ONE ON ONE: AN INTERVIEW WITH JETSKI!
We sat down with Charles, Elliot, Jack and Alex of Sheffield band, Jetski, not long after the release of their debut EP ‘For The Family’.
Published On: 06/11/2022
WE’RE JUST PAST THE RELEASE OF YOUR ‘FOR THE FAMILY’ EP. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO FINALLY HAVE THE DEBUT EP OUT THERE IN THE WORLD?
(Charles) Stoked! We’re just really happy with how it’s gone down. It’s nice to see people enjoying it. It’s nice to see people who have been around for a while enjoying it and the new people too.
(Eliot) We’ve been inundated with messages from people who absolutely love it, it’s a lot more than we expected I think.
THE ONE THING I NOTICED IS THAT IT’S ONLY THREE SONGS, IT’S QUITE SHORT AND IT’S QUITE CONCISE. WAS THAT THE INTENTION GOING IN? TO GO QUALITY OVER QUANTITY AND FOCUS ON THREE REALLY INCREDIBLE SONGS?
(Charles) Yeah, they had been in our setlist for a little while. We had ‘Joey and Zoe’ as an opener and then ‘Jack’s Song’ in the middle part of the set where we introduced the band, and ‘Curbside’ is towards the end because it’s quite a big finisher as a song. We just liked how those songs flowed together, we’ve drip-fed music with only five singles over the past three years so we wanted to give people a different experience so they could sit down and listen to songs in sequence rather than just one at a time.
(Eliot) It’s not like we didn't have any other songs, those three just seemed to really sit well with each other and I think it showcased the wide spectrum of what we can do.
YEAH, DEFINITELY. AS YOU SAID ABOUT THE FIVE SINGLES RELEASED OVER THREE YEARS AND WITH THIS EP COMING OUT, DID YOU FEEL THIS WAS THE RIGHT TIME OR WAS THERE EVER A TIME BEFORE THAT YOU HAD KIND OF THOUGHT ABOUT IT?
(Charles) Just with the way music is at the moment and the way that social media is because that's the main sort of thing that decides how far we make reaches outside of things like playlists and radio and press, like yourself. Stuff gets flowed in so quickly that we didn’t want to give an actual like body of work until there were people sitting waiting to hear it. So, doing the singles we were just trying to show something new each time, trying to give a different vibe each time and this was like a time to give people a set of songs.
DEFINITELY! I’LL SAY THIS - I WAS FAMILIAR WITH YOU GUYS, I HEARD A COUPLE OF SONGS AND HAD HEARD PEOPLE SAYING STUFF BUT WASN’T THE MOST FAMILIAR UP UNTIL THE ROAM TOUR. A TOUR THAT HOLDS A VERY SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART BECAUSE IT WAS SO HECTIC AND I WAS ACTUALLY INVITED THROUGH YOUR PR WHICH WAS WONDERFUL. WHAT WAS THE GIG LIKE FOR YOU GUYS?
(Charles) Were you there on day one or day two?
DAY TWO, THE LAST ONE.
(Charles) That was a really special show for us!
APART FROM ELIOT BECOMING A FATHER ON THE LAST DAY, WHAT ARE THE LASTING MEMORIES OF THAT TOUR? BEING BROUGHT OUT BY ROAM ON THEIR WAY OUT, PUTTING YOU GUYS ON.
(Charles) We owe a lot to Roam. Eliot and Alex used to be in a band together and had played shows with Roam before.
(Eliot) We played on their very first tour. When they released their first EP they played a show in Sheffield, a venue called South Sea.
(Alex) There were about 10 people there, if that.
(Eliot) It was amazing to be able to play with them on their very first tour and their very last tour.
(Charles) What year would that have been?
(Eliot) 2012.
