SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio has music staples like Tejano, country, and metal music, but did you know that this city also has a lot of emo fans? Luckily for those fans, we’ve got a band like Jonah Vin.
Emo music is a sub genre of punk rock, indie and alternative music with intricate melodies and is mostly known for emotional lyrics - hence the name “emo.”
Jonah Vin is a local four-piece that blends math rock and emo influences to create their own sound.
Math rock is a sub genre of indie and post-hardcore rock that features rhythms and time signatures that aren’t the norm, and showcases high technical skill.
Cousins Gary Battreall and Jesse “Buzz” Mata are the band’s core, and they have been writing music together since a young age.
“The inspiration of our sound did start with my cousin’s father, who showed us The Beatles,” singer and guitarist Gary Battreall said. ”We’re not just a math rock band or an emo band. We love the Beatles. It’s good stuff, and we really love the new progressive emo stuff as well. So, we got a collaboration of everything that we’ve all been feeling.”
Bassist and guitarist Mark Martinez told KSAT about how he and drummer Andy Alex connected over a shared appreciation for emo bands from the Midwest.
"Whenever I met Andy, I was really inspired by a lot of Midwestern emo, and this was a big thing for me. It kind of changed how I felt about music. I learned how to play guitar when I was ten,“ Martinez said. ”I was playing a lot of like death metal and like metal core and stuff like that, which I still listen to that. But whenever I started listening to Midwestern emo, the first band that got me there was American Football.
“When I met Andy, he had some similar interests. That plays heavily into our sound, American Football, The Promise Ring, many bands, a lot of them from Chicago.”
The band started playing shows in San Antonio but took a detour for a few years to try a different scene.
“Me and my cousin Buzz, we’ve been playing music for forever, and we did start writing music on an iPad,” Battreall recalls. “We got a little tired of the scene here in San Antonio just because we would go out and see the same people, and nobody was really supporting each other back then. So we dipped out to Austin, and we lived there for about seven years, and we’re just grinding hard there. [Andy] started getting rides from San Antonio to Austin to join us. Now Mark’s in it, and we’re just coming home now.”
The band has noticed changes in the music scene since they’ve returned.
“There’s a lot of youngins out there going really hard, and I’ll give them that. I can see a lot of love in the young scene,” Battreall said. “It’s something about the older crowd that we need to get to them and say, ‘Hey, screw your egos.’ Go support your friends, stuff like that. That’s big in San Antonio. I felt that for a long time.
“Again, that’s why we moved to Austin, and we did our thing. But now we’re back, and we’re giving our city a chance because we love our city, and we love our people.”
Jonah Vin has been hard at work writing and recording new music, but they’ve adopted a different release method.
“Actually, we’ve just been recently writing songs and just like putting them out, just like singles,” bassist Jesse Mata said. “Seems like what everyone’s doing now is just putting the singles out, you know. Just the album thing is getting a little played out, I guess, in a way. But we’re still down to make an album, but these things that we’re putting out now, they’re kind of more demos in the way.”
“I found it’s kind of hard to keep people’s attention span. I just put songs out one at a time and just see how they respond to them,” Battreall said. “And then those are what we’re choosing to go on the albums, the ones that we get good responses from. So recently, in the past month, we’ve already dropped like five songs. So make sure to check that out. That’s on Apple and Spotify, all the platforms."
For this SA Vibes set, Jonah Vin performs “From The Top,” “Rebel Mind,” “Beautiful Distraction” and “I Don’t Mind.”
You can catch Jonah Vin at 7 p.m. on April 11 at Cold Star Dab Co and again at 9 p.m. on July 5 at Jandro’s Garden Patio.
More information and music from Jonah Vin can be found on their Instagram page and Spotify.
Special thanks to Jacob Guerrero at The Starlighter for hosting this SA Vibes!
About SA Vibes
San Antonio is well-known for its culture, but the local music scene has always seemed a bit hidden.
Unless someone takes you to a local show — at venues like The Lonesome Rose, Hi-Tones, The Mix, Paper Tiger and 502 Bar — chances are you’ll never even know our music scene exists. That’s what made me decide to launch this passion project that we’re calling “SA Vibes.”
My name is Valerie, and I’m a video editor at KSAT. I’ve been attending local shows for over a decade, and I want to put a spotlight on the great talent that San Antonio has to offer.
Each month, we’ll be releasing a new “SA Vibes” video across all KSAT digital platforms and our YouTube channel, showcasing a local musician performing live versions of their songs from music venues around the city and the KSAT garden.
If you’re a San Antonio musician and would like to be a part of this project, please send information about your next show to our SA Vibes email. (We can only feature original music because of licensing.)
