Powerpop.ru was repeatedly told about creativity of band Jellybricks. The broadbrow and good creative people always will find the way to thanks all who have care for their creativity and pay them attention. Recently, the leader of Jellybricks Larry Kennedy wrote to us and thanked that we wrote on our website about Jellybricks' new release Goodnight To Everyone.
We have asked Larry to share with our readers news about today's life of the band. Larry has kindly agreed to give a detailed account of Jellybricks' life and music, with the result that we have this an informative interview. And we were very glad for this, because we prefer more substantial discussion and more less blitz polls...
We would like that we and all Internet users, who love power pop and related styles, always could discovering something new on sites about music, because the aim of many good readers and listeners are daily progression and the opening of all new and interesting! Long Live Rock'n'Roll!!!
Powerpop.Ru: What is the Jellybricks' history? How did it begin?
Larry Kennedy: In late 1995, I traveled from Youngstown, Ohio to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to record some demos for a new solo project. Though I didn't meet Garrick Chow when I first recorded in Harrisburg, Garrick was an engineer at the studio who heard my demos in mid-production. Garrick liked what he heard, and called me on the phone to ask if he could record bass guitar parts on the demos. I agreed, and a long-distance musical friendship began. Soon, Garrick told me that if I would move to Harrisburg, he could find another guitar player (Bryce Connor) and a drummer (Laine Wehler) who would be happy to form a band. I felt I could not refuse Garrick's excellent offer, moved to Pennsylvania, and The Jellybricks were born in January of 1996. We like to think of it as a blind date that worked out! In early 1996, we released a self-titled 6-song demo on cassette, followed later by our debut full-length album, «Kinky Boot Beast» in 1997.
In 1999, a few months after the release of our second album, «Soapopera,» our drummer, Laine Wehler, departed the band for health reasons, and at the very first show we played without Laine, Tom Kristich joined us on stage. Tom became a full-fledged Jellybrick later that year, and has been with us ever since. With Tom, after several years of re-establishing our band-chemistry, we released our third album, «Power This» in 2004. «Power This» was a slow-growing sensation which eventually built our band's reputation to greater heights than we'd previously seen, recovered from much momentum lost with the change of drummers, and rebuilding the band's identity.
And of course in August 2008 we are thrilled to be releasing our fourth full-length CD, «Goodnight To Everyone.» In our live shows, we play music from all four of our records, and we are proud of all of our past work, wrinkles and all. Every song we've ever recorded has been recorded with the intention of creating an interesting, entertaining, and enjoyable musical place to visit. That's not to say all of our music is «happy,» but more accurately, that the majority of it, however sarcastic or humorous, ultimately comes from the heart. The fact is that we have an incredibly good time making music, and we hope that other people will have a good time listening to it.
Powerpop.Ru: You love power pop and you are keen on music creation. Has your attitude to this genre changed with years?
L.K.: The truth is that when The Jellybricks formed, none of us had ever actually heard the expression «power pop.» It is true that the first song we learned together was «Bad To Me» by Lennon/McCartney, and that all of us are Beatles (and the 60s in general) fans – but after that, our influences range far and wide in style and intent. To this day, I don't really understand the idea anyway, as «pop» is a derivative of «popular,» which clearly has NOTHING to do with describing our music, or most of the music they call «power-pop.» We have only ever truly considered ourselves to be a «rock'n'roll band.» That is sufficient for us. Upon the release of our first album, power pop fans and critics began referring to us as a power pop band. OK – we take it as a compliment from those who love that kind of music! Why wouldn't we? We've come to understand what they're talking about, and there's a lot of great music in the genre. However, we also have always been criticized for not being «power pop» enough for some power pop fans, and since we don't know what their «rules» are, we're not really concerned about trying to fit their ideas of what kind of music we should be making. Our aim is always to entertain ourselves, and if people dig it, great! If they don't, that's fine too. We don't all love the same woman, as my father likes to say.
Powerpop.Ru: The Jellybricks started playing in the middle of the 90s. As it seems to you, what time in the band's life was the brightest period?
L.K.: Our first three years together were incredible! We were instantly successful in some ways . . . a song from our first album, «Who Is God,» became a regional hit single, we played a STADIUM show before we were a year old, and released our second album to much reaction, and much acclaim. We traveled the U.S. and felt very blessed with good fortune. There were difficult times also, but since then, from the time we released «Power This» until this very moment has been a period of our time as a band getting better and better. I feel that today's Jellybricks are the best that has ever been, and we hope to only get better with time.
