An Interview with Finger Eleven’s Rick Jackett |
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| Written by Kevin Johns |
| Friday, 31 July 2009 00:00 |
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You are Rick Jackett and James Black, guitarists for Finger Eleven, one of Canada's most popular alternative rock groups. You are creating music in an age when auto-tuned pop reigns supreme, and songs are so well polished by studio producers that you can see your reflection in their choruses. What do you do? You release a low-fi rough and tumble straight-up country & western album with sensibilities so old school listeners will want to smash their iPods and dust off their vintage vinyl turntables. Filled with songs about broken hearts and empty bottles, Blackie Jackett Jr.'s debut album Whiskey and Tears will be startling revelation for Finger Eleven and country music fans alike. Rick Jackett chatted with (Cult)ure about the surprising new side project. (Cult)ure: Why a side project? Rick Jackett: When we started writing the Blackie Jackett Jr. songs, there was no intention or ambition attached to it. It was something we were doing for fun, just getting drunk and writing songs. We were listening to country music, and we started strumming chords and throwing around words. Next thing we knew we had a collection of five or six songs, and they turned out a lot better than we ever thought they would. We started listening to them with our friends when we were having parties, and it just sort of became a thing we were doing. We did that for about two years. We just kept writing songs and recording them with no name attached to the project or anything like that, no real reason for doing it. Then one day our management took it to the label and the label wanted to release it. It was that simple. Without even trying, we got another record!
I think there was a point in the song writing period where it definitely got less humor based and became a little more honest and serious. Once the words "released" were thrown in the mix, we started to really go back and listen to things to make sure we were happy with the songs. Once you put out a CD, it's out there forever, so you want to make sure you feel good about it. It's a lot of fun; it's home recordings. There is a lot of heart and soul put into this project, but it's fun as well. When an artist decides to tackle a new genre, it is generally met with a certain level of skepticism. Do you think people will question the band's authenticity? I think people will definitely have skepticism, and, if nothing else, confusion. "What? A country album from this rock band?" But we honestly don't look at it as any specific genre. Even in Finger Eleven we try not to pigeonhole ourselves into a single genre when we are writing our songs. The only genre that we can't do in Finger Eleven is old-time country music. It just wouldn't fit. When we started writing these songs, if there was a chance they would fit into the Finger Eleven world, we would have let that happen, but they just didn't make sense in that world. When we put it out, I'm sure there will be some people who will say, "What is this? This doesn't make any sense," but what can you do? We like it! Do you have a feeling for what the fan base for this project will be like? I think there are definitely Finger Eleven fans that are coming to check out the shows, and I've been pleasantly surprised, since if you are a Finger Eleven fan, this is nothing like what you would expect. Blackie Jackett Jr. sounds nothing like Finger Eleven, but the connection between the two is that both bands are about trying to write good songs. There are also people who wander in off the street, and friends that heard about the project. It's really mostly this small group who have been listening to it for a couple of years already. We're just going to go from there and build it. I mean, it's awesome. It's like starting over again with a brand new band, yet we still have Finger Eleven, so it's the best of both worlds. You've said people like Hank Williams and other old country singers influenced this band. What was it that attracted you about that type of musician? We're not telling stories about our own lives, we're making up stories about life. There is a country singer/songwriter from the late 60s and early 70s named Townes Van Zandt. He was a huge part of us discovering country music. Up until that point, both me and Jay considered country music to be Shania Twain and that kind of shiny, poppy country. We had never really dove into the cool poetic rhythm and blues country. You have to go pretty far back to find that kind of stuff. We did, and we just fell in love with it. It was the lyrics. It was the age thing, the point in our lives that we're at and the point in their lives that those people were were at when they were writing those kind of songs. You just relate on a lot of levels. Plus, it's killer songwriting. There's not much masking it. When you listen to Hank Williams, it's just a guitar, bass, and a voice with words. There's no production to make it sound cooler. They don't repeat the hook over and over. It's just great words and great storytelling. It was something we