Every now and then, it's possible to encounter a band which has not only created a unique sound, but carved out an unmistakable identity. A band which provides an experience unlike any other you will find. Jail Weddings is such a band. Gabriel Hart, formerly of The Starvations, formed the band in 2006 in order to take his music into very personal, unexplored territory.
Jail Weddings have just released Meltdown: A Declaration of Unpopular Emotion, their second full length album, on Neurotic Yell. It sounds like a mutant Broadway musical, written by Nick Cave and produced by Phil Spector. They are currently playing shows around southern California and are planning a national tour for late October – details to be announced soon.
I asked Hart about his concept for the band, their music, and the new album.
Ground Control Magazine vs. Gabriel Hart of Jail Weddings
Ground Control Magazine: The thing which really impresses me about Jail Weddings is the scope of your vision for the band. Most people form bands thinking, "I want to play punk!" or "I want to sing the blues!" or "I want to rap," but not much beyond that. It seems to me that you had a complete idea of what you wanted to do, what you wanted the band to sound like, from the beginning, and have worked hard to maintain this. What is your vision for Jail Weddings?
Gabriel Hart: The goal is to turn our lives into an all-inclusive musical, and I mean that quite literally. It's already happening. They all thought I was asleep in the backseat of the van, but I heard every word they were saying about which JW songs reminded them of certain parts of their lives or why they could relate to the lyrics. It's cause they are part of the reason why most of this is being vomited out. We are hoping to redefine sacred love for people that are fed-up with the trappings of traditional channels. We all remember Peter Finch's character from the movie Network – I'm striving to be that kind of mouthpiece for modern romance or lack thereof – like I was telling Jada [Wagensomer] the other night – I'm an authority as well as an idiot on the subject, but it's about that kind of honesty. Stripping all our layers of scars off and remembering what was once not constructed from years of built up defense mechanism bullshit. It's far more than a band just playing songs, in my eyes. I think we'll be able to take this one-step further once some of Kurzweil's technological predictions come into fruition. If we'll be able to email objects to each other in the next ten years, I'm going to demand we have the option to secede from reality all together and just spend the rest of our lives singing to each other.
GC: Has your vision stayed consistent with time, or has it changed?
GH: This new record, Meltdown, definitely marks a turning point. I feel we've managed to wiggle out of whatever preconceived notion anyone had about us, and it feels like a new band in many ways. We've made the vision a bit more malleable to keep it interesting for us and more unpredictable for the listener, but it still sounds like Jail Weddings. We've made the hues a little darker in order to make the upbeat parts appear more demented and defiant.
GC: How would you describe the Jail Weddings sound?
GH: Large, Luciferian, and hopefully redemptive at the very end. I created a slangish adverb the other day: "Brim hard." If you're full of emotion and there's no more room for it inside you, you're "brimming hard." It's sloshing off the top of you, spilling out a bit.
GC: Jail Weddings have gone through numerous personnel changes over the years. In fact, other than yourself, Hannah Blumenfeld (violin) is the only original member left. How has that affected what you're trying to do?
GH: People will come and go. I don't want anyone in this band if their heart is not in it and sometimes you don't realize it till years later. Some people have really suffocated under the insular nature of the group and I can't blame them. It's always intense. But I really truly hope this particular line-up stays. It's never felt more focused, as by this point they all know instinctively what it's supposed to be like and how it's supposed to come across. This last trip up the coast was refreshing in the way that I didn't feel like me or anyone else was going to die at a certain point, so this is good.
GC: Speaking of touring, what do you think is the (ideal) relationship between Jail Weddings and their audience? Both in terms of what happens at an individual show, and more generally in terms of you total fan base.
GH: Our fans very quickly become our friends after a show. I tend to blur that line pretty quick, as I feel l just shared something very intimate with them and if they respond to it, I feel very comfortable drinking with whoever till the sun comes up if I have the time. It's like having one of those naked in the classroom dreams where you are somehow not afraid, and slowly you see everyone else disrobing in solidarity. I realize this is still an esoteric band that isn't necessarily for everyone, so I often feel the band itself is a self-contained litmus test for people I'm going to want to spend my time with. It's mere existence should weed out the infidels.
