound guy and the owner of the bar. That kind of stuff would never happen in the States — people would never leave in the middle of a song. But then again, that was a long time ago and things have gotten better.

CP: What’s prompted the change there?

YG: Well, now we won’t play at a random kibbutz we know nothing about. In Tel Aviv, people know us now, so they know what to expect. The kind of people who come to our shows now are the people who aren’t going to be terrified of us. We don’t go to those kinds of places any more. Most of those shows were acoustic shows or very quiet stuff. These are the kind of people who would call Bob Dylan a traitor when he switched to electric guitar. These are old fashioned people who weren’t ready for our type of music, which we don’t encounter here in the states because the rock’n’roll culture here is so developed, and people are ready for basically anything.