Interview: The Jim Jones Revue

Live4ever sat down with The Jim Jones Revue for an exclusive interview at world famous Maxwell’s in Hoboken NJ as the UK’s Rock N Roll powerhouse blew in to town to wrap up their US tour. Members Jim Jones, Rupert Orton, Gavin Jay, Nick Jones and newly acquired keyboard player Henri Herbert shared tales from the road, their strong views on the digital VS analog debate and the sad state of Rock N Roll, among other things.

L4E: Welcome back to world famous Maxwell’s in Hoboken lads!

JJR:  Thank You!

L4E: Great to see you for a second time in a week, we saw you at Music Hall of Williamsburg, last Saturday.

Jim: Brooklyn Yeah, that was a good one!

L4E:  The last time we really spent a some quality time with you guys was at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX when you played our Live4ever Brit Rock showcase at Antones. Any thoughts about how that went down?

Nick: Well, legendary venue isn’t it?

Jim: And one of things that stuck out from there is that we were supposed to see Alex Chilton there and he died didn’t he?

L4E: Correct

Nick: That was last year but it was the same place he (Alex) was gonna play.

Gavin: A year before…it’s all a blur on the road. Years become a blur.

Rupert: The main difference between that (Live4ever) performance and when we played SX last year is that we knew what to expect and we were really drilled but also what was really cool was we’d gone to New York and then LA and had some time to kind of get our shit together so when we came to play that show with you, I think that was one of the first ones we did we hit it full on ( smacks his fist) . D’You know what I mean? And we just kept going – it was like 5 days boom boom boom and it’s quite interesting cuz when we were waiting at the airport to fly back to the UK we’re just sitting around going: How did this go? cuz the last year before that we’re going: God, you know, what does this all mean? But this time we knew we’d done quite well. We kind of made a pact then that we were coming back and we’re gonna hit the States as hard as we could and six months later we’re playing Letterman! so we’re really, really pleased.

L4E: Yeah it seems there was an enthusiasm for playing Antones and it suits your music because you need a sound system like that and you need professionals to set the place up for you?

Rupert: Yeah. No it’s cool, it’s great. Austin is wonderful place and it’s brilliant to do SX

Jim: Good about Antones is like the middle of the day and it still feels like a night time venue when you go in then.

L4E: Wasn’t it St Patricks Day?

Band: Yeah it was!

L4E: Who was wearing the green shirt?

Nick: Yeah that was me, Celtic connection, you know.

L4E: When we spoke to you in Austin you were still struggling to find a US distributor for your new album “Burning your House down”?

Rupert: Well yeah, one of the reasons we went to do SX was to get a distributor sorted out which we’ve now got umh so the record was released a couple of weeks ago in the US properly on Vinyl, CD, everything plus all the others so we are now in the position where we’re properly distributed in the US and it’s good because before it was a little bit haphazard and so yeah I think it was definitely something good that happened in SX because there was a lot of buzz about us and it was a case of talking the right people we felt were the best for us.

L4E: The Guardian’s Michael Hamm wrote the following about you: “The Jim Jones Revue imagine that Rock ‘n’ Roll didn’t really need to evolve after 1956; it just needed to get much, much louder, and wildly more distorted” How do you feel about that view?

Jim: The guy that wrote that

Rupert interrupts: No no no, that was the good guy! (Band laughs) …Michael

Jim: The Guardian?

Rupert: Yeah he had a guy we did that review show with. Radio 5 Live. He’s a music editor at The Guardian.

Jim: Ah right. Oh Yeah , yeah.

Rupert: I think it’s him. But I would slightly disagree with that you know because obviously indisputably there’s a Fifties like influence to the music but you know (we might have) taken everything from that point as well and stuff before it so you know it’s like a big bouillabaisse of like exciting music that we felt was going to be good to sort of regurgitate in our own way. I don’t think it’s a straight ahead revival, you know sort of retro thing.

L4E: How do you generally feel about the state of Rock N Roll or just Rock music?

Rubert: Shit! It’s fucking nothing, d’you know what I mean. I’ll tell you the weirdest thing like for us: We come over the America to play and we’re like this is the heart of what we’re about, this is like the streets are paved with our heroes and all the kids have got their trousers rolled up playing 80’s music with synths with from like we used to hate in the 80’s influenced by British bands what’s that all about , you know? So I don’t understand.

L4e: You think there’s something driving you to change a little bit about that?

Rupert: We don’t wanna to change it . We just wanna do it for us, d’you know what I mean?

(long silence) (rest of band breaks out in laughter)

Jim: I’m tempted to say something…. I ain’t gonna bother (points at Rupert and laughs) Talk to him.

L4E: Since we last saw you at SX Henry is a new addition to the band. How’s it been on the road with him?

