Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is a DCist first. We’ve been doing Three Stars long enough that we’re profiling a band with members from a disbanded former Three Stars subject. Michael Medlock was the frontman for The Sentiment, a hard rocking group we covered in 2006. Two years, several shows and an EP later, he’s now at the helm of the Black & White Jacksons, a punk-inspired four-piece that’s making quite a name for themselves around local rock clubs.

The Black & White Jacksons are an affable bunch of guys who love to have fun, but are very serious about music. Drawing from their considerable educations and influences from every corner of the rock universe, their songs are sparse, to the point, high energy and infectious. It can be a lot harder to write a simple-sounding, 3-minute rock song than it is to write a complicated, orchestral opus with everything you can imagine thrown into it. Black & White Jacksons think about what they’re doing, and it shows, both on their highly-listenable EP and in their live shows. Taking cues from Medlock’s explosive stage presence (that often explodes right off the stage and into the audience), the entire band plays with heart and energy and a sense of pure enjoyment that’s often hard to find. We chatted with all four members of the band — vocalist Michael Medlock, guitarist Tim George, drummer Zacky Onassis, and bassist Lucas Oswalt — in their Mt Pleasant practice space about all things B&WJ.