Today we’d like to introduce you to Caleb Little, Neal Colledge and Brian Hekman.
Caleb, Neal and Brian, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Neal and I (Caleb) had been friends since we were teenagers and would stay up until the wee hours of the night learning songs we liked on our acoustic guitars. But, as we started to get a little older and I left for the Navy, we grew a little further apart each year but always remained in touch. Throughout that time, I had started playing publicly with some other artists and bands on the drums since that was my main instrument then. But a passionate love had formed within me for singing, playing guitar, writing songs, and learning guilty pleasure pop songs like Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” and Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. Since I hadn’t really heard these pop songs covered in an acoustic/rock style, I thought I was onto something so I began pursuing solo acoustic gigs wherever I could find them. I wasn’t used to being out front on stage so I never really had full confidence when singing and playing guitar alone and I would often ask other musician friends of mine to join me on gigs. Because it was usually a different group each time there would be a different name for the act each time, usually Caleb Little and something-somethings with a different something-something each time. Neal joined in a few times on guitar but we never really had drummer because they are not only hard to find but as a drummer myself- I was a little picky.
Around February of 2013, I had a gig at a local bar and this time I really wanted to have a good drummer. As fate would have it, I met Brian a few months earlier at a welcome-home party my family threw when I left the Navy and returned home. There was a five-band lineup in my mom’s driveway and he was the drummer for one of the bands! Anyway, I called Brian and asked if he was interested in joining me on the gig and he was onboard to give it a shot. Now that I had a drummer, I needed a bass player but my two usual go-to-guys couldn’t make it and I thought “I wonder if Neal would want to try it out”. I knew Neal wasn’t a bass player but remembered from our late night teenage jam sessions that he not only had a bass but could also play it pretty well. I called Neal and he was in for the gig, too. I think the best part about all of this is: Neal and Brian didn’t even know each other, They met on stage the night of the gig! We had an awesome crowd and all three of us had such a great time that we decided we needed to play again together and give ourselves a name. That’s when Brian said, “I’ve always wanted to be in a band called ‘Wet Jeans’ so we can name an album ‘The Worst Thing In The World'”. The name Wet Jeans instantly stuck. Later we would begin rehearsing weekly to learn more songs for our pop cover act and, in doing so, we couldn’t help but to create some original music of our own. A few years later we recorded our first album which was released in April of 2018 and because of Brian’s joke in naming the band, we named the album “The Worst”. Since then we have built our own recording studio while writing our second album. Both of which are nearly complete and we have hopes to begin recording in late summer/early fall this year, 2020.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I believe we can say as far as our band goes, it has been a smooth road. We live our band-life through the principal of “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.” After all, it’s called “playing” music.
Our only real obstacles are pretty paralleled with everyone else – time and money. Luckily, we all have our own means of income so we were able to pool all of the money from every gig we’ve ever had to pay for our recordings and our first and only music video. Since the 2018 release of our first album “The Worst”, we have continued to pool all of our gig pay to build our recording studio. On the other hand, because we all have our 40hr/wk. day jobs, it can be difficult to dedicate the time needed to complete our band related projects.
Wet Jeans – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We are a tripod of performers with strong beliefs in certain aspects of musical professionalism. We love what we do. When we’re booked for an event, we show up either on time or early with smiles on our faces. Our specialization is in the assurance of good time for the audience. I think it’s similar to how laughter is contagious. Just like it’s hard not laugh when someone near you is laughing, it’s hard not to have a great time in the crowd when we’re having a great time on stage. I think that’s what makes us stand out a little. We know we are just guppies in a gigantic ocean of musicians and artists. But, since we create our own music because we love it, we’re cool with being guppies. As we continue to write together, our songs continue to get better and better and it spreads joy and warmth throughout my entire body. I don’t think we’ll ever stop making music together.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The proudest moment of our career so far would have to be the accidental viral music video of our song “The Finish Line”. It was our first music video and Neal had the idea he would post its YouTube link on Reddit. Nobody knew how he did it or that it would even come close to happening but somehow the video went viral and became the number one post on all of Reddit after just a few hours of posting. In fact, it got so much attention that Reddit Moderators took it down because they thought we were using Russian bots for up-votes. Thus, out of sheer luck, our song became kind of a hit on the internet. Although there was an insane amount of horribly negative comments on Reddit and YouTube, there were also tons of positive comments and we gained a lot of followers, especially on Spotify. To this day our song has over 400k streams on Spotify and in the Spotify app, it shows you where people in the world are listening. So, my proudest accomplishment was looking at our Spotify app and seeing that this little love song we wrote was streaming in over 40 other countries. Plus, our first online merchandise sale was to a new fan in Ireland. All thanks to a lightning strike of luck on the internet.
Contact Info:
- Website: wetjeansband.com
- Phone: 404-309-9647
- Email: wetjeansband@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wetjeansband/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wetjeansband
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wetjeansband
Image Credit:
Olivia Prance, John Tangney, Miles Burgess, Luke Usry, Rachel Conley
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