Another extremely cold Iowa night, although with the six guys on the stage, things were hot inside Mars Café. OK, that was awful. Anyways…my special guests for the evening was Jemstate.
There have been a number of moments on Scented Vinyl where the music of old and new has collided in fun ways, such as the night I played records that were made 100 years apart. While last night had another one of those moments; as we were playing a record, Brad was looking it up on his iPhone and actually downloading the songs right then! I thought it was cool anyways to see the differences in technology, yet seeing them work together at the same time.
I’ve been cleaning and sorting my record collection slowly over the past few weeks, it’s not quite as quick as sorting through my iTunes, but it looks a lot nicer. The result has been finding some albums that I didn’t even realize I had, thus the random playlist this week.
Here is some of what we played…
Sufjan Stevens – Greetings From Michigan Okkervil River – Down The River of Golden Dreams I’m Not There (OST) – Cat Power – Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again John Doe – Pressing On The Kinks – For The Record The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldier Faces – Snakes and Ladders Rolling Stones – Goats Head Soup The Commodores – Greatest Hits The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down 45”
After self-releasing their debut album in December of 2006, Jemstate has been playing around Central Iowa in various ways. They’ve had a couple of line-up changes, but seem to have found where they are most comfortable as a band. Andy had to leave due to family commitments, but was back for this special acoustic session; playing accordion instead of guitar and adding a whole new element to the songs.
Jemstate is a straight up rock band with duel guitars and Jason Smith (formally of The Mckenzies) on drums. The songs on their self-titled album sound completely different than the ones we recorded at Sonic Factory Studios, but they work well acoustic. You can download them now for free, and to see what Jemstate is all about, grab the interview. Also listen to some of the tracks off their album at www.myspace.com/jemstate
