The Joe Kings

Fri 15th Jan, 2010 in Features

Jack Stirling from The Joe Kings is standing on some bricks on a bucket in chilly Augusta at 11pm to get the best reception possible on the phone to chat with Fasterlouder about the launch of their upcoming EP; Calls in the Night.

The band started out two years ago as a duo with Jack Stirling (vocals, guitar, keys, percussion) and Phill Leggett (rhythm guitar) because of their love of blues rock. After meeting kindred spirits Riley Watson-Russell (bass guitar) and jazz drummer Ryan Brewer three months ago, they have now expanded to a full sized band. Having just played a set at Southbound this year and with their EP launch coming up on Saturday 23rd at the Fly By Night as well as being on the bill for the West Coast Blues and Roots Festival in March, it looks like the year 2010 will be full of action for The Joe Kings.

How was your Southbound gig?
It was good. It was fun, hey. Southbound was amazing. King Khan & The Shrines were the highlights, I reckon. Friday night we got there and went too hard. I was like, feeling the pain, and was climbing the wall of hungover-ness playing on Sunday.
It was the first time we’d played and we played in this tent stage, the lounge tent? We had a big party in the lounge tent and it was good. It was like our second proper gig with the full band and it was smooth, fun and got a little wild.

So how did the Joe Kings come about?
I love blues and played solo blues stuff since high school until two or three years ago. Just played by myself for a year and yeah, couldn’t find anyone like-minded you know. And Phill came along, and yeah, I was working in Musgroves and he came into the store and just got on the guitar and I was like, “that’s pretty good”. He came around, we had a jam and that was the start of the duo thing.

So yeah pretty much, I could not find anyone my age who listened to blues rock and everyone was into The Presets or some shit, like all electronic and stuff, and I have no interest in that whatsoever. A lot of it’s cool, I appreciate it but you know, for what I was listening to and writing at that time I wanted to learn more about blues and learn more about early rocker blues and there’s so much out there. Phill had so much knowledge about that as well so it just sort of clicked.
The duo thing went for a year, a year and a half. Then we got a deal with Session Records and now we’ve got a full band.

How did you guys get onto Session Records?
Eddie Narain moved over from Sydney to Perth, then just saw us at the Norfolk playing with… I can’t remember who, but it was a local band. And yeah, Eddie saw us and was into it and said he’d produce the record.

What’s the live show going to be like as a band now rather than a duo?
All the songs [on the EP] were written as duo songs but when we started recording, Eddie said some songs would be far better presented as a band format, you know what I mean? Some of the songs were awesome as a duo, but some of them were a bit too spacey, you know? Like lacking power in the songs. So there’s two duo songs and three full band tracks. All those songs we’re going to play at the launch at the Fly By on the 23rd of Jan.

I guess for people who have seen us as the duo thing, yeah… it’s more blues rock. Like the duo is more straight down the line like all the rhythm, you know what I mean? There wasn’t too many time changes and things like that. That was cool, the duo was more stomping blues. But with the band we can actually sort of push the boundaries a little. Rather than just keeping it 4×4 and straight blues, we can go into like, swing and sort of funk rhythm and things like that. So that’s fun.

And the other thing is that I’m so glad not to have to kick the drum the whole time. So fucking glad.

What would be your dream gig?
My dream is pretty much to play to a really good appreciative crowd. Just getting people moving, you know, that’s what we do now and what we spend all our time doing. Like when I write I think about how people are going to respond rather than just writing whatever and putting it out there. A good gig to me is when a crowd is really responsive, you know? And all gigs are going to be unexpected, but a really good gig, like a dream gig for me is one that gets wild and people go crazy. We try to make that happen every week. Absolute chaos. And hopefully if we start playing bigger and bigger audiences, the bigger the audience the wilder they feel like getting.

What’s the most rock n roll things you guys have done?
Phill gets a bit crazy. Phill is pretty much constantly naked. I’m not joking. Well I am the Joe Kings, hah that’s one of my own jokes there. But yeah, there’s lots of things we’ve done like swam in a few people’s backyard swimming pools unbeknownst to them. And we didn’t really know either, we just remembered a few days later.
Gigs are always fun, gigs get pretty wild. There’s always things that happen involving nudity.

Is there anything else coming up?
We’re playing Blues n Roots this year, that’s one of our big achievements. That’ll be super exciting and I can’t wait to meet Jeff Beck. So that should be fun.

Other than that, yeah, we will be working on an album for late this year. Yeah, end of the year, maybe early next year it’ll come out. We’ve got the EP launch and then a tour over east.

Calls in the Night will be launched at the Fly By Night on 23 January with support from Sneaky Weasel Gang, The Floors and The Growl Presented by Fasterlouder.