{"id":28210,"date":"2026-03-26T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=28210"},"modified":"2026-03-24T17:33:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T17:33:35","slug":"poison-punk-lifer-justin-maurer-launches-j-mau-the-kiss-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=28210","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Poison&#8217;: Punk Lifer Justin Maurer Launches J MAU &amp; THE KISS OFF"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Los Angeles, California\u2019s J MAU &amp; THE KISS OFF emerge from what they lovingly call their \u201cbeloved hellhole\u201d with their debut single \u201cPoison,\u201d out March 25. Founded in 2025 by Justin \u201cJ Mau\u201d Maurer, longtime punk lifer and founder of Clorox Girls, Suspect Parts, L.A. Drugz, and Maniac, the project finds Maurer turning toward something darker and dustier without losing the bite that\u2019s always defined him. \u201cPoison\u201d is a cinematic honky tonk murder ballad filtered through decades of West Coast punk history. It\u2019s the first glimpse of a songwriter who\u2019s always followed the feeling, even when it led somewhere uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"J Mau &amp; The Kiss Off - Poison Music Video\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6fBvGsOxQMM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Maurer\u2019s story isn\u2019t mythology. It\u2019s messy and real. A CODA raised between Los Angeles and Bainbridge Island by a single Deaf mother, American Sign Language was his first language. Punk became his second. After surviving a turbulent childhood and helping put his abusive father in jail as a teenager, Maurer found autonomy in the underground. By fifteen he was booking shows and touring. By twenty he was releasing records and circling the globe with Clorox Girls. Along the way he built a parallel career as one of the country\u2019s most respected ASL interpreters, working alongside prominent political figures like Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden, stage interpreting for punk legends like Alice Bag and The Avengers, interpreting Deaf actor Troy Kotsur\u2019s historic 2022 Academy Award acceptance speech, and appearing with Kotsur on&nbsp;<em>Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em>. His life has always moved between worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After stints living in Madrid, London, and Baja California, and in the wake of a divorce that leveled him, Maurer found himself flat on his back in an East Hollywood apartment, cowboy boots still on, old country records spinning. Hank Williams. Buck Owens. Merle Haggard. Gram Parsons. Kris Kristofferson. Townes Van Zandt. He finally understood it. \u201cReal country music is poetry,\u201d Maurer says. \u201cIt\u2019s about failure, heartbreak, and the tragic human condition. Music to laugh and cry and live and die by.\u201d That rock-bottom clarity led him to write \u201cPoison.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recorded at Savannah Studios in Boyle Heights with Ignacio \u201cIggy\u201d Gonzalez and backed by Patrick \u201cButterworth\u201d Vasquez and Kevin \u201cQuake\u201d Milner, the track moves like a slow-burning reckoning. Acoustic strum, restrained rhythm, and a haunted vocal that feels equal parts confession and warning. From his window in Pico Union, Maurer could hear children playing at the elementary school across the street. Listening to old country compilations full of doomed protagonists, he imagined himself as a man on the run whose days were numbered, watching that schoolyard and knowing he might never see it again. That\u2019s where the line came from:&nbsp;<em>\u201cWhen will you see the children play \/ You never will again.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;The refrain doesn\u2019t comfort you. It circles back like a hard truth you can\u2019t shake:&nbsp;<em>\u201cIt\u2019s got a way \/ That poison\u2019s got a way \/ It\u2019s got a say \/ It\u2019s got the final say.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The single arrives with an 8mm-shot video co-directed by Maurer\u2019s former MANIAC bandmate Zache Davis and Marta Ribate Gracia-Davis. Grainy, sun-bleached, and edited with a careful hand, it plays like a spaghetti western fever dream, a corrido where the protagonist must confront how he\u2019ll be remembered before the end comes calling. The artwork, designed by longtime collaborator Matthew \u201cSnake\u201d Davis, leans into vintage flash tattoo skulls and silent-film menace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>J MAU &amp; THE KISS OFF Online<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/jmau_thekissoff\/\"><strong>INSTAGRAM<\/strong><\/a><strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/distrokid.com\/hyperfollow\/jmauandthekissoff\/poison\"><strong>SPOTIFY<\/strong><\/a><strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/jmauandthekissoff.bandcamp.com\/\"><strong>BANDCAMP<\/strong><\/a><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>|&nbsp;<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jmauandthekissoff\"><strong>FACEBOOK<\/strong><\/a><strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/6fBvGsOxQMM\"><strong>YOUTUBE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Los Angeles, California\u2019s J MAU &amp; THE KISS OFF emerge from what they lovingly call their \u201cbeloved hellhole\u201d with their debut single \u201cPoison,\u201d out March 25. Founded in 2025 by Justin \u201cJ Mau\u201d Maurer, longtime punk lifer and founder of Clorox Girls, Suspect Parts, L.A. Drugz, and Maniac, the project finds Maurer turning toward something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[6770,1787,9060,6780,6772,6771,1681,1680,2558],"class_list":["post-28210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-clorox-girls","tag-its-a-revolution","tag-j-mau-the-kiss-off","tag-justin-maurer","tag-l-a-drugz","tag-maniac","tag-rpmnews1","tag-rpmonline","tag-suspect-parts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28212,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28210\/revisions\/28212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}