The Jauntee—featuring guitarist Caton Sollenberger, keyboardist Tyler Adams, bassist John Loland, and drummer Scott Ferber—are rising stars on the jam circuit. The band has expanded their dedicated following in their hometown of Boston to a solid fan base across the country, earned in large part due to the band’s consistent, nationwide touring and standout live performances. With the band’s recent move to Colorado, their opportunity to tour coast-to-coast has become an easier task, and bigger opportunities supporting well-respected bands in the jam community continue to present themselves.
The Jauntee recently released a new album, Always Never Knowing, which came out on September 14th. Always Never Knowing is an effort to mirror The Jauntee’s high-energy live performances, as the quartet carved out time to record Always Never Knowing during the group’s two-night run at Cambridge, Massachusetts’ The Bridge Sound & Stage. Recorded in front of an intimate crowd consisting of mostly longtime fans and friends and family, the new album offers the best of both worlds, with The Jauntee showing off their live jamming abilities, while also offering up 16 tracks, with nine of them previously unreleased in studio-quality format.
Live For Live Music had the chance to chat with The Jauntee’s drummer Scott Ferber recently. During our conversation, Scott gave us the low-down on The Jauntee’s new album, which marks the band’s first studio recording with their new keyboardist, plus chatted extensively about The Jauntee’s relatively recent relocation to Colorado and life on the road with Leftover Salmon and Twiddle. Read on for the full interview!
Sam Berenson: How did you guys meet?
Scott Ferber: We all met in Boston, where we went to college. Tyler Adams, Caton Sollenberger, and I went to Berklee College of Music, and John Loland went to school for airplane mechanic work, but Caton and John knew each other from living in Pennsylvania previously. The Jauntee formed in Boston about eight years ago, when Caton and I started the band towards the end of 2010. We’ve gone through some lineup changes since—we had a different bass player, with John joining in 2012, and then Tyler joined in 2015. However, we were friends with Tyler before that and had jammed with him in the past.
SB: When you and Caton started the band, was it a common goal to start touring, or did things initially start just for fun?
SF: I think it was a little of both. The end goal for both of us was definitely to be in a band and tour, and in the end hopefully making a career out of that. It definitely didn’t start out that way though. We used to play a lot of parties and smaller events, but I would say the end goal for us was to be touring and playing as much music as possible.
SB: Tell me about your new studio album.
SF: We are just about to release an album, Always Never Knowing, that we recorded last summer in Boston, just before we moved out to Colorado, at the Bridge Sound & Stage in Cambridge, MA. It was kind of a unique experience where it was in a studio, but there was also a live room with a stage. We did a two-night event with 70 to 100 people in attendance, a lot of them being fans from the area and close friends. The album is two live shows that were professionally tracked and recorded, but it was also a live experience, so we were able to capture the jamming and improvisation, and, more so, one of our shows live, which we thrive off of.
We compiled two CDs worth of music from those two nights and made the material flow together in a continuous set. We’re really happy with how it turned out, and this is our first official release with Tyler, so we’re happy to be doing this with him. Our previous studio effort was with our old keyboard player.
The Jauntee – “Puppy In My Pocket”
[Video: The Jauntee]
Sam Berenson: It’s very unique to see a drummer holding down the majority of the songwriting. Have you always taken the lead writing role with The Jauntee?
Scott Ferber: I guess so. Before the band started, I had always written a bunch of music and done some recordings playing every instrument on the track, so I had a little bit of background with that. I do most of my writing on the piano, creating a skeleton for the song, and the other guys, for the most part, fill in their parts unless I have a specific idea for the melody or a segment of the song. We all do our part in writing though, and everyone’s contributed with their own songs. I would say it’s a mixed bag in terms of writing in general.
SB: Have these songs that are on the live release ever been recorded before on a previous studio effort?
SF: Most of them have not. That’s another thing that we are excited about. Most of our songs are not on an album. We have two previous studio releases with about ten songs on each album, and we have nearly 100 songs in our repertoire including covers. There are maybe five songs on our new album that have been previously recorded, but the other ten tracks or more are songs that have not been in a high-quality recording atmosphere.
