This is Sadie & Sarah @jamclubrgv who is this week's feature. They make their own music as well as fun covers!
Sadie & Sarah
I asked JamClub if they currently have anything they enjoy and Sadie mentions "I recently bought an Xbox One! I hadn't gamed for years and it's relaxing. Also, UMBRELLA ACADEMY on Netflix is a great binge." I've been seeing images of The Umbrella Academy, but I have not watched it, but when it comes to consoles I do not own an Xbox One, but I have played with one before! Sarah says
"Magic the Gathering! I'm teaching Sadie how to play and she's teaching me how to play poker." I've tried learning MTG, but I got into other card games that I don't play anymore, but poker is also hard for me.
From their current favorite activities and shows, they go on to mention their favorite local artists/businesses " Our favorite local business is Bandera Coffee Co. @banderacoffee in Harlingen, one cup of their homebrew has us buzzin' all day! Hop Shop @hopshopbar, our fav venue in our town. Our favorite local artist is Mario Godinez, trippy stuff that highlights some personal and cultural aspects of his life. Sarah owns a few of Godinez's originals!" I've heard of Bandera Coffee, but one day I'd like to visit the Hop Shop when everything is all good.
JamClub wasn't always JamClub to which Sadie brings up its beginnings and how it all started "I first started in college, writing jazz tunes and arrangements and things like that for class. Used to play in cover bands and salsa bands, those were fun gigs." As she mentions all these genres it makes me wonder how many instruments does Sadie knows how to play she says " I know how to play piano, melodica, guitar, bass, violin, cello, ukulele, trombone, trumpet, tuba, saxophone, clarinet, and drums! I'm a music teacher and spend a lot of my time practicing when you know a few you kind of understand them all" she continues by saying "My favorites are the brass instruments because they're tricky to play but so awesome and powerful! Sarah plays guitar, bass, ukulele, and trumpet. She played French horn in high school." Continuing the upbringing on JamClub Sadie said "When I moved here to the valley I kind of just immersed myself into the band & DIY scene, I LOVED IT! I joined Los Skagaleros on trombone in 2016 and they've really helped me get out there musically. Shortly after I started having a lot of ideas and decided to make my own solo project. It started as JazzClub, fun little synth instrumentals that took me like 30 minutes to slap together. This year we had a name change to JamClub and with that A LOT of new ideas about where we want to take this." It may have been a year, but there is plenty to be had as time goes on.
There have been mentions of Sadie and Sarah, but these are the 2 current members of JamClub as Sadie tells us more about Sarah "Sarah is our guitarist, we've been best friends for a long while and she's great. Her family taught her how to play when she was a little girl and I'm super jealous of that!" My dad tried to teach me how to play the acoustic guitar when I was fifteen, but I'm currently debating on picking up a keyboard. Even though my family knows how to play instruments and played in some bands. Sadie also brings up what seems to be the mission statement and meaning behind "JamClub " being "the idea we want for JamClub is for anybody to feel like they can come up and jam with us, join the club. We want guest artists, guest singers, guest musicians, guest dancers, whatever! COVID kinda slowed that idea down for us a bit but it's something we still have bouncing around. We want people to say 'damn, I want to do that' or 'damn, I can do that better' and come up to us and ask us to join in. We'll even show you how to play our songs, it's truly a 'JamClub' ". It all sounds fun imagining one big jam session of different individuals playing different instruments. I say that it really is a good idea and an interesting/engaging way to engage with the community who wants to play or maybe try their hand at something new. I can't wait to see future videos of a big group of musicians bringing the meaning of "JamClub" into a reality.
Speaking of JamClub and the multiple instruments the members play along with the multiple ideas bouncing off the walls has me thinking on the genre JamClub may be more due to the fact that they play covers along with their own work, but with the help of JamClub, they were able to pinpoint this "I would say right now our style is pop-rock. We say that because it's a lot of standard chord progressions, nothing too complex or dissonant, and it's up-beat and exciting. The originals we've written this year are in two styles, kind of like a 2 sided cassette tape from back in the day. One 'side' is pop-punk and the other 'side' is synth lo-fi. The reason we did that is because those are our two fav styles to play, so, why not?" That is an interesting way of putting it. Another way I thought of it while thinking of JamClub would be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. One being the pop-punk and the other being synth lo-fi.
Through their 2 sides of a "cassette" style group and changing their group name from JazzClub to JamClub surely there must have been a change or personal improvements as she says " huge changes! We take a lot longer than 30 minutes putting together a song! HA! We also have more of an idea of where we want this project to go. It's great because it feels like a natural decision that's just evolving and growing with time. We've learned a lot about music production and songwriting and there's still SO much more to get into. We never want to stop learning." Each artist is different from being able to create songs within minutes or an album within a span of years it isn't a race as long as you enjoy what you are doing along with being comfortable with what you have created. Going at your own pace is good to eventually bring these projects to life. Speaking about the ideas and the time spent on music gives us an insider on the process behind JamClub which is explained by Sadie "Usually we hear a song or a melody and we're like, 'oh woah that's cool what if we tried this with the chords instead? or completely invert the melody?' and I'll sit at my piano and mess with it until it's a completely different thing. I also try to write at least one idea, melody, chord progression down a day. You never know when you'll look back on an idea and like it. This year I think we wrote 8 songs in a month? January we just pumped them out; that's when we got the DAW, the audio interface, and some more instruments. With my knowledge of music theory and Sarah's natural musicianship it just really works together well, we have a good time and never take things too seriously. Having fun with it plays a huge part in being creative." That's what it's all about "having fun" and if you're not when what's the point. The experimentation of within-trial and error is one of the best things. Until you feel comfortable or what's interesting it can also just be accidental!
With all this work there must be something in the works to which Sadie gladly shares "We do! We are mastering our 'two sided' album, working on a cover album, and also making an ambient album! Most of our EP can be found on SoundCloud and we have a few unreleased songs still in the works. The ambient album is purely for commercial use so we want that to be something content creators, bloggers, or whatever can utilize in their videos." This sounds great also the ambient album can really be something that brings in another crowd as well. From what I recall with royalty-free music and using royalty-free stingers for news radio having access to content is really great. I'll be on the lookout for these releases.
From all the music genres and all the music, they produce from original and the covers what can be said about their influences behind their work to which they replied with "Female powerhouses give us LIFE. We look up to SIA, she was a music producer/writer for a long time until she started releasing things under her own artist name, and she did it at 40 years old! That's some woman power right there. There's really a lot of influences for us, jazz will always be our favorite. We love Nina Simone's writing and poetry, what an amazing woman."
Yes, there is a lot of amazing female artist out there, but I'll be sure to look up SIA.
These are JamClub's thoughts on the local scene
"Wherever you go, it's what you make it! That's the best advice we've ever heard. I grew up in Harlingen and Sarah grew up in San Benito so we love it here, it's home. We've been on every side of the scene; show promoters, venue owners, musicians, and fans. One thing is for sure, musicians and artists need to stick together. It's really us against the world, y'know? Also, share share share local content with your friends! There's so many talented artists and musicians, you really don't have to go far to find something you'll like and maybe even love."
Along with some added thoughts they wanted to share
"We like to raise money for S.N.A.R.R. Animal Rescue in NY, they're far away but do A LOT of rescues here in the Rio Grande Valley. Find them on Facebook, every dollar adds up! Thank you! https://www.facebook.com/SNARRNE"
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