An interview with The Jailbirds
An interview with The Jailbirds
What inspired the name of the band? What are your influences?
One night in 2015, Liam was dreaming of us robbing a moving train in the 1800s… this was around the time where we were all actively trying to come up with some names for our band haha, and he basically dreamt us getting caught, thrown in jail etc. And then the warden walked by and looked at us, pointed and said to the guard: “Hey that’s The Jailbirds!” and he woke up, wrote it down on his pen pad and circled it a million times, then went back to sleep! Hahaha then the next day he told us about it, and we loved it.
We have a wide variety of influences. Mainly, you can hear in our music, that our biggest influences are bands like Deep Purple, Sabbath, Alter Bridge, ZZ Top, GN’R, Soundgarden, etc. But we draw inspiration from many genres and artists!
How do you approach songwriting? Are there any themes that you are keen to explore when you start off?
The only consistent approach to our song writing is that we are always trying to make our music better. Whether that be talking to other musicians and writing with them, rearranging the song a million times, rewriting lyrics until they resonate just right etc etc. We don’t hit record until we are 100% happy with every second of the track! In terms of themes, we usually are in the realm of mental health struggles, playing with vices, real life experiences, as well as fantasy/fictional lyrics. We just write what sounds good to us, that’s pretty much it!
How do you approach songwriting? Are there any themes that you are keen to explore when you start off?
The only consistent approach to our song writing is that we are always trying to make our music better. Whether that be talking to other musicians and writing with them, rearranging the song a million times, rewriting lyrics until they resonate just right etc etc. We don’t hit record until we are 100% happy with every second of the track! In terms of themes, we usually are in the realm of mental health struggles, playing with vices, real life experiences, as well as fantasy/fictional lyrics. We just write what sounds good to us, that’s pretty much it!
Why do you write the sort of music that you do?
It’s in our blood. Rock N Roll is a powerful drug, and there’s nothing else in the world that we can imagine ourselves doing. I wish a had a more elaborate answer, but that’s the truth!
How do you decide what songs to perform live and how do you transpose them into that live setting?
We try to play all of our released songs live, as that’s what our fans and any new fans will have to go off of for the time being. Then we sprinkle in our un-released songs, maybe try out a cover or 2 as well. Just like everything else we do, we just try to have fun. And with the style of recording we usually go for, there ends up being a lot of layers and different parts etc, so we have to scale things down a tad sometimes, but we work really hard on being able to portray the songs properly in a live setting. Come see for yourself once COVID has been taken under control!
How do you decide what songs to perform live and how do you transpose them into that live setting?
We try to play all of our released songs live, as that’s what our fans and any new fans will have to go off of for the time being. Then we sprinkle in our un-released songs, maybe try out a cover or 2 as well. Just like everything else we do, we just try to have fun. And with the style of recording we usually go for, there ends up being a lot of layers and different parts etc, so we have to scale things down a tad sometimes, but we work really hard on being able to portray the songs properly in a live setting. Come see for yourself once COVID has been taken under control!
What plans do you have for the future?
We are currently rolling out our 3rd single from our forthcoming EP, I Will Move On is online on Feb 1st, 2021! Make sure you follow us (facebook.com/thejailbirds and @thejailbirdsband on IG) for all of our wicked content that we’ve made for you! Once this release is over, we will be announcing our EP release as well. 2021 should be a good year for us, lets hope that we can play a gig or two! Thanks for reading, take care.