When you think of mid-90's emo bands, names like Braid and The Get Up Kids come to mind. Along with these bands, The Jazz June has to pop into your head. After forming in 1996 and releasing numerous records, the band broke up after 2001's Better Off Without Air. Members went on to form other bands, and it seemed as if The Jazz June would end of as a small footnote in music history. However, the band has recently decided to hold a reunion show to benefit their roadie who has been diagnosed with cancer. Scene Point Blank's Cory caught up with the band to discuss the reunion show, and see what they have been up to since their breakup.
Scene Point Blank: It's probably appropriate to start the interview off by letting those that don't know that The Jazz June is playing a reunion show in Philadelphia in mid-January. How did this all come about, and did everyone feel like it was time to get the band back together?
Bryan: We are reuniting because our roadie Adam Gerhart needs our loving support. Adam has been diagnosed with brain cancer and we are getting back together to raise some dough to help him and his wife through this heavy time. The Jazz June have remained very close friends over the years and we have never had more of a reason to get back together than for Adam. Anything that we can do as a collective to help Adam, we will do! Cancer is a real fucker, and we are going to use our music to help drive it from Adam's brain.
Andrew: We had been toying with the idea, but everyone was so busy with new babies that it probably wouldn't have happened for a while. We had talked about maybe starting to practice in the summer of 2007. We had been getting a lot of messages from people on our Myspace site asking for a reunion, so we figured why not. The idea was to do a few weekend shows and hit Philly, NYC, Boston, and our favorite city Detroit.
Scene Point Blank: Has practice started yet for the reunion show? How much, if any, rust was there, and if you haven't practiced yet what are the expectations?
Bryan: Practice has started at home. The setlist is loaded into my iPod and the shredding has begun. Expect a great show. We are also working on having the show video taped with the thought of releasing it on CD and DVD, with the thought of having all of the proceeds generated from CD/DVD sales going to Adam. I am hammering out the details.
Andrew: Dan, Bryan, Justin and Jim live near each other, so they have gotten together. I live all the way up in North Jersey, so I will only get together with the band a few times before the show. I will be doing a lot of practicing at home with my acoustic guitar in front of the computer - I don't have a stereo. I do actually know what all the notes on the guitar are called now, so I'm going to make a cheat sheet. The lyrics will be hard. I used to have this thing where I didn't want anyone to know what the lyrics to the songs were, so a lot of them are not in the CD. This was a good call considering how bad some of them are.
Scene Point Blank: The show in January is a punk raffle type show to help your roadie Adam in his fight against brain cancer. Along with your band playing, labels like Dischord, Buddyhead, and Jade Tree have also agreed to help. It seems like sort of an odd grouping of people, how did everyone collectively come together?
Bryan: I sent some emails and made some calls to labels that were up and coming when we were playing in the late 90's, all of the labels graciously made donations. I reached out to Ian MacKaye of The Evens and he suggested the raffle idea to me, then I ran with it. We received some awesome records from all the labels. And Siren Records in Doylestown, Pa offered gift cards to raffle off.
Justin: When we were involved in the scene it was a bit more honest and DIY than it seems to be today, much less about getting signed and more about getting off your ass and doing something creative. We've approached this show in that spirit, just calling old contacts, talking to labels and bands we respect and just seeing if they're interested in helping this amazing person that made an impact on a lot of people at shows and on the road. We've had a tremendous response so far and owe a these people who are contributing our deepest gratitude
Scene Point Blank: Is this show going to be a one time deal, or are there any other plans for the band to stay together in the future?
Andrew: I'm sure it will be more than a â??one time deal,â? but with everyone having babies and houses and jobs that make them travel all the time, it will be hard to do on a regular basis.
Bryan: We'll tell you after January 13th via Myspace.
Scene Point Blank: The Jazz June has a very extensive playlist covering numerous albums. How many songs are you planning on playing, and how are you going to choose them? I personally suggest starting with â??When the Drums Kick Inâ? just because I'm a corny person. Maybe consider it?
Andrew: â??When the Drums Kick Inâ? is definitely on the list. We actually posted a bulletin on my space asking for suggestions. Our friends also requested a few. We will probably play around ten songsâ?¦ It all depends on how the practices go and how stoned we get.
