When we last caught up with Jukebox the Ghost, we left hoping we’d hear from them again. Soon. Their unpretentious but knowing mix of staples from the pop-rock canon — think Billy Joel gone quirky with a bunch of proto-new wavers as backing band — is addictive, and they proved they had the tunes to back it up.
Unfortunately, Jukebox were still a kick-ass live show without too much in the way of quality recording to call their own, so they’ve spent much of the winter holed up in North Carolina, laying down a bunch of new tunes for an upcoming release. If the material is half as good as “Hold It In” — featuring lead singer Ben Thornewill’s spazzy delivery and Tommy Siegel’s squealing guitar — then there’s a hell of a lot to look forward to tomorrow night when they hit Velvet Lounge.
The guys were kind enough to take time between their GW studies, historical re-enacting, and thrift store shopping to sit down and answer some of our questions about the new recordings, their live show, and the DC music scene.
Next show: Friday, February 2, @ Velvet Lounge. With Bliss and Chet Vincent.
How’s the recording coming along?
Tommy: The recording is coming along great—We finished the tracking for all 12 tracks, and we’re in the process of mixing it now. The few songs we’ve gotten early mixes for sound phenomenal… We’re recording with producer Ted Comerford at Low Watt studios in Raleigh, North Carolina.
How do you feel your songs translate live?
Ben: I think one of the greatest challenges in recording is making sure the energy of the live show is transfered onto the CD. But since so much of the energy of the live show is visual and since the underlying thrill of a live show, whether admittedly or not, is that the performers could mess up, flub, improvise or burst in flames at any minute…these elements are lost.
Tommy: As for studio/live translation, that’s something that we’re very new to since most of our other recordings are relatively bare-boned demo-style recordings, until now… Our show this friday will be our first after coming out of a “real” studio session. Some of the songs will definitely be missing key elements. When we were in the studio we added tons of things we don’t normally get to do like vocal layering, harpischord, hammond organ, baritone guitar, vibraphone, tympani, acoustic guitar, layered synth… It added up to make us sound a lot bigger than we really are. I’m sure there’ll be elements that we’ll miss when we play live, but we still manage to make a pretty big sound for a three piece. As for whether the songs will “work” as well live, we won’t know for sure whether some of this new material succeeds in a live setting until we do it — we’re psyched to see what happens.
