It was never my intention to keep Gnawing’s ringleader, webmaster and primary songwriter John Russell waiting when we met ahead of the band’s last show, but I got caught behind an awesome procession of Richmond’s equivalent to Baltimore’s 12 O’Clock Boys tearing down Main Street.

A week before that, I was late for an earlier-than-advertised set by Drug Country Family Band, Russell’s new project that features several Gnawing personnel. By the time I discerned that this outdoor brewery moonlighting as a music venue was not, in fact, a mini-golf course, the band was capping off its set with a cover of Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

But Russell is patient with these setbacks, a skill he’s undoubtedly honed in his decade worth of day jobs in social work, and what he describes as an eight-month sabbatical to work at Guitar Center (that’s a lot of “Stairway To Heaven” noodling). That stint would connect Russell with drummer Christian Monroe and lead to an even greater test of endurance and grit: starting a band, and doing said band, for seven years in this economy.

It’s apparent that Russell is proud of what they’ve accomplished on stages all over the country and for posterity across a pair of albums and 7” single. What local band wouldn’t be chuffed with shredding guitar back-to-back with Nutsy on air guitar at The Diamond among their bona fides? And who hasn’t dreamed of a favorite band [in this case, the band known as Fucked Up] taking them on tour? Are the highs worth the lows of bum shows and the steady pressure to put yourself out there? By this time next week, Russell and his bandmates won’t be worrying about any of it.

I finally meet Russell in line at the bar of another brewery. We order two beers apiece and set about dishing and double-fisting in a corner of the patio because I only have an hour before my wife is expecting dinner (you’ll notice my time management needs work). And as Russell reasons, it’s a Sunday afternoon and he’s just finished mowing the lawn. When it comes to Gnawing, there’s plenty to cover beyond the band’s loud, twangy crunch and power-pop backbone that’s punk rock at its core. There are those things like sustaining meaningful, collaborative creative pursuits with your friends while balancing them with work, family and other projects. Reaching an audience. Not losing your ass and still having fun amid late-capitalist doom.

Style Weekly: I gotta hear about Gnawing’s tour with Fucked Up.

John Russell: Christian and I — we grew up listening to Fucked Up and that was one of the first bands we had talked about when we started working together at Guitar Center. It was a very cool full-circle moment. The way Fucked Up treated us and Dark Thoughts and Restraining Order, and all the staff of every venue we played, they’re just total pros. And they’re so fucking sweet.

Every night they would invite us into their green room and give us their whiskey. And Damien would have pre-rolled joints for each member of every band. And we were like, What? This is crazy. It was awesome.

Did it feel like you were playing to a new, wider audience? 

Yeah, I think so. This is a dumb metric, but it’s kind of the only metric these days. During that tour, our Instagram followers doubled and our monthly listeners on everything doubled.

We saw so many different places that we probably wouldn’t have seen on our own, and people that might not have ever thought to connect the two bands. To me there’s such an intrinsic connection between hardcore stuff and what Gnawing takes influence from. There’s a huge connection between hardcore and like, Dinosaur Jr. and even as far as The Lemonheads coming out of the Boston hardcore scene. All of that makes sense to me. But we were a little worried that it was gonna be too soft. I think it connected really well though. And every night, some guy in his fifties would be like, “You guys remind me of Super Drag.” And we’d be like, “That’s fucking awesome. I love Super Drag. Here, have a sticker.”

It was obviously the biggest crowd we had ever played to. Just by sheer numbers alone, we walked away with more people listening to it than would’ve ever listened to it before.

Back to the beginning of Gnawing, would you paint the scene?

Me and Christian have been in it the whole time, basically. Originally I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was in this really loud, like, drop C noise rock band and was screaming. It was killing my throat and it was not sustainable. I had all these more ’90s alt rock songs that I wanted to record, so I made that demo where I played everything. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I just had it.

When I moved to Richmond, I started working at Guitar Center and met Christian and we immediately clicked and started talking music and had so much in common and I was like, “Hey, it doesn’t have to be these songs, but I’ve got this demo recorded and would love to start something in this loud, fuzzy, but then also kind of twangy vein.” He listened to it the next day and was like, “Yeah, that’s it, let’s play those songs. Those are sweet.”

The first lineup was me and him and Ali [Mislowsky] from Young Scum, played bass. Christian was still in Shiloh, the post-rock band, and we practiced in their space. It was November and December of ‘18 and it was freezing. There was no heat in that room, so we would just bundle up and play. But now that’s romantic, you know? That’s the part that I look back on and I’m like, Man, two of my best friends and me playing these songs — it was cool.

What brought you to Richmond? 

I had played here a bunch when I was still in North Carolina. It’s such an easy drive, if you’re going north, it’s the first show of any weekend or any tour ’cause it’s right there. And so I’d always loved Richmond and my-now wife, but at the time, my girlfriend, Kelsey, lived in Arizona and I was still in North Carolina and we were trying to move in together, but I didn’t wanna go to Arizona and she didn’t wanna go to North Carolina, so we were like, let’s just pick a new spot. And I was like, “I’ve always wanted to live in Richmond. She was like, I’ve never been there. Sounds good. Let’s do it.” So we both moved to Richmond and that was eight years ago. And it’s the best place.

