Jukebox the Ghost “Kids haven’t realized the darkness and horrors and misery of real life.”

When I saw Jukebox the Ghost earlier this year (TMT Review), their energy and incredible skill blew me away. So when I found out they were playing again near me, I couldn't resist seeing them again and wanted to find out more about the process behind their unique pop music that borrows more than a little from Broadway and a classical piano concert.

I spoke with all three members of the band -- keyboardist/vocalist Ben Thornewill, drummer Jesse Kristin, and guitarist/vocalist Tommy Siegel -- before their show in San Francisco and discovered that, despite their candy-coated exterior, they've got some pretty serious ideas about music and life. But they never get too dour: as Ben says, Jukebox the Ghost is “strings, horns and fun!”

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It's been over a year and several tours since your album was released. Has that time changed how you relate to your music?

Ben: I think we play it better than we did when we recorded it.

Tommy: There were three or four songs we wrote a week before we went into the studio to record them. Those ones have gotten much better. More than anything, our performances have become more animated and interesting. At this point, we know all the parts so well that we can make stupid faces while we play.

Your music definitely lends itself to theatricality with dynamic changes and dramatic sounds. Is that intentional?

Ben: I've never written anything with performance in mind. It's just that some things lend themselves to performance better than others. And the better you know a song, the easier it is to perform it. If you don't have to think about what you're playing, it's a lot easier to be theatrical.

What do you like about splitting the songwriting between two people [Ben and Tommy]?

Tommy: It takes the pressure off. More importantly, though, it allows us to keep only the best songs, so we don't feel like were scrambling to fill the record.

Ben: From the audience's perspective, it's a lot more interesting as well. The effect is cool, to not always know where the next song will come from.

Many of the lyrics are in the third person or about fictional events. Why do you write like that rather than about yourselves, as many songwriters do?

Tommy: I tried to make my songs on this album form into a concept record about the end of the world. All my songs on the next one are first-person.

Ben: For me, it's two different exercises in songwriting. Most of the songs I contributed, first-person or not, aren't about me. “Victoria” for example is in first-person but still obviously fictional – I definitely did not have an affair with the Queen of England. But in a certain way, it's all real. It just depends on how you tell it.

The band formed while you were all attending George Washington [in Washington, DC]. How did you decide to pursue music full-time?

Jesse: We all wanted to do music as a living, and by the time senior year rolled around, it was perfect timing because we had all slowly come to the realization that we wanted to do music and not necessarily use our degrees. By graduation, we'd all decided everything else could wait.

Did any of you get degrees in music?

Ben: I did.

Tommy: I minored in music, because that's kind of easy to do. I can't really read music.

Jesse: I can't even read.

Tommy: And he got a biology degree!

Was it difficult to move to Philly and leave the community where you got started?

Ben: Many of the people and the bands we were close with moved away before we even graduated, so in a sense that community was already gone. We get nostalgic about it sometimes; though, I don't think we're missing out on anything. It still feels like a homecoming every time we play in DC, but we just don't live there anymore.

Your shows draw a younger crowd. Is that something you notice?

Ben: We definitely draw a younger audience. Kids haven't realized the darkness and horrors and misery of real life [laughs]. They live in a happy bubble. And the difference between the happy-bubble exterior of our music and the fact that our lyrics tend to be darker is intentional. It reflects who we are, happy people, though by no means are we miserable on the inside. No one's just bubbles all the time.

I was talking to a punk-ish sort of girl at a show in England recently and she said she used to be a Goth. She said she had a lot of darkness inside, but I told her I was all bubbles. She didn't laugh. That's when I knew we weren't meant for each other.

Are you working on new material?

Ben: We're hoping to record the second record in July and August of this year. It's going to be more contained because we've gotten older and calmed down a bit.

Jesse: It's shaping up to be more Beatles-inspired, and I'm not sure how that came about. The sounds are more classic.

Ben: This sounds weird, but it's more like real music – harmonies, melodies, people actually sitting in a room together and playing. It's more genuine, and it seems effortless. No tricks, no studio, just putting songs down in one track.

Jesse: Though we do want to put in some of our flair. And we want to go a little crazy with horns and strings. It's still going to be fun, because we really like fun.

Ben: Strings, horns and fun! That's the next record.

[Photo: Shervin Lainez]

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