Jim: (softly) He’s a bit of a c##t (laughter)

Rupert: Henry is brilliant! If we would have gone into a laboratory like Frankenstein and built our perfect piano player it wouldn’t be far short of that.

L4E: We wouldn’t disagree at all with that! We were wondering how you maintain that posture for the whole show? During the Letterman appearance it appeared like you were sitting from certain camera angles. Do you train for that – what’s your workout?

Henri: The workout is the gig, the gigs I’ve done. I’ve done a lot of them now. It was a struggle at first to play standing up.

L4E: We heard a rumor you were a boxer? Does that help a little?

Henri: I was a boxer. It does help a little with some things (laughs) in general it’s just the gigs. I don’t know how many gigs I’ve done but lots. That playing standing up thing makes it a lot easier for me to play aggressively. I’ve just enjoyed playing standing up know so when I play sitting down it just doesn’t feel right.

L4e: You’re very animated and fun to watch when you play and interact with the audience. Do you have a theater background? Is that just you being you?

Henry: That’s just me coming out on my own. It’s taken a while to have the confidence to be like that.

L4e: Well it’s very entertaining and fun to watch.

Do you have any good stories to tell us from your Letterman appearance?

Rupert: Well we thought it wasn’t gonna happen and then we got confirmed . We were like God this incredible and then out of the corner that hurricane Irene starts edging into the news and then suddenly all the flights are canceled and we’re just like: What the fuck happened there!? So we couldn’t get there but we had to go to Paris to go play Rock en Seine and we routed our flights to go from Paris to New York you know which made sense at the time but when it got reconfirmed again we couldn’t go from London so we had to travel all the way to Paris to get to Vancouver where we were gonna start the tour and when we got to Paris it (Letterman) got confirmed again. We’re like Oh my God this is brilliant but then we just went into this incredible criss crossing America. We crossed coast to coast four times before we got to New York to play the show so it was a bit of a blur really. It was great though, we were blown away by it.

L4E: Let’s change the subject a bit. The owner of HMV records came out and said that he believed the CD format had another 5 years before becoming obsolete. Do you have a preference how your music is released? Do you like the whole digital download direction the market is taking . You’re fans of vinyl aren’t you?

Rupert: It is what it is , you know what I mean? It’s just a form of recorded music whether it’s like ones and zeros for digital stuff or vinyl, cd or whatever it is.

Jim: If it’s a case of it being a “digital show” then we’d have a problem with it

Rupert: But you can’t digitize a live music show.

Jim: The thing you really want is the performance, the communication of the music is important and whether the people get it or download it from somewhere or whether the buy it vinyl if that’s their preference … everyone likes to suck a dick in a different way , you know? Vinyl is one way, CD is another way, download is another way. We’re not really bothered about it. It’s the same way in the studio we don’t have to use old fashioned microphones you know. If Pro tools is going to get us a better sound we’ll go with Pro tools.

L4E: Did you got the digital route on your last album?

Jim: We take all routes.

Rupert: We throw it all in there. Our last record does digital and analog, everything.

Jim: All styles , it’s a Bruce Lee approach.

L4E: We’re surprised by your response, both in terms of the method of recording and the medium by which you release your music. Especially where your music is concerned, pulling vinyl out of its sleeve is a cool thing and being able to capture the energy of your music we thought would be something you’d focus on, is it not?

Jim: The vinyl IS there for you.

Rupert: It’s there if you want it.

Jim: You can have that experience if you want it. Some people live somewhere too small to have a vinyl collection and mp3s are the way to go. And they still get the experience they want. You know, you don’t have to have special haircut to come to a Jim Jones Revue concert. You don’t have to have some esoteric knowledge of the history rock n roll. You come to have a damn good time and that’s the point.

Rupert: There’s no code you have to adhere to.

Jim: We love vinyl. I love to hear vinyl. But also, when I don’t have time and I just want to check something out, I just get my hands on an mp3.

Rupert: And not to go into this in too much detail, but if you look at the history of recorded music when it started in the late eighteen hundreds, maybe its just a transient thing the it has gone since then and from now onwards where it’s going to go somewhere else. Before that, it was just playing it live. We do it live. There’s no samples, no synths. We play everything live, so what you see if what you get. It’s totally organic and we’re completely comfortable with that.

L4E: There’s a band from Dublin, big fans of yours, The Minutes…

JJR: (Collectively) Oh Yeah…

L4E: They recorded their debut, not far from here in upstate New York, completely live. The three of them stood around in the same room playing and recording live and they thought it was hugely important to do that and we find there’s a similarity in your music as there’s so much energy and is it not important to capture that?

Jim: Yeah! We play live. Absolutely. The way it’s processed after that, to make it sound as exciting as possible, we’ll use anything at our disposal.

