Get extra use out of your Halloween costume and head to the Clear River Tavern the day after Halloween for their Day of the Dead party with the band Jabbawaukee at 9 p.m. The band, which hails from Rhode Island, will be making their debut at the Clear, and they’re very excited about it.
Jabbawaukee is a four-piece band consisting of bassist/ vocalist Brendon “Low B” Bjorness-Murano, guitarist & vocalist Dave Hobson, keyboardist & vocalist Jack Skiffington, and drummer & vocalist Stu Taylor. They’ve opened for several national acts, many of whom have played in Killington, like Twiddle, Pink Talking Fish, Hayley Jane, and the Ryan Montbleau Band.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Jack to learn about the band. He described them and said, “From a physical standpoint, we look like four regular guys, but once we get on the stage and start playing, that’s when the magic really happens. You can expect high energy, blast-in-your-face style jams, raunchy and raw but very technically proficient at the same time.”
They’re a heavier jam band which Jack said, “I like to call it Jam Core. We take a lot of inspiration from your general jam band troupes like the Grateful Dead, Phish, and all that then combine it with elements of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, Queens of the Stone Age, and all kinds of that stuff.”
Each of the guys has their own musical tastes that influence what they play and how they play the music: the sounds they create and the textures and chords they use. Brendon likes death metal, Jack likes jazz and EDM, Dave likes jam bands and classic rock, and Stu is into modern rock. Jack said, “Once it all blends together, it comes out as our own. The influences are there. It’s not what we’re trying to emulate; it’s just what comes out.”
Jabbawaukee plays originals and covers. Jack said, “In regular jam band fashion, we like to blend things together. We’ll do a cover that goes into an original or an original that goes into a cover, just to keep things fresh and fun. A lot of the times we do a cover, we like to put our own spin on it.” A good example of that is The Grateful Dead’s “New Speed Boogie,” which they released as a single. Jack added, “You listen to it, and until you hear the words, you don’t even know it’s that song.” Jack likes any RHCP, or Primus covers they do. Jabbawaukee has done a whole set dedicated to each of those bands. Jack also likes the Talking Heads covers they do.
They all take turns writing songs for their originals, so each guy has written songs for the band. Jack said, “There are songs in our collective that we have written all together, all on the spot essentially. There’s a song called ‘Spread,’ where we all took turns writing the verses. All of us have equal contributions to the song, and the song writing. We try and keep it that way to make sure we all feel we have a tug and pull of what we’re doing, and to where the creative direction is going. We even have some songs from someone outside of the band. We have a friend, ‘Bird,’ who has written some songs for us.”
I’m looking forward to seeing this band for a few reasons. One, I dig jam bands and all the bands they cover. More importantly, I love bands with multiple lead singers and harmony. These guys all take lead on a few songs, but harmonizing is their jam, pun intended. Jack said, “We like to switch it up. We all have songs we like to sing. At the end of the day, there’s only four of us. I see this with a lot of duos/trios; the harmonies are key because you don’t have as many people there to fill up the space or as many instruments. You need the extra voices to bring it up to another place. Let’s be real here, when you hear a whole church choir sing, a whole church sing, forget the choir, it sounds so beautiful when many people are singing all at once. It’s next level.”
The band has been together for eight years, with Jack the past five. Jack used to live in Vermont and is friends with Alex, who works at the Clear, so that’s how this came to be. They play all over New England, and in the summer months, they like to hit festivals like StrangeCreek and Wormtown in Greenfield, Massachusetts. StrangeCreek is a great music festival, and the band has been playing it every year since 2019. Jack said, “It was my first real music festival, and it absolutely changed my life in how I viewed music. To me, a music scene was something that happened in the ’70s in New York, and then I come to this for the first time, and I’m wowed away. There’s so many people here that like the same type of music I like to listen to, and even the music that I like playing, this is insane.”
Jack said when he plays in the band, “It feels like I’m sharing energy with people like it’s a form of communal magic, a way to share ideas. It’s not just me sharing my ideas with other people but for people to respond and give me back inspiration. All that really, truly makes it a magical, transcending experience that I’m very happy, as a human being, to experience that over and over again.”
Their debut album is a five-song EP, “Five from the Shack”, released in 2018. Their latest album, “Live Worms,” is a live recording of their show at Wormtown in 2023. They also have that single I mentioned earlier, and they’re currently finishing up their sophomore studio album, which should be released early next year.
They have some cool shows coming up after the Clear. They’re at the Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Nov. 27th, the Ocean Mist in Rhode Island on Nov. 30th, and Stella Blues in New Haven, Connecticut, on Dec. 28th.
You can find Jabbawaukee on all the social media platforms, and their music is on all the sites you can stream music from, like Spotify, YouTube music, etc. Jack said, “Anywhere you can type our name in, you can find us.” You can also find them on their website, jabbawaukee.com.