SB: How’s the Denver scene treating you since moving to Colorado a year ago?
SF: It’s awesome, and we love it out here. I really, really have been enjoying our time out here, both personally, being a big change of pace from Boston, and the music scene out here is awesome. We’ve been getting a lot more opportunities for gigs and are able to bounce around all of the mountain towns in the winter. There are so many good venues, including the Fox Theatre in Boulder, the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins, and Cervantes’ in Denver, where we’ve been lucky enough to play. It seems to be a good move for us. The mountains are awesome, and everything out here is beautiful. We’ve been enjoying it.
SB: Absolutely, change is good. Do you view moving out west as an important ingredient for you guys taking things to the next level?
SF: I think it’s an important ingredient in terms of our general happiness. Having a place where we’re all comfortable and able to build a good fan base and friend base is awesome. We’re also a little more central now. We were able to do our first West Coast tour last year, hitting Montana, Oregon, and Washington, which would’ve been really hard to do from the East Coast. Now that we’re in the Midwest relatively, we’ll hopefully be able to hit all of the best spots on the coasts.
The Jauntee – Paradise Rock Club – 4/7/2017 (Full Show)
[Video: mk devo]
Sam Berenson: I see you guys are heading out on a big fall tour, supporting Leftover Salmon and Twiddle on select dates. Tell me about how your relationship with these bands formed.
SF: We’ve played with Leftover Salmon once before at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins, which came about through being a Colorado band and waiting for the right opportunities to arise for an opening slot at the Aggie. It worked out and was super awesome. I think we’re a good fit musically with Leftover, and the same goes for Twiddle. We opened for them for a couple gigs on the East Coast around two years ago, and it was a great fit. The crossover in our fan bases will work well together from everything I’ve seen. They’re really nice guys, and I look forward to hanging out with them for a week or so and getting to know them better.
The Jauntee – “Before The Storm”
[Video: The Jauntee]
Sam Berenson: And you guys got a new van for this tour?
Scott Ferber: We got a new van! We just got the emissions test done an hour ago. We’re psyched. We ran the last van pretty much to the ground, although it’s still running with close to 300,000 miles. We racked them up pretty fast over the last five or six years. We pretty much got the same van we used to have but newer—a good ol’ trusty Chevrolet. This will be the first run that we bring it out there, so let’s hope it doesn’t break down.
SB: I hope it treats you guys well! Are there any bands you haven’t toured with that you think could be a really fun co-bill?
SF: I think we would love to be paired with some jazzier acts. We’re huge fans of Medeski, Martin & Wood, Snarky Puppy, and Cory Henry, and I think there’s a crossover with some of the improvisation we do. We can crossover into more of the jazz-oriented crowd, which would be a lot of fun. No specific acts come to mind though. We do this acoustic bluegrass rendition of our tunes that we call “The Jauntgrass”, and it’s nice to have different opportunities interacting with audiences with different interests in terms of music genre.
SB: That’s really cool. If you could give one up-and-coming touring band advice, what would it be?
SF: Oh man! Just keep going and don’t get discouraged. Keep going, it takes so long. It’s so rare these days, especially in the type of music we’re doing, for a band to blow up fast. Even a band like Twiddle, who’s in their fourteenth year as a band, has been working to get where they are for years. The advice they told us when we talked with them was “Keep going.” We’re in our eighth year now, and we’re finally just seeing a push that we haven’t seen quite until this point. Don’t give up. Bands can’t get discouraged when an audience is only five people because it probably will happen 100 more times.
SB: I really appreciate your time Scott, and congratulations on your on your forthcoming studio release.
SF: Thanks so much, Sam!
For more information about The Jauntee or their new album, Always Never Knowing, head to the band’s website here. You can also stream the new album below.
The post INTERVIEW: The Jauntee’s Scott Ferber Talks New Album, Leftover Salmon, Twiddle, & Why Up-And-Coming Bands Shouldn’t Give Up appeared first on L4LM.
