It is a long way from West Chester, Pennsylvania, to the sweaty stages of Melbourne and Sydney, but for CKY’s Jess Margera, the distance is more than just geographical. It is a measurement of time, legacy, and a career defined by the kind of grit that only a quarter-century of experimental stoner punk skate rock can produce.
As the band hits Australia for the first time in over a decade, the drummer and co-founder is feeling the weight of the absence.
“It’s almost embarrassing how long it’s taken us to get back there,” Margera admits with a sheepishness that belies the band’s notorious reputation for chaos. For a band that essentially birthed an entire subculture through the marriage of jagged riffs and skate-video anarchy, Australia has always been a primary stronghold; an early adopter that understood the CKY frequency before much of the rest of the world.
The last time CKY graced Australian shores, the landscape of heavy music looked vastly different. Margera recalls the band’s stint on the Soundwave festival circuit, estimating it was “10 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago”. The band’s history with the country is storied and occasionally dramatic, particularly a co-headlining tour with Alien Ant Farm that fell through in a somewhat spectacular and controversial fashion.
But this time, the vibe is different. Instead of the circus of big tops and massive festival stages, CKY is opting for the intimacy of rooms like Crowbar and Max Watts — venues where the sweat of the crowd matches the volume of the Moog-synth-infused guitars. For Margera, the choice between a massive festival and a dark club is a toss-up. He relishes the “preaching to the converted” energy of a headline set, where the room is “a hundred from the get-go,” but he still harbours a deep-seated love for the challenge of a festival stage.
“I like the festival thing because there’s people there that might not even know your band… and you have to win them over,” he says. “My favourite is the person in the front who clearly is waiting for the band after you… and I have whatever it is, 30, 40 minutes to make them into a fan.” It’s a mentality born from the band’s earliest days, when they weren’t just a band, but a soundtrack to a revolution in the skate and surf world.
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Founded in 1998 by Margera, guitarist Chad I Ginsburg, and former vocalist Deron Miller, CKY (an acronym for Camp Kill Yourself) became the sonic backbone of the CKY video series and, subsequently, Jackass. While the band’s name and association with the Margera family’s brand of mayhem often grabbed the headlines, the music — a unique blend of stoner rock, punk, and experimental electronics — earned them a cult following that has remained fiercely loyal.
The connection to Australia, specifically, was forged through the lens of a fisheye camera. “I think because we got our start through surf and skate videos on Volcom,” Margera explains when asked why their sound resonated so deeply on the other side of the world. “And surf and skate culture in Australia has always been massive. So I think that helped a lot.” It was a “perfect storm” of media and music that Margera says he appreciates more now, with the benefit of hindsight, than he did when he was living in the midst of it.
The CKY of today is a leaner, more focused machine. Following the departure of Deron Miller in 2011, Ginsburg stepped up to the microphone, handling both guitar and vocal duties. The current lineup is rounded out by bassist Mike DeLeon, a fixture in the CKY orbit for two decades who brings a heavy thrash background from his work with Soulfly.
DeLeon’s arrival has solidified the band’s rhythmic foundation. “He’s so solid. He makes my job easy,” Margera says, joking that he and Ginsburg had become the “Spinal Tap of bass players” before DeLeon finally had an opening in his schedule to join them permanently.
This stability has paved the way for new music, though at a characteristically measured pace. Last year’s single “Can’t Stop Running” marked the band’s first new output in seven years, a delay Margera attributes to a desire for perfection. “We’re slow and we’ve been working on it for a long time,” he says. “And as we get older, we know that whatever comes out, you have to live with it forever. So we make sure it’s completely perfect in every way until we’re finally happy.”
The creative well, however, is far from dry. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Ginsburg reportedly wrote a new song every single day. When the band finally reconvened in Pennsylvania, they were faced with a daunting “mountain” of hundreds of tracks. Their solution for organising the chaos? Working titles based on the date they were written. “He just said, ‘Say a day.’ And I’m like, ‘June 8th.’ And then we worked on June 8th,” Margera recalls.
This new chapter, which Margera describes as sonically “all over the place,” represents a band no longer tethered to a single expectation. “I mean, there’s literally something for everyone,” he explains. “There’s songs with kind of our classic sound and then there’s heavy songs. There’s songs that kind of sound like Talking Heads meets CKY or something. I can’t really describe it, but yeah, I’m beyond stoked for you guys to hear this.”
