Hello Rev, welcome to Seth’s Rock Report. It is a pleasure speaking with you and presenting these questions for you.
SRR: Please introduce yourself and walk us through your distinguished musical career.
REV: Whats shaking? I’m Rev Jones. I started playing bass when I was 15, and joined my first band about 3 months later, followed by playing my first shows about 6 months after I started. From then until now I’ve been doing the same thing, playing music. I’ve been touring & recording with several big acts for the last 20 years or so. I was in a speed metal band called Fort’e we released 2 albums on Massacre Records in the early 90’s. Then I joined Black Symphony we released 2 albums in the late 90’s and did a European tour with DIO. Then in 2000 I joined Michael Schenker Group. I was the bass player from 2000 until Dec 2006, during that time we toured the world non stop and released a couple of albums & DVD’s. I did returned to do several tours in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014. After leaving MSG, I joined 2 well well known bands, the first was Steelheart who I toured & recorded with from 2007-2017, the second band was Leslie West/Mountain who I toured & recorded with from 2008-present. I still currently do shows with Leslie West. Also during all those years I recorded with George Lynch, Jeff Martin, Paul Gilbert, Kottak, Jack Frost, Steve Moore, Fort’e, China Blue, and Blasted To Static. I also did several tours during those years with Fuel, Texas Hippie Coalition, and Gundriver.
SRR: What can you tell me about your new solo record?
REV: I have a new album called “Bakwash” that just came out. It is my first solo album. It features myself (Rev Jones) on Vocals & Bass, Jim Dofka (Dofka, Leather Leone) on guitar, and Jeff Martin (Badlands, MSG, Racer X) on drums. This album is full of heavy rock songs with catchy riffs, intense vocals, pounding drums, and lots of Insane over the top bass & guitar soloing. I’m very pleased with it, and I think everyone that is into music from Rock to Metal should give it a listen, there’s a something for pretty much everyone on this album.
You can stream my new album https://revjones.hearnow.com
You can purchase the album https://revjones.bigcartel.com/product/rev-jones-bakwash
SRR: When was it released?
REV: It came out November 9, 2018.
SRR: Is there a first single?
REV: Not yet officially. I’m gonna release a video for the title “Bakwash” in a few weeks, so that will be the first single.
SRR: What was the writing process like for it?
REV: Well it was a little spread out. There are 3 songs I actually wrote in 1994, “Bette Blue”, “Bakwash”, “Long Legged Lady”, it was for a project that didn’t happen and I never felt like they fit with any of the bands I was in after, so they never got recorded. But when I started putting this together I knew they had to be included. The song “Candy” was originally written when I was in Black Symphony, it was only recorded on a demo and never released, so when I was putting this album together I decided to include it. The other 6 songs were written some time within the year I recorded the album. I have 6 or 7 new songs & 3 old songs that didn’t make it on this album, that I will be recording later this year for my next album.
SRR: Can you tell me how it feels too have your first record done and out?
REV: It feels great to finally be able to share these songs with everyone, and it feels awesome to have recorded songs that only I decided what to play and what to sing, I wouldn’t always want that, but every now & then it is very satisfying.
SRR: How did you come up with the album cover idea?
REV: Well the little boy holding the beer is me when I was 12 months old. I knew I wanted to use the picture but I was not sure exactly what to do with it. I had a graphics guy that was gonna do the artwork but he got slammed at work and couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the money to hire anyone so I just had to do it myself. I knew I needed 4 pages and I had the 4 photos to use, so I just started experimenting and it all kind of fell right in place.
SRR: For those who don’t know much about you, how would you describe your music and sound?
REV: Heavy Rock with catchy riffs, intense vocals, and a bunch of crazy Insane bass & guitar soloing.
SRR:What is your live show like?
REV: At a Rev Jones show you get entertained the whole time, whether its a 1-hour set or 3 1-hour sets, we don’t let up. Its 3 guys playing rock songs with NO backing tracks, what you here is really what we sound like. We play every song from the “Bakwash” album, we do select songs from some bands I’ve toured with (msg, steelheart, mountain, leslie west, fuel), and some classic covers I’ve re-worked to sound like they were my songs. Playing wise there is a lot of showing off but in a fun way not a pompous way. If you’ve seen me on stage with any other band then you know I’m pretty active all over the stage, the only real difference doing my own shows is that I’m stuck in one place a little more than normal due to fact that I’m the lead singer. But trust me I’m still very very crazy and active on stage.
SRR: How do you promote your shows or do you rely on the venue?
REV: Well, normally I’m on tour with established acts, so I don’t have to promote the shows, I only have to promote me. But with Rev Jones Band shows I try and promote as much as I can with Social Media, posters in the venues, having people spread (street team), what ever it takes. It’s a lot harder these days to go out and promote locally, when I was younger we would hit all the high schools at lunch, all the game rooms, all the record stores, and hand out fliers and tell everyone about the show. Now theres no record stores, game rooms are not the same, and you can’t hang out at a school and pass out fliers, hell if you are an adult people would think you were a pedophile talking to kids about your show.
SRR: What do you think of internet radio and podcasts?
REV: More the merrier. as long as they don’t bombard you with awful music.
SRR: Is that the new way to get your name out there?
REV: The best way to get your name out there is put it out there any and everywhere you can. So yes I think they help.
SRR: How do you feel about the state of the music business today? What’s your take on the recent commentary that rock is dead?
REV: It’s not dead, it’s just lost. The biggest problem bands have today is that there are too many avenues for music so its almost impossible to properly promote your band to everyone that should hear it. Unless you have an account with all of the different Music Services, (which takes way too much time), chances are you are gonna miss out on a whole bunch of people that would be fans of your music just because there is too many music options and who knows where and to reach the right people anymore. Plus the internet is over saturated with real bad music and or music that has been put together on a computer and the supposed band that released it could never pull it off without backing tracks, modern day Milli Vanilli. Remember if you tune your vocals, program your drums, or use a computer to play your guitar parts – You Are Not A Real Musician , Just a wanna be imposter! If people would stop following every stupid trend and start making there own decisions again, there wouldn’t be these kind of problems. But I don’t see that happening ever again.
SRR: Do you think there is a way to fix it, ideas to make it better?
REV: NO! Every time someone trys to fix something to make it better, it usually always gets worse, thats kind of how we got here where we are at today. About the only thing that would help would be “Music Police”, their job is to keep bad music, fake music, bad bands, and dorky unqualified rockstar from destroying MUSIC. The problem is they would eventually get one sided and probably destroy music anyway.
SRR: Do you think streaming service is the way to go for your music?
REV: Now that artist are collecting money from streaming I think its great, nobody really makes money from albums anymore you make it from merch and touring, so its more important that people are familiar with your music and know who you are than it is to sell albums, you’ll still make more money in the long run from the streaming.
SRR: Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions for Seth’s Rock Report.
REV: Thank you for having me.
You can keep track of Rev Jones on his website http://www.revjones.com/
You can also check out Rev Jones latest single and video for the title track of his new album “Bakwash” below.
Comentários