J. Robbins is your cult guitar hero’s guitar hero. Though he began his career in the mid-‘80s as the bassist for D.C. hardcore group Government Issue, he’s perhaps best known as the founding six-stringer of Jawbox. The latter outfit helped push the twitchy, noise-quirked melodicism of post-hardcore into the mainstream with their major label debut, 1994’s For Your Own Special Sweetheart – a record that managed to put them on the road with the Stone Temple Pilots.
After Jawbox imploded in 1997, Robbins kept pace with amp-cranking outfits like Burning Airlines, Channels and Office of Future Plans. He also worked behind the scenes as a producer on tone-saturated emo classics from Texas Is the Reason, Braid, Promise Ring and more. Jawbox themselves have reunited off and on since 2009.
