MusicWeek Staff: What made you decide to pursue a career in music?
Jiminy: On my sixth birthday I was given the choice of getting a guitar or joining the junior ice hockey team. My dad advised me that my chances of getting into the NHL were slim.
MusicWeek Staff: What kind of artist/singer would you classify yourself as?
Jiminy: I'm a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter.
MusicWeek Staff: What do you feel is the best song you’ve ever released? Why?
Jiminy: I don't know. I keep hoping to write a great song. I'll say this, my song "The Phoenix" made it onto a "Barack Obama's Summer Playlist 2022". Good enough for Barack, good enough for me.
MusicWeek Staff: What set your music apart? What is unique, or at least uncommon?
Jiminy: I am not married to any particular genre. My lyrics can move from high concept to personal stories to all points in between. It's about ideas and feelings, or maybe it's about nothing at all. Ultimately the listener will decide.
MusicWeek Staff: What story behind the song "Apocalypse Dance Party”?
Jiminy: In August of 2022, after the release of “The Phoenix”, I was kicking around a bassline on a Fender Rhodes, underneath some dark chords that felt….kind of ominous, a little foreboding but still funky. At the time I had been listening to a bunch of Philly Soul music from the 70’s, Gamble and Huff stuff, but what came out didn’t sound anything like that. It felt more like some 80’s dance-pop influences popping out, like Was Not Was, mixed in with some early 2000’s dance club stuff, a genre I think of as “Jell-O shots at the Jersey Shore ” type music. Also, I had been listening to a lot of Henry Mancini stuff from the 60’s and wanted to see what those jazz-inflected string arrangements using classic vintage synths would sound like. I knew I wanted to record the core rhythm section to tape and layer a bunch of vintage synths on there. While I was working on the first song, the producer (Aaron Nevezie) texted me "let's get this party started" and the title came to me: “Apocalypse Dance Party”. I wrote the title track, a funky macabre tune that kicks off a 22-minute EP that gets progressively darker in tone and subject matter. I went down the apocalyptic rabbit hole reading about natural disasters, bioterrorism, biblical, and mythological stuff. I wanted to conflate paradise and hell, celebration and destruction. The visual of calamari pouring down from a tsunami is atrocious and absurd. Is that satire or irony? I don’t know. I didn’t want to be too heavy-handed about it. Dance in the face of death. Dance like there’s no tomorrow.
MusicWeek Staff: How does this song "Apocalypse Dance Party" differ with your previous song?
Jiminy: It's way more "high concept" and heavily modular synth based. The last album was more personal and had more instrumentation with 70's rock, folk, singer-songwriter and chamber pop elements.
MusicWeek Staff: How will you describe your music to people?
Jiminy: Music you can dance to, smile to, think to, and feel to!
MusicWeek Staff: Has your music career journey had a deliberately direction or did it simply gradually evolve in whatever direction it found?
Jiminy: It's been evolving with every project and every song and every idea and every post-it note or voice memo or walk through the park.
MusicWeek Staff: What is your advice for upcoming artists or songwriters wanting to follow your footsteps?
Jiminy: Make the stuff you want to make. Don't worry about it being art, don't worry about it being "good" or not.
MusicWeek Staff: Where can potential fans find out more about you?
_(1) (2).jpg)
COMMENTS
Leave a comment