 Credit: Tatiana Eva-Marie A gumbo of New Orleans influenced blues, blue-eyed soul, funk, and folk, Mama Juke is a four-part-harmony freight train just a-hummin' down the rails. Playing originals as well as a crowd-pleasing repertoire of covers, the boys have played gigs for audiences of all types all over New York City, including several residencies. On June 9th, Mama Juke will be playing the Northside Festival and in advance of their appearance, member Jon Wert kindly took the time to speak about Live at Unit J, dream collaborators, touring Japan, and share some excellent touring tips. Is there a story behind your album’s title? It's pretty self-explanatory, "Live at Unit J." Unit J is a loft space/DIY music venue in Bushwick where Eli used to live. He, together with other creative/performer roommates was instrumental at setting up the place, making connections, hosting shows and turning it into the scene that it has become. It's been the epicenter for so much art and music that has happened over the past few years among many of our friends and colleagues in NYC. We felt that this simple title was the right debut live album for the band because it pays homage to our home-base that has nurtured us and many others. We wanted the album to not only capture the feeling of a typical live Mama Juke show but also to showcase the feeling of being at a concert/party at Unit J. When/where do you do your best writing? Sometimes on the road, free from the everyday stresses of life and inspired by new places and people. But really we're all of the mindset that, at least for us, it really just requires a dedication and scheduling of time to sit down for however long, no matter what's going on, and just try to write. Often it's difficult, often nothing great comes from it, but the act of trying to switch on that composition mode at will, and just the experience of trying to write over and over again, builds up your skills as a writer over time just like practicing an instrument does. Sometimes it's important to have some kind of inspiration that helps you get something good, but in general we're just trying to get better at creating our own inspiration when we need it. Do you have any touring tips? Start planning as early as possible, ideally about 6 months out or longer. Make a spreadsheet with all the details you can think of to help you be organized, a column with each date in your potential timeframe and all other details to follow (venue, city, contact info, backline, social media, etc.) Also plan your budget. Try to secure a few important gigs throughout (i.e. gigs that pay well to help finance the tour) in the places you want to go and then work to fill in dates around that. And then really it's about getting busy contacting people. It gets easier as you develop relationships with venues/bookers, but it's still difficult to get a hold of people, pitch your project, and actually confirm a gig. I'd recommend trying to schedule time everyday to work on this, maybe 30 minutes everyday to makes some calls, send some emails, make follow-up calls (extremely important), and keep fleshing out that spreadsheet. It also helps to get in touch with any friends you have in the places you are traveling to for help with lodging and booking advice. And then once the time to head out has come, have fun! What do you love most about being on the road? Just being musicians, and being free people. Being on the road gives you an opportunity to let go of most of your daily routine and any struggles and stresses of everyday life. You only have one job: make it to the gig and play music! Aside from that, just being a person who can focus on meeting people, enjoying new places, making memories, just being a genuine person without any concerns taking you away from the present (aside from making sure everything goes smoothly for the show!) Who would you love to collaborate with? Wow, so many great answers for this. Aside from the musicians and bands in the Brooklyn/NYC scene whom we frequently collaborate with, it would be great to get involved with The Wood Brothers, we cover a few of their songs and draw a lot of influence from them. Another great band to team up with would be King James and The Special Men in New Orleans, they bring the party and soul like none other. We've been toying with the idea of adding a keyboard player to the band at some point, or maybe just for certain shows, John Medeski would be a dream addition. We'd also like to collaborate with more artists across other mediums. There are a few painters/drawers on the scene that come to shows and draw us, the crowd, anything they think of. Collaborating with more visual artists in creative ways would help expand what we have to offer. Same thing applies to dancers, I'd love to do shows with some choreographed or improvised dancing happening to the music. Comedians are great to work with too, we're trying to add more of that element to the shows, develop a rapport with the audience, give them something a little extra to take away from the show other than just a typical band performance. Are there any songs you are tired of playing and why? No! It may sound self-congratulatory, but I love playing with these guys because there's always a high level of musicianship and improvisation involved. Plus, we've expanded our repertoire so much that we never really have to rely on playing a particular song, so if we happen to have played something at the last 5 shows it's easy to replace it with something fresher and bring back that old song again when we feel like it. Do you have a favorite gift from a fan? Yes! Calista, our friend and former bartender at our weekly residency designed and built our wooden sign that we've been taking to shows ever since. It's our logo, it's featured on the live album cover, and it's awesome. She took a rustic piece of wood and painted the band name on it, it was a great gift that feels like it captures the energy of the band well, thank you so much Calista! Is there a professional “bucket list” item you would love to check off? There are two I can think of right now. First off, we want to tour Japan. Eli has been there playing music before and we collectively have enough connections to string an awesome tour together. I've never been to Japan but I love Japanese food and culture and would love to experience the other side of the world. The second thing is to get a placement for one of our songs, on a TV show, movie, commercial, anything. It's very difficult to do this, but it's a very useful thing for raising awareness of the band and generating passive income so we can keep building this up and hopefully work together for many years to come. Northside Festival: https://www.facebook.com/events/206159880187175/?ti=icl Tickets https://www.mamajukemusic.com https://mamajuke.bandcamp.com/releases https://www.facebook.com/MAMABEMUSIC https://www.instagram.com/mamajukemusic/ https://twitter.com/MamaJukeMusic Mama Juke is: Elijah Bridges, who brings elements of bluegrass and rag with his soulful harmonica, acoustic guitar, and voice; Amos Rose who is a world traveling multi-instrumentalist who also sings and plays lead Telecaster guitar; Pete O'Neill, an in-demand session musician, and bassist and drummer Jon Wert, a sought-after musician in the NYC rock and jazz scene.
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