Photo by Roper
J.C. Brooks and the Uptown Sound play the kind of rump-shaking soul music that will make you sweat out your 'do and get down like you're in a club on the Chitlin' Circuit circa 1965. Guitarist Billy Bungeroth brought the band together by placing an ad on Craigslist. The Uptown Sound is named for Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, and consists of drummer Kevin Marks, bassist Ben Taylor, keyboardist Andy Rosenstein and Bungeroth, who occasionally join forces with the Lowdown Horns when they really need to bring the funk. Jayson Brooks rounds out the group as the show-stopping front man.
Their sound has already attracted high-profile fans like Mayor Rahm Emmanuel (they played his inaugural party) and Jeff Tweedy, who liked the band's cover of Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart." Their newest album Want More "give[s] the soul renaissance a modern edge with cross-genre instrumentation and contemporary lyrics," according to KDHX, who also calls their Wilco cover "a triumph of imagination." We talked to lead singer Jayson Brooks about musicals, memories of kindergarten and the devil in advance of the group's upcoming show at Off Broadway on December 10.
St. Louis Magazine: What experience did you have with soul music before you started the band?
Jayson C. Brooks: None, really. I had listened to it. The closest thing I had was a band in Pittsburgh, named The High Frequencies, that did '50s and '60s rock and roll and early R&B like Chuck Berry, Hank Ballard type stuff.
SLM: Were you in any other bands in Chicago?
JCB: I was in one called The Hadleys, and we rehearsed for months and broke up at our first show.
SLM: What happened?
JCB: Basically, the guitar player was a little unstable and tried to stop us part way through the set, because he thought it sounded terrible. But it sounded fine, and he was just freaking out and afterward we were all like, “Yeah, we can’t do this.”
SLM: Your band is so Chicago, but you’re from New Jersey. Do you feel like a Chicagoan now?
JCB: A little bit. I think I walk a fine line, because I love the city, but no matter how hot the water is, you just can’t scrub off the Jersey.
SLM: I know you were in Bailiwick Chicago’s Passing Strange in the spring, and you studied musical theater in college. What was the first musical you were in?
JCB: It was in Kindergarten. Half the class was sunflowers and the other half was squirrels and I was a sunflower, so I had a green sweat suit instead of a gray sweat suit.
SLM: What were you singing?
JCB: An adaptation or a musical version of Chicken Little’s “Oh My, The Sky is Falling Story.”
SLM: That sounds cute.
JCB: Yeah, right. Perfect for kindergarteners—creepy when you’re my age.
SLM: But post-college, what were your favorite roles?
JCB: Well, that was playing Coalhouse [Walker] in Ragtime. Porchlight Theatre did a production a couple years ago and that was a lot of fun. It’s in my top ten list.
SLM: So is it weird working with Bloodshot records? They aren’t known for soul acts.
JCB: No, they aren’t. In fact, the only other soul thing that they have on the label is Andre Williams, but it’s not really weird. They’re enthusiastic about what we’re doing. Plus, I think that our stuff still has a rock edge, and we even do a country song on the new album, and not because of Bloodshot. It’s just what we were writing. Sorry, I’ve wandered away from the original question. [Laughs.]
SLM: It’s a good point, though. You guys do combine a lot of different genres in your sound. Is that because of all of you guys are bringing in your musical influences and collaborating?
JCB: I think it’s a matter of all of our influences, but we also don’t want to be that same-sounding band that has the same-sounding thing happening. That’s why I like having a whole bunch of different styles, if not in one song, then on a CD. It keeps it from that sort of sameness.
SLM: So where do you get your stage energy from? On stage you’re super into it. Who is your inspiration?
JCB: I get inspiration from Tina Turner, Patti Labelle, Otis Redding...but I’m also really inspired by the idea of getting up to a mic, and having people want to know what I’m going to do. Like they paid money and they’re waiting for a show, so I feel there’s an obligation to give them a show.
SLM: Have you ever had a crowd that wasn’t that into it?
JCB: We played in Vegas, and we weren’t a featured act or anything. We were just playing on this stage that was on the casino floor behind the bar so everyone who was sitting at the bar had like video poker screens in front of them and then there were a couple of people who were watching, but there were a lot of people who were walking between different sets of gaming. It was one of the only times that it felt like work.
SLM: That sucks.
JCB: The first night it sucked for me. But after that, I think it got to be a lot easier because you just really focus on the couple of people speckled in the crowd that are paying attention. You really focus on them, and you end up talking a lot more during the set, because for some reason the people who aren’t paying attention, an ear will perk up when they hear someone talking, as opposed to singing.
SLM: That song “Overdue” that you played on the video blog Strange Vision sounded like it was from a musical. Have you ever thought of writing one?
JCB: I absolutely have. The band sort of jokes around about it since Passing Strange, too. I mean I hopefully can sway them to more than just joking. We need another fun, interesting, non-conventional project.
SLM: Do you have a story that you’d want to work into a musical?
JCB: I do, actually. It’s something that I’ve kind of kicked around for a while. But it’s like a mix of the Persephone myth and Cyrano [de Bergerac].
SLM: The Persephone myth is the Greek one where she gets pulled into Hades?
JCB: Yeah, he was enamored with her and he snatched her away. But it would basically be this guy who goes in the underworld and tries to get her back by becoming Mephistopheles’ advisor, or the fellow who is trying to help him win her. So there’s where Cyrano comes in.
SLM: Mephistopheles the cat?
JCB: [Laughs.] It’s [also] one of the names for the devil.
SLM: Sounds interesting.
JCB: Yeah, I come from such a remix generation. You see so many stories get recycled in their same form. I have nothing against recycling a story but mix it up some.
SLM: Speaking of recycling… why did you guys cover Wilco’s “I’m Trying to Break Your Heart?”
JCB: It sort of started as a joke. We were joking around and Bill was doing covers of Chicago’s greatest bands, and WIlco came up, and he started doing that, and it was really funny. Then we sort of started working on it in earnest, and we were like, 'This doesn’t sound too bad.' I can’t remember how they first became aware of the song.
SLM: Were you surprised?
JCB: We were, because we made the video and put it out and it was out for two or three weeks and we got a couple thousand hits, but nothing [major]. Then like all of a sudden my mom—because my mom is really excited about the band, and she checks on stuff like YouTube hits for our videos and stuff—and she’s like, “Oh my God, the video's gone up!” And I checked, and it [had] jumped 3,000 hits in a day. It was because Wilco put it on their Facebook, and that’s how it got popular. We used to get all these comments from people who were like “How dare they do this to ‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’ or any song!” Online hateration.
SLM: What’s next for J.C. Brooks and the Uptown Sound?
JCB: We’re going to keep touring behind this album, and we’re going to be writing and recording in the spring . [Until then], we’ll be seeing more of the country and hopefully more of the world. Because that was the other thing. I’ve never been to the southwest or west coast [before their recent tour there]. While some of the drives were long, and terribly long, and even longer than that, it was also very beautiful at points.
SLM: Any highlights?
Somewhere between Idaho and Oregon there was this one place that had an almost alien landscape. It wasn’t mountains but it was these like flat plates of earth that were just jutting up and then there were cliffs on one side and then a slope on the other and they were all covered with this short golden grass. I was like, “We’ve got this in America? Awesome.” It was beautiful. So I got to see a lot of stuff, but it took a long time to get through it all.
