New Music Alert! Meet WeAreJackStrong
Meet WeAreJackStrong, a trio from San Diego, California. This group of musicians takes inspiration from bands like the Talking Heads and Arctic Monkeys, with a good mix of 70s psychedelia in their sound. With music focusing on one's inner relationship with themselves, one of WeAreJackStrong's main goals is to help others feel empowered and less alone through their music. So, Let's get to know this new local band!
TO CHECK OUT WEAREJACKSTRONG'S NEWEST RELEASE “(it’s a) Natural Thang,” CLICK BELOW.
WEAREJACKSTRONG IS AN UNUSUAL NAME FOR A BAND. IS THERE A STORY BEHIND THAT NAME?
"It was immediately apparent that the songs we wrote were very personal... Maybe too personal. They were coming from a very deep place inside of us. We didn't have problems revealing ourselves to each other, but the idea of revealing personal thoughts to the world was daunting. So we invented an imaginary character named Jack Strong. We thought about him and talked about him until he became real to us, and then we would write the lyrics from his point of view. In other words, the incidents and memories that make up the stories for the songs were no longer ours but his. Doing it that way allowed us to share some pretty intimate ideas without becoming self-conscious or ashamed. So We Are Jack Strong, and so are the people that identify with our music."
WHAT WOULD YOUR BAND HAVE TO ACCOMPLISH FOR YOU TO FEEL SUCCESSFUL?
"There are lots of ways to look at that question. If you mean a successful business, we'd have to be able to create and present the music anywhere it is wanted sustainably. That is, we could create and present the music, and we could make enough money to survive and keep doing it. In other words, we could do nothing but make music and make enough money that we could support ourselves.
But the bigger success is communicating ideas that inspire people or cause them to overcome the parts of themselves holding them back. To Help people make progress in ways that matter to them."
WHAT DO YOU DO CONSCIOUSLY THAT SETS YOU APART FROM OTHER BANDS?
"Most of our songs are about the struggle that occurs within yourself rather than problems with other people. So that's one thing. Many bands write songs about their relationships with other people, and our songs are mostly about your relationship with yourself. That's a conscious choice for us. Also, we don't really aim to stay in any particular genre. One of us will often get inspired to play something that's purposely unlike the other songs we play. 'Natural Thang' came out that way. We wanted to write a song with funk elements because that music is so fun to play. We're certainly not a funk band, but we appreciate that style and how it makes us feel. We spend a lot of time understanding how the music makes us feel or how some lyrics make us feel, and we work hard to match the feel of the lyrics and music so that the song feels coherent. So we can express the feeling of significant loss, self-discovery, or triumph with both the feel of the music and the lyrics. Also, we don't listen to trending music with the idea of writing something popular. It may be bad for business, but our principles steer us to write something meaningful overwriting something popular."
