I Always Dream About A Unified Scene

Anyone who's been in a band knows about how most shows are booked, or at least, how they're booked in New York. You find out who's booking, and you email links to your music, and say what dates you're looking for. If they like what they hear, they'll offer you a slot. Usually a bum night at first, a Monday or Tuesday, then a few gigs down the road maybe a better night.

And there's a bunch of other bands doing the same thing. And maybe four or five of them get booked that same night. Chances are, nobody in any of the bands knows anyone else. None of the bands' fans know any of the other bands, either. In a perfect world, that would mean that fans for five different bands would hear four other bands for the first time. What really happens is that each band's fans (friends) leave pretty much right after their set, barring a few diehards. Pretty much nobody gets any new ears hearing their music. It's a bit of a drag.

So here's what I'm trying to do.

Whenever I book a show, I try to bring other bands with me: bands that I've shared bills with before. Bands that I want to hear and that I think would like to hear The James Rocket, too. Bands who will stay for the other sets, and keep a bunch of their friends in the club partying with them. Bands like Bunkbed and Tixe, The Mitchells, Futurex, The Jack Bennys, Mirror Queen, Destitute NJ... not all of them sound the same, but they're all cool people to hang with and they all make great music.

I don't know if it'll work, but it seems like a better way to go than the sort of rotating door shows so often end up being.

Bringing It Live

So, dig it, people: The James Rocket is a real live band now, playing shows that you can go see.

I'd actually not been too confident that it would ever happen. Not for any lack of faith in the songs, but simply because I was sure that if I was ever going to have a band playing my songs, I'd have to have hired them. And I've no budget for that, so I figured, oh well.

But then, back in July, Lon Rozelle - who had played drums for a while with me in A Bunch Of Girls - shot me a note asking if I wanted to work on some of my songs with him. So we did. And it worked, so I brought Vanya Edwards (also a bandmate in A Bunch Of Girls) in on guitar. And that worked - mostly.



I found that playing bass and singing the songs forced me to compromise too much on both parts, so a lot of the bass hooks were missing. And almost all of the songs really call for two guitars, so a lot of the guitar hooks were missing. So Lon and Vanya fired me on bass, shifted me to guitar, and I bit the bullet and went on Craigslist to find a bass player...


... and immediately struck gold with Tommy Cooke, who turned out to be a super nice guy as well as a righteous bass player.

Last Sunday, we played our debut at Otto's Shrunken Head. Here's most of the first song: 

Both The James Rocket and A Bunch Of Girls are playing Lit Lounge on February 27th. Come on out.

Keeping on top of it

So, Launch has been launched, and the people who hear it seem to like it. That's all good. Following that, we really have to wait patiently: we haven't got anyone promoting us to radio or anything like that. The only way anyone's going to hear about The James Rocket is by word of mouth, or dumb luck.

On the other hand, there have been some positive reviews online, and that counts for something. And we've got some podcast-type-airplay from no less a monument than Mike Watt, on The Watt From Pedro Show. (August 29, 2012, as well as November 25, 2011.) So we don't feel completely lost in the wilderness.

So now I'll be divided between three things: 

1) getting tracks to Markleford for album TWO; 
2) finishing up some new songs for album THREE; 
3) whipping 1drummer and 2 guitarists into shape to take the Rocket live. 

It's going to be a busy year.

The James Rocket: LAUNCH

Huzzah! We're live:

The James Rocket: Launch (Bandcamp) 

There's a bunch of good songs in this record. Stream it for free, buy it for keeps. It's the product of collaboration: I write the songs and record the demos, Markleford polishes the tracks and extends the arrangements and pesters me for solos and extra verses. I provide same, and he goes into his batcave and turns the rough tracks into the shiny guitar pop goodies you could be streaming right now if you weren't wasting your time reading my blather. But really, buy these. We'd really like to be able to release the NEXT one on vinyl. 

JWR

Hang On To Your Hats

After years of writing songs and popping them out to the vasty internet, The James Rocket is metamorphosing. It had been primarily a solo project, but for the past two years it's been more of a collaboration, and I think now it's fair to call it a band. Especially since we're about to release our debut album as such: "Launch." I'll post the links once it goes live: I think you're going to like it.