BUDDY JACKSON

Some nights, when I’m alone and bored and feeling ponderous, I think to myself: “Gee, I wish I had some good friends around to talk to and joke around with.” Then I remember Buddy Jackson, and how annoyed I am when those guys are anywhere near me, and about how if they were around I would probably be thinking, “Golly, I sure wish I was alone so I could ponder things without these guys making fart noises and insulting me.” Unfortunately for me, I was assigned to interview bands for this blog and now I’m stuck having to communicate with these terrible, terrible people. Here’s my time (and I mean that in the sense of “time served”) with the boys of Buddy Jackson.

Names, ages, instruments/roles in the band?
Im Tim, I play bass and sing, Im 28!
Nick, 23, guitar/vocals.
Grant, Age 27, Drums/John Taylor (drummer of Burn Burn Burn) lookalike.

How come you're a band with the name of a solo artist?
Tim: Well, we ain’t King Elephant.
Nick: Essentially, Grant's a big dumb idiot who kept putting a terrible name ("The Have-To's" - Fucking awful...) on all our early show flyers, so we named the band after a song we wrote.
Grant: Cause with our powers combined we equal the least talented Jackson brother.

So if you get better, you might eventually change your name to Tito Jackson?
Grant: I don't think we'll ever be as good as the real Tito but he is our booking manager.

If I call you "Butty Jackson" during this interview, would that endear me to you, or would you react negatively?
Tim: I like butts about as much as Grant and Nick do. It’s just smellz...
Nick: Honestly, I'd respect you more than I ever have before.
Grant: I'd be offended you didn't think of anything better.

Great; Butthole Jerkzone it is.

You guys are all from other Montana towns, but have lived in Missoula for a while. Do you like Missoula? Do you miss your hometowns?
Tim: Would you ask “Buddy Jackson” such asinine questionable inquiries? Missoula’s alright I guess. MISTER Jackson seems to wanna settle down here.
Nick: Technically, I'm from Bonner, which is about 15 minutes from Missoula. So I'm sort of from Missoula, but also from a run-down shithole.
Grant: Missoula is pretty good. Definitely more open to all kinds of music and life styles. I'm from Great Falls and while it was a thriving musical destination in the early 2000's, it seems like it is now the kinda town that a remake of Footloose could be based off of.

"No- it's up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, a, b, select, start, dummy." "There's no "select", this is an arcade, you moron."

Hey Grant- do you think Great Falls can ever retain it’s former position as a fun destination for regional bands?
Grant: With Great Falls, I highly doubt it unless someone just opened up a place that was set just to do shows/function as an all ages place to hang out. Missoula right now, I feel, is experiencing a resurgence in live music after kind of plateauing since I moved here almost three years ago. I feel that's mostly because the right people are stepping up and making it happen as well as bands around town are getting better and drawing people in. Sadly, I think it takes a band like a Green Day, a blink-182 being in the mainstream to get kids interested in playing real instruments. Add in that you need an actual all ages place for these kids to go out and show people what kind of music they created in their parent's basement to get place like Great Falls back into a place where a band can play at a local theatre on a Tuesday night in January and walk away with $200 in gas money.

What do you do outside of this band?
Tim: I’m raising an army. Nick’s probably taking a picture of his dog. Grant’s probably taking a picture of his dog.
Nick: I go to school and subsidize my musician's income with shitty food-service jobs. Also I have a dog I use to get girls to talk to me.
Grant: I work at Burns St. Bistro and try to write some acoustic stuff on the side.

I detect a lot of earnest sentimentality in your songs. Are you secretly big softies?
Tim: Well, I can’t really get more than a softy, if’n you know what I mean.
Nick: I'll give YOU a secretly big softie...
Grant: If you're taking about the ice cream place, sign me up!

What reoccurring themes can be found in the lyrical notebooks of Butty Jackson?
Tim: We don’t carry notebooks. Notebooks are for nerds. We’re lyrical freestylists that drop a conversational rhyme on your face like Nick drops his nuts into shot glasses.
Nick: Honestly, it sometimes amazes me how much of a downer a given song by us will turn out to be. Lyrics are always the last thing we write, and a lot of the time some song with a really happy melody will turn out to be about ruining your own life with your personal shortcomings or some equally-happy message.
Grant: Tortured artist type stuff. Lots of obscure Robert Smith/Morissey type lyrics. Maybe even stuff about meth.

Has B.J. traveled/toured yet?
Tim: A little bit. We’ve been to Grant’s mom’s house a couple times. And our uncle Hogan’s house a few times. He has a blue satin robe. We’ve done a few tours in the northwest, recorded some shit, stuff that other bands do. We’re not special. I hate being in a band. I don’t know why I do it anymore.
Nick: We've done the Northwest a couple times.
Grant: We've done a couple little runs to the north west.

Is “Hogan” the Matt Hogan that recorded your first couple releases (available on BJ’s bandcamp page- see link at bottom of interview)?
Grant: Hogan is the same guy who helped lay down the tracks of our Impound EP/demo.

What are you proud of, regarding this band?
Tim: Me personally? Mostly tolerating the other guys in the band.
Nick: The fact that it somehow works, in spite of our lack of chemistry or effort.
Grant: I'm proud that we just gel together quite well and are doing more things than I thought a band that started with Nick and I not knowing how to play our respective instruments.

What's on the horizon?
Tim: A hot steaming 7 inch slab of wax and an EP in the near future.
Nick: We have a split and an EP in the works. Might be cool!
Grant: 7" split with our boyfriends, Burn Burn Burn. Then an EP and hopefully getting out to the Midwest. After that we will probably start pre-production on "Buddy Jackson: The Movie" starring Jason Statham, Lou Diamond-Phillips and Charlie Day.

Who’s putting out the 7” and the EP? When can we expect those to be available?
Grant: We're going to self release the 7" with Burn Burn Burn. It's kind of a nerve racking experience but it's pretty cool that the 8 of us are just gonna do it ourselves and make it a learning process along the way. Hopefully we can get it out by the end of Summer. The EP is still kind of up in the air. Once we get the 7" stuff rolling, then I think we shall move on to deciding what to do with it. Right now we will probably self release that on CD and Tyson Ballew said he'd do a small run of cassettes just for fun. We will probably get that out by fall if things keep going well or just toss it up on the bandcamp. We recorded the total of 12 songs in two days with our buddy, Kii, in Seattle and we couldn't be happier with how they turned out. He did a great job capturing our sound, and, the butt tons of laughter in the background. At one point he told me to shut up cause I was making him laugh too much.

Last Words:
We're excited to come play Richard Dreyfest and eat many, delicious Doritos Locos Cool Ranch Tacos.

Okay, so I exaggerated a little, and I think that I probably insulted them more than they insulted me, but c’mon- they’re obviously jerks. Look how they’re all... you know... Jerky. And shit. Right? ... Alright- you got me. I’M the fucking jerk. Are you happy? I’m an asshole and Buddy Jackson are, in reality, three good humored friends that are a reminder that in an ideal situation, bands are not made to simply be star-making money-generating machines; but a good excuse to hang out with like-minded pals and create something worthwhile together. ...Now get off my back you buncha ingrate gape-mouths!
http://buddyjackson.bandcamp.com/

Oh, and: See you at Dreyfest!