Interview in LOS Magazine
Junior Eats Alone (Leiden, The Netherlands) can't wait to break through internationally. Their debut-album Love Will Slow Me Down, that came out in June 2008, was very well-received and radiostation 3fm labelled the band 'serious talent'. We had a talk with frontman Ronnie Verton, during a bandrehearsel. He tells us of a band without ego, living for music.One by one, the eight bandmembers of JEA (Junior Eats Alone) arrive at the studio at the industrial grounds near the Rooseveltstreet in Leiden. The atmosphere is relaxed as the gear gets set up for practice.
As calm and laidback as the preparations are, as fierce and dedicated goes the rehearsel. Ronnie: 'we work professionally and are definitely not a hobby-band. We all invest enormous amounts of time, money and energy into this band and I think you can tell'.Whoever tries to describe the music of JEA faces a difficult task. There's so much to hear: one minute you're listening to some calm jazz, next thing you know you're being blown away by electric guitars and a brass-section who, through a dash of latin, give the music undescribable character.
The bandmembers have given up trying to describe their own music. 'We have no problem with being sterotyped. We don't believe we're making music that has never been made before. The best thing to do is just to listen to it and describe it yourself', thinks Ronnie.StorytellersJEA's music is music for listeners. 'It's a beautiful moment when, during a concert, the entire crowd is absolutely quiet. What we want to do is: tell the audience a story.Such a story can be heard in the song Heal Me. The creative process isn't always as easy when you have eight people in your band.
Ronnie: 'I start out with a lyric and a melody. This is then discussed by and with the rest of the band. Each bandmember then creates his own melody within the melody, and a song is born'. Ronnie's lyrics are all based on his own experiences. 'I want to share my vision with people and talk about what and how I feel about different things. But then I realise that I really don't know much about anything', he adds laughing, 'I only know about what I experience, so that's what I eventually end up writing about.Ronnie was made frontman by the rest of the band, a position he sometimes has difficulties with being in. 'It's hard. I'm someone that wants everyone to be happy.
But with eight people, you need a leader every now and again'. There's no room for ego and everybody's equal. The guys do leave some space for being influenced by eachother. This is probably the main cause for the huge diversity in their music.A SearchThe band has been around since 1999, and were once known by the name 'Id'(pronounce: it). Two years ago four new guys joined the band and the name was changed into Junior Eats Alone. 'The album Love Will Slow Me Down was being finished up and the idea came to integrate a brass-section into the band' Ronnie explains the growth in personnel.
'We wanted to sound as good live as we did on the album, so we added some brass'. This asked for a new name. 'Besides the extra bandmembers, we were also getting sick and tired of the fact that no-one was able to pronounce our bandname correctly', Ronnie jokes.Those new bandmembers caused a delay in the process of the album-release. 'We had been searching for a long time, to find out what we wanted with those songs.
It was a learning experience and a lot of fun, but next time we won't take as long. JEA recorded the entire album themselves and released uit by founding their very own record company called 'De Matenplaatschappij'. 'It had been a dream for several bandmembers to create their own label. However: the search for a bigger record-deal continues'. Finding one of those isn't easy in The Netherlands and JEA knows this well: 'This is a beautiful country but it's so difficult to get signed somewhere. It's not that there isnt' money, there's just isn't enough willingness to invest'.
JEA is looking to export their product abroad. First contact has allready been made in Germany, France and the USA. They've allready managed to get an international distribution-deal. To sum up: JEA is ready for their breakthrough! ALEXANDER SCHIPPERS
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