Poison Noises Spread The Love with Capital Region Collaborations

TROY – Never seeming to know how to sit still in his creative endeavors, Jordan Withers, of local boutique pedal company, Poison Noises, is embarking on yet another project. Immediately after the successful launch of Poison Noises’ Not For Josh pedal (a joke aimed at YouTuber and founder of JHS, Josh Scott), Withers is now collaborating with local bands and artists to craft their own limited line of guitar pedals.

Yet another project that is indicative of the sense of community found within the 518-music scene, I reached out to Jordan to learn more. What follows is our discussion.

To learn more about Poison Noises and their collaborations, please click here.

Lucas Garrett: How’re you doing, Jordan?

Jordan Withers: I’m good; getting a late start today. I was up until 4 o’clock this morning working on pedals for an expo.

LG: Sounds like you’re staying busy as always. I’ve been noticing all the collaborations with artists that you’re doing. How’d that all start?

JW: The most recent ones we did were with The E-Block guys, The Hauntings guys, music stores, too, like with Collar City Guitar and Love of Fuzz.

LG: What goes into a collaboration?

JW: Well, the reason we started doing these was there were a lot of ideas I wanted to get into enclosures. Being able to do these small, little batches, as opposed to these big elaborate launches… Not for nothing, but whomever I’m collaborating with is part of the marketing team at that point. I don’t have to focus as much making sure people are aware of the project. It doesn’t fall solely on the band, but I do get a partner when I do it.

LG: Are you creating pedals that you normally wouldn’t?

JW: Definitely. There’s some stuff that might’ve been out of the realm of a normal Poison Noises pedal, but more often than not… I’ll give you a good example. The E-Block guys did The E-mail with them, which was an envelope filter with a built-in distortion circuit. What’s cool about that is that it’s something I wanted to do for a while. It was going to be the Postman V3 – we’re on version two now. I didn’t want to put the efforts into doing a full launch for that because we had so many other things going on.

What we did instead, is I talked with those guys. They’re a big fan of the Postman. I said, “Why don’t we release it under your band name’s first? If people are still hungry for it, I can do the Postman V3 down the line.”

LG: It sounds like these are prototypes.

JW: Totally! The Hauntings’ Dan Wade is a huge fan of the Knuckle Sandwich, which is a tube screamer clone. When I came up with a new version of that pedal, I called his band up. Those are cool, too, because we made them glow-in-the-dark, which is something I’d never done before.

LG: Why not, right?

JW: Exactly, and that’s something I wouldn’t have done in a normal Poison Noises run. Sometimes it’s stuff we wouldn’t do, and sometimes it’s stuff we would do but haven’t done yet.

LG: Say someone in the area wants to do this. How do they get ahold of you to get the ball rolling?

JW: So far, most of these are: I catch a band, see a show; a band hits me up on Instagram, or personally. That being said, I recently built a place on our website, where you can inquire about doing collaborations. [The responses] will go directly to my email, and I can review it and come up with whether or not it’s possible, if there’s things we can improve on, how much it’ll cost…

LG: What else do you have going on?

JW: In terms of Poison Noises, we did the Not For Josh launch, which was our biggest launch to date. It ended up on guitar.com and Guitar World magazine.

LG: Can you elaborate more on the story behind that pedal?

JW: The whole story with that… we did this collaboration with SingleCut Brewery in Clifton Park, which was the Amp Punch. We made a pedal; they made a beer. It’s one of my all-time-favorite collaborations. We threw a two-day party with drinks, and cool bands came through. We sold a bunch of pedals and a bunch of beer; it was awesome.

When I went onto the JHS show – Josh had interviewed me a couple months before and asked me what some of my favorite circuits I’d ever made. I said it was the Amp Punch. He asked me if I could have one, and I said no, because we only made 50. Josh Scott of the JHS show is one of the most famous pedal collectors of all time. I’ve seen his collection, it’s incredibly overwhelming.

Fast-forward a week or two later, he sends me a picture and he had one. The caption said “Challenge accepted.” I told him he’d never get one and he did.

Almost a year later, I made a version of that same circuit, and put it in a new enclosure that says Not For Josh. It was made around the whole idea he can’t have one. The best part is that we launched it on his show. His whole team knew about it. We sold the cap. It was so much fun doing that. Reeves (Gabrels) from The Cure has one, and I sent it to my guitar pedal youtubers. It’s all in good fun.

LG: Where do you see these collaborations going?

JW: This whole thing started as this idea over the summer where I was going to a lot of show. Wouldn’t it be sweet if at the end of all of this, every band in the 518 had their own pedal and were trading them to each other like Pokemon cards? Sometimes I see pictures of one band I did a collab with that traded pedals with another band I did a collab with. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the exciting part, for me.

LG: Are there any parting words you have for us as we wrap the interview up?

JW: If people are looking to work with us, invite me to your show, and tell me what you want to do. It’s really cool how supportive, and inclusive, and what a great sense of community the 518-music scene has. I’m always down to meet people. If it’s in Troy and within walking distance of my house, I have no excuse not to go. Tell me about your band, tell me what you’re looking for.

LG: Thank you for your time, Jordan!

JW: Definitely, man. I always appreciate doing these with you.