Rupert: Every track we’ve recorded was recorded live. In fact, some of the tracks of the last album ‘Burning Your House Down’ are first takes – ‘Burning Your House Down’ and maybe ‘Killing Spree’ but, they’re first takes. How you hear it is how we played there in the room. I don’t think you can get any more live than that really!

Jim: Also, digital has a ways to go. It doesn’t sound as good as analog but you know, it’s so convenient.

Rupert: And we’re on the road almost all the time so, we can’t go around with a big trunk of vinyl and a portable turntable!!! That’s why we’ve all got iPods, you know?

L4E: So, the first album took you 48 hours?

Jim: We booked a room for two days so we could leave the mics set up and we went in there at lunchtime and went home at eight or nine at night and we did that two days in a row.

Rupert: It was a really horrible experience! I think it was in August and there was a heat wave. We were in Camden I think and we had the sweat pouring off us! We were like, ‘Are we done yet?, No? One more take…’ Fuck!

Nick: (laughing)… ‘Right, that’s it one take. Let’s get the fuck out of here’!

Rupert: I think we did ten takes of each and then we then chose which ones were best and then Jim fucked them up! – In a good way!

Jim: I just cooked them a little further. They weren’t quite distorted enough!

Rupert: Actually, the thing was Jim and I were round his place and we had no money. We’d been to a couple of different studios and the made us play separately, you know? Drums first…and then… bollocks! Then a lightning bolt came out of the sky and we said let’s just record ourselves playing live in our rehearsal space, which we’re really comfortable with and that’s just what we did. A friend of Jim came round and hung a few mics around and boom… that was it.

L4E: How would you feel about having your music used in a vodka commercial or a muscle car commercial?

Jim: Well, if it’s being used for something we don’t believe in, then no. But we’re still living hand to mouth at the moment so, a little bit of revenue something like that we wouldn’t turn down.

Rupert: Like, if it’s like an Arms manufacturer…! Then yeah! Like, bombing people to ‘Rock’n’Roll Psychosis’, then that wouldn’t be good. But that’s just another way of getting the music out there. Radio is not the same anymore; the charts aren’t the same anymore. The recorded music market is worth nothing, basically.

Jim: I’m sure you’d agree, the industry is changing so much now. I was saying to Graham (cameraman following JJR for a documentary feature) earlier, we’re trying to work out a way to be like Bugs Bunny and take a piece of chalk and draw a doorway and go through It because the rest of it ain’t working. If you’re not twenty years old and doing some electro eighties influenced music and you’ve got one of the bigger labels behind you, you’re struggling.

Rupert: But that’ll change. Six months from now it’ll be something different. At the core of it, we’re a fuck off live band and we know what our strengths are – everything else emanates out of that and so if it it’s used in a car commercial, so be it but the core of it is us. It’s just five individuals.

Jim: And the five of us have a strong belief in what we’re doing. We’re all on the same page and we’re able to move forward in an independent way, you know? We don’t have to wait on the label and have to have a meeting to talk about this tour or that. We can just talk about amongst ourselves and if we want to do something we go and do it.

Rupert: Exactly. We were in Chicago a couple of days ago and we had a radio session on NPR the next day and Chicago to Philadelphia, where the interview was, is sixteen hours or something. And we said, let’s do it and we jumped in the van and did it. We didn’t need a committee meeting or anything. Sleep or do a radio show, you know? We got sleep deprivation, everyday of the week.

L4E: And how’d it go?!

Jim: It went well. It was worth it. We got in there early in the morning.

Rupert: We actually got in there a half hour before it was being broadcast. We set up, no sound check, boom – straight on! It went brilliantly. It was fantastic!

L4E: We just had dinner with a musician friend of ours – the lead singer from English band Pint Shot Riot and he told us to ask you guys – At what point in your lives did you realize this was it? That you were going to play music for the rest of your lives…

Jim: Mine was gradual. I merged into it, like highways merging!

Rupert: Same here. Three or four years ago before this band got together, we were all doing different things. But then everything, like Jim said, merged. Everything aligned just right and we thought fuck… this is going somewhere.

Jim: That’s the one thing that made me feel good about this project. It made me feel like everything I was doing up until that point was a learning curve and everything from that point onward was an execution of my experience. Now I feel like I know what I’m doing. Enough to fool myself anyway!

L4E: Well, it certainly does look like you know what you are doing. It looks like you absolutely LOVE being up on stage – like we see Nick laughing and having a blast behind the drums. You’re the same Jim, engaging the crowd all throughout the show and obviously Henri as we talked about earlier – it’s really, really great.

Thanks for your time guys.

Jim: Yeah! Thanks. And thanks for being supportive from the word go. It’s been great.