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Awesome Jarvis & The Whales Rock Hard, But Can They Play Buckethead On Expert Level?

March 07, 2014, 12:45 PM

Detroit’s rock scene is steeped in the garage sound. So, it’s rare to find a band that stays true to those roots while creating polished well-produced music. Even rarer to hear such a rich sound from fresh faces. Awesome Jarvis and the Whales will be releasing their latest album on Funky D Records with a show at PJ’s Lager house on March 14th. Woven Tangles will open, and they’ll share the bill with local icon Tony Mugg’s Ween cover band Mega Weedge.

Where does the name Awesome Jarvis and the Whales come from?

Bryan: We knew before we picked the band name that we wanted to have an old school name, like “Blank, and the blanks” style. And we went through so many combinations. “Steve and the . . . whatevers” and it just didn’t sound right. Somehow we landed on Jarvis, which sounded good to us.

Emily: Didn’t we get Jarvis from South Park?

Chris: Yeah the guitar hero episode of South Park.

Bryan: Oh that’s right!

Ben: Chris and I have always had a fascination with whales for one reason or another.

Chris: I actually am a whale.

Ben: He actually is a whale. He has a tattoo that says “I am a whale”

How did you guys come together?

Ben: I actually met Ben when we use to work together. We use to sweep the floor at a grocery store together. At one point Emily and Bryan, all four of us were working there and I sold an amp to Bryan once. He was just some guy looking for an amp.

Chris: I still remember the day you wanted me in your band, I was playing a Howling Wolf lick.

Ben: I remember the moment I wanted to pick up every one of you, Chris in particular; at a St. Paddy’s day party he had at his house.

What kind of sound are you shooting for?

Ben: There really isn’t…I think that answer would be drastically different depending on which member of the band you ask.

Emily: I was just about to say something to that effect.

Ben: Like, Bryan, Chris and Ted (Emily) were all in a death metal band before this. They were called West End. And I come from the local blues, garage rock community and Phil is a pop-punk kid, so it’s kinda an amalgamation of different schools of thought.

The direction was kinda like a lo-fi, garage rock thing. But Bryan and I are so prone to progressive rock noodling.

Bryan: Basically riff based… funk…psychedelic.

Does your music come together collaboratively or is there a creative lead within the band?

Chris: Everybody writes their own part. Every song is written literally, like, usually it’s a free jam, and we pick what we like. We all work it out as a group.

Emily: It starts out as a rough idea and everybody just adds their own piece to the puzzle. And it slowly becomes a greater picture

Ben: Nobody has ever shown up to practice with a completed song.

Bryan: That’s how our sound has come together. It’s worked out.

Bryan: The difficulty is getting people to come out to the show unfortunately. A lot of people are scared of Detroit.

(laughs)

Ben: Well, there’s that and there’s six months a year where it’s cold out and no body wants to leave the house.

Bryan: That’s true too

Ben: And, Detroit, although it is…I’ll be the first guy to run the Detroit scene up the flag pole but, there’s only a few bars that have a really strong music community within them. If you leave PJs, and Smalls and The Loving Touch and four or five other bars behind, there really isn’t a whole lot to choose from.


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