Billie Joe Armstrong’s Son Jakob Danger Talks Debut EP, ‘Musical Family’

Jakob Danger Armstrong, the 17-year-old son of Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong and brother of SWMRS’ Joey Armstrong, recently paved his own pop-punk path when a few songs he posted on SoundCloud and YouTube made the rounds online, earning him a deal with Burger Records. The singer-songwriter and his band, performing under the name Jakob Danger, have a self-titled debut EP out today and are plotting a full-length. “I’m writing more songs, and I’m recording them by myself right now,” Danger tells Rolling Stone. “I guess I’ll keep writing, keep recording. The ultimate goal right now is to put an album out at some point. That’s what I’m going for”

When did you start writing your own songs?
I’ve been writing my own songs for a while now, but I’ve always just kept them to myself. The ones I put on SoundCloud, I wrote at the beginning of last year.

What kind of music were you listening to growing up?
My two favorite bands are the Strokes and Beach Fossils. I love those bands. All my music is kind of based off their stuff. I just love that style of music. 

I definitely hear some Strokes influences on “Don’t Try.” Do you have a favorite album of theirs?
I love those first two albums, Is This It and Room on Fire. Those are great. If I had a favorite song, I like “Hard to Explain,” off the first album. That’s a great one. Those first two albums are awesome.

What or who encouraged you to start posting your songs online?
I wrote those songs — “King of the World” and “Don’t Try” — and I played them for my parents, because I wanted to share [the songs] with them. My dad told me to try and record them so I tried it out, and it sounded really great. So we started doing that with all my songs, and eventually we got it set up so I can just record it by myself. I’d play instruments on some of the tracks, and then I asked my brother if he wanted to play [on them] as well. That’s really how we got this going. 

Does your brother, Joey, have any further involvement with the band, or was he just helping with the recording process?
Joey played on most of the recordings; I actually played drums on a few of them. On “King of the World” and “Don’t Try,” Joey played drums. In my band, I play with Chris Malaspina. He goes to my school, and I’ve known him forever. He’s a really great drummer, and we’ve been jamming. I also play with Enzo Malaspina, his little brother. Enzo plays bass. We’ve got a trio, which is great.

Have you guys started playing shows yet?
This is really new, so we just had our first show a few weeks ago at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records. We’re playing another one [there] on October 15th with this band called Radioactivity.