(Charles) So 2012 is when Eliot and Alex started a relationship with Roam, and then we played with them right before the pandemic happened. Alex Costello (Vocalist of Roam) and the rest of the band were really nice and complimentary, over the pandemic we were talking with Alex a lot, he was suggesting things for us to do and being supportive and being very kind, so to get asked to do the last set of shows was amazing. The impact that we had on new fans as well as meeting people who had been around for a while, someone flew over from Sweden. People bought merch and came back the next day for another show and had modified the merch. There was a girl who had turned a tshirt into a full crop top. There's loads of little things about it but yeah, it meant alot to us to be able to go and do that. Shoutout to Roam, RIP.
ONE OF THE BIGGEST THINGS THAT HITS EVERYONE WHEN YOU FIRST LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC IS THE WIDE ARRAY OF INFLUENCES. YOU GUYS ARE CLEARLY INFLUENCED BY BANDS LIKE ARCTIC MONKEYS AND CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN AS WELL AS BANDS LIKE ROAM AND NECK DEEP. DO YOU THINK THAT MAYBE COMES FROM BEING A SHEFFIELD BAND AND HAVING THE WEIGHT OF ALL THE HISTORIC SHEFFIELD INDIE BANDS THERE? OR DID YOU JUST THINK IT WAS COOL?
(Eliot) I think there might be something subconsciously. I grew up listening to indie bands, I used to love The Wombats, Arctic Monkeys and things like that but now I probably wouldn't ever listen to that kind of stuff.
(Charles) I’m still really into all that sort of stuff. A lot of bands that come from the UK who try and make this sort of emo or pop punk or whatever you want to call it, i've seen people from Leeds playing shows in Leeds who are like ‘What the fuck is up Leeds?’ and every single bit of music was trying its best to be American. Songs like ‘Lemon Haze’ for us is like a piss take of that, because we’re from Yorkshire and we don’t want to cover that up in any way, it’s just about keeping it fresh and not trying to imitate anybody and just make music that we like to hear really. We’re just trying to make music that we want to listen to that we maybe can’t find.
YEAH, LIKE I SAID ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS THAT HIT ME WHEN I WAS LISTENING TO YOUR MUSIC WAS THAT IT WAS SO COOL, SO FRESH AND UNIQUE. YOU’RE NOT TRYING TO BE ANYTHING THAT YOU’RE NOT, YOU GUYS ARE FROM SHEFFIELD AND YOU’RE NOT TRYING TO BE PEOPLE FROM THE STATES, YOU JUST MAKE MUSIC FOR YOU GUYS AND I THINK THAT REALLY SHINES THROUGH.
(Eliot) I think it helps that we all listen to completely different types of music but we all also agree and can find common ground.
ONE OF THE THINGS I FORGOT TO MENTION ABOUT THE ROAM TOUR, YOU WERE WITHOUT JACK ON THAT TOUR DUE TO A BACK INJURY, SO TALK ME THROUGH WHAT THAT WAS LIKE COMING UP FOR A BIG TOUR A MAN DOWN.
(Jack) Stressful..
(Charles) We knew that Eliot was already having his kid, so that was something that was already on our minds as the due date was around the same time as the tour. Then when Jack hurt himself, I was very much in the mind of ‘The universe is giving pretty strong signals’ like last time we released music and played a decent sized show and then the pandemic hit straight after. Maybe the universe is just giving us signs that we’re not meant to fucking do this really.
(Eliot) It just got worse because we had a guitarist lined up to learn my parts in case I couldn't make it there, then obviously Jack broke his back so the guy who was learning my guitar parts had to drop that and learn the bass parts instead. I was like ‘I'll just wing it and see what happens’.
(Jack) The guy who filled in fucking smashed it from everything I saw, gutted to miss it but they smashed it.
I REALLY ENJOYED THE ‘JOEY AND ZOE’ VIDEO BECAUSE IT’S JUST DUMB AND IT’S FUNNY, IT’S THE PART WHERE JACK WHEELS DOWN THE LANE MADE ME BURST.
(Eliot) That wasn’t how the video was supposed to go either.