Powerpop.Ru: Did The Jellybricks have critical and difficult situations but when there was something that gave you the strength to continue moving forward?
L.K.: When our first drummer left the band, even though we found Tom almost immediately, the rest of our organization fell apart at the time. The promotion and touring for «Soapopera» came almost to a halt, we lost our manager, our booking agent, and eventually we lost a great deal of money. This is why it took until 2004 for «Power This» to finally arrive. Critics sometimes have thought us slow, or lazy, or who knows what, but we have always basically worked as hard as we could to create new music as fast as we could muster. We have never made money in the music business, but always try to make our next musical offering better than the last, and worth the wait. That just means it takes longer sometimes too. At any rate, our band chemistry with drummer Laine was wonderful, so we seriously considered breaking up when he left. As it happens Tom was a great fit for The Jellybricks, but we took a long time to rebuild the quality of band we'd had with Laine. I am thankful that we managed to finish «Power This.» We almost lost the will to complete it, and the longer it took, the less sure we were that anyone would care if we released it or not. That record reinvigorated us as a band, and we collectively feel that «Goodnight To Everyone» is the best record we've made as a result of us having stayed together. As you can tell, we're still in a very optimistic period . . . !
Powerpop.Ru: What are the topics that you don't want to touch on principle in your creativity and what about do you prefer to write? Did you do all that you wanted in new record?
L.K.: We don't really observe too many rules other than our own reactions to our work. We write about whatever comes to mind, although more often than not, we write about relationships between people. Sometimes they are people we have known, or aspects of ourselves, I suppose. If we have any rules at all, they might be: 1. We try very hard to find new ways to do things, but never for the pure sake of being clever, unless clever is called for – 2. We try to entertain ourselves always. If we're not having a good time, we wouldn't expect someone else to enjoy it either – 3. We always want it to be as good as it can be, no matter what it's supposed to be. That's a bit cryptic, but by this I mean if we're playing a brash, angry song – it'll be as brash and as angry as it pleases, and if it's a sugary pop-tune, it'll be as candied as it wants to be, and if it's emotional, or funny, or pointless . . . as long as it's good, we'll commit to making it Jellybricks-worthy. As for our new record, we have done what we wanted in presenting something new, which offers reminders of our previous work, but ideas which we haven't tried before, and what we feel to be some of the strongest songs we've written so far. Each of our albums has been an attempt to cover as wide an array of our personal tastes and styles as we can fit, while staying true to our personalities, and always trying to raise our own standards. I think «Goodnight To Everyone» is the highest-quality collection we've recorded, and yet we all believe we can improve upon our work. That's what makes life in a creative band exciting, after all. You never fully achieve what you want, ever, if your ambitions continue to look forward.
Powerpop.Ru: The Jellybricks has a list of friends and favourite musicians on myspace to page. Which musicians you would like to meet with more often in the future on musical spaces of earth?
L.K.: If you mean to ask who we would like to work with . . . I can speak personally very quickly in saying that since I was a child, I've wished that by some impossible stroke of luck I might get to collaborate with Paul McCartney. I realize that this dream isn't very unique, but since you asked . . . there you have it. Aside from that, I would also personally love the opportunity to work with Neil Finn. My primary passion is for songwriting, so the people I would love to work with are a long list of favorite songwriters. Paul and Neil just happen to be at the top of my list. If you mean to ask who we would like to perform with – just about anyone who's musically switched-on is fun to play with. If you mean an imaginary jam session of some kind, I'll add that I'd love to play guitar with John Fogerty. He's my favorite guitar player from a long list of favorite guitar players.
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Powerpop.Ru: In the modern world, there are a lot of music of different styles and redundancy of information. Do you fall under influence or do you keep independence and try to not pay attention to those who have mass popularity?