It seems like you’ve got it all here, but this show is marking the end of an era huh? 

It never felt permanent, even if it’s like five, 10 years down the road. Even if we’re old men and are like, “Cool, let’s pick it up, let’s play some shows again.” I feel very confident that we could do it, and probably first practice back, still be stupid tight. It’s the tightest band I’ve ever been in — for no reason.

I mean, everyone is proficient at their instrument, but we could go six months without practicing and that first practice back, we’re always like: Why was that so good? Why are we locked in? It’s stupid. But the last two years, we slowed way down. [The record came out in 2023] so we went from doing that Fucked Up tour and our record release; we played with Bully at the Southern — we were doing all these support shows. We played all the time. And before that we had averaged a ton of shows per year. Then last year, we played four, and this year we’ll have played two, with this last show being the second.

I started working in Charlottesville and spent a lot of my time on 64 and now we are moving to Mineral, to be closer to Charlottesville, but still close enough to Richmond to come see our friends. Chris and Christian started playing in Molt, which Chris is writing all the riffs for. They both love hardcore and punk rock — we all do, but they always really wanted to be in a band like that. So that’s amazing. Me and Garrett will do Drug Country stuff and everybody has job changes that got a little more serious. People moved in with partners that got serious, everybody in the last two years had an adult happening, which is great.

What has everybody’s role been in the band other than the instrument they play?

At first it was learning songs I had written, but from the 7-inch onwards, Christian and I — even if the skeleton of the song is mine, or if the words of the song are mine — me and him were the ones that would grind it out and dissect it. So he is the second brain child of the band, I would say. Then Chris is the vibe enforcement. On tour or at practice or when we’re recording, Chris will not let any of us have a bad time. If any of us are in a shitty mood he’s the one that’s like, “No, dude. Look, we’re on tour, we’re in Minneapolis, and it’s awesome. And it’s beautiful outside.”

Garrett started playing with us in ‘21, after the first record was out. Garrett immediately jumped in and helped a ton. Most of the second record was kind of a blend of us, but Garrett came in and was instrumental in helping, he became like the duct tape in the last three years of the band. He did a bunch of the admin stuff with me. He would be the one I would bounce a lot of ideas off of, so he’s kind of the Swiss Army knife, the duct tape of the band. Does everything, holds it together.

Gnawing music video for “I Saw A Ghost” made by Ben Kerley, compiling tour footage.

Last but not least, what about you?

The benevolent ruler. Most of the songs, I would say, at least started in my brain. Even if we ended up radically changing them. Most of the time it would be a skeleton that I had brought. And then in the end we were getting to a point where everybody was contributing more. But for the most part, most of the songs I had started and then we fleshed out.

Who called it? 

I was the one that ultimately made the call ’cause I didn’t want anybody to hold room in their brain for doing stuff if it wasn’t gonna be as frequent as when we were playing all the time. It felt like it was a good spot; we also love each other. We’re all still friends. Nobody was mad at anybody. Nobody was resentful, so it seems like a good time to call it.

Why one more show? 

Why is easy to answer — a show is truly the more pure distillation of Gnawing. Both LPs are amazing and sound great, but it has always been a challenge to capture the Gnawing live sound on recording. The messiness, the chaos, the pushing it to the limit of the wheels falling off but still all landing on the “one” at the same time? It just never makes it to record. It wouldn’t have been a proper send off without one last set. Also a great excuse to do a fundraiser for Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project.

How’d you link up with RRFP?

We wanted to do a benefit for our last show because it felt silly to have a “for profit” final gig, so we decided on RRFP based on how great their advocacy for reproductive rights in Richmond has been. I became familiar with them during COVID from my job interacting with them, and have really loved the work they do. As a band of a bunch of dudes, using our platform to advocate for reproductive freedom just feels like the correct thing to do.

“As a kid I started playing music because it was the only thing that made sense in my brain. I didn’t know it would turn into a part-time side thing of content creation and algorithm studying and basically a marketing degree. I prioritized just getting back into enjoying music again and worrying less about the social media stuff, and I can’t recommend that enough.”

Will Gnawing’s new projects play a show together? 

I would love to. I feel Drug Country would bring Molt’s cool level down. But I would do it. I think it would be really funny to have a sad, slow-core band open for a hardcore band whose longest song is two minutes. I think that’d be great. That makes a lot of sense in my brain — those things being together. I’m sure we will at some point just ’cause we’re all still friends and Christian and Garrett — and probably eventually Chris at some point — have all played in Drug Country Family Band. There’s a melting pot of all of our projects, all kind of being in the same vein.

Where did Gnawing fit with Richmond music? 