Scene Point Blank: Stepping away from the reunion show, it's been years since the band has been together. I know Andrew plays in Snakes and Music, did anyone else go on to any other bands?
Bryan: Andrew has ten bands. He is crazy/prolific/nuts whatever, the man writes lots of music. I have been working for years on a solo project, but I can't find players that live close enough to me.
Andrew: Hahahahaha... Dan (bass) is also in Snakes and Music, don't worry he is easy to forget. He is very small. Bryan also lends a hand to Snakes and Music in the studio and at shows. Bryan and I have been working on his solo album for a while; it is some real good shit. I also have bands called Wake up Dead and The Lows. Wake Up Dead is a zombie punk rock band and The Lows is a folky, rock band I have with my wife and some of the guys from Snakes and Music. Actually, Justin from The Jazz June just signed on to be our drummer. Oh and Justin, Bryan and Jim were in a band called Ready to Rip for a while.
Dan: I play the accordion by myself in my basement.
Scene Point Blank: The last album The Jazz June released was Better Off Without Air, an album obliviously more experimental then previous efforts that seemed to get mixed reviews from fans. Looking back on it now, was the goal of the album to be progressive, and are you happy with the way everything turned out?
Bryan: There are about five or six songs on there that I am personally very proud of. We wrote the record after we graduated from college; basically recorded and mixed it ourselves and finished post 9/11. It was a prog-rock attempt; it was the direction we were heading. The poppy days had passed us at that point and we a bit anti-emo then. I was cracking up after being in NYC on 9/11, I just wanted to make music, smoke a bit, jam on the delay pedal and create textured well thought out music. We did contemplate a name change before the record, because the sound was so different.
Justin: I like that album in general. I think in retrospect I might have wanted to make it an EP and trimmed the fat. We were really trying to push our comfort zone and try to do some things people wouldn't expect. I think we could see that the genre we were being lumped into. "Emo" was getting really stale and we wanted out of that; look at all the major label "emo" bands and you'll see what I mean. No sense of experimentation or rebellion; it's all posturing, fashion, emo hair, and man purses.
Andrew: Yeah I think it is a great album. We actually got really good reviews from the critics, which you can take as good or bad. It's funny, while we were recording it the engineer asked me who wrote the songs and if we actually liked them. We were definitely trying to separate ourselves from the heap of indie, wannabe radio fucking crap that was starting at the time. Every band we played with was starting to sound pop-punk. We just wanted to do something different and more challenging. It was an ugly time in the world when we wrote the album. I remember feeling sick for about 4 months after 9/11. Some of this probably came out in all of us in the studio.
Scene Point Blank: The band started in 1996, and was very active when the term emo started to become bastardized, (although some would argue the word was never a positive thing to begin with), playing with bands like Mineral and The Get Up Kids, and even being featured on one of the Emo Diaries compilation. What are thoughts on the word, then and now that it's evolved?
Bryan: I thought emo came from D.C., you know Rites of Spring and Embrace. Emo is now a major label cash cow genre selling records for Thursday, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. We were labeled with the term after Sunny Day Real Estate hit the college scene in â??92.
Andrew: Emo turned into the worst kind of music ever. It was like mixing Blink 182 with a lot of whining. I was just talking to my friend about this. These new emo bands are people who don't know how to write songs; which can be good if you are writing experimental indie rock or punk, but with these new bands it's like they take a boring, bad radio song and throw in a twist, â??Oh look! The singer is a nerd with tattoos! Let's put him on the cover of Rolling Stone.â? If you are going to be mainstream then just be a rock band, there is nothing wrong with that. If you are going to be indie or emo then write new, interesting, different music. That is what it is supposed to be all about. It has come to the point that emo is just associated with a style of dress and the music is just like all the other stuff on the radio, but worse. The fame will come after you write a good album, no matter what kind of music you are playing.
Scene Point Blank: When asking a buddy of mine in the band The Summer We Went West if he had any questions, he had one simple request: If you had a pet made out of spaghetti, what would you name it?
Justin: Your friend is f'n nutz.
Andrew: Name him Jesus and eat his eyes first. After you have crucified him, throw acid where his eyes were and ask him why God hates gay people.
Words: Cory
Graphics: Matt
