Crankbox-music

Jolly - New tunes without deviating from their core

Story and interview by Chris Koppers

One of Jolly's main factor is versatility. Everyone's hands are involved to produce prolific tracks for your ears and your mind. Based in NYC, Jolly goes the extra mile to reach their fans in the U.S. and in Europe.

Jolly shared some moments with my humble person and this interview is the outcome for you.

--- Interview --- 

How would you describe your recent tour - May 2012?

I think the tour was a success. We had a chance to go out and play for people who have been waiting to see our live show for a while now so we were happy about that. It's always a great feeling meeting and talking to fans of the music we're making. This is the first time we've been to Europe since our Album "The Audio Guide to Happyness part I" has come out. Of course we wish we could have played for more people but that is what we are trying to do now. We are trying to get on to a bigger tour opening for a bigger band. It's a tough thing to do, but we feel given the opportunity to open for a bigger band we could really spread our music around and people would love it, we're confident!

Who came up with the idea of "The audio guide to happiness (part 1)"?

JOLLY came up with this idea, ha.

Can you reveal your plans for 2013? Videos, tour, etc?

"The Audio Guide to Happiness" is a two part album and we will be releasing part 2 in the beginning of 2013. We're really excited about this because it's been finished for so long and the 4 of us are the only people who've heard it, so we're excited to have fans of part I and hopefully more people to experience it!

There is a possible European Tour after the album release at the beginning of the year as well, I can't say with whom yet, but if all goes well it's going to be a great tour!

I'm sure we'll put out a video for part 2's first single, but for now you can check out our newest video "Where Everything's Perfect" that we actually animated ourselves in my apartment. None of us have animation experience, we just figured it out ourselves as we went along. We had nothing nothing but a fish tank and a pack of markers:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoVgMvHMaGk

What are your key-essential elements when it comes to your lyrics? 

The melody and music is usually written first and then we write lyrics around how those melodies, or how the music makes us feel. I guess the root of our lyrics is raw human emotion: Love, sadness, feeling alone, happiness... In the genre of Progressive rock, lyrics are usually these epic tails of space dragons and deep phylosophical ideas, JOLLY rights pretty down to earth, true lyrics. We don't sit in a library researching what to write about, we use this as a way to tell exactly what we're feeling, or what we've been through.

Does social networking help you to increase your popularity, or is the old fashioned way, leg work, more effective?

Social Networking is great, but it doesn't decrease Leg work, if anything it adds to the work load of being in a band. It takes a lot to keep up with it and find new ways to use it to branch out. It definitely helps us reach people all around the world that we would not have been able to reach without things like Facebook or Myspace.

I wish things were the way they used to be in the 90's when you just get in a van and play shows all over, a time when people still just went to random shows to have fun and check out music. The sad fact is that it's just not like that anymore, in America, anyway. If a band today isn't using the internet/Social media, they are going to have a very tough time getting their name out there I think.