The Jaded Hearts Club Band
Music always pays homage to artists that made history in many ways, one of them is covers, but sometimes covers reinvent the original in creative ways without altering the feeling that was intended to have. These covers are mostly associated with people that post in social media and just do it for fun, the interesting part of this is that there are succesful artists out there that want to do the same, just have fun while remembering music history.
One supergroup/cover band that has been showing up a lot lately is the Jaded Hearts Club Band, which initially focused in covering the Beatles, but now expanded their horizons to soul and other rock classics.
The members are all musicians with well known careers in the industry. The band consists of Jamie Davies, Miles Kane, Sean Payne, Graham Coxon, Nic Cester and Matt Bellamy.
One of the greatest things about this is that is just simple pure fun, this is an idea that came from playing at a birthday party, and they had so much fun that it was impossible to just leave it at that, so they decided to make it a project, a cool little side project.
NME Interview
In an interview with NME the band discusses how they handle the fact that they are a supergroup and how they got into the project.
Guitarrist Jamie Davis said:
Supergroups have got a bad reputation for massive egos and not sticking it out. We try to treat The Jaded Hearts Club like a new band who will continue. We are officially what a supergroup is, but we’re trying to stay away from those associations as much as possible, by playing gigs and making music as often as we can.
One of the things that keeps them away from all of that ego fighting drama is the fact that they are just having fun, drummer Sean Payne says: “There’s no bullshit or head games. It’s simple: Turn up, play, have a laugh.”
On how they got together as a band, Jamie says:
“I wanted to hire a Beatles band for my birthday. But then I saw how much they cost, plus they were all a bit naff. Then I thought, ‘Hold on, I know a few musicians…’ It was a eureka moment. I’d thought, ‘They’ll do me this one favour and it’ll be this one gig’. But, after the party, everyone was going, ‘That was really good, we should do this again’.
Just a Cover Band?
During the NME interview they all gave their opinions on making original music in the future (with the exception of Matt Bellamy who wasn’t present at the interview).
Nic: “Everyone’s tastes are more or less aligned, so I’m sure it’s possible.”
Miles: “At this point, the next album will probably be more covers.”
Jamie: “Matt and I text each other every day with suggestions for other great lost songs, and we’ve easily got enough for volume two.”
Sean: “The way we’re doing it keeps any songwriting egos out of it. But I’m sure new songs will naturally fall into place. We need to watch The Traveling Wilburys documentary to see how they did it. Everyone wrote in that band, and they managed to kick the doors down straight away.”
Their Debut album “You’ve Always Been Here” is out today and while it doesn’t cover any new ground in music, it’s hard not to enjoy the talent from each one of the members through classics.
Even more than just enjoying, one of the ideas behind the band is to bring old musical gems to everyone’s attention. There are hundreds if not thousands of songs that are all over stream services but don’t get enough plays. Maybe with this fun project, we can go back in music history and enjoy some of the classics in soul, blues and more.
