Welcome to The Rocks Off 200, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. See previous entries in the Rocks Off 100 at this link.
Who? Houston native Renée Jonard has been around music since her days at Dobie High School, when she went from playing double bass in the orchestra to bass guitar (just like us, actually), and then various bands including Astralis while she lived in Fullerton, Calif. Even when she put down the guitar and started a family, Jonard says she still had the urge to be involved in some way.
"There's gotta be a grownup in rock and roll," she notes.
While living in Atlanta, Jonard interned for an entertainment attorney who represented several hip-hop and R&B artists. When she returned to Houston in 2010 instead of studying nursing or music therapy (too much theory), she started helping her friends bands and volunteering at festivals like Free Press Summer Fest, Atlanta's A3C Hip-Hop Festival, and the Austin Psych Fest. In April of last year she met the folks behind Houston indie/psych promoters Treaty Oak Collective at a Har Mar Superstar show and took over their social-media duties.
From there Jonard helped Treaty Oak by attempting to bring in several music-related films, including Amrit Singh's Dosa Hunt and the Black Lips tour diary Kids Like You & Me, and finally succeeded with Change In the Game, a documentary about Atlanta's hip-hop history that she helped present at Walters last June. She even flying out the filmmakers for a Q&A and show featuring artists from the film. Jounard started her own booking agency, Noise Pollution, late last year and this month is putting on several shows at Mango's, all of them experimental, noisy and eclectic: Mother Ghost and Austin's Bounce House this Thursday; C.J. Boyd, Eric Todd and P.L.X.T.X. February 27; and Migrant Kids, I Am the Albatross and B.E. Godfrey February 28.
"I want to do a lot of things," says Jonard. "I'm not quite sure what it'll evolve into, but I hope that we bring a little flavor to the scene."
Home Base: Jonard's husband's job recently relocated him to Round Rock, so she's been spending a lot of time on the highway. Her ties to Houston and Dinolion, the video/film-production company, keep her racking up those miles.
"I can't stand the thought of not popping into Boomtown or Blacksmith for coffee once in a while," she says. "For the past ten months, I've been at Mango's, sticking my iPhone in bands' faces to get a shot for Instagram."
Good War Story: "Not very juicy, but I got to drive [comedian] Rob Delaney to his hotel room and he gave me gas money," cops Jonard. "He was a real cool dude."
Story continues on the next page.
