Getting to Know… My Pet Rhino | Interview

In the 479^th Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, Jon Maratheftis provides the inside scoop regarding his intriguing project, My Pet Rhino. 

“My Pet Rhino is essentially a little passion project started by me, Jon Maratheftis, as a vehicle to finally complete a set of songs I had been slowly working on for about 20 years or so.” Right on, Jon, or should I say, My Pet Rhino! In this detailed and extensive 479^th Q&A, Maratheftis provides the inside scoop on the My Pet Rhino, including the genesis, goals, musical influences, and current and future musical endeavors. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into Getting to Know… My Pet Rhino: Interview No. 479!

For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes My Pet Rhino distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

The My Pet Rhino sound is unique in the way it pushes the boundaries of how to write catchy rock tunes that still have a sense of edge, excitement, and listenability. I am a big lover of progressive music; however, a lot of the time, it falls into the trap of being too technique-driven or too concept-driven and forgets that, as a form of entertainment, it still needs to have some hooks or simple repeated ideas that keep listeners coming back for more. Conversely, on the more rock/alternative/indie side of things, where simple tunes and catchy riffs, and melodies are more in favour, there is the pitfall of repeating ideas too often, leaving the listener with the sense that there may be a lack of diversity within the artists catalogue.

With My Pet Rhino, I am actively trying to seek out the best of the qualities from the genres listed above, while steering away from the common issues that just sticking to one specific genre tends to bring. For example, My Pet Rhino has a number of songs written in irregular time signatures, which is something very much rooted in the prog world, but instead of having them just be an interesting idea that passes through the song, I have tried to make them the core hook that is repeated throughout, which is something borrowed from the alt-rock and indie rock world. I firmly believe there is so much catchy, pop-oriented music hiding in the world of odd time signatures that no one ever bothers to explore, so My Pet Rhino is definitely trying to correct that, and that is just one part of what makes our sound unique. I think audiences are having their socks rocked off by our music because this approach naturally leads to a lot of diversity between tracks, and with no two tracks sounding the same, it makes for a very engaging listening experience!

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did My Pet Rhino form, and what were some of your goals or visions early?

My Pet Rhino is essentially a little passion project started by me, Jon Maratheftis, as a vehicle to finally complete a set of songs I had been slowly working on for about 20 years or so. I initially had the idea that I would try and form this as a traditional band and bring in band members for every instrument; however, it was proving challenging to find other musicians locally who were willing or capable of making the music I wanted to make. As such, about two years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands and start the process of recording anyway and completing as much of the record myself as I possibly could. I knew I would need help with drums and vocals as I am not up to a professional standard on those instruments, but I was confident I would be competent enough on all other instruments. I hired a local session drummer, Mark Spiteri, to come and smash out the drums with me over three days at Zen Studios in Sydney, and then slowly but surely came back to the studio on a part-time basis to record the full instrumental parts ready for vocals. For the vocals, I scoured the internet for the most talented and suitable session vocalists I could find, and eventually settled on LeeLoo, who was absolutely perfect for my tunes, but was based overseas which naturally brought some challenges to trying to make the logistics of recording work! I sent LeeLoo the backing tracks and some demos with scratch vocals sung by me as a guide, and she would go and record the vocal tracks at a studio near her in her own time, before sending the vocal files back to me in Sydney to be input back into the main tracks. So, while a bit unconventional, that was the roundabout process I used to put together the full band sound!

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

They have definitely changed a little bit, I would say. My initial goal was just to complete the songs I had been working on for so long in as professional a way as I could and release them into the world – that was it, nothing more. If people listened, then great, but if not, then I was never going to be too fussed about it – they were my songs done my way, and that was good enough for me! However, after all the hard work that went into putting it together and then hearing the quality of the tracks in the end product, it was clear to me that I probably needed to be a bit more ambitious in my goals and actually make a concerted effort to get people to hear the tunes. I genuinely believe there must be an audience for this type of music somewhere out there in the world, so I am now aiming to do my best to make sure all these potential fans get an opportunity to hear my work.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences, and how are they influential?