Growing up, I always went to mixed bill shows where anything under a general punk or alternative umbrella pairs well. I’ve gone to hardcore shows where the opening act was a rap group. Anything can pair as long as the attitude is the same. But we joked the whole time that we were too punk for the indie crowd in Richmond, or really anywhere. And too soft and too indie for the punk crowd.

We definitely tried, and there were times we were successful at doing mixed bills. We played full-on honky tonk shows at Fuzzy Cactus and then two weeks later we’d play with Narrow Head at The Camel. People maybe didn’t know how to categorize us, and that sometimes made it hard to get on a bigger show where they’d be like, “Why would you guys even want to play this?” But it makes sense to me.

That made the Fucked Up tour even more validating. We weren’t crazy this whole time. Loud guitar rock fits with other loud guitar rock bands, even if it’s not the same drumbeat.

There was another surprise twist to your last show, after Anytime closed and you had to change venues and then change the date. Does that feel fitting? Like, of course you’re gonna have to deal with all of the uncertainty and extra work that comes with being a DIY band up until the end. Is the show rain or shine?

At this point it’s rain or shine. We love playing Get Tight. It has been our second home for the past couple years. We had our second record release show there. But there was a moment where I was like, “Maybe this is a sign from a bigger, a higher being, like, maybe we shouldn’t even do this?” But Garrett, who was often the one that talks me off the ledge was like, “No dude, we should do it. We should try and find a new date. We should work this thing out.” And so we found the new date, and sadly it didn’t work for Young Scum. But we’re excited for Painted World and Camo Face.

You know, it’s been an uphill battle the whole time we’ve been a band. There’s been stupid roadblock after roadblock. We had this entire record release tour for the first record that COVID canceled and then I rebooked the entire thing, and the second wave of COVID happened and we had to cancel it again.

It was just like our record label. He would take six months off at a time, and our records were sitting in his basement and the web store was down and nobody knew why. It was almost poetic because from day one, this has been an uphill battle of trying to make this thing work by sheer hardheadedness.

It was funny when the show almost didn’t happen, but we pushed through and re-booked it and I’m excited for it. But if there’s a hurricane, we’re gonna play through the hurricane. It’s gonna happen. If the AC 30 electrocutes me, it’ll be a great way to go out.

Now that Gnawing is coming to an end, at least for the fiscal year, would you share any glimpse of the band’s profit margins to date? 

It has been a net loss, fully in the red. T-shirt and LP sales have been good but you never seem to sell enough of anything to come away with a profit. The smartest thing we ever did was build a self-recording setup with the advance for the second LP. Making this machine self-sufficient saved our asses moneywise on the second record.

Any reflections on the “music biz” such as it is?

As a kid, I started playing music because it was the only thing that made sense in my brain. I didn’t know it would turn into a part-time side thing of content creation and algorithm studying and basically a marketing degree. I prioritize just getting back into enjoying music again and worrying less about the social media stuff, and I can’t recommend that enough to everyone.

I don’t think I ever knew when I was a kid and started playing in rock bands, that you end up having to do so many things that you’re like, This is whatever. I just wanted to play guitar and have a venue to play these songs at, and a T-shirt to sell.

Also no matter how many documentaries you watch where band members say this, it really is true: Don’t let anyone have any percentage of ownership of your masters. You wrote the songs, they are yours and not a label’s.

What can we expect from your last show?

The set will be a little bit of all the eras. There’ll be some classics that haven’t been played in a long time. And there’ll be some guests of different caliber, maybe different eras of participation in the band, that’ll be jumping up and doing some stuff on stage with us. It’ll be kind of what it always was, at its peak, when it was a fully functioning machine; the four of us playing loud and having a good time.

Are we looking at a liquidation sale on merch? Will you have Gnawing’s back catalog with you? 

Yes. I am trying to get rid of all of it before we move so that I don’t have to lug a bunch of T-shirts and records. There’ll be a huge liquidation sale, no price too low — accepting offers. I have a decent amount of the 7-inches left. We’re almost out of the first record, and have a good amount of the second record. So there’ll be a bundle deal for sure. Fire sale, everything’s on sale.

Any parting words, for now?

We’re excited to do it up one more time. I don’t think it’ll be the end. There will be a reunion show when we get a high enough cash offer from The Broadberry. They’ll come around and finally ask us to play.

I think Gnawing is my favorite band I’ve ever been in. It’s the longest band I’ve ever been in, but I think it’s a good time to put it down for a little bit. And I’m excited. Molt is so sick and I’m having fun doing Drug Country. I think everybody will still be involved in music. We’ll all still be around, and we’ll all still be in each other’s bands. It’s not like none of us will ever play again. That would be terrible.

Gnawing’s last show (for now) is Friday, June 13 at Get Tight Lounge with Camo Face and Painted World. Tickets cost $10 with profits benefiting the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project, which provides “practical and financial support for abortion services in Virginia and surrounding communities.” Doors are at 7:30 p.m.