Words by: Corey Bloom
J*Davey doesn’t sound like anything or anyone you’ve heard before, and they want to keep it that way. After meeting in 2000 through mutual friends at a Senior Prom the Los Angeles based duo of producer Brook D’Leau and vocalist Miss Jack Davey found a common “weirdo quality” in each other that was later exonerated through music. They’ve spent years honing their sound, and have heard more no’s than a virgins date, but never lost faith in their music and have thus carved their own niche rooted in dirty drum patterns, draped in fuzzy electric melodies and adorned with deviously sweet lyricism. It’s too bugged too be bitten and so funky you gotta feel it, that’s just J*Davey baby.
With their dual EP The Beauty In Distortion/The Land Of The Lost on shelves and digital libraries, and currently at work on their Warner Brothers full length debut it’s only just begun for the group who is already ahead of the game.Prior to forming J*Davey what were you guys doing musically?
Jack-Musically we were both working on things independently in our spare time, but in all honesty we were either going to school or working regular jobs, just trying to figure out what we were ultimately gonna do with our lives. Music kinda popped up and took over.
Brook-I wasn’t even working with anybody before I met her. I was just making music by myself, and just doing production stuff for my own enjoyment. Unless you want to talk about what you were doing when you were younger…
Jack-Well yeah I’ve been doing music since I was a kid, I was in a group that was signed, but that was years and years before I met Brook.
What was the group?
Jack-It was D.E.F.
Brook-It stood for Doing Everything Funky.
Jack-Yeah…Thanks (laughs). It was basic 80’s pop/R&B type stuff. It was a hybrid of rap and singing, like TLC almost but with more people. I was in that group from like 8-14, and then I contemplated still working on music but I couldn’t find anybody to work with. A few years later I met Brook and wa-lah.
I’ve heard you guys refer to the music as Electro Cowabunga. Before anyone tries to piggy back on that term can we set the criteria for the Electro Cowabunga sound.
Jack-Electro Cowabunga is…I mean we are from California so the music that we make has this laid back surf element to it, and of course it’s electronic sound so I don’t know…It’s just a corny thing that we came up with, and it’s indicative of where we’re from and where we’re at when we’re creating the music. Very relaxed, and just riding a wave. It’s a way of saying surf, but surf music is already surf music. So for us it’s like taking something old and making it new.
I read an interview where you were talking about creating your own lane, and you simply said, “why not?” People talk about creative freedom, but for you it seems like there is no other way.
Brook-As an artist, I think the main thing that you want is to be remembered. Not necessarily to be famous and have money, that is cool too, but most importantly you want to be remembered and respected. I think the main way people respect you…for instance, if I wear a certain piece of clothing and people might respond funny to it. Alright, it’s a pair of shorts I wear sometimes that most guys are like I don’t know dude, that’s a little much. But they’ll see how comfortable I am in them, and at the end of the day they’ll go you know what, you’re the only person who can pull that off, I respect that. It’s the same musically, when you do something that might not be common or traditional, and you’re very true to it, I think people respect you even more because they see it’s not some facade and you’re not making an attempt to be weird just for weird’s sake. So yeah, fuck it, make your own path because at the end of the day you’ll be heralded as somebody who did it their own way.
Exactly, and then you followed that quote saying people are ready for something new.
Brook-People are ready for new! What is being marketed and pushed, style wise, a lot of things are being recycled. Its like okay, that’s cool we can go backwards and reinvent shit, but how about we push forward and attempt to create new shit. Honestly there is nothing new, but you can have a new perspective on something old. We can at least push forward to do that because man, I just see it all over the place. People are responsive to anything that’s not what they heard before.
J*Davey’s The Beauty in Distortion/The Land of the Lost is in stores NOW!!!
