These birds aren't of a feather, but they rock together. Al Janelle explains. "Individually, we’re all coming from completely different influences and backgrounds and we come together to mold those influences as a band. All four (of) us together bring that kind of weird blend. In this way we can appeal to a lot of different people as individuals, as well as a band. We’re pretty diverse and we bring it together nicely in my humble opinion."
This energetic flock starts off with seventeen-year-old vocalist and guitarist Al Janelle, a high school senior with strong ties to his faith.
Next along the line is eighteen-year-old Matthew Heller, the band's drummer, who shares his joy of the beats with others by teaching at his high school. Adam Smith, a twenty-year-old bass guitarist and background vocalist, has talent with the written word along with the sung as the entertainment editor for his school newspaper The Stallion.
The old man of the group is twenty-two year old Joel Jones, a guitarist and vocalist who not only performs but also composes and arranges music, from marching bands to jazz ensembles, and has aspirations to compose music for film. Joel also teaches along with Matthew at their high school. Al recalls how they came together, working their way up to recognition.
"We were all members early on of the high school jazz band. I contacted Matt and Adam and got 'em all together so we could play at the high school talent show. They were down with that and a little later Joel came in. We started learning a lot of cover songs so we could start playing bars. That next May we were booking gigs."
But first they needed a name...
"There’s a coffee shop in Milledgeville, Georgia called Black Bird Coffee and it has probably one of the coolest illustrations of a blackbird I’ve ever seen. I was like 'that would be a cool logo for a band'. Of course, now, we don’t use their logo, but there was no copyright on band names, so we stuck with that one after throwing a few around." The energy and passion in their performances soon brought them to the top of the pecking order in Angel City's Battle of the Bands, then went out on a limb and became a Top 20 Finalist on Fox's "Next Great American Band".
"The whole experience starting in last July until the show aired was very rewarding, but very nerve wracking the whole entire time.
“We sent in an audition tape expecting for them to not even call us back, and we ended out going through until the last round of auditions. It was a great experience to get to play in front of the people we got to play in front of and meet the bands we got to meet. The exposure to everything we were exposed to...they made us stronger as a band. It made us realize we might actually have a shot at doing something productive with what had started as just a little thing to do to occupy our free time."
As the group grows, their music evolves as well, though into what, even the band can't yet predict. "It’s more of a progressive blues rock. I guess a better word would be retrogressive blues rock because instead of completely going forward with the idea, now we’re kind of going back to the old school guys and taking their ideas more forward. It doesn’t make much sense but it kinda does."
Al tries to explain. "We’ve especially started, in the last few months, to take a big jam band influence."
Where might the winds of chance and fortune take them? Anywhere it likes, as long as they can remain aloft upon the melody.
"We all want to pursue this as our future, to make good music and go as far as we possibly can with our talent and have fun the whole time! Everybody we look up to seems like they’re having such a good time doing it, so we just hope we can be that way in 20 or 30 years. We’re on the right track. We have a lot of fun doing what we do and we hadn’t rather do anything else with our time.
| written by Joshua Schrader
