Peer through 'Fishbowl' with Go Jimmy Go
* Note: Click on the song title for an mp3 audio sample. Apple QuickTime or Windows Media Player recommended for playback.
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| From left, Eric White, Ian Ashley, Shon Gregory, Jason "Bison" Friedmann, Fernando Pacheco and Cameron Wright are Go Jimmy Go, whose third album, "The Girl With the Fishbowl Eyes," will be celebrated at a CD release party Thursday night at Pipeline Cafe.
Moon Room Records Go Jimmy Go's 'The Girl With The Fishbowl Eyes' CD Release Party with Warsaw 9 p.m. Thursday Pipeline Cafe $10 (21 and older); $12 (ages 18-20) 589-1999 |
Honolulu's favorite rock/reggae/soul band will probably clue folks in at its Thursday "Fishbowl" CD release party/live show at the Pipeline Cafe. We couldn't wait that long.
So after listening to an advance copy of the Jimmy's very fresh and oh-so-clean "Fishbowl" last week, we asked saxophonist Eric White and bassist Cameron Wright to discuss the long-awaited "Soul Arrival" follow-up track by track. They obliged while knocking back a few alongside the fugu lamps at La Mariana Sailing Club.
Eric: "The idea was to introduce you to the album and more than that, the musicians on the album ... to give you some history. Everybody played in other bands before Go Jimmy Go, I think, except for me. So the little clips that you hear are from those previous and current bands. Cam's band Fever Boner is in there."
Cam: "You'll hear me singin' a little bit of lead and playing guitar. (Trombonist) Fernando (Pacheco) is singing lead on a Pimpbot song. Dynamic Pressure, (vocalist Jason) Bison (Friedmann's) old band, kicks it off. (Drummer) Sean (Gregory's) old bands Red Session and Kamikazi Kong are on there. (Guitarist) Ian (Ashley's) side project, Good Enough, has an emo-rockin' thing."
Eric: "It's like saying, 'Here's where we're from.' "
Eric: "It was the first song Bison ever wrote for his old band Dynamic Pressure. His inspiration and the person he always dedicates the song to is Mama Pat. Mama Pat taught him gospel music and how to sing it. It's just Bison doing his thing with no problem, knowing the song inside and out. We've been playing that song a long time, and it's pretty much stayed the same all that time. It was probably the first song we laid down for the CD."
Cam: "It was easy because we were so familiar with it."
Cam: "That was originally an instrumental called 'Kickin' It With D.' (You'll have to ask Eric and Cam what "D" is at the release party. Just be prepared to walk right into an old-school, off-color joke.) Of course, that title didn't fly with our record label, so we had to change it. I would've been perfectly happy with the original title, but I'd have been answering questions about what 'Kickin' It With D' meant until I was 60 years old. We used to open shows with it. There's a good long walk-up intro to it. The rhythm section comes first. Then the horn section creeps up. Bison just put together words for it ... does his testimonial."
Cam: "I like story songs ... full of tongue-in-cheek stuff and hijinks. Some old ska songs were actually kind of like that. Prince Buster and all those guys told stories about funny situations. 'Bang The Skillet' (on GJG's second CD 'Soul Arrival') was that kind of tongue-in-cheek, funny story. This one is kind of like a mini-movie within one song. Bison and I wrote it. The setting is probably a rural village or small town run by an 'El Guapo' kind-of-guy. During shows now, Bison says the song is about me because I'm the single guy in the band. So I guess it would be about me hooking up with the governor's daughter, running from my wife, and wanting to go home. It was made to sound like an old story song."
Eric: "(Former guitarist) Andrew (McClellan) wrote it. Every time we're on the road, we always stay with friends, we always see friends. All across the country. There's people from Hawai'i everywhere. We're fortunate to have them come out to the shows. It's so cool because we bring Hawai'i to them, and they bring Hawai'i to us. And it makes us feel a lot better, especially when we're in a place like New York City."
Cam: "Eric brings crack seed everywhere we go. And in turn, they tell us where the L&L Drive Inn is. It's a great exchange."
Eric: "We make friends all the time. ... Even Mainland people who meet us and hang out with us feel like it's family. And they open their doors to us all the time — their floors, their couches, their fridge, their kitchen cabinets. We're very grateful for that."