I am heavily influenced by a lot of British and Scottish indie and alternative rock, such as We Were Promised Jetpacks, There Will Be Fireworks, This Town Needs Guns, Jamie Lenman, etc. I love the mix of brightness, grittiness, and uniqueness of their songwriting, yet a lot of their catalogues still feature songs you can’t help but sing in the shower because you can’t get them out of your head! Not always just the vocal parts either – some of the best hooks in their catalogue are rhythm guitar riffs or drum beats that are just super catchy and memorable. I am also a huge fan of bands like Queens of the Stone Age, The Killers, Radiohead, Mother Mother, Metallica, Nirvana, Silverchair, Powderfinger, Julien Baker, etc. for a lot of the same reasons. Basically, anyone who brings energy and intensity to their music, all while still forging a unique sound for themselves, is a winner in my books. I would say I definitely borrowed a lot of concepts from all the artists listed above and re-purposed them into my own work to help create my own unique sound.

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

Unfortunately, with My Pet Rhino being a one-man, recording-only project at the moment, it makes it a little tricky to tour or do live performances at all! Given that it is a unique situation, I guess that could be considered wacky in itself? But it certainly does make it hard to answer this question in a compelling way! I can give an example from another project I was involved in if that helps – I was playing in an acoustic cover duo, and we were hired for a private birthday party at a house for three 45-minute sets. About halfway through the first set, basically everyone from the party decided to leave, and the hosts left it up to their teenage son to come and inform us we were no longer required to play the remainder of our sets. He was super nice about it, and we still got paid, thankfully, but during our conversation, he revealed that he was a musician himself and was looking to start up a covers project to play at parties and was wondering if we could give him any advice. We had just failed to engage an audience, including himself, for a quarter of the time we were meant to and were essentially getting booted off the job – it certainly did not feel like there was much good advice we could offer him at that moment!

To this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

“Knots” for me would be my favourite song I have recorded. It was the first song I wrote where I deliberately set out to emulate a certain sound and actually managed to achieve it, and it also marked a bit shift in my songwriting approach when it came to formulating the lyrics. Up until that point in my songwriting journey, I tended to focus on a lot of vague, fictional stories in my lyrics, and had a tendency to write words and phrases in a negative context by heavily using negative words like ‘don’t’, won’t’, never’, etc. I made a conscious effort to try and break this habit when writing “Knots.” The song formed into a little story about my tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a lot of scenarios in my life, which is a negative story in itself, but because I tried to phrase it with more affirmative language (I couldn’t get rid of ALL the negative language, but it was a start) the storytelling just seemed all the more powerful and interesting than anything I had written before. As such, the track really opened a lot of doors for me to explore from a songwriting perspective, which eventually translated to the album you hear today. From the recording side of things, “Knots” was just the most effortless track in the catalogue to record. Everything about the song just seemed to gel very early on, and it didn’t feel like I had to force anything to sound the way I wanted – it just naturally sounded how it was meant to sound.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left-of-center we should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

There are a couple of odd little instruments used in places on the album that might be considered interesting or surprising. The track, “Night Watches Over You,” uses a banjo-mandolin in the ending to add a little bluesy twang. A friend of mine found the instrument in his grandparents’ attic one day and couldn’t quite work out what it was, so he brought it to me to see if I knew. I had never seen anything quite like it, so I did some research to work out what it was, and it turned out it was a hybrid instrument, the banjo-mandolin (not to be confused with a banjolin – banjo-mandolin’s have 8 strings and play more like a mandolin than a banjo; banjolin’s have 4 strings and play more like a banjo than a mandolin). My friend’s grandparents estimated it was roughly 100 years old, and it was in desperate need of restoration. They had no use for it, so they asked if I’d like to buy it off them, and of course I did! Once I had it restored, it had such a unique and interesting sound to it that it has become one of my go-to instruments when I need a bright and playful colour to a tune, which was exactly what “Night Watches Over You” needed.

The other unusual instrument, which found its way onto the record in a couple of songs (“In Time” and “Sinner”) was a jar lid. I was looking for a unique ‘clicky’ sound to add some colour to these tracks and was playing with the heat-seal button on top of a jar of pickled ginger at dinner one night when it occurred to me that this could be the answer. I liked the fact that the click had two different tones – one when pushed down, and a slightly different one when released back into its popped-out position. It made it seem a bit more ‘conversational’ and gave the click an added element of dimension, which I found interesting.

What are you currently working on or promoting that you can share? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

I am still in the throes of promoting the first album, Arrows. “Knots” was released as a single on July 10^th, 2025. Beyond that, I am hoping to record one more track before the end of the year (although no plans yet set in stone) to hopefully give the listeners one more song to sink their teeth into before I close out the ‘Arrows’ chapter of our story.

Thank you so much for sharing and taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward.