JEEJ: Everybody Needs a Friend
“Ohh, that sounds like David Bowie,” I thought, settling in my blanket nest on the couch to listen to this album for the first time and hearing the echo-y vocals in the beginning of the first song. “Um. No, that actually sounds like The Beatles,” I decided a few minutes later. “Nope. Definitely, Foo Fighters.” A couple songs later, “Wait, am I hearing some Blink 182 here?” “Radiohead??” When the album was over, my brain was slightly overwhelmed, but in a good way, like when you are traveling and return to your hotel room after a day of exploring a new town, with a kaleidoscope of new sights, smells, sounds, and impressions rolling in your head, colorful slides randomly replacing each other. I needed a break and then, another listen.
Photo By Sofia Chesney
Dave Grohl to the local Foo Fighters tribute band, Fresh Fighters, and now a solo artist, JEEJ (Jeremy Jacobs) hasn’t always been singing or writing music. His mom is a musician, and she always tried hard to get Jeremy to play the guitar, but the offspring initially resisted. “I think the best thing she did for me was always having the right music on play when I was a kid. She grew up listening to The Beatles; I grew up listening to The Beatles; I wasn’t even aware of the effect it was having on me until later.” “Later” was when Jeremy was around 12; he was visiting a friend, and, going through the friend’s parents’ vinyl collection, they found The Beatles’ Revolver album. They listened to the entire record front to back, and that was when something ‘clicked’ in JEEJ’s head, setting him on the path that he is on these days: toward “becoming the next Paul McCartney.”
To this day, JEEJ draws a huge inspiration from The Beatles. He admires their “being able to craft so much with so little; being able to create such big sound and message from very simple parts.” After listening to Everybody Needs a Friend, I dare say it shows.
If you want to put a label on this album, alternative rock leaning toward progressive would probably be your best bet. “I’m not necessarily trying to carve out a new sound, I just like to do it in my own way and have my own voice. I have always gravitated to very accessible music, with relatable lyrics and pleasing chord progressions […] when the music really drives a feeling,” says JEEJ. The tunes are catchy, foot-tapping-triggering, with instrumentation that is layered, but not distracting, not overly complicated; the lyrics are relatable and versatile. Playing around with themes, genres, and patterns, JEEJ creates a tasty, very listenable ‘variety pack’ of fresh rock brews.
Photo By Sofia Chesney
Going solo was a tough decision for Jeremy. When you play with a band, you have a safety cushion; you can ‘fall back’ on the other band members and rely on them to balance out whichever spots you might miss. When you are on your own, well, you’re on your own, baby. Nobody to pick up your slack; it’s all on you, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Expressing what you have to say while creating a quality product is not an easy task, but you can’t mull over it, picking it apart and reassembling, for too long: you might lose authenticity in the process. You also can’t let others’ opinions dictate the direction in which you should be going:
“The second you start writing music for an audience, you basically become a short-order cook. You are servicing what you think people want to hear, and then you begin to lose that originality. I still struggle with it; I want to write music that people will enjoy […] but at the same time I want to sound like me; I want it to be my own.”
Everybody Needs a Friend is very distinctly his own, yet very everybody else’s, too: anyone can find something familiar in it; a line, a message, a song or two that they can relate to, or smile at, or dance in the kitchen to, singing along into the spatula (I totally didn’t). It’s an album “about friends, dogs, and other good stuff,” and a pretty damn great one, at that.