Eric: "It's one of my favorite songs on the album. Bison wrote it about his girl. It's basically about being at a party, and not being able to wait until your girl shows up. A feeling of, 'There's thousands of people around me. But it's nothing without you.' "
Cam: "We're just romantics. And our guys sing great on it ... sweet and subtle."
Cam: "It's Go Jimmy Go's road song. It's about being on full-time tour last year. It's about being away and wanting to go home. I think it's our most autobiographical song so far. ... We were having moments (on tour) when things were more tense than usual. So I started playing this on guitar. The words came kind of easy. It talks about the chances we were taking — leaving our home and putting our music out there. There's that element of, 'This might not work. But we're sure gonna try, and we're gonna do it our way.' It was the last song written for the CD."
Eric: "I first heard Bison do it in 1999. He used to play it on his acoustic guitar all the time. The first time I heard it, Cam and I had a place on Wai'alae Avenue, and Bison was over. And I had to hear it again. It was such an awesome song. He only had a verse and a chorus. ... I kept bugging him and bugging him to finish it but he just put it in the closet and never touched it. ... But I like to keep things. Especially when I latch on to something that I really like. And every couple of years, I'd bug him about the song. ... Finally, he started working on it again and finished the lyrics. It was one of those things, we couldn't push."
Cam: "Some songs just need to marinate for a while."
Eric: "That's the mover and the shaker. (Former guitarist) Tino (Olsen), one of the original members of the band and so much a part of Go Jimmy Go, wrote it. It's such a simple song. But when you put some feeling behind his words, it's something special. ... When we started playing it and practiced it, Cam's bass line reminded me of one of those Jamaican buses with the suitcases and the chickens inside and on top, and everybody's packed in there. I could just imagine us on a bus like that just going down a bumpy country road."
Cam: "It's Ian's songwriting debut. It's a love song. Ian has a rough exterior. So this is like a peep into Ian's tender little heart. Deep down inside, he's a romantic. And he expresses it well on this song. It's heartfelt and it's all Ian. His words. How he feels. A love song in every sense of the word."
Eric: "Cam wrote it ... way back in the early days in 1997. It was about dreams. What are the things that you dream about when you're stuck in traffic? What are the things that you dream about when you're stuck in class? ... And we were thinking at the time, 'Well, where would we want to be when we're in a miserable situation?' Well, I wanted to be next to a beautiful woman. In fact, I'd like to be with a girl who's beautiful and had big eyes — the kind you can just stare into. How big are they? Bambucha! But we couldn't call it that. We needed something better. Then I said, 'The girl with the fishbowl eyes!' "
Cam: "That was it."
Cam: "The subject matter is a wee bit racy. If you know Andrew — who wrote it — it makes more sense."
Eric: "We were playing it for so long. All I'm gonna say about the lyrical content is that I liked the lyrics, but I didn't piece the story together at first. It's full of innuendo. Listen to it. Look into the song a bit. And let your imagination run wild."
Eric: "That was written in 1998. I can place the week. We were playing a really big show for us at the time called Spring Ska-lebration at Andrews amphitheater. Our idols were there — Hepcat, Dancehall Crashers, Save Ferris. Ska was big. We felt grateful to be on the bill, opening up the day. But two days before the show, we felt we needed to come up with a killer song to bust out for the crowd. And basically, we came up with only the foundation of the song as it is now. It was too ambitious. ... I remember messing up."
Cam: "We were just a little too adventurous then. That was the first time we tried to get a little funky."
Eric: "That one's getting another go-round. It's (also) on our last album, "Soul Arrival." We just wanted to redo it. We thought we could do it better. ... A lot of times when we play, it's our 'hana hou' song."
Cam: "People on the Mainland now know those two words. We teach them to everybody everywhere we go. We're, like, 'You want an encore? We don't know what that is. But we know what a hana hou is!' The Hawai'i people get it going and pretty soon you have a whole club in Tennessee or Boise, Idaho, going, 'Hana hou!' ... When we first recorded it for 'Soul Arrival,' it was kind of green."
Eric: "It's how we end our shows. And it was how we were gonna end our album!"
Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8005.