fell in love with. The music we make is always influenced by the music we're listening to, and this just happened to be the period of our lives where we got into country music. Country music, with its ties to the cowboy West and all the mythos that entails, seems to be quintessentially American music. As Canadians, do you think you bring something different to the genre? A lot of the influence for us came from American country, because we spent a lot of time in the last four or five years in the south, in Nashville, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama... Most people from Canada don't spent a lot of time down there. We just happen to be a touring rock band, so we get exposed to a lot of that kind of country music. When you are in the original places where these guys used to play, it's pretty hard not to be influenced by it, because it's all around you. It's like if you were to spend three months in New Orleans, you would come back listening to Mardi Gras music. You can't help it. As Canadians we bring a different kind of twist. We're obviously not born in the deep south, and we're not from poverty, but we are telling stories. We're not telling stories about our own lives, we're making up stories about life. The album is full of songs about the evils of women. Are you worried about accusations of misogyny? I think that will be weird, because, as people, we are the furthest thing from that. That's not who we are at all. These songs are written with a little bit of sarcasm, and a little bit of self-deprecation, but if you don't know us, you don't know that is going on, and you might just think it's a couple of sexist pigs. There is a sense of humor throughout the whole record and hopefully if you take the time to listen to it, you'll get that.
We would write these heavy words, and we'd get to these pretty deep places in our hearts when we came up with the ideas for songs, but, when we went to record them and deliver them in a country mode, you tend to laugh about it and have fun with it. That's one thing we've really learned about country music: You can actually say the darkest deepest thought you've ever had, and it sort of sounds funny when you deliver it in a certain way. It's like the lyric from our song "Burned (Fuck Me)", One thing I've learned / With every woman you get burned. If you said that in a death metal song, it would sound so angry, but in our song it's more from the "Ah, I give up," perspective. That's the fun of a country song. Speaking of "Burned", that song pops out at me as the obvious single, and yet its buried deep in the album as track thirteen. Plus, you throw "Fuck Me" into the title and the chorus. It's like you're taking the most commercially viable song on the record and self-sabotaging it. I think that came from a true and honest place where we weren't looking for anything when we were writing these songs. It was for the people in the room at the time. When we got to that part in the song, we just thought it was a "He-Haw!" moment. Traditionally they would never say, "fuuuuuck meeeee!", but we just threw it in there for a laugh. It's definitely the catchiest tune on the record and it tends to be the song people gravitate towards. Where did these songs start, with the music or the lyrics?I don't even remember where it started... Probably with a bottle of whiskey! It was probably a music thing. We were probably trying to write something for Finger Eleven and it came out country and we probably added lyrics we had laying around. You know what? I don't even remember where it started... Probably with a bottle of whiskey, that's for sure! The first song we ever wrote for this whole thing is the song called "Married to the Highway". That was something that had been kicking around since the Butt Monkey days, these funny joke-lyrics we wrote as a country song when we used to travel in the van and were bored. When we were making our last record, we were all together writing, and we sort of hit a wall in the Finger Eleven world, so we got drunk and said, "Lets write something totally ridiculous that has nothing to do with Finger Eleven. Lets get our minds out of this mode," so we wrote that song. About six month later, we were in the studio, and the same sort of thing happened and we wrote the song "Whiskey and Tears". After that we just kept writing and trying to make them better and better.
What's next for Blackie Jackett Jr.? The album is available for download now, and the CD will be in stores August 18. We've got shows in Toronto every week until the 18th at the Horseshoe Tavern. We're playing three shows at the Bovine Sex Club before that. It's great, because it's a brand new seven piece band on stage. We've only played five gigs, so we're just trying to line-up more shows. Hopefully when the record gets released, it will open up some more opportunities. For more info visit: www.myspace.com/blackiejackettjr
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On my first listen, it did sound very much like a tongue-in-cheek self-aware, almost ironic album. But the more I listened to it, the more I discovered heavier stuff in there along with all the fun. 
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