Jukebox the Ghost: The MusicSnobbery.com Interview

Each one of us putting together After the Jump are interviewing a band who are playing the event. I got Washington, D.C. trio Jukebox the Ghost, who have a self-titled EP out for your enjoyment.

If you like your pop music created by music majors than Jukebox is your band. They all graduated George Washington University this year, so instead of entering the work force, they are testing out the often cruel waters of indie rock.

Ben Thornewill is the lead singer and piano man, Tommy Siegel is on guitar and Jesse Kristin is on the drums. I talked with Ben about the history of the band and what's it like opening for Kanye West. I'd like to welcome him to this space.

I have to start with the dumb music journalism question of how the band got together.
I have a dumb answer. We all met at GW, I lived above Jesse and next to Tommy in the same dorm.

Are you all from D.C.?
I'm originally from Kentucky, Tommy is from Richmond, Virginia and Jesse is from Boston.

What did you go to school for?
I originally went to GW for politics, then never took a single politic class and lost interest in it, so I became a music major. The others did biology and journalism.

What's the music scene like in D.C. these days?
It's getting a lot better. The past year, we've been making good friends with Exit Clov, Le Loup and These United States. We're kind of sad because we've left it for the road, but we're coming back. It's hard to explain because everyone talks about there being a lull of bands. Then theoretically, there's a serge of bands.

The reason I ask because D.C. was known as the birthplace of dance punk. Since the early 90s, there hasn't been much going on.
You have to remember that bands like Dismemberment Plan and Q and Not U, those like dance punk indie bands, have all broken up. So there's that lull after that where there's no hardcore bands anymore. I'm hoping that our happy pop band catches on.

How did you guys decide what you wanted to sound like being that D.C. had that strong hardcore scene?
We never really talked about it. We didn't set up the band to contrast what had happen in the D.C. scene. I'm classically trained so that's heavily involved in our sound. The other guys have wide ranging tastes. Tommy is a Phish-head and Jesse is a punk rock guy.

I'm sure you get this a lot but you remind me a lot of Ben Folds Five.
Yup, less now then we use to. We get a lot comparisons to Queen and They Might Be Giants.

So being a college band, I'm sure played around D.C. to start out.
Yeah, for the first couple of years we just played around campus until we were decent enough to play outside of campus. We finally did get to play The Black Cat. They wouldn't book us for years, so we changed our name (from the Sunday Mail to Jukebox the Ghost) and sent in the same material. They booked us immediately, which was interesting.

What are some of the big gigs you've played so far?
Well, we played to 600 at the Black Cat with Great Northern. We just recently played the Rock 'n' Roll Hotel with Tokyo Police Club and Ra Ra Riot, which was sold out. We did open up for Kanye West once at GW.

That's awesome. Did you get to meet him?
No, we saw him through a sea of bodyguards.

You should put that on the resume.
We do sometimes. We also opened up for Lloyd Banks, who stabbed somebody a year before we opened for him. We had the great idea of getting stabbed back stage by him, which didn't happen. Then, we did cover one of his songs before he went on. I forget which one, but we totally butchered it. After we played it, these massive guys just stood in front of the stage and stared at us down the rest of our set.

Nice. That could have been the end of Jukebox the Ghost. So have you gotten any label interest yet?
Yes, lots of talk. We're a few weeks away from signing.

Great, so eventually you'll make a full length album?
It's done already. We recorded it back in January in North Carolina with Ted Comerford (Army of Me). We released the EP to gain some attention for the full-length. We'll probably have the LP released in November.

 

Comments

[scott]

great band! looking forward to seeing them...