Jettison is the weekly download artist of the week! Go grab it HERE. We sat down to get to know this new, promising local band. Go check them out on October 11th at Urban Artifact!
Give us some background on Jettison…
We are a Cincinnati-based band made up of Cody Disney, Corey Howell, Cody Westerman, Michael Belarde, Mike Abrams, and Steven Penningroth. Originally the band was started with me (Cody Disney) and Michael and was originally named Eyes & Oceans but after adding new members Corey, Mike, and Cody, the name was thrown out. Apparently I was the only one who thought it was cool. We went on to record two singles as Eyes & Oceans and eventually just dropped off the face of the earth before ever creating a social presence or playing a show. A few months later we started playing again and tried to get things going musically. In the last few months of 2015 we rented a practice space in Northside and started writing new music. It started very slowly as we were trying to figure out how we would sound considering so many of our members come from different musical backgrounds. Corey who was originally the bassist, came to us with a few ideas for guitar parts he had recorded and from there we all started adding onto it until we ended up with a finished song. We then switched Corey to guitar and needed to find a bassist. We went through a few tryouts and couldn’t really find someone who worked for the band. Until someone mentioned our current bassist to us. None of us really knew him but I messaged him and asked him to try out, he agreed, and we were pretty lucky that he did because Steven is just way too good at what he does and he thoroughly enjoys doing it. A month or two after Steven's arrival we went into the studio to record our first song with our new lineup and It wasn’t until our second session that we decided on the name Jettison. From there we continued writing and recording until we eventually were ready to play our first show in July of 2016. Although we were playing out as Jettison, the band didn’t really exist on social media. We had nothing released or even a Facebook page so we were a little worried about how many people would actually even know we were playing that night but luckily we have a lot of good people in our lives and they came out to support us even though they were probably very unsure as to what style of music we even played. Shortly after our first show we officially launched on August 16th and released our first single “Friendly Fire.”
Tell us about your songwriting process…
Currently our writing process is a whole lot of organized chaos that actually has worked out surprisingly well for us. One of the members will come to the band with a clip of something they recorded on their phone and from there we basically all live with the sound clip for a few days and then get together as a group and spend a while jamming around the foundation of the original recording. Once me and Corey finish arguing about microscopic details of the song, we then have this big chaotic pile of choruses, bridges, and verses that needs to be refined and organized in a cohesive way that not only makes sense in the context of the song but also in the context of the entire album. It’s really interesting to hear how songs turn out because everyone has such different musical backgrounds its crazy to see how we end up making something work for all of us.
What can one expect at a live show?
Hmm, that’s a hard question just because we’ve only played out twice so far, so we are still learning our way around on stage. I guess you can expect us to play music and love doing it. Included in that is plenty of stumbling around, kicking, yelling, stomping, accidentally unplugging mics during a song and even forgetting to turn amps back on during gear changes. We like being ourselves on stage and we are all very different people. So when we perform together it’s pretty unpredictable as to what will happen.
What is next for Jettison?
We are currently writing the rest of the LP so within the next couple of months there will be new songs released on our page and performed at our shows. We will be announcing new show dates next week including a show on October 11th at Urban Artifact with Break Up Lines and our friends in Home Plate. We've played with some of these guys for our first and second show and they aren't only great dudes but they also love what they do and do it well. As for our plans beyond the fall months, we are planning on releasing the full length album in the early months of 2017 and plan to start making weekend trips to shows in some new states and I think everyone in the band is beyond excited to do so.
