This article originally appeared on Boston Band Crush ). To find out more about Boston Band Crush’s “One Night Band” and to buy tickets to the big show please visit:
http://www.onenightbandboston.com
Check back each day for more interviews with our participants!
Jen Johnson grew up in Northern California where she spent a lot of time climbing orange trees, playing violin, singing, and making up little songs about everything, encouraged by her professional singer Mom. This longstanding love of music brought her to Cambridge’s Longy School of Music, where she became one of the chosen few opera students to drop out of school to play rock music. Jen currently plays guitar, keys, and sings in the rock trio Static of the Gods. With 2 national tours and almost 40,000 miles of road behind them, SOTG has a new record of songs written on tour coming out this fall.
BBC: What Boston rockers, past or present, would you most like to have a One Night Band with?
JJ: I would love to have an all-girl one night band. There are so many talented women musicians in Boston, the talent level and creativity is huge. Hmmm…maybe this is an idea whose time has come. Sophia, what do you say? Want to join me? (Sophia: I’m totally down!)
BBC: What Boston rockers, past or present, would you most fear having a One Night Band with?
JJ: I don’t think that there’s any one musician that I would be afraid to have a one night band with, because you know I am such a huge diva. I’ve been playing solely with Static of the Gods for the past two years (we’re going steady: we have promise rings and everything!), so I am a bit rusty when it comes to collaborating with other people. We’re pretty in tune with each other and our writing process is very collaborative and comfortable at this point, so it will probably be a bit strange to do that with other people.
BBC: What is your normal song or part writing process? Will writing three songs in a single day drastically differ from your usual approach to creating music?
JJ: Writing with Static of the gods feels like a dream come true for me; it’s everything that I have ever wanted in a band. It’s organic and feels very natural now, but we’ve worked hard to create a space for that to come about. One of us will bring in a musical idea, and then the others will add their contributions and we just collaborate and expand on that. The most successful songs are the ones we’ve written in 10 minutes or less! SOTG writes a lot of songs, so I am not too worried about writing 3 songs in one day, but I’m more worried about the cover because I came from a classical music background and there are TONS of songs that everyone seems to know that I don’t know at all. Ben and Mike suggested that my group cover something totally ridiculous like Bell Biv Devoe (haha, now no one will want to be in my group!), although maybe done a la Ted Leo it could work, who knows?
BBC: What Boston band do you have the biggest crush on right now?
JJ: Biggest Boston Band Crush for the moment would have to be Big Bear and Caspian.
DISCLAIMER: I am totally kidding about the diva thing and the promise ring thing…or am I? You’ll just have to come to the show and find out!
DOWNLOAD a Static of the Gods track HERE!!!