(Charles) Of course yeah, we wrote completely separate music videos. We shot one of them without Jack and we got a body double for him, it’s so silly but everything was already happening. So we did one with the body double and then we were gonna write something else but because it was the first time we had done a proper music video, shoutout Aaron Mckenzie and While She Sleeps for bodying the visuals and being so fun to work with, we were gonna go and rewriting again but we thought it had to have Jack in it. People need to know who we are as a band and know how it works. So that was just the best idea we could come up with, to sort of take the piss and just have fun with it and still have everybody included. Jack is literally still so not healthy, it was not an easy day or a good idea. We sat in A&E after he hurt his back from stage diving and someone said ‘We heard you fell off stage.’ and he said ‘It wasn’t so much fall, it was jump.’ He was dosed up on so much morphine and was trying to explain to them was hardcore is. We showed them a video of Drain playing on my phone and it was people crawling across the stage and doing the Drain shark thing, people were doing front flips off their backs and into the crowd, they looked at it and went ‘Do you guys value your lives?’. That and then telling your doctor that you’re not going to stay home and recover but instead do a big production music video, it was so fun. Shoutout to everybody who came in as an extra in that video as well. Silly fucking video. I remember getting a call from Tom saying that we should put a disclaimer at the start of the video, I was like ‘What do you mean?’ and he says ‘Well without the context of knowing Jack is actually injured, it just kind of looks like you’re taking the piss out and being ableist’.
WHEN I SAW THE VIDEO, OBVIOUSLY I HAD BEEN TO THE ROAM SHOW AND KNEW JACK WAS INJURED, I SAW THE VIDEO AND THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY GOOD. I SENT IT TO MY FRIEND AND HE WAS LIKE ‘WHAT’S THE JOKE?’
(Charles) We did announce that Jack was hurt, we’ve probably gotten quite a bit bigger since Jack was initially injured.
WITH THE MUSIC VIDEO AND TOUR, WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT GOT PUT ASIDE OR THROWN OFF THE TIMELINE OR JUST MESSED UP WITH EVERYTHING THAT HAS GONE ON?
(Charles) We spoke about a year ago or at the start of the year, we were saying how this year would be when we give it a proper try which obviously means quite a lot of time and money and effort invested and a lot of sacrifices made in our own personal lives, like holidays or buying yourself some new clothes when you need to. The challenges that came up like possibly not being able to go on a tour because of becoming a dad and not being able to go on a set of shows or do some music videos because of big injuries, we just pushed through it all. Everything has come out as it was intended to in terms of the timeline.
(Eliot) It was hard work, financially as well because we threw so much money at everything and then we thought we couldn't play any shows which meant we couldn't recuperate any of the money, so now we need to throw more money at it and we might not get that back either.
(Charles) We’re very transparent with everybody who listens to our band about how it works, we’ve all got full time jobs and we’ve all got families and things going on outside of the band. So when we are able to release music consistently, always having new content, always having new merch and always playing a show near where you or somebody else might live - it’s a lot of work and we try and show that. I think people have been so kind, the amount of merchandise we have sold recently has been mad, the amount of merch preorders and listens and even just people sharing it across their socials. People know that we’re having a proper crack at it and I think that’s why everyone is so down to back us because we’re just being honest about it. We want to make this bigger than it is, we want to make it grow and keep growing so we just want to say thank you to everybody who supports it because it’s rad.
TO WRAP UP, WHAT ARE THE IMMEDIATE PLANS GOING FORWARD AND WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MORE LONGER TERM PLANS FOR THE NEXT YEAR OR SO?
(Charles) We have three headlines to finish off the year, we’re taking December off after a mad year for us, we’re just gonna write and hang out. So we’re doing the 7th of November in Liverpool at the Jacaranda Club, that’ll be our first time there after being asked to go there for almost our entire time of being a band. We’ve got back to back Sheffield headlines on the 25th and the 26th of November, we want a headline that will be bigger than the Leadmill show but there's not really any mid-sized venues in Sheffield so we’re just doing two dates. Saturday is about to sell out and Friday is not too far behind it. We’ve got a single to come out at some point soon, maybe towards the end of the year or maybe early next year. Our socials are @jetskitheband and you can buy music, merch and more at Jetskitheband.com.
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