I ask Jack about influence.
He gives me a blank sort of look and says he knows very little about
what's out there. He says for someone
who loves music and sure loves to perform, he is influenced by a small handful
of people. "Johnny Cash probably
being the main one". Johnny
Cash. Now I get it. Watching Jack on stage as the man in black is
something else. With his long rockabilly hair and his tattooed fingers on the
frets of his black guitar, you read "h-o-p-e l-e-s-s" and realize at
some point, you ended up fortunate enough to view the insides of a starving
soul. "So how did you and Pete meet
each other?" Jack chuckles and says they met at a gay bar. I find this funny because for the short time
that we have known each other, I have always referred to Pete as his lover, his
bromance partner, or some affectionate term for the endearing couple touring
together in a van for weeks at a time.
Jack agrees to all terms, insisting that we all understand that they
both happen to be beautiful straight men and that they happen to meet at a gay
bar, being of course the only straight men working there. When I ask Jack about his first impression of
Pete, he says that it was instant, that their smoke breaks became times of
reflection, hopeful daydreams about their futures, what they like to do in
their spare time, what music they like, and then the proposition to play
together, jam on their instruments some time soon. As Jack recalls the next morning, as if they
had stayed up all night eager to see what "jamming" together might
feel like, he plays with his hat, adjusts himself into his seat, gets wide-eyed
and tells me every minute detail of this happenstance from arriving with two
coffees through the progression of their sessions to their current state
basically stumbling into what is now known as "Hopeless Jack and the
Handsome Devil".
Jack's heart and soul is written in every line of every ballad, some heartbreaking and some playful, and then there's Pete, the ever-present counterpart banging away like a flathead V8 with lake pipes at 7,000 revolutions per minute. Jack's bourbon-soaked vocals and sultry tracks draws you in, makes you want to hear what else he might want to share with us, what window we will be allowed to see into. You see the sweat, the excitement, the handkerchief dangling from his back pocket, you think he must have had practice - a long time to perfect this craft. But when I ask Jack how long he's been at it, he gives me his devilish grin and says "not long darlin', only a year and a half-ish". I am shocked. You are recording your second studio album? This guy won't stop. He lives for this shit. As well he should. The two piece band is a spectacle, a performance to be taken on the road, a band you could book for your rock festivals, weddings, and even retirement parties. "We do well in small towns and especially to older crowds but what's cool is you have parents come in with their kids and everyone loves it but the parents are really loving it." "I could've guessed that. I'm thinking about how much my dad would love Jack.
Promotion and marketing - the two weaknesses for the band. I ask him why he thinks he has a poor turnout for big city shows. "The [metropolitan] cities are heavily saturated with rock and roll". I wonder if it might be that his version of blues is a bit older than what his generation is listening to or if the poppy songs are played out in variations of a lot of other tunes. I can't help but wonder what I could possibly suggest to "Hopeless Jack and the Handsome Devil" to get them to stand out above the rest, get the notoriety they so deserve. This band works harder than almost any other band I know. They sweat, bleed, and cry it out in every performance, taking it on the road most of the time seriously underpaid and starving through it all just to have people come and dance for a night, where new girls can have the chance to get on stage with the kind-eyed tattooed stranger.
It's not all sex. Don't feel like Shallow Hearts – Shallow Graves is a one-dimensional album; it's quite the opposite. This album, their debut record, gives us a unique insight into the heart and soul of this two-piece outfit. It plays like a teenage love story - full of pitfalls, emotional battles with raging hormones, love lost, excitement, fear, anger and soulful sex. It is a raw, reverb-laden quintessential rock & roll recording filled with contemplative lyrics, dipping hard into the complexities of love, anger, loss, and playful relationships.
When I hear Shallow Hearts – Shallow Graves I am reminded of the reasons I loved hearing “The White Stripes” first few albums, where I fell in love with the old guitar rock all over again, the joy I felt hearing bands rekindle that garage-style element that has been lost in pop culture today. The rawness percolates through the record even down to the last track, where Jack offers a heavy mesmerizing, drowsy ballad only someone who has felt for another could really relate to.
The two of them offer a muscular, almost brutish sound throughout but yet the recording is handled with such finesse that you embrace the foreboding emotional undertones that startle the audience with a sort of eclecticism. Shallow Hearts – Shallow Graves is a well-executed debut that most certainly falls under the rock & roll umbrella with such vigor that only a hard-working breakthrough band can offer. Buy it and you won’t be sorry.
