The NJX Demo Sessions
Bluesbox was the band, a 3 piece blues trio, that we formed after FK and I finished the "Before The Night Is Through" CD. It was me, JD on guitar and vocals,
FK on bass and Shawn Robinson on drums. After playing gigs for about a year or so we started working on the Bluesbox CD "Boxing Day". It took us, oh I don't know (?), about 8 or 9 months to finish. I remember, it was started in the fall and continued thru the winter months. The summer of that year (?) we started recording again but this time we decided it was gonna be a whole different "thing" or "concept" or "whatever". I refuse to use the word "project" because it "creeps me out yo". Always did always will !
"Boxing Day" was a Blues/Rock CD, at least that's what we were going for. The new songs we were writing and recording were any style or genre that we came up with and felt like doing. That became the M.O. We wrote songs that were Blues, Rock, Country, Psychedelic Pop, 60's Soul, Rock-a-Billy, Folk/Acoustic and many un-nameable mixes of these styles.
We were not "purists"and took a respectful but irreverent and unorthodox approach to everything we did. And lo and behold, we started having "FUN"! Not only did we do this with the songs but also in the way they were recorded and produced (all Frank Kozak's fault). We used guitar, bass, drums and various percussion (chairs, glasses, table tops, boxes, paper and anything we could bang on), and keyboards. We also got into "sound effects" like real time wind, rain , thunder storms, etc. and made them part of the mix. We also did a lot of over-dubbing with instruments and especially with the vocals since I was the only one singing.
While we were recording these songs we talked about the fact that all of us were born in Philadelphia,PA. In our shared experiences and childhood memories we realised that Philly was a big and influential part of our lives and that living in New Jersey was just an "experiment " to see if it was "cool".
So, we named the recording session and demos "The New Jersey Experiment" or NJX. Keep all this in mind when and if you listen to our free music on the web site (' cause there's gonna be a test later on ,I'm kidding and I know it's a corny joke but I work in a High School and I can't help it).
The NJX demo sessions were never commercially released and when we started the Bohemian Mechanics web site we decided it was time to unleash it on the world and continue to do so in the future. Hope you enjoy them. I know we did!
Later,
JD
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