Operating as an independent entity has afforded the group a luxury they rarely enjoyed during their commercial peak: time. Without the pressure of a label demanding the next record, CKY has been able to self-correct the mistakes of their youth.
“Anything that’s been rushed, there’s a few on Infiltrate and Answer that I listen back and I’m like, ‘Why did I do that fill there?'” Margera admits, reflecting on the band’s seminal early-2000s output. “And it’s because I probably learned the song that day and recorded it. And so we make sure that we don’t do that anymore, really.”
Of course, no conversation with a Margera is complete without addressing the complicated legacy of the family name. Jess’s younger brother, Bam, became a global icon through skating and Jackass, but his public struggles with sobriety have been well-documented. Jess has been open about the fact that he hasn’t spoken to Bam since their infamous castle blowout a couple of years ago, maintaining a strict boundary until his brother is consistently sober.
“I think he’s doing good and it’s good to see,” Jess says, noting that he still keeps tabs on Bam through social media. “I guess one of us will reach out when we’re ready. You know how it is with brothers”.
While both brothers were notably absent from the Jackass Forever movie and soundtrack, the recent news of Bam’s return to the franchise — reportedly via archival footage — raises the question: could this open the door for Jess and CKY to return to the fold as well?
“Possibly. And you never know. I don’t know. I never say never,” Margera says regarding a potential return via the soundtrack or archival appearances. Reflecting on the band’s absence from the previous film, he acknowledges it was born out of a volatile period for his brother. “That was definitely a weird time. Bam was clearly not doing well,” he explains. “Those guys gave him kind of an ultimatum and I think they thought they were doing the right thing, but it kind of blew up in everyone’s face.”
For Margera, the exclusion felt like a missing piece of the Jackass puzzle. “I think it was too quick to return to it with his partner in crime missing,” he notes, likely referring to the late Ryan Dunn. “So it was definitely a rough situation. And yeah, I think time heals a lot and hopefully this will go well. I think it will.”
Ultimately, the drummer remains open to reclaiming CKY’s spot as the franchise’s sonic heartbeat. When asked about the possibility of hearing their signature sound in future projects, his answer is immediate, “I’d love to,” he says. “I’d love to be on it.”
Despite the friction, the CKY influence continues to bleed into the next generation. Jess’s daughters are now in college and, in a twist of irony, they are learning about their father’s legacy not from him, but from their peers. “Whatever your parents do is never cool,” he laughs. “But yeah, they ask a lot of questions these days and I answer them.”
One of those stories involves a piece of rock history that sounds like suburban legend. Jess recounts a time when Ville Valo, the frontman of the Finnish band HIM, was staying in Jess’s mother’s garage. Valo was suffering from severe writer’s block while working on the album Dark Light. Jess handed him a copy of Blast Tyrant by the band Clutch for inspiration. “He listened to Blast Tyrant by Clutch and got totally inspired and wrote six songs that day,” Margera says. One of those songs turned out to be the global hit “Wings of a Butterfly”. “I had to read about it in fricking Metal Hammer,” Margera laughs. “I’m like, okay, cool. You’re welcome, buddy”.
As a musician, Margera remains a student of the craft. While he is often associated with the aggressive “skate rock” sound, his influences are surprisingly diverse. He cites John Bonham, the man who “invented rock drumming,” as a key influence, but he also draws heavily from jazz great Elvin Jones and the progressive complexity of King Crimson’s Bill Bruford.
Even his parents’ record collections left their mark. His father, Phil — whom Jess notes was a promising athlete before Jess “came along and fucked it all up” — constantly played Elvis Presley, whose drummer Ronnie Tutt became a secret influence on Jess’s own style. His mother, April, filled the house with the Rolling Stones and Def Leppard.
This melting pot of influences is what Jess brings to the stage every night. And as CKY returns to Australia, he is ready to tap back into that West Chester kid energy, even if his beard is a little greyer and he now looks more like his dad.
The mission for this Australian tour is simple: play the hits, introduce the new chapters, and remind Aussie fans why they fell in love with this band in the first place. For Margera, the CKY story is far from over. “It can’t end until all this new music comes out,” he says. “I feel like we’ve gotten older and wiser… and I feel like the new stuff is our best.”
