Three years after releasing The Star Trek Conspiracy, Warragul-based punk band Jason Lives is back in the studio recording a new CD.
Above: Joe Menzel, Luke Woodhouse and Gav Jacobs are back in the studio. Photo by interviewer.
The Warragul & Baw Baw Citizen caught up with Luke Woodhouse, Gav Jacobs and band newcomer Joe Menzel to talk about it.
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This article was first published in the 11 July 2014 edition of the Warragul & Baw Baw Citizen.
William Kulich (WBBC): What have you been doing since Trek?
Gav Jacobs: Six months after we released the last CD our previous guitarist, Ross, decided he wanted to move on. So from then on we were sort of stuck for a while. Then I bumped into Joe at a wedding and we got talking and he was like ‘oh, I’d be keen to play.’
Joe Menzel: Luke and I used to be in another band in high school, 1999 to 2001, Squeeze the Juice we were called, and for a few reasons we stopped playing but we didn’t break up. I thought playing music again with Luke would be cool.
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Luke Woodhouse: This band has a real complicated, incestuous background I think. The original version of this band was formed in 1996 and broke up in 1999, and when that broke up Joe and I formed Squeeze the Juice which went from ’99 until sort of 2001, and then myself and Ross talked about getting Jason Lives back together.
WBBC: Recently you have been involved in some band competitions in Melbourne. How have they gone?
Luke: They’ve gone pretty good in many respects. For us it’s been a fun opportunity to play with bands we hadn’t heard of before and reach a whole new audience that wouldn’t usually show up to a punk show. A lot of them might show up to see an acoustic performance… and they get stuck with us three guys playing punk music and carrying on like fools and they actually like it.
Joe: We’ve been playing a lot of shows lately. It’s all been really great experience getting back on stage.
Luke: I think the hard thing for us is being a band that is in many respects out of the loop. You could say Warragul-based… but we’re not really ingrained into the Melbourne scene, so we’re always looking for opportunities to break in.
WBBC: Where do you see the band being in the next few years?
Gav: Pretty much every show we’ve done for the last two years has been Melbourne-based. We’re just going to push as hard as we can and just flog ourselves, basically, around Melbourne and do as many shows as we can… and just keep plugging away until hopefully it takes us somewhere.
Luke: The problem for this band has always been we’ve all got busy lives… and it’s really hard for us to keep the momentum going. We’ve found in the past we’ve had a good run where we’ve even done shows interstate and something happens that makes us have to put a hold on things for about six months or whatever, and when we come back all the bands we used to play with have broken up or the venues have closed down. Once we get this new CD done and under our belts it will be time to really get out there and start doing as many shows as possible. This is the time for us to really push it further than we have before but, at the end of the day, so long as we enjoy doing what we’re doing we will keep on going.
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Listen: www.jasonlives.net