L.K.: New music influences us the same way old music does. When we have fallen under the spell of someone new, ultimately we will be influenced by them. The same is true of older music – we haven't heard everything that's out there. I love discovering music that has been here for a long time, but is still new to me. But as far as paying attention – we just have our tastes, like anyone else. If we like it, it's worth paying attention, and if we don't like it, it's irrelevant to our musical world. It's exciting when our whole band all agrees on something – usually a single album, which will fuel our inspiration. Some albums which I remember captivating our entire band at once would include the first two Ben Folds Five albums, «Head Trip in Every Key» by Superdrag, «OK Computer» by Radiohead, «Kontiki» by Cotton Mather, the first Shazam album, Jason Faulkner's «Can You Still Feel?» and Matthew Sweet's «Blue Sky On Mars.» But – to illustrate what I said about older music, we had the same band-wide experience with «The Who Live at Leeds» and «The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society.»
Powerpop.Ru: Have you a feedback with your audience? Probably, you listen to their wishes. What act or words of your friends, listeners have positively affected to your creativity during preparation of one of four albums?
L.K.: We make ourselves pretty open to feedback from fans via the internet and mail. We have always taken note of which songs in our live show seem to generate the most reaction from people – good or bad. We do aim to please in that respect certainly. As a matter of fact, our most recent album has a little bit more emphasis on new production ideas, which some of our fans seemed to be yearning to hear. We are fundimentally a two-guitars, bass, drums and four-vocals band, and we take pride in being able to interpret a wide palette of style with just those tools, but having recorded three albums worth of music mostly trying to capture our live essence in the studio (always with an effort to produce songs individually – with more or less «extra» stuff to suit each song's personality) – we decided to allow ourselves to invite a few more foreign sounds into our «sound» for the new one. As a general rule, we like to let the song tell us what to do, but with the help of creative producers like Saul Zonana and Frank Silver on our latest record, we're excited to deliver at least a bit of a new kind of record to our familiar fans.
Powerpop.Ru: The musical life in the United States is rich and self-sufficient, and many bands being on tours a lot from state to state, and they almost do not visit other countries. Where would The Jellybricks like to visit and what are your favourite places for gigs?
L.K.: We would love to play ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE that people would like to see and hear us play our music! I would add that we have been invited to play the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and we'd really love to do that, but so far, we haven't made it outside of the U.S. – which is sad, because we do have many fans in many different countries. We think we may have MORE fans in other countries, actually, but we haven't been able to afford to travel that far yet. In the U.S., we've really enjoyed playing a number of times in Los Angeles CA (always in connection with International Pop Overthrow), Baltimore MD, New York NY, Philadelphia PA, Nashville TN, Cleveland OH, Boston MA, Chapel Hill NC, Niagara Falls NY and Atlanta GA . . . so you're absolutely right – the U.S. is a large place, and there are large parts of our own country which we have never visited! I would also say that since we have played everything from bookstores to a stadium, I believe that our favorite places to play are theaters – they are large enough to accomodate a loud rock'n'roll show, and have an exciting aura about their atmosphere. Club gigs are fun, but very uneven. We can connect well with every audience member in a theater setting, but when you get to arena-sized shows, it's hard to know for sure if everybody is having the same experience in the back rows. We would love to visit every place where our music is playing – including Russia :)
Powerpop.Ru: Harrisburg is a very beautiful city! Please tell our readers a little about Harrisburg and Pennsylvania musical life.
L.K.: Thank you very much! The photo of us on the back cover of the «Power This» booklet was taken of the four of us standing along the bank of the Susquehanna river, which cuts right through the center of Harrisburg. Harrisburg is a nice city, full of life, activity, character, and substance. My hometown of Youngstown, Ohio still shapes my personality and point of view the most, but I have enjoyed living in Harrisburg for 13 years now. Part of what I like about Harrisburg musically is that there are many very talented people playing music here. Another well-liked power pop band, Cherry Twister, are good friends of ours hailing from this region, and we have friendships with other successful regional artists : IKE, Jeffrey Gaines, Fuel, Live, and The Badlees. What I don't like is that the live music scene here is very poor audience-wise at this time. It was not like this when we formed in the 90s, but nowadays, we don't bring a lot of bands to town to play with us, because it is hard to generate a large audience. The exception to this is for bands who play only cover songs. But there are many excellent original acts in this area, and all of them struggle to build a local fanbase. These things always change with time though, so hopefully it will get better at some point.
Powerpop.Ru: Do you want to tell our readers something that I forget to ask you?
L.K.: Only that if you read all of this, thanks so much for reading it! Oh, and also, thank you for the interview, and if someone reading this decides to check out our music because of this, THANK YOU for listening! We love making music, and it's a phenomenal pleasure to have FANS who like what we do!
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