Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryan Haines, Brian Weinberg, Clark Lee and James Deveau.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
After returning to Atlanta from attending college at Florida State, I (Bryan) reached out to my high school buddy James about starting a band. He told me that he had been playing with a group of guys and that they had room for another guitarist. You see, at that time, James was primarily playing guitar and only later started focusing on keys. So after meeting the guys and working on songs, we are starting playing gigs and settled on the name of Jack’s River Band.
The name itself is a reference to a river in the Cohutta Wilderness of North Georgia, Jacks River, which has a well-visited hiking trail, waterfall, and campground. Over the next couple of years, we continued to write and perform, eventually going through a couple rhythm section changes. When our last drummer got an opportunity to play full time with Col. Bruce’s band we found ourselves on the hunt for another replacement. We immediately posted an ad on Craigslist and within a couple days, we received our first response which happened to be Brian.
From the beginning it was an extremely natural fit and he introduced us to his longtime bandmate Clark. Within a couple months, we were really starting to gel and found ourselves at Zak Recording Studio (now Astro Studios) recording our first album, “Woodland Creatures”. That album is really a collection of songs I brought from a previous band in Tallahassee and songs James wrote outside of JRB.
Over the following year, we continued to expand our horizons, headlining at venues in Atlanta like City Winery and Eddies Attic, as well as expanding outward into the greater Southeast. This gave us the opportunity to really get to know each other musically and we began writing new songs with earnest. Since our first album was mostly comprised of songs that were brought in from previous projects, we now felt the need to forge ahead with our “real” identity. So, in the spring of 2019, we ended up back in the studio, this time at Japanski in Athens, and we recorded three new songs. Besides those three recordings we regularly perform roughly 20 original tunes that reflect the current musical state of the band.
Today we continue to aggressively write new material and gig throughout the Southeast. Our next Atlanta show is on 4/11 at Aisle five supporting the Magic Beans on their nationwide tour.
Has it been a smooth road?
We face the same challenges that all independent artists face: struggling to grow your audience, booking and promoting shows, maintaining a website and social media presence, etc. We are happy with our growth and are excited to see where it all leads.
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
What sets Jacks River Band apart is the variety of genres we represent. At our core, we are a four-piece Rock/Jam band that prominently features energetic, extended improvised sections. On top of that foundation, though, we also pay homage to the legacy of the Blues, lace nearly every song with a healthy dose of funk, get weird with a multi-song experimental and meandering rock opera about a dog, and burn down the barn with a handfull of bluegrass tunes. We even have a sea shanty in our songbook. What ties all these varied genres together is our commitment to performing with a contagious energy and making sure that no two shows sound the same.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
There is a tight-knit and constantly expanding music scene in Atlanta that caters to the type of music that we play. It’s my hope that as this trend continues we continue to see more and more incredible musicians come to Atlanta and help draw an even larger community of live music consumers in the market.
Contact Info:
- Address: Bryan Haines
170 Boulevard SE Apt H507
Atlanta, GA 30312 - Website: jacksriverband.com
- Phone: 678-315-5294
- Email: jacksriverband@gmail.com
- Instagram: @jacksriverband
- Facebook: facebook.com/jacksriverband
- Twitter: @jacksriverband
- Other: youtube.com/jacksriverband
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