“The rock and roll audience is a lot smarter than radio would have you believe. I think that most people are a lot smarter than the news and the general media give them credit for. People are willing to listen to something different — not all the time, but in certain situations you can get an audience that has never read you before to like you right away,” says Kendall Marsh, guitarist and casual spokesman for New Jetz, an enterprising group of six musicians from Denton, Texas.
By combining a formal knowledge of music with their individual talents, they produce good listening music you can dance to without compromising either. Part of their creativity is in their willingness to experiment and to abandon stereotypes of what a band should be, so it is easer to what New Jetz aren’t than to say what they are. The sound of New Jetz is hard to compare because it is the product of diverse influences of each member.
“Originally, New Jetz started with just me and Brian Mullin (the other guitarist),” explains Marsh. “We started playing as a duo doing some of the songs we play now. I figured the only way to get a band that would sound tight would be to add one piece by one piece, so we would get more or less what we wanted. What I had in mind was to eventually get a sort of dance band together — a dance format with original tunes. It got better and better as we practiced more, and towards the end of that summer, we thought it would be really nice to get a third person. Lee Ann Zimmers Cameron was playing in the Denton clubs. She is really interesting and completely different from the usual musicians around here and at the same time, she plays so well. What I really wanted was to have a band where everyone’s personality would be interesting enough to make it worthwhile doing.”
Marsh’s credentials include a degree in classical guitar performance from the University of North Texas (UNT), although his experiences playing various kinds of music probably tell more about the songs he writes. He started playing guitar when he was 10, found classical guitar more challenging than folk or rock, and decided to seriously study it.
“I wanted to be influenced by lots of different music, so I went to a school where I could hear lots of music and experiment with music. Classical guitar has influenced me, and of course all the rock people. Jazz has influenced me a lot.”
The other original member and guitarist, Brian Mullin, also studied music at UNT, as have drummer Chuck Norcom, and bass player Jeff Weimer. Norcom started playing in bands as a teenager in Virginia, his home state, and his background includes Latin, fusion, R&B, and jazz. Weimer played in rock bands in Dallas before moving to Denton, where he joined New Jetz to replace a lost bass player. Jim Combs, the keyboardist and a friend of Weimer’s, joined at the same time.
Lee Ann, the singer, was raised in a family of musicians and plays guitar, keyboards, and electric mandolin. Her background includes folk and bluegrass music and an admiration for Patti Smith, Janis Joplin, David Byrne, and Joni Mitchell. Along with Marsh, she writes words and music for many of the band’s tunes. The tone of her lyrics tends to be “either satirical or kind of yearning and pissed off,” as Cameron puts it.
The emphasis of New Jetz music is on dancing, but is a special kind of dance music that sounds better the closer you listen to it. What you hear may not be familiar, but it will certainly be entertaining. When asked about their music and its appeal, Marsh remarks, “We’d like to appeal to people who are interested in hearing something different, who are bored or disillusioned with what they hear on the radio all the time and want to hear original music.”
Weimer is more blunt on the subject: “We’re not really a band for all people.”
In spite of this disclaimer, the band has a much broader appeal than one might expect, since they rely on their musical ingenuity for winning the audience, rather than on a gimmick or on an outlandish style. Their music draws a clear response from everyone.
“We’ll play in a club and people with either really like us or they’ll really hate us. Even when the crowd has hated us, there are always people who come up afterwards and say that we’re the greatest thing they’ve heard in a long time. Even when it’s miserable, someone always likes us,” Marsh says. “We appeal to all kinds of people. We’ve entertained people slam-dancing and at the same time, there were people who just enjoyed sitting and listening to us.”
New Jetz have appeared in clubs across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Their music never lacks variety or excellence, no matter how closely you listen to it or how much you dance. Marsh warns, “When people come to see us, they should leave their expectations in the foyer.” Unless they’ve come expecting a good time, that is. Those who don’t expect art are going to be pleasantly surprised.
by Hope Walters