GC: You wrote all the songs, including all the individual parts, right? Do you have formal training in music composition, or are you self-taught?
GH: I write the majority of everything, but the thing is, I'm not a great musician — and that's not some empty self-deprecation — I'm just well aware of my limits. I'm a good songwriter and I can sing well, but I can't play piano or violin or drums or bass and I can play only certain things well on guitar. So I will write the complete skeleton and present it to the group, then hum or record tinkering piano arrangements for the strings and they will look at me and giggle and then play it better than I ever imagined. The rest of them are very schooled musically and I am beyond lucky to have them spend so much time with me while someone like Hannah is doing strings for Ghostface Killah.
GC: There's a strong element of storytelling in your songs. What about literary influences?
GH: It's an interesting question, but I feel like that's one for someone else that's going to put me under an analytic microscope. I warp my brain on endless noir films and novels and it probably seeps in there but not before it seeps into my actual life… In retrospect I've seen myself make some bad decisions based on characters in books just to add some adventure and intrigue into the daily grind, and then it trickles into the lyrics, so it's a bit of twisted osmosis. Noir is like medication for me, as it reminds me that no matter how bad life gets, there is always someone way worse off than you. But it's also very, very easy to get away with romanticizing it and before you know it you just are one of those doomed characters whether you like it or not.
GC: The album goes into some pretty dark places. What are the inspirations which went into it?
GH: A person tends to think that just because they might be well into your 30's that they're some end-all veteran of Love and life experience, but in the last couple years I found myself as a bit of an Emotional Hitler, unable to process any romantic opposition and melting down nightly. Feeling personally doomed and dire and having it bleed into my whole world view. Really dangerous. It's the stuff cancer feeds on. But inevitably we are going to hit a wall with this angle, it closes up the arteries of life and leaves little room for the magic of chance to do it's handiwork. The idea of apocalypse is a popular one, whether you are religious or not it's contagious and fascinating and people tend to want to put a lid on everything in order to make sense of what's contained inside. What people are tapping into is actually a very gradual personal apocalypse in all of us, and we've manifested our own shortcomings this whole concept of something that is going to make everyone's world end. It's one of our most arrogant traits, but no one is immune – it's all inside of us – some of us are just better at dealing with it and evolving to the other side.
GC: Do you find writing the songs for Jail Weddings cathartic? Do you feel they are cathartic for your audience?
GH: I always gravitate towards the analogy of songwriting with vomiting – where after you puke, you then observe the puddle you've made to try to figure out what you ate the night before. It's a bit of a riddle, detective work, but I think it's something that should require almost zero thought – after all, it is coming from inside you. It already exists. As if you're fine one minute, then you're reminded of this thing making you feverish, and so you pour it out, and then it's over as if nothing ever happened. I often feel sick whether it's something painful I am writing about or whether I am paying tribute to something or someone I love, you know, the butterflies? If it doesn't feel like an emergency – and take a good look at that word, "EMERGEncy" – than it's rarely worth it to me, unless I'm writing one of my more lighthearted novelty tunes.
As far as the audience, you'll have to ask them. A couple weeks ago there was this one guy came up to us in Portland, and said we changed his quality of life. It's just as shame he failed to mention in which direction exactly…
GC: Did the album come out as you had hoped?
GH: Put it this way – I have written literally hundreds of songs in my life, since I was 14 and I'm 36 now. We finished the album in May, and it's September now and I haven't written a song since, and this is the longest I have gone in my whole life without writing a song. And not from lack of inspiration, this summer has been filled with death and loneliness and general existential crisis for me and everyone around me. But I'm trying to be present and allow a gestation period because the album is actually giving me comfort right now. I'm usually a third way done with the next effort by the time a record comes out. With Meltdown, I'm confident to just curl up in it for now, even though it might be a tight, pathetic fetal position.
Artist:
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Album:
Meltdown: A Declaration of Unpopular Emotion is out now. Buy it here on Jail Weddings' bandcamp page. https://jailweddings.bandcamp.com/album/meltdown-a-declaration-of-unpopular-emotion
