Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Alex Jordan & Co Q&A

Your name:
Alex Jordan.

Where are you from?
Dublin, Ireland

Name of band:
Alex Jordan & Co. 

Who else is in your band? 
Alex Borwick from The Young Folk on banjo and mandolin, Darragh Cullen of The Sour Seeds on bass and vocals, Conor McLoughlin of Sub Motion on guitar and Sean O'Connor of Sub Motion on drums and vocals.

How would you describe yourselves and your music?
We're a country rock group. We went to school together and played in different bands, but this is the first time we've played in this line up, and it's worked pretty well for us so far.
We all come from a rock background, however I've always had a country twang in my voice. I tried to fight it when I was younger, I sang and played in rock and blues bands and had a great time. I loved the music we were playing and still do, but everyone always said to me "you sound like a country singer", and growing up country music just wasn't cool, but I don't care what people think these days. That twang is what comes out naturally. So in the last few years I've decided to embrace my country roots, because of this the music I started making improved dramatically, it came out so much easier. I was able to combine my country vocals with my rock/blues influences and it all just worked.

Who are your main influences musically?
Zac Brown Band, Eric Church, John Mayer, Brad Paisley, The Eagles, Vince Gill, Trisha Yearwood, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the list is endless really.

What do you hope to achieve in music?
I want making music to be our careers. I love writing with the band and collaborating with other artists. But there's no better feeling than when we're playing live., We're not after fame and fortune (although they'd obviously be a welcome bonus) we just want to play to as many people as possible in as many places as we can.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
I can't pick one, so I'll quickly talk about three.
Last March we played to a full room at the Button Factory in Dublin, and that was the start of Alex Jordan & Co.
We then started gigging for most of last summer, playing festivals all around Ireland. One of the most enjoyable shows we did was at Electric Picnic last year.
However personally making this first record and releasing it has been the highlight for me so far. I feel in one sense it was a long time coming, and I'm so happy that it's finally out, after it had been recorded and mastered I started contemplating whether or not to release it, and I almost didn't, but thankfully we did, and it's going well.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?
I don't want to forget any of it! Everyone makes mistakes and regrets in this industry, but without them we don't learn, and that means we don't improve. I mean if we did everything perfect the first time, then the next move would be a negative one, if we peaked on our first performance or our first record, then we've done something very wrong. We're not trying to be a one hit wonder, we're here to stay.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
Borderline (The first track off our debut EP Leap of Faith). The song shows what we do best, it's country with attitude, and a catchy chorus. It's the song that people talk to us about the most. It starts off this simple acoustic track with strong lyrics and then we get to the chorus where the whole band enters, and we all let loose. We're not a rock band but we're not a country and western band either, we think we're somewhere in the middle, and that suits us to a T. Borderline really demonstrates our sound, there's acoustic elements in it, it shows off vocal ranges, but we also get to rock out during it, the song shows off almost everything that we can do...almost.



Where can we find out more about your music? 

Anything else you’d like to say about your music that I forgot to ask?
We've just released our debut EP 'Leap of Faith' it's available on all digital outlets.
We're currently booking gigs for throughout this year, and we've announced this week our first ever headline gig in the UK, where we'll be launching 'Leap of Faith' in The Water Rats, London on June 26th.
We've already started working on the next record, which should be out around Summer of next year, but we might release a single or two later this year or early next year.

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